To-Do list

I realize that it's been a LONG time since I've done a real post, but we're getting there now. I've been really busy, that's my only excuse, but I don't really remember exactly what I've been doing. It seems like my life is full of busyness but nothing ever gets done. (especially yesterday, nothing got done. I couldn't find my broom and so gave up on all cleaning and just read 300+ pages in Harry Potter #5.) However, this trend simply can't continue. I've decided I need more accountability, so I'm going to work on putting up my to do list and maybe then it will actually get done. The main thing is that my sister and brother-1n-law are coming to visit next week (and my brother too for a couple of days), and my apartment is a total and complete disaster! (not kidding or exaggerating too much either.) The only problem is that Joe's birthday is tomorrow (happy 28 honey!!) and Father's day is Sunday (he gets a bum deal; his two holidays are right next to each other. It's like having a birthday on Christmas, like my cousin Danielle.) So, here's the list. I'll start with the most necessary things first and go from there. It might get a little crazy, and for the 2 or 3 of you who actually read this, I'm sorry and you are not really obligated to read it all.

THE LIST
Clean Bathrooms
Buy new broom
clean floors
vacuum
all trash out
clean out closet
find a new home for maternity clothes (their old home was taken by our camping gear last week)
move crib out of girls room and into closet
move girls furniture and toys
wash dishes
date night today
finish Harry Potter 5
make birthday cake
Birthday activities for Joe
Father's day activities for Joe
laundry
dusting
clean off dresser
list of activities for vacation days
child locks on cabinets
post blog update and pics
organize music for girls

Well, that's all I have time for right now. The girls' morning shows are over, so it's time for me to be done. I don't think those things are all in the right order but that's all I can do right now. I think to start my list I'll go to the new Walmart (opened Wednesday) and see if I can find a broom and a couple other things. As you can see, a true update is in fact on the list. Let's just see how quickly the more urgent things can get done...

"Pardon our mess, but rennovations taking place"

Thanks to Calista for the new look! A real post will be coming soon, but I think that an hour or two a night is all I've got. Hope you're all doing great. BTW, my blog links got trashed in the update and I'm working on finding them, but if you want me to put yours back up and I haven't already leave the site in a comment and I'll be on it in the next day or so!

Anger Management

So, Karen's anger problems have gotten really bad, especially this morning. She's been really jealous of Rachel's glasses, no matter what I try to do to help. The last couple days she's just been really angry at everything. I know part of that's just being an almost-3-year-old, but it seems like more than that right now. Already in the last 2 hours she's hit Rachel at least 3 times, me once, and she was so angry she broke her crayons into little pieces. I don't really know what to do with her. Anyone have any suggestions for 3 year old anger management?

Easter and Glasses and Haircut

Happy Easter everyone! (Well, yesterday anyway). I hope y'all had a great day, as we did. Saturday we colored eggs, and Joe made it home to help us finish up. Karen loved it; we're going to have to up our egg count next year, 2 dozen wasn't enough for her. Rachel just wanted to eat the eggs and drink the 'juice'. It was nice to only have to be at church by 8:15, and Joe didn't even have meetings after church, so it was acutally a 'family' day.

The Easter bunny brought candy (a little less than last year, I'm trying to keep my sweet tooth under control) and some Little People in the baskets. They wore their new dresses that I made. Rachel picked the fabric and Karen picked the pattern, and they both loved the end product. Rachel would find them last week and start carrying them around with her 'showing off' walk. We had a somewhat-traditional dinner with ham, funeral potatoes, and deviled eggs. Doren and Steve also joined us and brought a yummy 'fish soup' that was really good. Rachel ate so much more candy than she was used to she got really 'hi' and then 'crashed', which was sad and funny at the same time. Karen ate more candy than Rachel, but thankfully tolerated it a bit better.

Today was supposed to be the first of several 'calmer' days this week. Ha! This morning the eye doctor called and said that Rachel's glasses were in. It was too late to go in the morning, so we had to go this afternoon. Thanks to Kitara for taking Karen this afternoon, because it was crazy. After dropping off Karen we drove and drove and drove (it is SO far down there). Rachel was getting more and more fussy, but there wasn't anything I could do at the moment so I tried to help her calm down. That effort totally failed and she instead gave back all of her lunch-in disgustingly recognizable pieces, we need to work on chewing our food better-all over her clothes and car seat!

If I was really a good mother I would have extra clothes for all my children packed away in the car for just such an eventuality, but alas I am not that mother. I used all my travel pack of wipes cleaning off her face, hands, and carseat enough that it would be 'okay' to take her home, and had to go into the doctor's office wearing only a diaper and socks. Needless to say, I received more glares in that 25 minutes of my life than practically any other time. How could I take my child out in public in only his (everyone assumed she was a boy) diaper? Well, we got the glasses and got out of there as fast as we possibly could. This was by far our shortest eye doctor trip on record. We left our apartment at 2:45, and even stopping at Kitara's to drop off and pick up Karen, we were still home by 5:30. Now all we have to do is keep Rachel from destroying her eye patches and glasses, and keep Karen from being insanely jealous and left out since she's the only one in the family without glasses. (I'm considering taking the lenses out of her sunglasses so she can wear them all the time, but haven't decided yet.)

Last item for the evening: Karen's first haircut. She had been bugging me for a couple of weeks to get her hair cut because her friend Hailey had recently gotten her's done. It was looking pretty gross at the ends, so I agreed. I bought a $10 pair of hair cutting scissors on Saturday morning, and that was it. I think it turned out okay for my first time ever, not perfect but not horrible either. It actually makes her hair look more full than it did before, and she likes it so I guess we're good on that count.

Well, that's it for us right now. If this post doesn't seem as upbeat as I'd like it to, I apologize. We really did have a great Easter this year, and we are glad that Rachel has her glasses. It's just that tonight at the end of it all I'm really tired, but I wanted to put this up now before I make more excuses not to do it and get farther behind... so here are the pics!

More Pictures!

In addition to these fun photos, I just put up a ton on Facebook. Also, a video from our ward party got put on You-Tube so, and Joe did a great job in it. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttj5JuQho0

Rachel's Walking!!!!! (and January)

Okay, so I was going to write about what happened in January since I haven't yet, but most important things first: Rachel is officially WALKING! Over the last week or so she's been making the transition, but today she pretty much refused to crawl anywhere and so it's official. I don't know how my baby can old enough to walk, but it's true. I have pictures, but they're still on the camera; I'll try to get them up by the end of the week (how's that for a goal?).

Another development, much more annoying but also important, is that Karen started asking "why" this week. Now everything she sees, she asks why. "Why are we stopped, mommy, I want to go" "why is it raining still" "why does daddy have to go on campouts" and on and on... Of course each question is followed up by another why question, until it feels like all I'm doing is answering questions while following Rachel around trying to keep her out of all the things she can now reach! And it seems like half of her questions always come back to "Because Heavenly Father wants us to do that" or some other version of the same. At least she accepts that without question for now, but I know it won't last too long. I think I keep falling back on that because it's easier than getting into a discussion with a 2 year old on photosynthesis, aerobic v. anaerobic, or other difficult science question. Yesterday I got away with telling her that it was raining because heavy clouds came from somewhere else with rain, and the rain was too heavy so it had to fall down (technically true, but still a bit fuzzy).

Now to January, but just the most important features of the month. Of course Rachel's birthday was on the 18th, which I already put up the picts for. The other big event was Joe's qualifying exam. For those who don't know what that is (which is totally understandable...), think Comps. or Comprehensive Exam. If that doesn't help, it's a really big test over 2 days (8 hours long) that was devised especially for Joe by the professors that know him best, testing whether he had enough knowledge on certain specific subjects to start his dissertation process. Scary? Yes! However, he took it just before the semester started in January and he passed!!!!!!! YEAH!!!! What does it mean? Just that now he can continue in the program, work on his dissertation, and that someday (maybe just over a year????) he will actually be done with school and we can have a real job that pays real money (okay, so he makes real money now teaching, just not that much of it)! I was so excited for him that I threw a huge party at our apartment clubhouse the night after the test. We didn't even know if he'd passed it yet, but it was such a relief that it was over! And our turnout was amazing, too! Almost all of our friends here in the Charlotte area came, over 50 people! We had lots of yummy food and visited while Ratatouille (sp?) was on, then (when in Rome, right) watched the Carolina Panthers get creamed in the playoffs. Thanks to all of you who came to hang with us that night, it was really great. And to all of you who didn't, that's okay. I'd put up pictures for you, but I was so worried about everything else that I forgot my camera that night. Sigh. So, if any of you who came took any pictures I'd love a copy...

Really for me in January it was all about Twilight. I borrowed the books in December and read them all in 5 days, no mean feat for a mom with 2 little girls. Joe bought the box set for me for Christmas (love Amazon.com) and in January I read them all again, and then again. (yes, I got a little obsessed, and I did in fact read the entire series 3 times in 6 weeks. I'm better now, I think). We also saw the movie for the first time the week before Valentine's day and it got Joe interested enough that he read them too! Sad, I know, but I can't wait until the movie comes out on Saturday!!!! (even though it wasn't very good; the next one will be awesome though!)

That's more than enough information in one post I think; I'll try and break it up with some picutes later this week. As a last note, it's been so long since I did a lot of typing that my skills are not as good as they used to be. This really took me too long to type.

Flashback Friday: Auto Theft

Okay, so I know it's not actually Friday anymore, but I started this on Friday and didn't have time to finish so I'm doing it now. For those of you not familiar with my friend Nancy's blog, every Friday she posts some funny story about something that happened to her. Last week it was eating pizza in Russia, other times it's about living in Jordan, living in Canada, or anything else she feels like writing about (like her grandma's food storage). As I was reading her Flashback last week I remembered something we did together once in High School, and I thought some of you might enjoy it. If it's not your cup of tea, sorry but it's still true.

I think it was my senior year of HS in Orem, but it could have been my junior year. It was in the fall during the time we had pit orchestra rehersals late into the evening several times a week and they were also having sophomores on the driving range-late October, probably. By the time we got out of practice it was dark outside. My friend Andy at the time drove a big old 10-passenger van. It was so old that the locks didn't work right, and the ignition would start even without the key. He drove to school one morning and then realized he'd forgotten his keys or something like that (a VERY Andy thing).

That's what gave me the idea in the first place. I remember that day he'd gone out right after the bell to move his van off the driving range so it wouldn't get towed or hit by the sophs. I told Nancy that I was going to 'steal' his car, and for some reason I couldn't understand she was very much against it. She knew I wasn't really going to steal it, but she was also way more anxious about the plan than I had thought she would be. (Now I realize it's because she liked him, since they're married and all, but at the time it was a mystery to me. It was around that same time that I told her I felt sorry for whoever Andy ended up marrying because he's so accident prone.)

Anyway, back to the story. After Andy had moved his van I snuck out of rehersal and met Nancy, who insisted on coming with me to make sure I didn't do anything too bad. We went out to the van which was now parked near the band room and climbed in. It started just fine without the keys, and I drove it over to the far end of the parking lot. Then we turned it off, got out, 'locked' the doors, and went back in. When we got out later (not sure what time) it was dark, and hard to see the far end of the parking lot. The van was a dark blue color with lots of rust, making it really hard to see clear down there. Of course Andy flipped out. He thought at first that he hadn't moved it and it was towed by the driver's ed people. Then Mike reminded him that he'd moved it. Then he was sure it was stolen, though none of us could think of why someone would steal such a nasty vehicle. Finally someone (I don't remember who) pointed it out, so far away in the dark. It didn't take long for everyone to figure out it was me, in fact I might have boasted about it, but I don't remember that now. Andy was mad of course, but more relieved that it wasn't stolen or anything (so were the other 5 kids who needed rides home that night). After that Andy drove the truck for a couple weeks while his parents got the locks and things fixed so it couldn't get stolen for real. Andy was never one to hold a grudge, thank goodnes, and a couple weeks later I even bummed a ride from him.

So, that's my flashback. I don't know if I'm thinking of these random things more now because my sister's a junior this year or because Joe's the YM pres and we do lots of stuff with his boys right now (BB tournament and Prom both this weekend). I know I have a lot more things I should post about, but hopefully someone will get a good laugh out of it and then forgive me. And Andrew, once again, I'm sorry I stole your van! (though it wouldn't do you a lot of good in Cairo anyway!)

RETURN!!!!

These first few are from Rachel's First Birthday! I can't believe she's already 13 months old! Where did the time go? (I know, you're thinking 'not by her blogging!') Anyway, it was a great time for our family and a few neighbors who came to help us eat cake and ice cream. Rachel got lots of Little People stuff; we walked through Toys R Us to find something she would like, and when we walked down that aisle she got SOOOO excited we knew just what to get her. She plays with these toys every day still (which is great).

Notice that the cake is the same colors and such as the toy castle? That was really on purpose, and Joe didn't even notice until after we'd eaten half the cake, when he said something like, "hey, isn't the cake almost like the castle?

This was our Thanksgiving that we did the day after Thanksgiving. On 'real' Thanksgiving, we went to the Tufts', Karen's best friend Hailey's house, and had a big ole' party then made our own the next day (mostly for the leftovers, I think). This year, I think we'll just stay home and do our own Thanksgiving instead of doing 2.
Setting up the Christmas Decorations after our Thanksgiving.

The rest of these pics are from our trip to Indiana for Christmas. It was a great week with Grandma and Grandpa Allen! The only problem we have now is that we have so much fun doing our fun stuff that we don't remember to get our camera out! It was fun to visit family and celebrate the holidays, as well as see the cousins, eat the yummy food, get presents, and everything else that goes along with that time of year.

Well, if a picture's really worth a thousand words, this entry is already WAYYYYY to long, so I'll be done for now and work on getting more caught up another time (tomorrow maybe? we'll see)

So...About that Return...

Well, it's been a trying process to get our computer back to where it needs to be to do ANYTHING! A week or two ago we had our friend reformat it and sadly, that didn't really help. But, we got our tax return last week, and the first thing we did was order a new desktop computer (okay, it was the second thing, we paid off our van first!!!) Anyway, HP should be shipping it by tomorrow and that means in the next week or so I will no longer have a valid IT problem for not blogging. It's sad, I have like a million pictures to put up of the girls from thanksgiving until now. They say a picture's worth a thousand words, so think how long it would take me to write all that if I can't upload the pictures. (I can't now; my Explorer would freeze up and I'd have to restart the computer at least once to get it going again...) Maybe my pennance for Lent this year will be to blog every day...That's actually not a bad idea, I might get caught up then... Hmmm, I'll have to think about that some more. Untl then, I'll keep my growing files of pics to myself and wait for the day I have enough juice in my computer to actually show them to someone.

I Will Return!!

Okay, so it's been so long since I posted that I really don't know where to start, but I'm really going to try. The last couple months have been really truly crazy and after next week it'll (hopefully) calm down enough that I can do a bit of catching up (0r at least start from where I'm at now and consider the last months a lost cause). Also our computer has issues with typing- there's a several second delay from when I type to when it shows up on the screen-so sorry about any really wierd spelling errors. I have no more time right now, but I promise I will return!!