Monday, October 31, 2011

Saturday morning tunes...

Liv and I have started a piano teaching business and by far our favorite customer is a girl from Ghana named Kristin (I know, it doesn't sound very native) who we met because her mother is a resident with Garrett at the hospital.  Every Saturday morning we drive to Princeton for some good quality tunes. The first time I met Faustina (the mother) I was amazed how white her teeth looked.  I love white teeth and I commented on how white they were.  She laughed and said, "They aren't really white, I'm just really black!"  We love going Saturday mornings even though Liv sometimes gets a little irritated when it interferes with her nap time....

Babysitting Bonanza.

When I was a young teenager I do not hesitate to brag that I was the top pick for babysitters on the block.  I took my job very seriously and even had a babysitting bag with all kinds of gadgets and gizmos of plenty to entertain and delight children of all ages.  Babysitting was my livelihood. Thankfully, that season ended and I became a career woman, actively working with a W-2 form and everything.  Now that I am 28, I am finding my career cycle coming full circle as I once again am a babysitter.  I had a weekend o' babysitting, but this time I had my own offspring, and no babysitting bag.
Bradly,and Eli, the homeschool boys from next door....


We enjoyed some quality library time, pizza, Ice Age, and throwing stale Kix off the balcony to squirrels below.
Liv was very understanding about the babysitting influx this week although I think this face best describes how she felt about all the new visitors.  Kira came to sleepover while her parents went to Florida.  She loved Olivia and was convinced that Olivia wanted to play with her hair because it was blond.
When Kira woke up, I thought I was really magnifying my babysitter duties by offering to make waffles.  She promptly responded that she did not LIKE waffles but instead wanted to have lunch for breakfast.  Way easier. Speghetti-O's for breakfast. Perfect.   While it was a good motherhood expansion weekend, I would have to say that hands down my favorite person to babysit would be the girl you see below:

Trunk or Treat. Without the trunks.

Some things don't change no matter how far away from Zion you go.  Like the ever classic, never changing ward trunk or treat.  Except there were no trunks because it was sleeting. It wasn't snowing, or raining, or hailing.  It was a combo meal of all three making it feel like there were giant snow cones without flavoring being pelted down from the sky.  So we scratched the trunk since the weather did a trick and just enjoyed the treats.  We took refuge in the church sunday school room (we have a mini size church, no gym) where it was complete madness.  Liv had no idea what was going on and patiently endured her sheep ensemble that we borrowed from Liz and her son Henry who upgraded to a more aggressive lion costume this year. I was drooling because I thought she was so cute. 

Saturday, October 29, 2011

How I want G to react this Christmas...



G and I have many differences. I hate tomatoes. He loves them. I could sleep in until I rot. G wakes up at 5 am ready to start accomplishing his daily goals.  One of the most extreme differences we have is on the reaction spectrum.  I could light fireworks and come out of a hot air balloon in a Chinese Dragon and G would have the same reaction as watching the most boring High Council talk in this dispensation.  It's one of the things that I love and drives me the most crazy because I thrive on reactions.  I love demonstration of expression all the time.  I am like an emotional volcano that erupts in excitement over anything.  It could be considered extreme. But then again, so could G.  As in the opposite extreme.  It's definitely one of those things where there is no middle ground and we're ok with that.  It's like a reaction tsunami and a calm tranquil reaction river being together forever. Even though sometimes I wish G would react like the girl in this clip....

Thursday, October 27, 2011

United Nations Luncheons...

I feel like I have become more culturally refined this week.  My neighbor (who I still can't understand her name because of her accent) is from India and invited me to lunch on Tuesday.  I wish your screen was scratch and sniff so this picture would have more meaning. I'm not going to lie, my stomach did feel a little like I was getting off the white roller coaster at Lagoon after we finished, but the bean thing on the left was acceptable.  We ate the following:
She told me it was the Indian New Year.  I felt very excited to learn that we were in the middle of a holiday that I didn't even know about.  I say the middle because the Indian New Year is three days.  What a genius idea!  I always felt Christmas went way too fast and New Years just made you tired the next day but you couldn't go to bed because who wants to start out the new year of life as a party pooper? Lame-o. Mega lame-o.  So why don't we take a lesson from India and just extend the holidays we like the most? Why not have a week long Christmas?  A four day Easter?  Can you imagine the egg hunt stamina you would have to develop?  And let's shorten St. Pat's big day to a couple hours. I've never been a fan. Why do we restrict ourselves to the day limit for each holiday? I'm telling you, India has something going on.  I'm loving the idea.  I don't know who we talk to but healthcare isn't the only thing America is struggling with. 

Anyway, I also met a woman named Liylia from the Ukraine who invited me and Tara (see explanation below) for lunch today and it was actually divine to digest.  It was such good food even though it all looked like a elementary science fair project.  She is Muslim and such a kind person with such a different culture.  I'm most definitely not in the Utah bubble anymore.  I don't really know where I am, but let's just say Deseret Book would shrivel up like a raisin here because there would be no business.  I love the diversity and learning about all these new cultures/religions.  I am yet to see a grocery clerk with their young womans medallion, there's no sounds of the sabbath on KOSY radio on Sundays, and when you mention stake center, people picture a restaurant (while we're on the subject, have I mentioned that they eat squirrel here? I wish I was joking. I'm not.)



The woman below is Tara Doggett.  She is American. Since this is an international oriented post, I thought I would clarify her ethnicity. Not that I am a respector of persons by any means. Well, on the contrary I try to respect all persons but I digress. To be quite honest, I feel like Heaven gift wrapped her and then paid for shipping and handling and had her sent right to my path. Literally.  I was out on a walk with Liv and stopped to talk to her and found out she lives across the street.  Her husband is in his last year of residency and works with Gar. She has 2 little boys and is 8 months pregnant with her first girl.  She is normal. She is funny.  She is not from here. She is an amazing mom.  We laugh. We talk. We have fun. She is a real friend.  That is an answer to prayer.  
There is nothing more important than family. Nothing. Family is everything.  But when you can't live by the people you love the most, sometimes Heavenly Father helps you out by putting people in your life as a compensation to let you know that He knows that you are not a mailbox, or a venus fly trap, or a jelly fish, that you a human, His daughter, that needs friends and people to talk to, to laugh with and learn from, no matter where you are in the world. Even and especially, in Bluefield West Virginia.


Moms and Cinnamon Life

I have been laying in the Bluefield dark trying to go to sleep for the last two hours. I have a problem falling instantly asleep.  I always have. G does not. I have to talk really fast if I have something to say while we are going to sleep because he will go from a fully functioning, interacting human to the middle of deep REM cycle in a matter of 27 seconds. I was always excited to get married because I thought it would be like a perma-roomate who you could talk with for hours and hours before falling asleep.  Then I got married and realized that vision was about as realistic as a unicorn or Puff Daddy's resurrection because it contains 2 inherent flaws. One is that Garrett is a boy.  That is not the flaw. That is the blessing.  What I did not realize is that boys don't talk like girls.  They do not endlessly analyze for hours.  They do not waste their mortal probation in idle chatter.  The second is that even if G did want to giggle and chat the night away, he falls asleep so fast that I only have the opportunity to utter about 3 sentences before he starts his Lamaze like breathing and is gone to the world of slumber, never to return until the alarm goes off.

Anyways. Back to why I am awake. I have been thinking for the last hour how much I wanted a bowl of cinnamon life.  I think that started keeping me awake, more than the deficiency of pillow talk or not being able to sleep in the first place.  Then I realized, I am an adult. If I want to eat cinnamon life. I can. I can and I will and I just did.

This is not the first time this has happened.  I love cinnamon life, at night in a certain bowl that is more like a mug.  I will call it a mowl. It has unconsciously merged almost into a night time ritual or habit.  I think that is because whenever we would go to my grandmas as a child (which was better than Disneyland) she would always let us have a bowl of cold cereal before bed.  I loved it. And now that I'm completely responsible for myself, I can bring back all my childhood fantasies and joyful memories I loved.  Certain things I still do even though I know they are not responsible. For example, when I was little no one would ever let you roll down your windows and have the AC on.  It's wasteful.  I agree. However, I do it sometimes when I am alone because I can and no longer have that childhood dream repressed.  I also chew multiple pieces of gum at the same time and spit it out the instant it loses flavor (usually around 8 minutes).  I also drink straight from the milk jug when no one is home.

I still think I need a mom to guide me because some things that one would hope maturity would naturally eliminate is still not working.  I need her to check my cleaning of the bathroom because I still hate cleaning bathrooms.  When you're an adult, no one tells you to go to bed when it's late. You're just dead dog tired the next day.  No one tells you to do your chores.  You just have a messy house if you don't.  Sometimes I love being an adult when I can eat Life cereal at midnight because I can but sometimes I just still wish I had to a mom to make me a chore chart, do my laundry, make some dinner and tell me to go to sleep.  Even when you're a mom, you still want your mom. I hope Liv always wants her mom too.