To Santa:

Thank you for coming.

Love,

Us

Prima Ballerina

Yesterday, I got the opportunity to sit in on my daughter's dance lesson. It was so wonderful to watch. She looked so beautiful and so grown up!

I was so proud!

Not that she did everything on beat or perfect , because she didn't (she is only 7 and this is her first dance class, after all). but it was awesome to see her so focused on something. If you know my daughter than you know that she is easily distracted and has a hard time focusing on the task at hand sometimes. Mostly at school, and mostly when she is doing some sort of chore. But yesterday in her dance class, and even though the room was full of parents watching her, she was so incredibly focused on what she was doing. I can tell she really enjoys going to dance class. My husband and I are very happy about this. It gives our daughter something to work for and something for her to be proud of. I'd say that those are both very important factors for her to have a good self esteem.

Did I already say that I was proud?

'Cause I am.

Hard Rock Cafe Minneapolis

After the Christmas display but before the Spoonbridge and Cherry, I mentioned that I was hungry. My Dad said that there was a Hard Rock Cafe right up the street, but that might be a little too much for him and my Mom. But they did drive me by to take a look and again, I was the only one to get out of the car. (I'm telling you, these people don't get excited about anything.) I checked it all out while they drove around the block. I went into the gift shop, had the hostess at the door take my picture with the big Hard Rock sign inside and then went out to flag down my family. I found them parked right in front of the restaurant in the most cherry parking spot you could ever find. Apparently, this parking spot was too good for my parents to pass up so they decided that they might as well eat at the Hard Rock. You see how the Lord helps me out with stuff like that? A parking spot! Who knew?

Check it out!!

Me and the sign!

My husband eating lunch with Bob Dylan!

Prince!

A sinful amount of melted blue cheese! A cup of buffalo sauce that I didn't even have to ask for!

Dear Hard Rock Cafe,

You and I were made for each other. I knew it when your hostess chased me down to ask me if I wanted her to take my picture with the guitar out front(Not the pic above, that was taken by moi.). I knew it when our waitress's name was Leslie too. I knew it when you played a video of Elvis directly after a Red Hot Chili Peppers video. I definitely knew it when you delivered a cup of buffalo sauce with my meal and I didn't even ask for it. It is because of that cup of buffalo sauce that I am willing to over look the Bruce Springsteen memorabilia.

I love you Hard Rock Cafe!

Vikings!!

So my parents live very close to the Vikings practice facility. My Dad thought I might be a little interested. He was wrong. I was very interested. In fact I was the only one interested. Nobody else even got out of the car. (Well, except my Dad, who had to get out to take my pictures. Thanks Dad!)

I mean, this is so awesome! Jared Allen practices in there! Did you hear what I said? JARED ALLEN. (God, I miss that man.)

Yeah! Football!

(P.S. Nobody better bring up that nasty "F" word in my comments. I don't give a crap about that guy, even if he is having an awesome season.)

A Day in the Life of Elves

We went to the Nicollete Mall to the see the Macy's Christmas display. It was nice but there is not much to say about it.

Blah, blah, blah....Christmas.

Blah, blah, blah....lots of people.

Blah, blah, blah....the kids were kind of scared.

Blah, blah, blah...skinny Santa Claus.

I'm a Sucker for Cherries

We're driving along in downtown Minneapolis and my parents are trying to figure out how to get back to I-35w southbound when I mindlessly snapped the picture above and then read aloud a sign that said "Walker Park." My Mom says something like, "Oh! Is that the park with the big cherry?" That's all I had to hear, I wanted to go to there.

So, as it turned out, Walker park is this cool garden in Minneapolis next to the art museum that has all sorts of cool sculptures. Apparently the Spoonbridge and Cherry is a Minneapolis Icon, (it reminded me of the shuttlecocks at The Nelson Atkins Museum in KC) but I had never heard of it before. Now I think that its the MOST AWESOME THING EVER.

Is this the greatest picture taking opportunity or what? I love these pictures so much I want to lick them.

There was a wedding party there taking pictures. I took a picture 'cause I was jealous.

I would die for wedding pictures like that.

Thanksgiving in Minnesota, eh?

(Baaa,haaa, haa! Don't you love how I always add that "eh" in the titles of my Minnesota posts? (To tell the truth, I've never heard anyone in Minnesota say that) I do!)

(Also, I'd like to say that I HEART Minnesota.)

We just got back from another fabulous trip to Minnesota visiting my parents. We had so Much fun. Tonight, my daughter said, "I want to go back to Grandma and Grandpa's house," and my little boy said with a huff, "I want Grandma and Grandpa's house!" I'll take that as a sign that they enjoyed their vacation.

A few shots from Thanksgiving day:

These are my parents. Aren't they cute? And yes, they are as awesome and nice as they look.

I always drive everyone crazy by making them pose for a picture using the timer, usually they are very patient, as it is a new camera. (They are starting to gripe about it, but I choose to ignore it at this point.) See those sweet potatoes in front of my daughter? Yeah, they are so yummy it's like eating candy. I feel like it should be dessert. (Ask me for the recipe, it's like an apple crisp but with sweet potatoes and nuts. Yummy.)

On Friday, we helped my Mom put up her Christmas lights. (Mostly, my husband did all the helping.) They turned out great, but I didn't manage to get a picture of them lit up at night. Sorry. (Are you supposed to put the comma before or after the but? I would look it up but I'm lazy. (See? I just left the comma out all together that time.))

More pictures to come of our Minneapolis adventures. (I promise, there are no Mall of America pictures. I'm just as sick of that as you are.) Stay tuned! Maybe I won't use as many parenthesis in those posts. (Maybe.)

This One Time, in 1998......

....my Mom made us go to her family reunion in Idaho! I know! We were all so mad.

But then we stopped for breakfast at Burger King.

This is us before eating our Burger King breakfast:

(L-R, my little bro Taylor, ME!, My sis Lisa, and Megan)

and after eating our Burger King breakfast:

Wow.

I'd just like to say that I am thankful (it is the month to be thankful, right?) for Burger King and the positive influence it has had on my life, and the lives of my friends and family. Thank you, Burger King.

Saboteur

Back in July, my parents gave me their green mini-van. It had a working air conditioner, my white mini-van did not. We parked the white van in our garage and I've been driving my parents green one ever since. The insurance that my parents had on the van expired on November 1st so I cleaned out my white van to use again until we had taken care of registration and insurance on the green van. It didn't take me very long to see that an old hash brown wrapper from McDonald's had been shredded into neat little pieces, and upon closer inspection I found, you guessed it, mouse droppings. I was a little annoyed. My husband pulled the car out of the garage to take a look under the hood. He noticed the insulation on the hood had been chewed, he peaked inside, and look who he saw looking back:

In preparation for this mouse hunt, my husband had put on two pairs of leather gloves. He carefully tried to trap the mouse so he could set it free somewhere that was not my garage or van. The mouse then became desperate and decided that his only choice was to fight, he jumped out onto my husbands hand, a hand that had two thick, leather gloves on it. My husband was afraid the mouse carried diseases so he wigged out and flung the mouse away from him. Away from him just also happened to be in the direction of my head. At least that's what it seemed like when I saw it flying through the air in my general direction. I screamed at the top of my lungs and bolted. In the process, I inadvertently snapped this beauty of a picture.Yeah, that's my shirt hem and the pocket on my pants.

The mouse ran for the cover of the storage bins in the garage. Of course by now, we are both laughing hysterically. I'm pretty sure the mouse had already flew past me and hit the ground before I reacted, but it is so funny how when you panic, your body just takes over. Fight or flight. Apparently, I am flight, and the mouse is fight.

But ultimately the mouse lost his fight for survival. Peanut butter gets them every time. However, the mouse did have the last laugh, the power locks, the vent blower and seat adjustments in the van don't work anymore. We think he must have chewed some wires or something.

Local Commercials

Oh, man. There are these commercials, they are local commercials, and I swear they only play them at night. They play at night when Leslie gets really giggly. You think she laughs a lot during the day, you should see her at 10:30 at night. But seriously, there are two of these commercials, they usually play them together, and they just kill me.

This is the first one:

***She sings***
Less of you! More of Life! Weight loss Surgical Center!

Pretty good huh?

Okay here's the second commercial, this one is really awesome:

***She really sings***(Look there's a link to the actual commercial!)
Midwest Hemorrhoid Treatment Center! Don't suffer in silence!

By now, I am usually laughing so hard, I have to excuse myself to the restroom. Now watch that commercial and tell me you don't want to sing it ten times.

Huh?

Huh?

That's what I thought.

Too Much Candy?

We went to the Trunk or Treat at the church on Saturday night. We got a lot of candy.

My husband ate a ton of it. It made him sleepy.

A Nice Relaxing Fall Break

I have a week off of school! Hooray! No class until next tuesday. Last night I was so looking forward to a nice relaxing break. I even thought to myself, maybe I'll read a book, for fun!

But then, I woke up to this

and this

and of course, this

and a reminder for parent teacher conferences for this self taught Karate Master.

That was when I realized how wrapped up in school I've been the last few weeks.

Sheesh. I'm already stressed out and it's not even 9am yet.

Wherein I talk about mostly nothing.

I am sitting in the computer lab at the community college. I had a test on break-even points with single and multiple products, and absorption and variable costing. Frankly, I find break even points a little too easy, and absorption costing slightly confusing, and if you know what I am talking about leave a comment at the end and you will receive ten brownie points. Don't get too excited, I said brownie points, not brownies.

I'm not so sure how I did on the test, I guess it could go either way. I didn't get a whole lot of studying done. I had a migraine yesterday, the kind where you lose vision and your brain takes a vacation. Yeah, I melted a plastic container all over my glass top stove. My house sure smells, but I figure it was a good thing, because my smoke alarms didn't go off and believe me, they should have. Add the alarms to the honey do list, I guess.

Now I am talking with the kids on the computers next to me about their mythology teacher telling the class that Jesus was gay. Hmmmm......what does that have to do with mythology anyway?

I Don't Know What You Mean....

Someone who commented on my last post (Megan) said that my children must have inherited my sense of humor.


Uhhhh...................


hmmmm........


what do you mean?

I don't know what you are talking about.

Peas and Carrots

These two have strong and wild imaginations.

I have no idea what they're doing. I did not teach them that.

But look how little they used to be!!

Awwwwww!!! They're so cute!

Gotta List it Out

• So. The Chiefs stunk so bad (I mean more than usual) on Sunday that I was bored watching the game. There was no yelling, no jumping out of my seat, no fun really. It was just a boring game, even the other team wasn't that spectacular. I could tell before the first quarter was over that the Chiefs were gonna lose, but lets be honest here, no one, not even me, expects them to win. Hope, maybe, ('cause I live in the land of hope) but no expectations.
• When I was 13 maybe, I discovered the Moody Blues. It was kind of life altering, well as much as music can be life altering. I was borderline obsessed. As I got older and got married, had kids, it kind of fizzled away. Well, I feel it coming around again. It's all I want to listen to, and not there cheesy '80's stuff either, but their early stuff from the 60's and 70's. I really need a record player. I think I have spent half my life wanting a record player.
• There was a little stink earlier last week about some Obama song being sung by kids in school. Not nearly as big a deal as the speech he gave in the schools, but my concern about all this is that no one complained when I was being humiliated in my jr. high PE class by the Presidential Fitness Standards! Why couldn't all this hoopla about the Pres in the public schools started then? Presidential fitness standards, what a bunch of crap.
• My book club is reading Catching Fire this month, if you are interested in attending this meeting, as I know many of you that are not in my book club have also read this book recently, we would love your company. I believe we are having a pot luck, so you should come. Good food, good friends, and a good book, does it get any better than that? ( I have in my possession two copies, let me know if you need to borrow one.)
• Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself why I am going to school. I sure do a lot of stuff I don't want to do, and it's all very emotionally draining. Why is that? All I do is sit in at a desk in various class rooms for four hours, why does this make me so incredibly tired? I don't know, but it does. I can't help but think that this would not have been the case had I been 18 instead of 27 when I started college. Hmmm......lesson learned, Life....lesson learned.
• I am doing a research paper on China's one-child policy. One of my partners is Chinese. ( I don't even know where my other partner is from.) I am trying to follow her lead on this thing, it's kind of challenging. For one thing it's hard because I can't understand her very well. I think I'm getting better every time I talk to her though. And another thing, I just assumed that we would be arguing against the one-child policy, but about two weeks in, I finally clued in to the fact that she thought the policy was a good thing. (Ooohhhhhh. Well, that changes everything!) But I did kind of laugh at myself though. How very American and Mormon of me to just assume that everyone would think such a policy was a threat to their belief system and human rights. Human rights look very different depending on where you are in the world. I am glad to be right where I am.
• Last month, one of my friends was telling me that she just cannot handle getting the kids ready for school and that she would get so mad. I was all, oh come on! It's just one hour! Well, I was in the "hope for better things" stage. Now I'm in the "get your butt in the bathroom and brush your teeth before I beat your ass!" stage. And today was picture day. Stupid picture day, why don't you just come shoot me in the foot, I could probably deal with that better.
• Did I mention that I need a record player?

This One Time....

A long time ago,

I opened my granola bar from Aldi,

and it smiled at me.

See?

And I was all,

whoa!

My granola bar from Aldi is smiling at me!

THE END.

Whatever it Takes

Setting: Early morning, a Mom (me, actually) is in her kitchen preparing breakfast for her kids before she sends them off to school for the day.

Conversation:
Mom: Ooooooh! Stop crying, you need to be happy.

Little boy: Noooooooooo!!

Mom: Are you hungry?

Little boy: Noooo! I want to kick your butt!

Mom: Oh yeah? (shrugs) okay, if it will make you happy. (She pushes her bottom out in the direction of the little boy)

Little boy: (as he's kicking his mother's bum) Hiiiii yahhh!!!

Mom: Feel better?

Little boy: (giggles) yeah!




Because that's the kind of Mom I am.

Was that weird?

Yesterday, I had a minute before class, so I headed to the restroom. As I am entering, someone is coming in behind me so I turn to push the door open wider for her. I see that it is my Professor for my upcoming class. She is excited to see me (and why wouldn't she be?) and starts asking me how my day and labor day was. Which is all fine and dandy, but she was in her stall doing her business. Isn't that right up there with talking on the phone while using the facilities? I thought it was kind of weird.

Was that weird?

My Tiny Ballerina

My husband's Mother so generously offered to pay for dance classes for my daughter. A month or so ago, we met up with my mother-in-law. We went and enrolled her at the arts school, and then to buy her first pair of ballet slippers.

She had a long wait till the first class. The more she waited, the more excited she would get, but finally(!), the day arrived. Her first dance class!

She had so much fun and can't wait to go back.

I'm so proud of my beautiful prima-ballerina.

Thank you, Nana Su!

I Live in Kansas, Y'all!

My husband works on his Grandfather's sod farm. Just for something to do, and while the kids have been in school, my husband has taken me out to "the country" a few times. It's only five or ten minutes from our house.

(Public service announcement: The speed limit on 56 hwy has been raised from 50 mph to 60 mph. Please keep this in mind when we are driving behind you. Thank you.)

Shots of "the farm" Such a classy place.

(look real close and you will see an empty beer bottle to the left of the tank, and to the right, the beer case that the empty bottle must of came from.)

Ha! ha! Yes it really looks like this out at the shop. This is where all the equipment is kept, and where the men gather before work. Most, but not all, of the old cars and debris are from the renters of the farmhouse. They rebuild cars and motorcycles as somewhat of a hobby. They have lived there for almost forever.

Wild life I have encountered on my farm adventures:

Grandpa's cows are scared of me. A few got wide eyed when I pointed at them, and I caused a miniature stampede when I got out of the truck. (Oh yeah, cows? Well, the feeling is mutual! pshh! Stupid cows......)

It was like the dragonflies stopped to pose for pictures. The blue on the wings is absolutely beautiful.

It is not uncommon to see a blue heron in one of the ponds. They are easily scared, so I was excited to get such a good picture.

And this is me in the middle of a corn field. I had never been in a corn field before, so I took a picture. It was fun, I giggled a lot. If you ever get the chance to run down a corn row, do it, just don't get lost.
I absolutely love where I live. Close enough to take advantage of all the big city amenities, but also all the beauty and charm of the country.

It's lovely.