Christmas Week Highlights

• On Christmas morning, despite the new bike and dollhouse, Ashley appeared most excited about her new Cinderella toothbrush.
  
• Sariah spent the morning in her new Care Bears apron, playing with her toy vacuum. All she needed was a pair of high heels and an oppressive husband and she would have made a perfect 50's housewife.
  
• I got Arrested Development on DVD. I'm pretty sure everyone needs to come over and watch it with me.
  
• My aunt and uncle came in from Baltimore for a week. They always stay with my Grandma, who also lives in the area. On Christmas morning, my aunt was so excited to get over here that she was up at 3:30. They ended up getting here early and waking everyone up.
  
• I was most excited that I had people to cook for. I spent most of last week cooking and baking and I was in heaven.
• This was the first year I've gotten to be part of the whole Santa/putting toys together/staying up late thing. It was fun.
  
• Ashley and I made and decorated cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve. We had a great time. Her excitement officially melted my Grinchy heart, just in time for Christmas.
  
• On Christmas Day we were supposed to get a huge snowstorm. It was supposed to be one to tell the grandkids about. I think we got about an inch. Apparently it hit all around us, but missed Orem. I was not pleased.
  
• Some friends of the family came over on Saturday and they have some kind of special water filter that apparently makes your water magic. I'm going to start drinking their water and see if it makes me special in any way. They all looked exceedingly healthy, so keep your fingers crossed. I'll let you know if the magic elixir works.
  

Sunday Summary

• I really hope my next batch of Primary kids have fun prayers like these kids do. Today's closing prayer included the following: "Please bless that we'll be good and not yucky. Be in heaven, Father of God. Bless the food. Name of Jesus Christ, Amen."
• I'm pretty sure that people should stick with the traditional Mormon child spacing of every two years. It creates problems when you have children closer together because then they sit in the rows in front of and in back of each other in Sharing Time and basically harass each other the entire time. For example, one of my kids was wearing a hooded sweater today and his brother, who was sitting behind him, decided to pull on the hood and strangle him. I didn't actually see this happen; I heard the choking noises and apparently another teacher ran up from a couple rows back to stop him. Perhaps I would have noticed it if I hadn't been distracted by another pair of siblings who were trying to force each other to smell their feet.
• We received our ward photo directory today and a miracle has occurred . . . an actual Christmas miracle . . . my picture is quite good (relatively speaking). Let us take a moment now and thank the Lord for this generous gift.
  

My brother needs a helmet

Mark went and broke himself again. He went snowboarding and managed to break his clavicle. For those of you with no medical training (or who don't watch House or Grey's), that means he broke his collar bone. This, a month and a half after he broke his elbow (or at least the part of the arm bone that ends in the area of the elbow), and two weeks before he goes to Spain for four months. I think we're going to need to get him either a helmet or a bubble or maybe both.

must find

I woke up thinking about Airborne. Not this Airborne.


This Airborne.

I must find this movie. It's completely craptastic and I must watch it. Like right now. If you've never seen it, let me tell you why you should watch it. It has Seth Green and Jack Black in it before they were famous. And Seth has long, 90's style luscious locks in it. It also has the secretary from Ferris Bueller (Graaaaaaace!) and the teacher from Saved by the Bell. And oh yeah, it has Shane McDermott in it, who did pretty much nothing after this movie, but hello . . . he looked like this . . .


And o.k., so the movie isn't great (it got a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes), but the 90's weren't exactly known for their quality teen movies. They had a lot to live up to after the genius of the 80's and the Brat Pack. So, just watch it for fun, not for quality entertainment, and you'll have a great time. Trust me.

Primary talent show

Today in Primary we did the yearly talent show. (When I say we, I mean people other than myself, because I just don't do that. Plus, it was mainly for the kids.) One of my little boys got up with his mom and sang a song from "The Polar Express." It was the most hilarious, but yet most touching thing I have ever seen. I knew his mom could sing, so I was kind of expecting that he would be all cute and have this great voice. Not so much. But he was just so enthusiastic and earnest and sweet, and he was just really belting it out. And so while I was laughing, I was also crying like a baby. Just a little bit though. It was seriously touching. And at first I didn't realize that I was the only one crying, so I was trying to hide behind the kid who was sitting on my lap, but then I realized the Primary President was also crying, so I stopped being ashamed and openly wiped the tears and snot from my face. It was almost enough to melt my Grinchy heart. I wish I had it on video. It would be a YouTube classic for sure. I'm about to admit something that I will totally deny ever saying later, but I may possibly miss my little Primary kids next year. Of course this feeling could be completely erased next week when they're hyped up on pre-Christmas cheer.

lyrics question

In the song, "Summertime" by New Kids on the Block (No, I will never stop talking about them. Don't even ask.), there is a line that says "with your flip flops, half shirt, short shorts, mini skirt, walkin' on the beach so pretty . . ." My question is . . . why is this girl wearing both short shorts and a mini skirt? Judging by the components of her ensemble, modesty is not her top priority, so I don't understand why she has both of those items on. In my mind she's looking a little stupid right about now. Maybe they just needed more syllables for that line of the song. I don't know. All I know is it bugs me every time I hear it. I love the song, but not so much that line. You should go listen to the song and tell me what you think.

My apologies

I've been slacking with the posts again. In my defense, it was the last week of classes and I have finals coming up, so I've been just a tad bit busy. Actually, not as busy as I should be because I decided like a month ago that I was done with this semester and I didn't want to put forth any more effort. That's kind of the story of my life-unless I really love something, I tend to only put forth enough effort to get by. I am most definitely not a perfectionist or a go-getter. Mainly because I just don't care enough. I'm really glad there are perfectionists and go-getters out there though, because otherwise nothing would ever get done. So hats off to you guys. Thanks for enabling my slackerness.

None of that was the point of this post. The point of this post is that I subscribe to lots of blogs. No, really . . . lots and lots of blogs. Like possibly a couple of hundred. Don't you dare judge me-I fully admit I have no life. So I thought I would share some of the joy with you and post a couple of links here and there. My requirements for blogs that I read are that they must contain either pretty pictures, recipes, funnies, celebrity gossip, or be written by people I know. Here are the feeds for today. Just go ahead and subscribe. You know you want to.

• Austin Bush Photography (to subscribe to the feed, use austinbushphotography.com/feed/)
  
• Old Fashioned Homemaking
  
• TMZ

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for the content of these blogs. Well, other than the fact that I like them and recommended them. But if you read something you disagree with or that offends you, don't come crying to me.

ew

Jennifer Connelly's legs look like they're transplants from Body Worlds. Make sure you click to make it bigger so you get the full effect.

Um . . .

I didn't realize exactly how many blog posts there were and how long it would take to go onto each one and label it, so don't be expecting all this labeling to be done for a while. Like for at least a few weeks. And it's kind of hard to decide on categories. Do I just do a general category of celebrities or do I need to have separate ones for Shia and Zac Efron? Or maybe one for general celebrities and one for hotties? Obviously I gave New Kids on the Block their own category instead of just putting them under music, but that was a given. And why am I even bothering with this labeling thing anyway? I was just going to do recipes so that I could find things easier, but then it got out of control. I realize I'm only doing this to avoid studying for finals, but now that I've started, it's become an obsession and I can't stop.

FYI pt. 2

Oh, and I also added a little email button thing so that if I post something wonderful and fabulous, you can easily email it to all of your friends. Or, more likely, if there's a recipe you want to try (because I post them so often), you can email it to yourself to print out later.

FYI

I'm going to start changing things up a little bit. Instead of having a Recipe o the Week that I don't update on a weekly basis, I'm just going to post recipes when I feel like it and start labeling the posts so you can find them all in one place. I'm also going to go back and include all the former Recipes o the Week in the post in which I announced that there was a new recipe. It was bugging me that once I changed the recipe, there was no record of the previous one. So this is my solution. Plus, I can never find my recipes for Texas Sheet Cake or Blender Pancakes, but I've posted the recipes on here before, so every time I want to make them, I have to look them up on my blog. So really, this whole thing is just to make my own life easier, not yours.

Also, I think I'm done with the Hottie du Jour feature. Not because I don't enjoy gazing at them lovingly, but because, except for a day here and there, they're always the same person. And I'll admit it, I am slightly ashamed of my Shia obsession. There, I said it.

I'm also going to fix my playlist so that it doesn't automatically start playing. Why? Because the first thing I do when I go onto anyone's blog is look to see if they have one and immediately turn it off. It's not that I don't like your music, it's that I already have my own music playing (and sometimes your music does suck, but mostly it's just that my music is already going). So since I would prefer that yours not start automatically, I'll change mine to not start automatically as well.

great website

The Big Picture from The Boston Globe. Plus, this was on the front page (of the website, I don't know about the actual paper).

she's gone wiccan

Well, maybe not wiccan, but definitely new age-y. Every year or so I go through a new age-y/Buddhist/spirituality kick. Not that I'm leaving my Church or anything, but I do start coloring mandalas, meditating, thinking about doing yoga (occasionally I'll do a little downward facing dog and child's pose, but that's about it), and reading up on all sorts of what I call "New Age, You Go Girl" literature. Technically it isn't all new age, but it is about being a powerful woman. Here is what is currently on my bedside table. Some I've read before, some are new. And a couple aren't actually NAYGG books, but they're still good.

• "The New Feminine Brain: Developing Your Intuitive Genius" by Mona Lisa Schulz
• "Women Who Run With the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
• "Wise Women: Over 2000 Years of Spiritual Writing by Women" by Susan Cahill
• "The Witch of Portobello" by Paulo Coelho (fiction)
• "Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living" by Pema Chodron
• "Living by the Word: Selected Writings 1973-1987" by Alice Walker
• "Dematerializing: Taming the Power of Possessions" by Jane Hammerslough
  

I think it's good every once in a while to declutter your mind, retreat from the world just a little bit and remember that spirituality and religion aren't the same thing. Are you the kind of person who lives their religion as a checklist? Prayer-check. Family Home Evening-check. Scripture reading-check. Do you go through the motions because that's what you're supposed to do or do you actually feel it? Does it bring you joy or does it just bring you more things to add to your to-do list? My new age-y kicks seem to always come at a time when I'm just going through the motions, but not really feeling it. They always seem to help me refocus my priorities and realize that I'm doing things for all the wrong reasons. So if you're ever feeling the same way, I hope you won't be scared off by any kind of new age stigma (i.e. thoughts of pagans celebrating the Solstice, etc.) and you'll consider checking into it. This doesn't mean you need to start buying crystals or anything like that, but just try to get more in touch with the world and not the worldly.

interesting article

Polish Jew gave his life defining, fighting genocide

stuff

I kind of got blogged out for a while there and had to take a little hiatus in order to preserve my sanity. Here's what's been going on in the last week and a half-ish:

• If I could stop Christmas from coming, I would. I'm just not feeling it this year.
  
• Last week in Primary the music lady was teaching the kids a new Christmas song and she asked the kids who Mary's husband was. One of the kids answered "Heavenly Father." I almost blurted out "He was her baby daddy, not her husband," but fortunately I realized how unbelievably inappropriate that would have been, and I stopped myself.
  
• Only one more week of classes left. I don't know if I can make it.
  
• Remember that Mexican Tomato Lime soup recipe I posted a few weeks ago? I made it again, but added black beans and diced green chilies and it was even better than the last time. You really should try it.
  
• "Swiss Family Robinson" was on t.v. today. I love the old Disney movies. They prepared you for real life. Kids today are spoiled by princesses and happily ever after. The real world just isn't that nice. Sometimes your dog gets rabies and you have to shoot it. That's just the way it goes.