New siding...

Our house is now a lovely shade of blue! It's much quieter as well. YEA!!!! I can't believe how nice it is. It is amazing how much the vinyl makes a difference. No longer do I have to suffer hearing the aluminum siding expanding and contracting. The birds no longer wake me up at 4 am with their twittering! It's the best! Now I just need to convince my husband to put the rest of the blinds back up. We have curtains up so it's not like we're giving our neighbors full viewing access to our house, but having the blinds back up will help even more.

Putting blue siding on our house reminds me of our house in Salina. Our house used to be yellow. It wasn't quite a sunshine yellow or a gold yellow, but somewhere in between. You couldn't help but notice the house as it was a rectangular two-story house where as the other houses near by were only one-story houses. I don't remember when it was but my mom decided she had had enough of the yellow and decided to have it painted a blueish gray. I loved the house no matter the color. I shared a room with my younger sister on the second story. That room was huge for two little girls. We faced the east so we always had the rising sun to wake us up, unless it was our turn to deliver the newspapers on our paper route. We had plenty of room to run around in. Every once in a while we got bored with it so we would move the bed and shelves around. There was a little area towards the back that had a built in desk where we could do our homework or just read books. Our room could have been called a second master bedroom, it just didn't have a bathroom attached to it. Across the hall from us was my brothers room for a while until my dad finished a room in the basement for them to be in, then it became my second oldest sister's room. To the south of these room was the bathroom , my parents master bedroom and then my oldest sister's room. On the first floor was the front room, dining room, the kitchen , the laundry room with a partial bathroom next to it and a large family room. The basement was mostly unfinished. My brother's room was down there as was a bathroom for him. I don't know why the rest of the basement was never finished but I think the main reason was my parent's didn't have the extra money to spend on that due to our family being so large. That house was perfect for as large as our family was. Someday I want to have a two-story house with a basement. What would make it perfect for my husband is if it comes with a three car garage. Guess we'll just have to wait and see what the future holds for us.

House

Our house is now without siding as of yesterday and today it decided to rain. Not just rain but rain so hard that the streets started to flood. Yea. Now our house, which has nothing to protect it from the elements, looks terrible and all the outside is soaked. I love rain. I just hate it when it comes and we are vulnerable like this.

I had taken the kids to see the floats at the South Towne Exposition Center to see the floats that will be in the Days of 47 Parade. They were awesome. I loved being able to see the floats so close without having to be out in the heat to see them. The kids decided that they were tired of seeing the floats so we didn't stay for the rest of the fun which would have been face-painting or get any balloon animals. On the drive home it started to rain. I didn't worry much about it until once we were over the hill, we saw that the streets were flooded. It had rained so hard in a small amount of time that the water was turning the streets into mini-swimming pools. The water was coming up to the top of the tires in our Tahoe. I was very glad to be in the Tahoe otherwise we wouldn't have made it home. Our little Versa would have just gotten stranded. I saw some cars pulled over to the side as they were just going to have to wait until the water subsided. Luckily I was able to just go through the water and get the kids back to my house as little Emily and AJ were grumpy and needed to get their naps. While I'm sitting here typing this the rain keeps switching from little raindrops to big fat hard hitting raindrops. It helps keep the temperature of the house down though since we have no siding to prevent the heat from seeping in.

Joel is almost done with his trig class this semester. He's ready to be done. This hasn't been a very fun class for him, but who said math was always fun. I personally am not great at math. It has never been a strength for me. I'm much better at history, English and art. Our kids are doomed when they get into higher math. I can help them up through Algebra, then from there on they are one their own, unless their Dad can help them.

Entertainment....

So last night Joel took me out to see "The Dark Knight." All I can say is... WOW.That was one of the most intense movies I have seen in a long time. I found myself turning away from the screen during some parts as I could already tell from the tone of the movie that these were scenes I wouldn't necessarily want replaying in my head. I am surprised that the movie received a PG-13 rating due to the intensity of the emotions and violence that goes on in this flick. When I first heard that Heath Ledger was going to be the Joker I just rolled my eyes and thought "Great. The movie is going to be a joke." Was I ever wrong. He takes the role and makes it his own, in a very believable psychopathic way. I don't think my mom would ever want to see this film.

As for SYTYCD, to my surprise Kherrington was voted off. I was almost in tears as she was a better dancer. I thought "How could she get voted off." It took me a moment to review things in my head and then I realized why she was voted off. She couldn't take criticism. Any time anyone said anything bad about her dancing, she almost burst into tears. Having emotion while you're dancing is great, but if you can't take criticism you're not going to get far in anything you do. She danced very well with Twitch as her partner, but when she was on her own or with a different partner, it was easier to see where her weakness were, especially when she went all diva on the I-can't-do-anything-wrong when the judges criticized her dancing. It was sad to see Gev go. I didn't want either Gev or Mark to go as I love both of these dancers. I would love to go see them when they come to Utah on tour, the hard part will be convincing my husband to take me.

AJ has lately been going through separation anxiety. It doesn't matter if we're out of his sight for 1 minute or 1 hour, when he finds us again he says "missed you" and proceeds to complain that we need to hold him. It's kind of weird for me to have an almost three year old go through this stage as most kids go through it when they are younger or so I've read. But then they say that kids go through different stages sometimes then others do. It's a challenge to though as he wants to be more independent. He wants to put on his clothes all by himself now and if you try to help him he falls apart. He wants to be a big kid and take care of himself, yet mom and dad have to be right there too otherwise the world is over as he knows it. I sometimes wonder if I was like that when I was young or if I can just blame it all on Joel's side of the family.

New calling

I have a new calling in my ward. I am now part of the Enrichment Board. This will probably be one of the easier callings that I've had as it doesn't require as much work as it used to since they technically only have Enrichment four times a year. There are side activities that go on, but I don't know how much involvement we have with those. On the thought of callings I remember one day I was surfing the net and ran across a Internet site that was all about supporting people who had left the LDS church. One thing that I found interesting was that some women had left the church because they felt the church treated women as second class citizens as there were no "opportunities" to be the bishop or have the priesthood. I was saddened that they would come to that perception. In no way have I ever thought the church made us second class citizens. I personally would never want to be a bishop or Stake president. I don't understand the need that someone would want to have the positions due to the heavy responsibilities that come with those callings.
Course that brings up another issue I have. I am thankful that women have the right to vote, run for president, have jobs, but some things that women feel they have to do I don't understand. I don't understand why women have to be football players, wrestlers, boxers, combat duty for the armed services. So pretty much anything that has any form of violence to it, why would women want to do that? What is it that has happened to these women that makes them think they need to "show-up" the men? I don't enjoy women's basketball, women's baseball, women's golf (or men's golf for that matter). I enjoy watching women's gymnastics, women's volleyball, or anything that enhances the femininity that is a woman's. I guess I'm just showing how old fashioned I truly am. I love dressing up in a beautiful dress, taking time to do my hair and make-up and just watch my husband's eyes light up when I come into the room. I love pampering myself. And I know just because I am such a girly-girl that should I have another child and should the child be a girl , I am almost guaranteed that she will be the biggest tom-boy ever.

Growing up..

My little boy is growing up so fast! He is now talking in complete sentences and telling me what he likes and what he doesn't like. This morning the Wiggles came on TV and he looked at me and said "Mommy I don't like Wiggles." He has always been talkative, but now he is telling me what he is thinking, what he needs, what he likes or doesn't like. It's amazing! I am so glad that I am here to watch my baby become more and more his own person. He also loves to sing-a-long with his favorite Backyardigans shows. He has an imagination that surprises me with what he comes up with as he plays with his toys. I love being at home. I am thankful to spend this time with him. I am pretty sure that when he starts to go to school I'm going to cry like a baby his first day.

Our house is still not done. We have been waiting for the crew to come back and finish the windows and start on the vinyl and that hasn't happened yet and it's been two weeks now. It's kind of frustrating. We were hoping to have everything done by now so that we could enjoy all the comforts of a newly insulated house, but oh well. My husband has ripped out our old deck and has yet to install a new one, so maybe it's a blessing in disguise.

Forgot to mention....

Someone forgot to tell me that as I started life as a SAHM (stay at home mom) I would be responsible to get the dishes done, all the time. Every day. Just when you think you've got them all cleaned and put away more dishes miraculously appear in the sink! It is a never ending cycle! It's just like the laundry. It's amazing now matter how quickly you get it washed, dried and folded, the next day your husband is asking "where's my shirt" and you could have sworn you just put it away but yet there it sits on top of all the other dirty clothes that are now flowing out of the laundry basket. I used to complain about my job being nothing but repetition when I was at work. No one explained to me that the same phenomenon happens when you stay home, but it's worse. The more you cook, the more dirty dishes you make, yet the healthier you are, but you're stressed cause you realize that the fabulous meal that took you an hour to make now is going to result in twice the work cause you need to do all the cleaning up. I never had a full understanding of what I was getting myself into. But I must say that I love doing what I do now, so that makes up for the repeat cycles I constantly find myself in.

My husband is stressed over school as he decided he needed to take a trigonometry class this summer as he plans to take a very heavy schedule this fall. His thinking was since it was just one class he would have plenty of time to be with us and enjoy the summer. Needless to say he was wrong. With a shorter semester he has much more homework then he normally would so that is eating up any "extra" time he thought he would have. I can't help him with his trig. I couldn't even pass geometry. I am so bad at math that at Snow College I had to take high school Algebra again before they would let me take College Algebra because I scored so badly on the SAT. Our kid is doomed if he wants help with math homework. English, History, Art , I can do, any kind of high level math he'll either need a tutor or another family member that has the brains for math.

Shimmers!

Last night as I was waiting to be tired enough to go to bed I decided to see if I could find out if some dolls I had in the late 80's were known by anyone. The dolls were part human, part deer or horse or butterfly. They had little babies that came with them. They weren't pose able and had glitter on their bodies. The mommies had long comb able hair where the babies were just solid plastic. After about one hour I found a website that told me what they were. The dolls were called Shimmers! I was so excited to find them! My younger sister had one of the butterfly dolls while I had a deer one, a horse one and a mermaid one. I thought they were so pretty. Then I found they had a description of Charmkins dolls. I had a few of those too. There was also the dolls that were jewels on the outside that could be opened up and turned into little girls. There were another type of dolls called Moondancers. I vaguely remember them as I think one of my friends had one of them. It was such a flashback for me. They had such pretty dolls back then. Today I don't think they have as great of a selection as they did then. I don't like Bratz dolls. They have re-released Strawberry Shortcake and all her friends, but once again I don't like their new look. It might be a good thing that I don't have a daughter otherwise I might be a little hard pressed to buy her a doll.

Windows

Yesterday we had brand new low-e windows installed in our house and boy oh boy can I feel the difference. The A/C can actually keep up better and the house is much more enjoyable. Ususally ths front room I am in is pretty hot by this time of day, but right now it's very cool and comfortable. It's amazing how much of a difference these windows make.

The Fourth of July is this weekend. I'm so excited! Our ward is having a breakfast that morning and then Joel is going to rip out our back deck. Later that night it is off to his parents house to light fireworks and eat ice cream floats. Maybe it's drink ice cream floats, how ever you want to call it. I remember one particular Fourth of July in Salina when it snowed! We were at the middle school getting ready to participate in all the activites the city put together when it started to snow. We ended up going home and drinking hot chocolate. One thing I loved about our home in Salina is we were close enough to the rodeo grounds that we could easily see the fireworks display that went on after the rodeo ended for that night. It was so cool. Plus at the pool they always threw money into it and then they would let you dive in according to age to get the money. I never remembered how much money I got but it was always fun to do.

I dont' remember what year it was but at the rodeo my dad won a 1/2 cow and my mom had won an award for the float that she had done for the Salina parade. It was so awesome. That is one thing I will always remember fondly is that my mom had us always go to the activites for the fourth and have fun. Thanks mom.