Seth Rules Pretty Hard

Seth got me this for Christmas. I have wanted it for several years. We got a set of RevereWare for our wedding that was destroyed by crappy rental-unit stoves, which is retiring now that I got this new set. It is so pretty. So Pretty. Shiny, well-designed. I am LOVING this Christmas gift. I didn't even have the gumption to put it on my list this year, but Seth is so awesome that he snuck it in there. I was shocked when I opened it. I was just crying and crying. I love this. I also love not having to wonder how crappy my next rental-unit stove is going to be because I own my own dang stove now. I don't RENT.

Hung For the Holidays

My sister Laurel gave us this CD for Christmas a couple years ago and we finally opened it and listened to it this year. It turns out, I really like it. I like that William Hung, because he has a really good attitude. I hope he made some bucks off being embarrassed. Maybe it's not embarrassing for him. That would work out real well. William sings all the Christmas classics on this disc, and it's good because it's not the same old beautiful Mormon Tabernacle Choir or Bing Crosby or whatever. It's just a regular guy with a fun Asian accent singing like a regular guy. And when I sing along, he makes me sound good. So if you're open-minded and like a novelty, like me, this may be something to check into.

I also got a disc called Bluegrass Christmas at the Dollar Tree several weeks ago but then I misplaced it and haven't been able to listen to it. I still will, though, whenever I find it. Another novelty Christmas disc! I love it!

I Had A Baby

And his name is Scott. Enough already with the carrots, right? I have real news. After causing us trouble all summer and trying to get out early, Scottie finally arrived right on time, Monday December first. It was a super-quick delivery, where we made it to the hospital within 20 or 30 minutes of delivering the baby, and if we had hesitated any more, we could have had a Bad Night. He came whether we liked it or not. I did it without an epidural. So now I've had one of every kind of birth: induced labor, preemie, c-section, vbac with epidural, "natural" delivery. Did I miss anything?

The funny part is that the whole time I was praying for Scott to be born the SUNDAY after Thanksgiving. I need to work on my enunciation or something, because Heavenly Father must have thought I was saying MONDAY that whole time. No sweat, though, because I couldn't have asked for a better birth. I was afraid to ask for a better birth, in fact, because just the timing was blessing enough. But I did sneak in a couple prayers where you're like, So if you want to bless me with such and such a fabulous birth with this baby, that would be great and I would be so grateful.

Everyone's always bloggin' it up about their babies and putting pictures and stuff, and it's not my intention to let Scott take over and dominate my blog. But he is super cute and super cuddly and super sweet. This last saturday night, at age 12 days, Scott slept from 10:30 pm until 7 in the morning. DANG!!! He's a really good blessing and I am super ultra grateful for him.

It's weird, too, because I'm grateful he caused so much trouble. Without it, I wouldn't have been diagnosed with cancer and I would be ignorant or it and it would go on growing and getting nastier and nastier. I had the last pre-surgery ultrasound this morning on my lymph nodes and it looked good, with no obvious signs of contamination. A few more fun tests and we are GO for surgery!

We Grew Carrots...But Not Good Ones

The title pretty much says what happened. On a bit of a whim I planted some carrot seeds and when nothing came up I replanted the row with cucumbers. So halfway through the summer, in between all the cucumber vines, here come these carrot greens growing strong and healthy. My mother-in-law gave me the seeds and told me that when she went to harvest her carrots, they were tiny stumpy nubs, so to leave mine in the ground, which I did. I finally brought them in after Halloween. Here's the entire carrot harvest, from largest to smallest. I was just pleased something grew at all. We...didn't eat the little guys.

Oh, and that IS my big fat old belly there, at the bottom of the picture. Sometimes I think I'm not that huge-looking, and then something will happen like this picture, and I'll know for sure that, yep, I'm tremendous in size. Anyway, here's to a better carrot harvest next year! Cheers!

Tomato Harvest After All

I was really disappointed when it got all frosty one night many weeks ago, so I had Seth go on out to the garden and just retrieve all the tomatoes that were on the bushes, green though they were. He brought them in all in a big bucket and just left the bucket on the kitchen floor. Not too much faith they would actually do much, eh? A couple days later I had a party in here, so I had to clean up stuff. There's not a real good way to make a big old bucket of green tomatoes look party-ish, so I used my Design Sense and lined them all up on the windowsills in the kitchen, living room, and my room. They looked pretty cute, I thought.

So but they sat there, very green and very hard for many many days. And then a couple of them began to blush, just a wee bit. And then the blushers got red. And then MORE started to blush! And it went from there, to where we had some getting actually ripe. My idea in planting five tomato bushes was that we would have an abundant harvest and process them into canning jars or whatnot. But obviously, with that plan dashed, we were still able to have an abundant harvest! I am still pretty pleased with this. Some went the way of all the earth before we were able to consume them, may they rest in pieces out by the tree where Seth chucks bad fruit. Some I made into a colossal batch of homemade tomato soup, which took me SO LONG that I had to put it away for several days before I got up the gumption to get it out and finish making it. Eric actually dug it pretty well and asked for seconds and asked to have it again. Seth said it was really strong, which it was.

Some we were able to use in salad or tacos. And the last of them I ingeniously used to make homemade spaghetti sauce, which when mixed with a can of regular sauce, was not too strong. Pretty good, actually. There was a ton of it and we had it for dinner two times in four days.

So Tomato Bounty after all that worry! It wasn't a nine-dollar salad tomato after all! With all these other brothers and sisters going ripe long after the fact, the average price-per tomato actually went down to where I would consider it a tomato bargain! And, sorry Seth, next year I'm planning to plant the same number of tomato plants, but suck it up and go get them MUCH earlier in the season, and coddle them and poultry-manure them and reap an even more abundant harvest!!!

Sometimes I Make Stuff that's Ugly

The idea was that it would be a football. It's the third or fourth cake I baked in my P-Chef batter bowl. It came out far, far uglier than the others. It stuck to the bowl and turned into a stupid pile of crumbs when I took it out. And then, to make it even doofier, when I cut it in half, I missed the line of symmetry and ended up with a very lumpy , terrible, lopsided footballish-type thing. After that I was all, Seth I love you, but I am not loving this cake, so Sorry! I just slapped on some homegrown brownish frosting and this is the end result. I even forgot to bring candles to Dorothy's for the party so that's a tealight up top. Delightful smell, though! I believe we were all calling it The Turd Cake. Me especially. Next year, Seth, you'll get a decent, respectable cake. Next year.

Modern Maternity Clothes

When I was pregnant with Eric I got me some super-comfy fun maternity clothes. I still have the shirts but the one beloved pants and the other not-as-beloved pants had to go, for style reasons. They were really comfy clothes, with lots of stretch and forgiveness.

So I'm more moderner now and with Russell I was blessed to be able to go in and buy some modern-day maternity clothes, mostly from Target. So Liz Lange, bless her heart, has these maternity clothes and they're supposed to be all stylish but mom-friendly. I will now review her work.

This isn't going to be a positive review. Liz apparently thinks modern and stylish pregnant moms don't care about a) comfort, b)wedgies, or c)their gut hanging out. I have had problems with all these things while wearing Liz's "maternity" clothes. One big thing is the stretchy panel up front. I avoided this altogether on my first maternities, with Eric. I thought, ewww! stretchy panel! So Liz Lange must think that also, because most of her maternities have a big fat stretchy waist-band that's designed to sit at your actual waist. That's pretty ok when you're not very pregnant. But once you hit actual pregnancy size and shape, it's STUPID!! My main problem with this waistband option is that it's super-uncomfortable having stuff right there all over your already uncomfortable fatty old belly. Then you have a contraction and boop! the whole thing slides right down to your crotch. This is Lame. So I give these pants a thumbs up for style and early-pregnancy comfort, but a thumbs down for late-pregnancy everything. They're great for going home from the hospital, though, when you're still all fatty but not pregnant.

Then the other style of pants Liz does is the "below the belly" waistband. I have one pair of these, that was on sale for like $5.41 or so. They are great, in that they don't give you a wedgie all day nearly as bad as stretchy-panel maternity jeans. BUT the downside is that if you don't want your gut hanging right out from under your shirt, these are not the pants for you. Mostly they just slip right down to the crotch pretty much all the time. So, not that comfy out in public or modest. So bless their heart, these pants were a good attempt to keep that big stretchy waistband off your uncomfortable "belly" but don't turn out to solve the problems.

And shirts. Traditional maternity shirts are big and wide and long and comfy. But they do make you look big and wide and huge and enormous. So modern-day maternity clothes involve little shirts. Little stretchy shirts. Oooh, so cute, look at her little pregnant belly. I despise the word belly and all attempts to make your baby gut something cute. It's really not attractive, people. It's just something you have to do and Look Like for a few months in order to score the real bonanza. So, like the pants, little stretchy maternity shirts are cute and flattering early in pregnancy, when regular clothes are too tight but regular maternity shirts are WAY too big. And then you get to the "actually big and pregnant" stage and they become RIDICULOUS. First, if you do have pants or jeans with a stretchy panel, whop! Here it is right out in everybody's face, because little stretchy modern maternity shirts aren't long enough to cover that fun stretchy ugly panel. It's not good looking and I for one, want it covered. Second, even if there were something cute about a pregnant baby-gut, and it were great to wear a little tight stretchy shirt over it, the shirt should at least COVER the baby-gut. Sweet old Liz Lange wants her modern-day maternity shirts to be short. For lack of a better word. She feels it's more stylish and flattering, which may be true when you're not that pregnant. But when you're big and fatty, like me right now, longer is INFINITELY more flattering. I tried on a modern shirt the other day and it was so ludicrously short and stupid-looking that I took it off instantaneously. I didn't even want Russell to see it on me. Really dumb. Plus I am super uncomfortable all the time, if my shirt is sticking a) on my butt or b) on my tummy. I feel like Big Edna in the movie "UHF" adjusting my shirt down constantly all day. These shorty little shirts are murder for a person like me, adjusting and pulling constantly, all day, all day.

Finally, I have something to say about stretchy panels. Nothing will ever be as comfortable as my first un-stylish maternity pants that I don't have anymore. I now have and wear pants with the stretchy panel. They might-well work for some ladies. Me, myself? I am in a state of constant Wedgie-ness. In my attempt to be cute and stylish, and wear modern-day clothes, I have succumbed to vanity at the expense of comfort. Is having a wedgie all the time comfortable? No. But then almost nothing about being pregnant is comfortable. That sounds like whining and it might be. Proto-whining, maybe. So either I can have a wedgie literally all the time, except right after a wedgie-pick and before moving a muscle, or else I can wear the waistband-down-to-the-crotch Liz Lange pants and have my gut hanging out all the time. I feel justified in a little tiny dash of whining. I do get into my jammies as early in the evenings as I can. They are regular clothes, but nice and stretchy and comfy. They make me look really tubby and I don't care. I rave about their comfort. Two thumbs up for comfort, if only for 9 or 10 hours all in the night.

I Rocked the Vote

Yeah, I voted. Jealous!?

Everyone was all worried that it would be three-hour lines out the door and hassles til Tuesday because of fever-pitch excitement with this election. Seth voted by mail because he would be working in The Springs all this week, over the entire time the polls were open. People waited in line during the last couple weeks for early voting, for hours some of them. I was ready to stand in line, because I didn't want to bring my own little folding chair to sit in line. And I'm SO GLAD I didn't bother.

I walked Jules to school, which is also our polling place. I walked into the special gym-door marked "Voter Entrance." I showed my card, signed my name, and stepped into my computer-voting-booth pretty much instantaneously. I am leery of computer ballots with no paper trail; BUT there was a paper trail on this. Just my name and voter ID stuff, but there was the stack of papers relating to those who had voted on this machine, right there. So, more confident. Everyone was all, there are so many initiatives and amendments on our ballots, voting will be so slow. But instead, I took a little cheat sheet I made up beforehand, after researching the candidates and issues. So that made it go really quickly. I had Russell with me. He just sat on the floor eating a peanut butter sandwich, being so good. I had him come in my little booth and push my "vote" button for me. And then we went home. It was SO FAST. No waiting. No lengthy ballot-reading. Plus a sister from our ward was in the booth right next to ours when I left.

No fuss, not really a lot of muss. During the John Kerry/ W. election, I sat up all night, just chewing my fingernails watching the "coverage" and then the next day I had a humongous headache, because of the stress that had been building up for weeks and months. This time I am determined not to get that headache, even though I live in a 50/50 battleground state. My goal is just not to watch very much of the "coverage." Weren't there any fabulous car-crashes or kidnappings or business-closings today you guys can report on?

Second, Second

This is a cozy photo of our couches right when we got them. Since then, I have taken away all the throw pillows. I got tired REAL QUICK of scolding the children to pick them up and stop playing with and on them. So, they disappeared from the scene. I do plan to make new more play-able and floor-able pillows using some pillow forms I got free from Dot 'n Jay, who got them from one of the storage-units they bought at auction, but obviously I haven't done it yet. How cozy and warm this picture looks!

First File, First Picture

I felt so successful doing that tag thing with the fourth photo in your fourth picture file that I decided to do one with my first file, first photo. Maybe next I'll do the 2nd, 2nd and then the 3rd 3rd and so on.

I actually have no active knowledge about this picture. It's taken on the back deck of our townhouse we rented for a year when we moved to Denver. The date on the picture leads me to believe that it might have something to do with the first day of school. Why else would I just take a random photo of Eric on the back deck, and why else would he be wearing a shirt with buttons and an undershirt, unless I made him for a special occasion like the first day of school? So that's what I think it is.

Here's Your Tag

Jodi tagged me to do the Google image search and I tried to do it but failed. Maybe in the future I'll try it again. THIS tag, however, proved to be the easiest one I've ever seen. This here picture is one of many, MANY pictures Eric and I have taken of his Bionicle creations. A couple of them he has uploaded to his Lego page and named. I don't know if this is one of them. I think this picture was actually taken by Eric, judging by the terrible framing. But it could have been me. You know what? No, it couldn't have been me. No way am I taking the picture and leaving the plunger in the frame. As a side note, Eric has been just taking the didge lately and grabbing his own photos of things, so it's a major blessing for Seth's peace of mind that my sister Dorothy found an awesome spongebob USB camera on sale at Target for 5 bucks for Eric's birthday. I feel that he will love it. Eric will. Seth will love Eric NOT using the family camera. I will love the software the comes with it and allows you to superimpose SpongeBob into your photos. So this is my "fourth file, fourth picture" tag and I don't know if it's fair to tag other people or if it will make me feel like a loser if they don't do it, so I'm going to go ahead and just tag.....mmmm...Gretch. And Jon. A little Blog Fodder for ya there.

I HAVE Read Something Good Lately

I saw on the list of 100 books Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne. You know, it's funny. I'm 30 some-odd years old and I never actualy realized there was a real official book. I should have. It's totally obvous. It had to come from somewhere, plus my sister-in-law Jodi was sending me quotes from it on my mission. My thing is, I don't know whether to let myself like Winnie the Pooh, because it's been so adulterated over the last 80 years. Plus the characters and stories have been totally raped since they've been bought by Disney. "Classic Pooh" merchandise?

So I took the children on a whim to the library, because Eric needed another Harry Potter book. And while we were there, on a whim, I looked up Winnie the Pooh, and there it was. The original book. Jules ridiculed me for checking out a Baby Book. Haha! Little does she know!

I actually really liked this book. I love the random capitalization, because I do that too. I love the cleverness and the way not everything is explained out in full detail. And most of all, I love Eeyore, and I'm about to write in my favorite quote, which I read out loud to Seth after reading it and laughing out loud.

The Old Grey Donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of the forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought,"Inasmuch as which?"--and sometimes he didnt' quite know what he was thinking about.

Classic! So, great book which I'll probably read aloud to the children sometime in the future, and too bad about it getting totally watered down and cheatinized. I actually feel the same way about Curious George. Although he's not quite as clever.

Read Anything Good Lately?

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them! :)"


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I don't have anything underlined because I can't figure out how to do it. I love the usual things, the classics, the Narnia. Also I take issue with some of the things on this list. NO WAY is this the definitive 100-best or top-100 books list. Bridget Jones' Diary? Please. And why list The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe separately from the Chronicles of Narnia?

So anyway, This reminds me of the time I got a flier of the "100 classics not to miss" from the Provo City Library and set out to read all 100. That's why I can put so many titles in Bold. Also I can proudly list that I have read several other "classic"-type books that aren't on this-here list: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and like that, plus the book I'm currently reading, Death Comes for the Archbishop. I didn't think I would like it but it's pretty interesting so far.

This Makes me Laugh So Hard

I get these email updates from goodreads.com from my sisters-in-law, Jodi and Becca. And I get them to my gmail account, where the computer scans your email and subtly gives you advertisements related to what's in there. So today I notice this advertisement, right up top on an email update from Becca, via goodreads:

BeccaSale - ww.oneinfinitemarketplaces.com - 40%-60% Discount Becca (in stock)

I LOVE that they're selling Becca and that it's IN STOCK!!!! I can't wait to go get my discount Becca. I've been paying full-price this whole time!!! Cool web address, too!

Novelty-Size Cake

First of all, this picture does NOT do the cake justice.

So, ok. I went with the ladies to a restaurant called Claim Jumper after the RS broadcast on Saturday night. They had told me that the food was nothing special, but the desserts were huge and delicious. So we walked in the front door and there was this display case of dessert things, and at first glance, the desserts looked big and delicious. And then they pointed out to me the MotherLode Cake. I just started laughing and laughing and cackling. This is a cake that has six (6) full-size layers. SIX. A normal layer cake has like 2 full-size layers or else several skinny-minny layers, and they look pretty tall, like four inches tall. So picture that, times three, plus a bunch of frosting in between each layer. THE CAKE WAS LIKE OVER A FOOT TALL!!! I was instantly in heaven. And there next to it was the slice. You know in restaurants, where they serve your food on an oval-shaped platter dealy instead of a plate? That's how they serve you a slice of this cake. In the picture here, I've already eaten a layer and a half or so, which was ALL I could do before just boxing it and bringing it home to show Seth. Sweet Seth. He tolerates my love of novelties and can appreciate something catastrophically novel, but also he really likes stuff that's delicious. So I think that was the main draw for him on this cake. It really is pretty delicious.

My idea is to go back to Claim Jumper with Seth on a date. Maybe we could grab a mini-bacon cheeseburger from the Wendy's dollar menu on the way, but then the main event would be to split an enormous dessert. The one I wanted to bring home but couldn't, was the "I D'eclaire" which is an eclaire the size of a homemade loaf of bread and then with ice cream underneath it. I LOVE THIS RESTAURANT, if only for its huge, hilarious novelty-size delicious desserts.

Braggin' it Up!!

If you don't like braggy posts, don't read this. I'm totally about to brag about my genius kid.

Last Tuesday, Russell and I got the first Harry Potter book from the library for Eric. We gave it to him that evening after dinner. He read until Lights Out, Books Out time. The next morning we could barely get him to get dressed and eat breakfast, he was so mesmerized by reading the book. He asked if he could read it on the way to school, so Ok. I was going to take it from him when we got there, but he was so sincere and sweet that I let him take it to school with him. I always warn him not to get in trouble for reading when he should be doing something else, which has happened to him in the past. He got home from school saying he'd had "extra reading time" that day, and I was all..."I'd better not get a call from Teacher about this alleged 'extra reading time'." Then that night I went with the Young Women to the temple for like 4 hours. When I got back that night after bedtime, there was the book sitting there on the rocking chair. He had FINISHED IT in ONE DAY. He's 8.

So, ok, he's a fast reader. Seth was suspicious, asking me if Eric really got what he was reading and so on. Apparently he does. He's a pretty good quick reader. His whole thing, though, has been reading, reading, reading, and not doing anything with it, academically. There's this program at school, A.R., where books are rated by level. Last year teacher set a goal with Eric that he advance in the A.R. program by a whole level by the end of the semester. All you have to do is read books and then take a test. That's where he fell short. I would send him off to school with the admonition that he take a test today in order to meet his goal. He almost made the goal, with all my badgering.

When school started this year, I specifically asked Teacher if we could work together to motivate Eric to at least earn the 25 points you need (at a rate of several points per test) to get on the Wall of Fame. He had maybe 18 points built up over 1st and 2nd grades. So last week when he finished the book so fast, I told him if he could take a couple tests and get on the A.R. Wall of Fame, I would check him out the second Harry Potter book. Monday he took a test and got enough points to get on the Wall of Fame, and then out of the blue on Tuesday he came home saying he'd taken the AR test for Harry Potter and almost passed. Awww, so close, buddy. But he got the second book, for reaching the 25 point level with the other test. So I checked the book out on Tuesday night and gave it to him when I got home from Young Womens. I know he's a fast reader and all, but I was astonished when he came up last night after reading time to say he'd just finished the second book. Again, in ONE DAY. And you know they get longer with each book.

So this morning I get a call from Teacher. I was expecting it to be either a)Eric isn't doing his work, just reading, or b)Why are you sending him in with these fat old books that are 20 AR levels above where he is? But instead, Teacher said she was calling to check whether Eric had read the book by himself. Uh, yeah. At bedtime, I'm up reading Little House with Jules. I sort of stopped reading bedtime books with Eric 18 months ago. So, yeah, he read the whole thing by himself. She says, "Oh! Because he told me he was reading it by himself. I knew he was a good reader. But I just called to tell you he took the AR test on the second Harry Potter this morning and got 100%. And this one is 12 AR levels higher than the first one!" She was going to send home a list of other AR books around that level for Eric to read.

So it totally made my day. He's not only a super good, super fast reader, but he's also only a few points away from the next AR Wall of Fame level, and needless to say, the most advanced reader in his class. WAHOOO!!! Sometimes he's a bit of a bonehead about remembering to put his stuff away or looking in a certain place for something even if I describe it in detail to him. But he's a fabulous reading genius, dang it!!

PS: I love you all, but I'm going to go ahead and request that no one reply with how much of a genius THEIR kids are, because it's my brag about my boy. Feel free to leave admiring replies saying how great he is or how his head must be so big because he has such a huge intelligent brain, though.

A Couple Favorites

I like this picture of Seth from the wax museum because he looks like one of those guys who happens upon a news story being filmed and jumps in behind the on-location anchor and acts "funny." Except he just happened to stumble upon Dale, Sr. just after he won the big race and is sneaking up behind to celebrate with him.

Here's one of my favorite pictures of me from Madame Toussaud's. I like it not because of old what's-his-name, but because we look so natural. I'm just pointing something out and he's just good-naturedly glancing at it. He's not really my kind of guy, though. Plus I don't actually know how to play poker. I have some good ideas about how to do it, but I would DEFINITELY lose the Celebrity Tournament.

What We Did in Vegas

Here's what we did and what I thought of it:

Las Vegas LDS Temple: large and pretty, this temple has a little interior courtyard and a huge spacious front lobby. We did sealings (Seth's idea) to celebrate our 10 years of marriage. It was great!

Hoover Dam: You can pay a ton to go on all kinds of tours, but we paid zero and went on zero tours. We drove on the dam and to the back side, took pictures, and sort of drove away. I had to go to the bathroom REALLY BAD, or else we would have walked down onto the dam for a look around. We stopped at the Lake Mead Visitor's Center and read the little souvenir books about building the dam, plus we got our nerdy souvenir: the panoramic puzzle!! Ooooh! So this is a pretty cool engineering marvel, with a fascinating history. Worth going to and being at but I'm glad we didn't pay 31 bucks apiece for the tour, if only because I'm so pregnant and crippled right now and the walking would have about killed me.

Hush Puppy Outlet Store: Seth is loyal to Hush Puppy shoes. Everything else in dress shoes is horrible for him and uncomfortable. I have been scouring department stores and malls all over Denver for anyplace that sells 'Pups and have come up with NOTHING. We drove out of the airport 20 minutes after landing in Nevada and boomp! here's a whole dang outlet store of Hush Puppies, a gift from on high. So we went back after the Hoover Dam and got Seth Birthday and Christmas shoes for work, all for WAY cheaper than I've been able to find anywhere, including online.

Planet Hollywood Restaurant in the Forum Shops (Caesar's Palace): This place seemed like it might be cool but ended up with a "lame" rating from Seth and Wib. The service was incredibly slow, and they brought Seth the wrong dinner, and then made him wait incredibly long AGAIN for the right thing. I was LONG SINCE done by the time his real dinner arrived. And they charged us full price for it! If we were bolder we would have asked to speak to...somebody about it, but eh. Who cares? The decor was ok, including props and costumes from movies, and the entertainment video would have been ok had we not had to sit through it twice and a half. So, in all, this was not a place we would return to. We had 40 bucks to spend on our dinner there, from the timeshare people, and when they gave us another 40 we both agreed that even free, we didn't want another dinner in there.

Dunkin' Donuts: I LOVE Dunkin' Donuts and I am Loyal. On one of our trips to Las Vegas 10 years ago, there was a rumor of a Dunkin' somewhere on the strip. We finally found a busted down old donut cart, not selling any donuts, in one of the crappy off the strip casinos. So, pretty disappointing. This time, there were three or four to choose from in the phone book. We went for breakfast on our way to our TimeShare presentation. We looked for the address, but the stores just skipped right over the Donut address and then we spotted it: the Outlet Mall. Duh! So we walked right in and (this was a gift from heaven) there it was right there: a kiosk, pretty-fully-stocked Dunkin' Donuts. Seth was a little taken aback that I wanted to get the dozen but really, there's not point in doin' it unless you're going to do it RIGHT!!!

Time Share Presentation with Wyndham: We like their product and would love to stay at their resorts. We love the idea of paying once and using it for the rest of ever. What we don't like is how they won't just tell you everything upfront and then all the pressure to buy right then. "This is our offer for TODAY ONLY and after this, you won't be able to become an owner." and this one, we really loved,"This many points is more than you need, and we don't sell any package smaller than that. BUT I had a family come in last week who only needed so many points and so JUST FOR YOU I have THIS MANY left over and as a special deal, we'll LET you buy these leftover points, right now only! I'm not supposed to be doing this!!" So if they hadn't given us 50 bucks in cash and 75 bucks on debit cards, plus lunch, this would not have been worth it.

Madame Toussaud's Wax Museum: LOVED THIS!! We went in expecting it to be a little snooty and cold, but then it turned out to be a big old picture-taking fun-fest. We took SO MANY PICTURES, by the time we got to the last room, we had to go back on the didge and delete some dupes from the first room. This was expensive, but I think, worth it.

Gondola Ride at the Venetian: This seemed like it would be so cool. It was expensive, though, 16 bucks a person. A PERSON. So, ok, we paid that and got in line and got into our boat with a pleasant older couple and a friendly gondolieri. And then we went maybe 50 yards, turned around, and came back. And that was it. The canal was not very long. This ride would have been way better if the canal went WAY further, and if it were $16 per couple. I really enjoyed the ride, such as it was, but would like to see this improved for next time. Listening, Venetian Hotel and Casino??

Dinner at the Flamingo (Hilton) buffet: This was so expensive. Everybody goes to Las Vegas expecting great buffets. We got the tip from the timeshare lady on which ones were terrible and which were fabulous. This one was right down from the Venetian, so we walked. It looks a lot closer on the map, and it probably is less of a stressful hike if you're not cripple like me. I hadn't been drinking enough that afternoon with all our activities, so I was hatin' it. Seth was probably hatin' it too, with all my "oooh, contraction, waaahh, this is so fast" whining. Anyway, we got there and waited in line and were seated in some fabulous seats right at this big old wall of windows, looking out onto the bird sanctuary place. We had a super waiter who really kept us hydrated. Rather than try to break a 10 or leave a tiny tip we later left him 10 bucks!! Felt like high rollers! Anyway, the food was pretty good, especially the crepes for dessert, made to order right in front of you, even though I was so thoroughly tuckered out that I could barely make it worth our buckage. The thing that made this so great was this big Black Swan that kept swimming by outside the window. He would go back and forth, back and forth, playing in the waterfall. He also had a very long neck and curly butt-feathers that were so endearing. This is a good buffet, if you can handle the 22 dollar tab per person, and the bird place is pretty cool.

Fountains at Bellagio: I LOVED THIS ATTRACTION!! We went to the 7:30 show and it was so cool that we waited until the 8:00 show. I was sorely tempted to stay for the 8:15 show but it was a long walk back to our parking garage. The lights, the music, the fountains shooting 50 or 60 feet in the air. It was really AWESOME!!! It's outside and totally free. GO SEE IT!!

Denny's WAY off the strip: We had these skillet breakfasts. Mine was sausages, bacon, hashbrowns, and scrambled eggs and then you're supposed to wrap it up in these tortilla pancakes. Cover the whole thing with syrup and it was SO DELICIOUS... Plus Seth ordered the whole carafe of orange juice, so we were really living large.

Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay: We chose to do this over the Car Museum and the Liberace Museum, and Circus Circus, and every other attraction. It was really cool! We saw all kinds of neat fish and water creatures, including our favorite little fellow, the Water Monitor lizard. He was just swimming and bonking around in his pool, then bumbling out onto the land. The other thing we really liked about this was the sawfish. They're so crazy! Look at that crazy saw nose! We touched the rays and took pictures with the lionfish and saw an octopus stuffed into the corner between the rocks and the glass. They give you these little cordless-phone-remote-control-type thingies and you dial up the number for what you're looking at and they tell you about it.

Planet Hollywood Gift Shop: Mostly overpriced t-shirts. We had 40 bucks to spend there, complements of the timeshare people, so we got a t-shirt for each kid. Eh. Nothing to write home about.

Security-check at McCarran airport. We waited in line for like an hour in Denver. We were rushed in line in Las Vegas, practically running to the next thing, the line was moving so fast. We barely had time to get out our IDs and get our shoes off and put the toothpaste in the baggie. We were expecting a wait and grumpiness. Instead we had nearly 2 hours at our gate to spend trying to find a reasonable late-lunch option in the overpriced airport fast-food places. Great security-check!

And that's what we did in Vegas. I guess it stayed in Vegas, though, so all for naught.

A Truly Retro Time at the Sahara

Sitting through a time-share presentation can be nearly fatal for a yes-girl like me. Especially when you have to say NO, not just at the end, but all the way through, so many, many times. But it can also lead you to a free three-day, two-night, Second-Honeymoon-type, 10th Anniversary, Free trip to Las Vegas, which is what happened to me and Seth.

They paid for our airfare and hotel, plus gave us a whole fistful of coupons, mostly worth a lot less than promised, but some worth using. First can I just say, our flight was on Southwest, and I am now working my way up to Pretty Loyal to Southwest Airlines. They didn't charge us extra fees. They have no-nonsense check-in online or at the airport. They gave us drinks and snacks. It was the snack that won them my loyalty: we had to get up for our flight so early that I didn't really have time for breakfast. By the time we had done all that waiting for the security-check line in Denver (the security-check line in Denver does NOT win my loyalty. They win my frowning thumbs-down.), I was not only difficult-ly pregnant and hungry, but also very thirsty and tired. So the stewardesses bring me a fabulous ginger ale and some sort of soft and chewy appley-fruity bar and it was SO DELIGHTFUL. I proclaimed my loyalty right then, since I want to practice making mostly positive comments to Seth instead of Debbie-Downer comments.

So the flight was great. We used one of our fistful of coupons for a rental car, and I am SO GLAD we did, even though it cost us like a whole week's grocery-bucks-worth. But even that's not the main point of this post. This is: The Sahara Hotel.

Bless its heart. This hotel used to be pretty grand. It's pretty old, built in the early 50's. We found out at the end of our stay that the casino is spruced up WAYYYY better than the rooms are. So that's something. There are pictures in the lobby of the luminaries that used to haunt the Sahara halls, like the alleged Rat Pack, and so on. The room was ok, if you didn't look too hard. I did look too hard, though. First, on our way in from the parking garage (good thing about Vegas, if you're going, is there's plenty of parking and it's all free--if you can get to it and find the right entrances. I knew this going in, which made it easier to say yes to renting a car), we encountered what I like to call "The Ancient Elevator." Two elevators, actually, side by side from the top levels of the parking garage to the ground level. Original Otis elevators. The funny thing is, you push the button and here comes the elevator, and then the door begins to open and you think,"oh, yes, I'll just step in," but then the door is still opening and opening, slowly, slowly, until it only has maybe a foot left to go to be all the way open, and it slows down and comes to a stop. You're standing there wondering the whole time, is it going to make it? Is the door going to be able to open? Will we be trapped in the elevator on the other end? But it's open enough, so you get in. And slowly, slowly, the door closes and you are elevated or de-elevated, also quite slowly. And they're not taking any extra care to make sure the elevator's clean and inviting either...

And because the Ancient Elevator is in the parking garage, I may as well add this: there are huge concrete beams all across the ceilings of the parking garage levels and they are all COVERED with shoe-prints. COVERED. I didn't see or hear any shoe-gang activity while we were there for three days, but someone has to have been SO busy, smacking shoes up on the beams, to get them ALL so covered with shoe-prints. I should have gotten a picture.

So but up to our room, though. The inside elevators aren't real winners either, but they're better than the outside ones. Just to get from the elevator to our room in "Tunis Tower" we passed two room-service trays and one glass sitting on the floor in the hall, and they were there the whole time we were. One day there was a bug scuttling away from one of them, but I think it was a cricket and not something so much fouler. Inside our room, there was a track of pretty thick dust around the edges of the room, you know, where the vacuum doesn't reach all the way to the wall. But they weren't sucking it up with anything else, either. And then the bathroom was the scariest part. The floor: fine. The shower: fine. Toilet: fine. Sink area: fine. Wall, Ceiling, and Light Fixture: SCARY. You think, there have been how many decades-worth of people coming in here, in Las Vegas, and doing who-knows-what, but couldn't they at least wipe the brownish spatters off the light, wall, and ceiling??? I'm sure it was just that the morning coffee was so hot, someone was startled and whoops! Coffee spattered everywhere! Or else, probably a root beer that got "all shook up" on its way in from the car and whoops! Root beer spray!! That's what I'd like to think happened in there...

There were some good things about our room in The Sahara. First, we had a breath-taking view of the parking garage, RIGHT outside our window. So, pretty fabulous. But seriously, one thing I thought was awesome was the curtains. I woke up after the first night not having ANY IDEA what time it was, because the curtains were so effective at blocking light. That's super-nice in Las Vegas especially where you could come back to the hotel in any state and not want to know when morning comes; so the curtains were really good. Ask Seth. I kept remarking to him how great the curtains were and how effective the curtains were. Then the other good thing I was remarking to Seth about was "they don't build them like this anymore." I couldn't hear ANY noises from other guests, during our whole time there. It was seriously so quiet. Maybe that's because they were all out at Casinos partying when were were wet-blanketing it in our room, actually going to sleep at bedtime, but I also couldn't hear them in the morning or in the afternoon, or ever. It was nice and silent. So, good curtains, silent hotel.

My recommendation would be two-fold. First to anyone going to Las Vegas who has enough money to avoid the Sahara Hotel, Avoid the Sahara Hotel. Again, bless its heart. It means so well. And the second piece of advice is for the Hotel itself: use some of that casino money and remodel, but in remodeling, totally PLAY UP your history and your 50's chic architecture. Everyone on the Strip has a theme and you could really make yourself something, like the Art Deco Hotels in Miami or whatever, if you could just play to your strengths instead of remaining a dingy relic.

What's Suckin' Lately

This is my brother-in-law and sister's ice cream store, Thursday night. In the background of the white truck you can see the SUV that caused the carnage, tipped up on its side. Both the driver and the passenger in the white truck were killed, and the truck hit a utility box which busted into the store and snagged a little 3-year-old boy and killed him.

I was just crying and crying Thursday night when we found out how horrible it was. Seth and I couldn't really get to sleep. What on earth can we do? Basically nothing. Just check the online news sites constantly for updates on what is sucking with this story and the families involved. Mostly the news stories concentrate on how bad things are sucking for the families of the deceased, and that's right. But things are also sucking pretty bad for the store owner, who has six little kids of his own, and now has to clean up the mess and get back to running a happy sunny business at the scene of a triple-vehicular-homicide. Here's the most informative and most-often-updated online news story:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/sep/05/car-crashes-baskin-robbins-kills-child/

Tomatoes: a Review

My whole life, everyone who cares has always asserted FORCEFULLY that homegrown tomatoes, vine-ripened and freshly harvested, are INFINITELY SUPERIOR to store tomatoes and that store tomatoes are trash. I have always agreed that store tomatoes are not awesome. Too...tomato-ey? Anyway, the other evening we harvested our first tomato from our garden and diced it up to put in a pasta salad. It was much lovelier to cut into than a store tomato, and we didn't harvest it until it was actually ripe. Those store tomatoes that say,"vine-ripened" are totally lying, since they're not ever actually ripe. Anyway, it was actually edible. I don't really like tomatoes, since they taste so tomato-ey and not as fruity. But this one from our garden was almost fruity and that nasty pungent tomato flavor was mellowed into a tastier, riper, and more-fruity taste. So, in the end, I agree that store tomatoes stink and home-grown and vine-ripened tomatoes are much, much better. But I'm still not to that tomato-activist point of saying that you can just go out and pick the tomato off the vine and eat it like an apple. THAT'S too much for now, but I did like our ripe garden tomato.

TV Show Review

So I don't really watch TV that much. Seth and I like to catch the occasional season of Survivor and I like the first few weeks of American Idol. Also we never miss The Office. But honestly, not that much tv. So my brother- and sister-in-law told me about this show: WipeOut. Just hearing them describe it, I was CRAZY to watch it. I LOVE stuff like that. And so I watched it, after missing it several weeks in a row. Can I just say, I LOVE THIS SHOW!!!

Bloopers and Practical Jokes was funny; Funniest Home Videos was funnier. People falling down is so hilarious, I can barely keep myself from laughing just thinking about it. So the premise of this show wipeout, is to put people on an impossible obstacle course and see how much they fall down. Then you take the winners from that and put them on harder impossible physical challenges. The Sweeper event puts contestants on poles and then just runs a pole around to sweep them off while they're trying to jump it. The first time I tuned in, there was a guy trying to get past the boxing-glove wall, where you have to cling to the wall and try to get by but with boxing-gloves punching out at you, all up and down, at random times. I almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard.

Then this last week they did the sort of "best of" show, which was great because there were just clips of wipe-out after wipe-out and each one would be more hilarious than the last. They have these big huge rubber balls and you have to try to jump on or run across them all, but of course they only had footage of one guy ever being able to do it. And he had to be the first one of the day, because after you fall in, you are all muddy and that gets on the big rubber balls and makes them slipperier.

In summary, this is a really great show. They have a lady-reporter down by the track and she doesn't even try to hide her laughter. Clearly this show is all about getting fabulous footage of people falling down, bonking off of huge rubber balls, getting boxed in the gut at random times, and in general being super-hilarious. Two thumbs up!!! tuesday nights on ABC

Holy Horticulture, Batman!

Here's my garden now. Those there, up front, are the tomato plants. I had to give up on raising my tomatoes from seed this year and just go buy these. Luckily they were on clearance or the price of each little plantling would have given me a stroke. THAT'S the last thing I need this summer, eh? Then there's a row of dud beans, then a row of half-duds and half-awesome beans. Then another row of tomatoes, of a different variety. Thanks, Dot and Jay for your cast-off tomato cages from last year. My dad laughed at how big they were when he saw them, but I feel that our little 'maters are doing them justice. Behind the second tomato-row are two rows of corn, with vigorous pole-beans climbing every stalk. And behind THAT you can see some extremely bushy beans. They are going crazy and this next couple weeks - hopefully - will see me canning some huge bean-harvests in my pressure cooker/canner. Thanks for that, Will and Jodi! You guys are great!

Then in this here picture you can see my poor sad little pea row, staked up with string and branch chunks right from our dead backyard trees. Then an enormous, bushy cucumber row. I plan to use that harvest to make little pickles, and maybe some big pickles. I got the gallon-size pickle chips from Sam's Club and the kids are kind of going crazy on them, so maybe I'll use my P-Chef crinkle cutter to do up some fancy old pickle chips. That's a big maybe. Anyway, beyond my little green garden stool you can see the king of the garden: my enormous, outrageous, novelty, competition-size pumpkin vines. Just vines, so far. With plenty of flowers. Every day that I can, I go out and poke around looking for a little gourd to appear but so far, it's just a bunch of flowers. Soon, little gourds, soon. You'll have to come soon in order to be ready and hilariously large by Fall. Then next to the big old pumpkin vines are some smaller but equally vigorous Butternut Squash vines. They have flowers too and no gourds. But it's just super-cool to have something growing so dang well in my garden, where nothing but rocks and debris were flourishing when we moved in.

Seriously, when we moved in, this was a nasty dump-hole. My mother-in-law came to help turn over the soil and get the garden ready, but first we had to move a box of busted-up mirror tiles, two of those concrete-based poles for mounting what? satellite dishes?, a long strip of galvanized flashing, lumber scraps, and literally TONS of landscaping rocks that were a couple inches deep under the deadish grass. I still have more of those to pick out for next year's optimistic, expanded garden. Plus all the stuff we un-buried while rock-picking, like lots of pennies, old batteries, matchbox cars, two bbq grates, some pavers, busted bricks, and more plywood scraps. And pens. Plenty of pens. And toys. Little mini toys.

So, thank goodness something good is happening in the garden, and hopefully lots of it will result in harvested vegetables. And none of the vegetables will be malignant!

My First Cancer Flowers

Eric came down and said, "There's a guy at the door with flowers." So within 18 hours of posting my new medical situation online, my brother and sister-in-law, Will and Jodi, had these flowers delivered to me. I was sobbing and sobbing for two reasons, one good and one not as good. First, because it was so unexpected and so dang awesome and so soon. But second, because Cancer Flowers! I have Cancer! so the children were lined up, one, two, three, asking what was wrong and was I ok. I had to calm it down and explain to them as nonchalantly and lovingly as possible, how sometimes the cells that we're made of go bad, and I had some bad ones in my neck , but not to worry, because the doctors are all over it, taking care of it and after a little while, there won't be anything to worry about, children!

Thanks, Jodi and Will! YOU guys are awesome!

I Have Cancer

Great, huh? I have Papillary Thyroid Cancer. I had the biopsy yesterday afternoon, which sort of stunk. It wasn't as uncomfortable as dental work, but my tumor is so big they had to use six needles instead of four. The numbing was nice, but it left my neck super sore. It's still sore tonight. The doctor used a cool voice-recognition ultrasound machine while he poked into my neck.

So today I get a call, right when I'm drifting off to sleep at naptime, of course, and the nurse is all personable and nice and then the doctor gets on and he's all nice-able and then he's all, well, I don't like to have to tell you that it's Papillary Thyroid Cancer. And he kept on talking, about how if you have to have cancer, it's a pretty good, slow-growing type to get and the survival rates are pretty good. I guess if you have to drop bad news on people all the time, you learn that there's not much they're going to want to say when you tell them they have cancer and you should just keep going. It is scary, though, to hear someone telling you your survival chances and realize you could DIE. Left untreated of course.

My treatment will probably include surgery to remove if not all, then most of my thyroid gland plus the big old tumor on my neck. Most likely we'll do this after the baby comes at the end of the year. There's a chance I could have to get radioactive iodine treatment, depending what the surgeon thinks of my tumor. The good news is that my lymph nodes are clean, according to the ultrasounds. So they can stay.

Bless this baby's heart, this pregnancy is about to break my camel's back. One thing after another and now I have cancer. I guess I'm the same as I was yesterday; it's just scary mostly when you say,"I have cancer" or talk about chemo or other cancer treatment things. The chances are slim that it will metastasize to other organs. But then the chances were slim that it was cancer, too, like only 10% or so and here I am. Just like me, when I tell people they pretty much don't know what to say. Huh, they're thinking. That sucks. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking, too.

In other news, Seth got a raise today. YESSS!! Now I can afford to pay for my Synthroid prescription I'll probably have to take for the rest of my life!!! But seriously, thank you, Martin and Vejvoda. We super-ultra appreciate it.

The Baby's Turning Out Pretty Good

...for all the dang trouble he's causing. It was anemia, not enough progesterone, and blood diseases at the beginning, and then now he's trying to get out half-baked. (explicit pregnant talk follows. Be forewarned) I had my cervix measured and it was pretty short. My measurements with Russell were all four something and the baseline with this new guy was two something and then I went to the Perinatologist last week and the first thing he says after, "I'm doctor so-and-so," was "See this number right here? That's not a good number." I knew that, because it was 1.7 something and that's the smallest number I've seen EVER. So he already had the nurses out trying to schedule me for surgery the next day.

So dang it. I had the cerclage the next day which is a stitch to keep things all tightened up like your Uncle Scrooge's Purse Strings, and it would be fairly simple if you didn't have to get a dang, stinkin' spinal to have it. So Seth and I were at the hospital all the next day and finally five hours after I had the spinal, I could feel enough to walk to the potty and do my pee-wee, so they let me go home. I had the same surgery to keep my fatty-baby Jules in, except that when I was all dressed and ready to go home and had done my pee-wee and everything, I was sitting in a wheel-chair waiting for my mom and...I barfed. First I asked for a cracker which helped a little bit, but then I barfed it up. Plus the force from that caused me to pee my pants. So I just got in the dang car and went home anyway, since it was a drizzly day and who cares. I just had surgery and I wanted to go to bed.

But no barfing with this guy. The catch was I had to be on bedrest for a week afterward, until the doctor could look and make sure it was all healed and working. I didn't know what we were going to do with the other three big kids. Seth's mom asked if we needed her to come up and help and of course we said YES so she came up the next day. And then all these ward-members started showing up at our house with meals and videos and also taking the children for fun times. I just started crying every time, after the first couple. With Jules I had to BEG for help and that was just a miniature trickle of help with one tiny kid. so Cherry Creek Ward Rules!!! Of course the baby's fine. It's just me trying to keep him in until he's fully-cooked and delicious like a little plumpy warm cinnamon roll.

The Jam Turned Out Pretty Good

So awhile back I wrote about how I was going to make jam from the dehydrated peaches and "we'll see how it turns out." So this is how it turned out. I just sort of made up the "dried" part of the recipe, so I think the all-peach ones on the right are super-saturated with peach. The ones on the left are strawberry-peach that I made with the leftover strawberries from my date with my daughter Julesie. We actually already opened and ate one of them and they were incredibly delicious. Today I got raspberries on sale and will mash them up as soon as I can get off my bum and make them into fabulous jam.

The Doldrums Tree

That's from The Phantom Tollbooth, the Doldrums. So my friend Jess had a list of all these ideas for kids to do when they're stir crazy during summer. Of course, my children aren't allowed to say they're "bored" because I taught them that bored means "not smart enough to think of something to do." So I've damaged their psyches a little bit. Anyway, I took Jessica's ideas we could do and added some of my own I thought of, plus searched the internet for more and wrote each idea down on a little tag. The orange ones are just for Jules, like "wash doll clothes" and the blue ones are just for Eric, like "transform all the transformers to vehicle mode."

There are a couple rules about the Doldrums tree, such as You have to be in the Doldrums to get to pick something, and Whatever you pick you have to do. The only trouble is that the children want to pick stuff all the time. I'm making dinner and it's supposed to be clean-up time and Jules is all,"can I just pick one thing, ONE THING, from the Doldrums tree?" and I'm like,"No way, squirt, it's clean-up time." Plus I was gone one day and Seth let the children pick something but kept making them pick again because every idea required ADULT PARTICIPATION. Make cookies, take a walk. anyway, I don't mine participating with them unless it's naptime, so it's pretty good so far. If I'd thought of it, I would have put up the list of all the different activity ideas before we taped them all up on the wall.

Sarah's Seventh

Seven years since our little Angel Baby Sarah was born. Every year I make a humongous heart cake for her birthday. I try to decorate it a little different each year.

Someting's Happening in the Garden

Corn. I never grew corn before but Seth's family does all the time so he requested it.










onion- I'm not really onion crazy but my in-laws gave me these onion sets and you do have to have some onions for flavah, so I'll grow these maybe, and then chop them up and freeze or dry them.











peas - I love peas so much. Also they smell pretty growing. Mine are wilt-resistent! So, bonus.











Butternut squash-I saw a recipe where you put butter and brown sugar in the squash and cook it and it made me want to try them. Otherwise I don't like squash, but I know you can make pumpkin-like pies with these if you don't want to eat them straight.








Pumpkins- I love novelties so much, so I got the enormous-competition-size-pumpkin seeds. Wouldn't it be SO COOL if a couple grew on the vine!!! Huge Enormous Pumpkins!!! It's like my dream come true.

So I planted all these seeds in the garden like three weeks ago and nothing has been coming up and nothing has been coming up. So like three days ago I started, duh, praying over the garden which I should have been doing all along, and voila! three days later here come all these crops popping out of the ground. I was so thrilled I called the kids out and made them examine each little sproutling. When Seth got home I made him come right out and examine each little sproutling. It's a pretty good miracle since all I did to prepare the soil was pick out most of the landscape rocks with which it was previously covered, and turned in the "compost" I had made during the whole last year of living in a townhome.

Finally, an Outside Project

We moved literally tons of gravel, plus a couple hundred pounds-worth of curvy pavers and put in this really calm, really good-smelling little bed. Also I planted a peony plant on each side of the window but they're super tiny and you can't see them. Maybe next year. Also we bought our brown paint for the trim there in front. The orange was just so....so ugly. Yes, that's the word I want. Also, offensive. Last Saturday Seth did the gravel bed on the other side of the front door to look like this, too. Maybe I shall plant some beautiful flowers or a tiny midget shrub under the window.

Chain Shoes

Remember these, from the 80's, with the chain across the front? So my dad brought me a bunch of stuff from the past, allegedly all he has of mine in his attic. And in with some really cool stuff and yearbooks and whatever, is this pair of shoes. What I want to know is, WHO SAVED THESE SHOES!????? These shoes are thrashed and ancient and I took their picture for historic value and now they're so leaving my home, may they Rest in Peace.

The Deer Paw Knife

My dad brought THIS in with all the stuff he brought me. Most of it was mine, from my past although I didn't know where most of this stuff was for the last almost 20 years on some of it. Anyway, this little beauty was a gift to my brother from my Uncle sometime in the 80's. Not sure if it was to John or Will but I suspect Will. How I ended up with it is rather a mystery. John? Will? Anyone willing to claim this...item?

Eye Of Partridge

Can you see the pattern on the heel flaps, up top? That's eye-of-partridge and I like it WAY better than your other standard heel stitch, k1 sl1. I think it looks really cool but I have to stop pretty much right there, because I haven't been able to knit long enough at one time to remember where I am in the 3-row pattern. I am petrified that I'll do a pretty good job all along and then at the end of the heel flap I'll do the same front-side row twice or three times in a row and it will look stupid but I'll be too lazy to take it out and fix it. So I'm just going to go ahead and stop right there, at "almost long enough".

Surprise Flowers

My friend Sharon stopped by last Thursday with these. She was just going around to people delivering flowers. Thanks Sharon! You're so thoughtful! I put them in my teapot I got on ebay but didn't insure, so of course the handle broke in the box en route. I think I did a dang good glue-fix job.

This May Become Peach Jam

I've had these dried peaches for 9 or 10 months but discovered that they don't taste good just to eat, like dried apricots. Mmm, dried apricots. So a week ago maybe I get the idea to rehydrate them and make jam. So this morning I'm doing it. Hopefully this works...

Also, when I put them on to boil the bad taste-smell went away and they started smelling like awesome boiling peaches like when you make peach jam, so yee-haw.

Little Appliqued Duck

We needed quilt tops for a church activity. I had a whole bolt of this blue plaid fabric so I pulled off a baby-quilt-tops worth but then it needed something else. Real quick I drew up the chicken, following the pattern we used in March for another activity, but enlarging it freehand. Pretty proud of myself there. So with the Pfaff (thanks for the loan, Mom!) I machine appliqued it on and I think it turned out pretty ok. Can you see it? I also did a tiny circular buttonhole for the eye. This was a few weeks ago, like maybe almost a month ago.

WHOOOO-EEEE!

A couple things have happened since the last stuff. First of all, I went back and got my real spicy Baconator and it was SO MUCH BETTER. Spicy and delicious with a little jalapeno crunch. Ooh, that's making me want to eat one right now.

So another thing is that I turned up with a bun in the oven. There were a couple super-scary things about this, though. I had a doctor's appointment the morning after I took the home test and she called me back with all this scary blood-work stuff about not enough progesterone and go get this prescription and the numbers are all bad and you have a blood disease, probably. Plus anemia. Well, I went back the following Monday for a re-test and of course, no offense to doctors for worrying and being up-in-the-night about stuff, but everything came back fine. But then I still had to have an ultrasound and she was all quizzing me whether I had any back or abdominal pain. So next morning on the internet (a blessing and a curse) it turns out low progesterone plus back or abdominal pain means the baby's not in the right place, like you could lose an ovary or worse. So I was super-worried all week until the ultrasound Thursday, which I had to drive through a freak-terrible-snow-storm to get to. I was all worried about the baby and then I had to drive through this stinkin' terrible weather and I was just relieved to get there alive. And (one more time, of course) the ultrasound showed little beany-baby, right in there where she belongs, with her little beating heart doing just what it should. So no worries, eh!?

And that was my daughter Juliana's birthday. So the next day I had 6 or 8 little 5 year olds over for a one-hour casual birthday-themed party. I was scheduled to go out with the ladies that night, but with all the stress and party stuff and all, I just welched out of that and went to BED!!

Then I'm going to top all that off with a visit from my church leader, asking me if I'll work with the 12 and 13 year old girls in the Young Women's organization. DANG IT!!!! Bless their hearts, but I didn't like 12 and 13 year old girls when I WAS a 12 or 13 year old girl. So this will be my chance to learn to love them and all. Already this week I have three meetings...

My Current Socks

Here's a pair of socks I made and finished a little while ago, like last month at this time maybe. The ones with the purple and orange and green stripes. They're made out of Cascade "Fixation" yarn, which is stretchy. That was actually fun to work with except that I made them both at the same time using the Magic Loop technique, and I didn't tie off the yarn in between stripes. I carried it along the edge, so I had six dang strings dangling out of the needles at all times. That pretty stunk. But anyway, I also just did a short-row heel, instead of a heel-flap, and it's ok. It's not fantastic. I just wanted to make socks that are like regular socks: stretchy and with that diagonal line at the heel. So I did it.

Then the other picture is my most recent sock project. I just cast on for it last week, maybe thursday or Friday, but using the original yarn I bought when I took the Magic Loop socks class at the local yarn store. I had made a sock with the class, but it was terrible. The gauge was all floppy and loose and we hadn't made a ribbing around the top originally, so I went back and added one which would have been fine if there was a way to cast off and make it just as stretchy as a K1, P1 rib, which there's NOT, no matter what they say. I know because I scoured the inter-flipping-net to find that very cast-off and THOUGHT I'd come up with something but after I did it, as loosely as I could possibly cast off, the stinkin' thing STILL didn't fit over my heel, to try it on. So Up That!!! I went ahead and ripped the whole thing out and used the yarn to cast on for this pair of socks and the yarn's already split neatly in half! So yeah! And check that cool K6, P1 rib pattern I added all the way around. Can you see it in the picture? Anyway, I made some super-similar to this for my sister Laurel (see my first post) but with a K7, P1 rib and I wanted it just a little more frequent in this pair that I'm making for myself out of very similar yarn. It's super quick to make them at the same time, and as you can see, not very messy with just TWO yarns coming off the work. They really don't get tangled. I highly recommend this method.

Spicy Baconator

I admit to being totally taken in by the commercials for this item. Every time I see another commercial, I want to eat one more and more, the spicier the better. Today on our way home from the Museum, I went the extra mile (or really, the extra couple miles) in search of a Wendy's so I could covertly get myself a Spicy Baconator without the kids badgering me for lunch (because we had already eaten at the museum) or making Seth jealous (he's working like 12 or 13 hour days to finish out tax season). So, but we couldn't FIND a Wendy's. We got to the end of the line, where I knew there was nothing out beyond us but the open prairie, so we turned around. And wouldn't ya just know it: there was a stinkin' Wendy's hidden behind a bank. On the right-hand side of the road, too, which is a big deal to me. So we made it home with our food stuff (I felt compassion on the children and got them some fries) and I bit into my spiciest, loveliest, baconiest hamburger-thing and...NO SPICY. I ate through the whole dang thing hoping to come to something zesty or hottable, and I came up with NOTHING. I called them up and "Brian" was all, come on in and we'll make you up a fresh hot one. So since my "baby's sleeping" it'll have to be an hour or so before I can make it back up there and this one BETTER BE SPICY!!! Because I really want it to be fabulous and delicious.

Barf Explosion!

First day of Spring Break and we're partying like it's 1999, right?!!! So I slept in late and came down to find my angel children watching Curious George on PBS. They're so great. Then we had oatmeal breakfast (party!!) and went to the library. Can I just say, I LOVE the laser printer at the library. I have been wanting to print off all this music by Sally DeFord from the internet but our printer is TERRIBLE, so I finally got to the library to print it off. The process was quite simple, with just typing in your library card number a couple times and inserting some money. Then there's always a librarian to sass you, though. She was all busy doing something so I was waiting my turn and she sasses up at me,"Can I HELP you??" and I was all, uh, you looked busy, because you were doing stuff. Anyway, there's always a sass waiting from a librarian. Also the school ladies, but that's another post.

So we got home from the library and had some fabulous reading time, plus lunch and chocolate cake, which Jules and Russell didn't eat. Then later, after movie time, here comes Jules up the stairs, making that coughing barf sound halfway up. We ran to the kitchen at the top of the stairs and I yanked out a barf pot. Jules, the angel-princess that she is, had caught most of the barf with her hand, in front of her mouth while running up the stairs. By the time she got to the kitchen though, she was shooting more barfs out, and with her hand in place there in front of her mouth, it was spraying all over the kitchen like when you put your thumb in front of the garden hose. Poor girl. She kept thinking she was done, after every heave. I kept up an awesome Mom-calm-yet-fun-banter with her the whole time so's she wouldn't start crying and thinking something bad was happening. She was SO GREAT about getting cleaned up and everything, just waiting patiently to get her shirt and arms wiped off. And then the funny thing was that she started asking for chocolates as soon as we got her clothes all changed and I was like,"No you dih-n't just ask for chocolate! No sir!"

Anyway, she's resting with me now and I HOPE we don't have any more barf explosions but you can't even try to hope for that. You know how great it is being a mom, always raining barf!

Sarah's Quilt

Here's the finished product for all those embroidered flowers. I just think it looks so cool with all the different colors from far away. Plus I love any Irish Chain quilt. Up close you can see the different quilters' work and the grub from being on our bed for a couple years, but you can also see the love from everyone that helped make it and how much we miss little sister. It's sideways here, and I just made it whatever size I wanted to instead of a real bed size, so it's 80 x 100.