Zoo Fun!

Saturday we braved the cold weather to visit the zoo. It was a little too cold for me, but the kids didn't seem to mind, and it was Rachel's first interactive visit. She was enamored with the penguins! We also got to hear Sarah call each of the animals by their first name according to Barbie as the Island Princess. The zoo has a red panda, and since there aren't any leaves on its tree yet we had a great view of the little guy, and Sarah kept yelling "HI SAGI!" to it. It was enough of a distraction that the panda kept looking up at her and she was thrilled. She also told us that the peacock's name was Azul, and I'm pretty sure that all of the elephants are named Tika in her mind. I don't know what she will do when the baby elephant is born.
We also enjoyed seeing 3 day old twin tamarins. They were tiny! All you could see were their little arms and legs clinging to their mommy's back. This picture is of an older baby, but it gives a good idea of what we saw.

All in all I am glad we braved the weather--especially since our annual zoo pass expires today!

Good Morning Snow-shine

I don't know if anyone else has had mornings like this, but it is almost 9:00 a.m.-- Becca is gone to school, Ellie and Sarah are playing downstairs, I just put Rachel down for a morning nap, and I am still in my pajamas, trying to put off getting dressed for as long as possible. I think I can explain the phenomenon. I woke up this morning to a white world, and even though I knew it was coming, my body has gone on strike against winter.
My reticence to getting dressed may also have something to do with some seriously disturbed REM cycles last night.
It is not uncommon for me to wake up in the middle of the night to a child crying or a child pushing me out of my own bed, in fact that happened twice last night, but those sounds typically only half wake me up, and I can go back to sleep pretty well. However, last night I was awakened by Greg shaking me and urgently telling me to "GET UP!"
I sat up, my heart pounding in my chest, and asked him what was the matter. He said, "I have to do a body count," and proceeded to climb out of bed and use the bathroom. When he was done, he climbed back in bed and was fast asleep. When I asked him this morning if he remembered his actions, he told me he had no recollection of dreaming at all, and just laughed.
I, on the other hand, was awake for almost two hours trying to calm myself back down after thinking the house was on fire.
So, if you were planning to come over this morning to visit me, I would recommend waiting until about noon, or plan on coming in your jammies for a lovely pajama party!

Easter Dresses

These pictures were all taken after church, so the girls' hair is a little out of whack, and you can see a spot of egg-salad sandwich on Ellie's dress (she thought it was OK to wipe her mouth on her dress because the eggs were yellow and her dress is yellow) but at least you can get an idea of what the kids looked like--and how excited they were to have their new dresses.

Happy Easter!

This morning Sarah was the first one up in my room begging for breakfast. I had planned on making Easter egg pancakes, but she requested Æbleskivers, so deciding that they looked quite "egg-like" I agreed. Since skivers often have something in the middle as a surprise, I put a little piece of mandarin orange in each one, decorated them with colored sugar and called them "Easter Egg-leskivers." The girls were thrilled, and didn't even complain that they had to eat breakfast before delving into their baskets.

Tarzan, Meet Jane...

So, I just came upstairs to put away some clean laundry and found Sarah wearing her birthday suit. I told her that she needed to put her clothes back on, and left to put away the clothes. A couple minutes later she came in my room telling me she decided to wear Becca's "dress" because it was so beautiful. I'm not sure how she got it on other than the fact that it is three sizes too big, but that is not actually a dress, in case you couldn't tell, it is the inside of a skirt with shorts liner. Talk about ingenuity!--I think my daughter would make a great red-neck!

I'm lookin' over a 4-leaf clover

Happy St. Patrick's Day! This morning we were visited by leprechauns who turned our heart-waffles into shamrocks, turned our juice and syrup green, and even turned our white chrysanthemum green! I was so excited about my creativity with the waffles I had to put up a picture, and I really need to get a picture of my kids, too--they are quite into the not-getting-pinched thing, and are all in green from head to toe!

Uh-Oh!

TYLER, THIS PART IS FOR YOU! Sorry for the blurry image--we are having camera problems. Ellie loves using the camera, and a couple months ago, for some mysterious reason, the camera stopped working (the lens wouldn't open). Well, we debated between getting a new camera, or getting ours fixed, and since we really like our camera, we just mailed it off to get fixed. It came back good as new, until Ellie climbed up in my closet and took the camera again. Once again she dropped it, and the lens was all out of whack. I decided to try to fix it, and it worked pretty well. She cracked one little piece, so it didn't close quite tightly, but it seemed to be doing OK. Well, yesterday, I found the camera, once again, in Ellie's room with the same error. I tried fixing it again, and the lens popped back in place, but I think it has sustained a little too much damage, so the pictures I took wouldn't quite focus. Oh, well--maybe it is just fingerprints on the lens, and I will be able to get them cleaned off--who knows.

Anyway, the title of this post has nothing to do with our broken camera. Rachel has started talking, and loves saying: ma-ma-ma, da-da-da, ba-ba-ba, and her new found favorite, Uh-Oh!
She was sitting next to me on the couch this morning as we waited for Becca to get picked up for school, and before I knew it she was being eaten by the couch. As she slid deeper and deeper into the recesses of the cushions, she kept saying "Uh-Oh! Uh-Oh!" with each slip. It was so funny I decided I had better take a picture, and by the time I got back with the camera, she was down so far I had to lift her up to get this picture!

I'm a Super Star!

I just got a ream of paper delivered, and when I closed the door behind the delivery man, Ellie said, "Mom, how are you so famous?" I asked her what she meant, and she said, "Well, you must be really famous, 'cause all the strangers who come to our house want your autograph."

I guess if I want to improve my fame, all I need to do is order a little bit more off the internet!

Would you like to buy a....

As I was cleaning my floor today, I was reminded of the time the door to door salesman selling cleaner asked me not to tell my neighbors about LA's Totally Awesome Cleaner, since I paid $1 for the exact same stuff he was selling. I have listened many such people over the years, and I realized that a lot of my experiences with salespeople have been quite funny. So, today I would like to offer my top 5 experiences with sales (other than the Totally Awesome experience), and good excuses for anyone interested:

#5 When we were first married, I received a visit from a vacuum sales girl. It wasn't Kerby, but another pricey vacuum that we certainly weren't interested in. She gave her pitch, vacuumed my front room, and asked me if I was interested. I told her it seemed like a very nice vacuum, but I also presumed it was more expensive than I would like. She said that, yes, the upfront cost of the vacuum was more than most, but over the years that evened out. She asked me how much money I had spent on vacuums and vacuum bags over the years, and I told her I had only spent $5, for some bags Greg had found online on a huge discount, and I had received the vacuum as a gift, so doing the cost-analysis, it would take me about three life-times to make up the cost difference. She didn't make a sale.

#4 Some friends invited us to go to a free dinner and fire safety meeting at a restaurant one night, and so we went assuming it was a public safety sponsored event. Instead, it was a fire security company trying to sell all sorts of expensive detectors and first response schtuff. We enjoyed our dinner, and listened politely to his presentation, then when he asked us if he come to our home to give us an in-home estimate for what we should buy, we told him that it might not be to his advantage, seeing as we were getting ready to move in about three weeks. (We didn't mention that the move would only be about three blocks away)

#3 One fine summer day, I received a visit from a Kirby deep-cleaning salesman. He gave me his speech that it would pull the dirt right out of the pad, and asked me where the dirtiest floor was in my house for an example of the power of the cleaner. I turned around and realized that by far the dirtiest carpet was on the stairs, and when I informed him of that, he told me he would need special permission to do the stairs, and never came back.

#2 This is one of my favorites. I had a knife-salesman come to my house once, and upon showing me his wares, he cut his finger. He took one look at the blood and nearly fainted. He asked if he could lie down for a minute, and spent 20 minutes on my couch after wrapping his finger with a band-aid, trying to decide if he should go to the hospital to get stitches. Once he stood up, the idea of trying to sell me anything was a little beyond him.

#1 Last summer, I received a visit from the kind sales people at Winder Dairy. They were very kind, and gave my girls all sorts of samples, but when I saw their prices, I was not overly keen to sign up. I took the pamphlet, and said I would discuss the option with my husband, and even gave them my phone number. Well, I was in and out of the house quite a bit over the next few days, and received two messages from Winder Dairy. The first message was quite typical, asking if I had decided whether or not to use their services, and the second was a little more intimate--the salesman ended the call by saying, "I love you." There followed a rather embarrassed pause as he realized what he said, and I have never heard from Winder Dairy again.

Happy Birthday Sarah!

I am afraid I need to remind the community that the world according to Sarah dictates that Princess Rosella from Barbie as the Island Princess is in fact named "Barbie Island" and not Rosella. Ever since we took the kids to the zoo last year to meet Barbie, this has been her obsession. Here is the cake that I made for Sarah on her special day. Last night she saw me making a cake after we had been discussing all what kind of a cake - she knew it would be a Barbie Island cake. It was very cute to see her wake up this morning (she had climbed into bed with us earlier) and proclaim "I want to see my Barbie Island cake!!!"

TAG!

I got tagged with a book tag and a history tag, so here is the Book Tag:

Here are the Rules of the Tag:

1. Pick up a book you are reading (of at least 123 pages).

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the next five sentences.

5. Tag five people.

"I'll need to see her once a week until we're certain she's all right."

Glasses all the time, I thought. No boy wants to date a girl with glasses. Despite the doctor's instructions to wear an eye patch for twenty-four hours I had to take it off. I couldn't let the reporters see me with the patch because they would make a big deal of it.

Any guesses as to what I'm reading right now? I am almost finished with "Warriors don't Cry" That scene was from the day that a boy at Central High blew acid into Melba Pattillo's eyes, nearly blinding her. I have really enjoyed the book, although I find it almost impossible to believe how many people, and how violently people opposed integration.

And here is the less interesting History tag:

20 years ago: I was 11. I was anxiously awaiting August 8, because I thought that 8-8-88 would be such a cool day, and I knew there wouldn't be a day like it until 9-9-99 (little did I realize that as soon as we hit the new millennium it wouldn't be all that uncommon). I was a babysitting maniac (it occupied almost every journal entry I made) and was anxious to enter Junior High.

10 years ago: I was 21. I had just moved jobs from OC Tanner to Creative Color, working in accounting and answering phones. I was also getting ready to start a master's in Speech Pathology at the University of Utah.

5 years ago: I was 26. Becca was not yet two, and Ellie was a newborn. She kept me up all night every night, and poor Becca had "Spirit-Stallion of the Cimeron" as a babysitter every morning while I tried to get at least an hour of sleep because Ellie's best consistent sleep always happened as soon as Becca woke up.

3 years ago (today): I was 28. I was 8 1/2 months pregnant, and totally unaware that the next day I would be going into labor. I was at our Stake Women's Conference with my mom, grandma and great grandma. My great-grandma had to leave the meeting to go to the bathroom, and said "It's heck getting old!" in her "whisper" (so everyone in the room heard it). Then, through the remainder of the meeting she kept asking me if I needed to use the bathroom, or if I was in labor (also in her "whisper"). My mom spoke in the meeting (she was the Stake RS president), and as soon as the meeting was over she told me I was free to have the baby any time. When my water broke the next morning she told me I was a very obedient daughter.

1 year ago: I was 30. My grandma and great-grandma passed away within a few weeks of each other.I was seven months along with Rachel, and finally over the morning-sickness. Becca was loving kindergarten, and we were enjoying mild weather and kite-flying. I was loving life and felt confident as a mother of 3 (I always seem to be able to handle the number of children I have right before the next one comes along).

So far this year: I got released from the Primary (after over 6 years of being there) and am now in the Young Women's Presidency over the Beehives. I spend most of my days trying to keep up on laundry and dishes and trying to pick out the choice moments to blog about!

So, anyone who reads this (Since 99% of you are lurkers) feel free to consider yourself tagged, and let me know what you are reading and-or what you were doing in the past!

a Couple of Funnies

At church yesterday, I had to take Rachel out (again) because she was screaming bloody-murder during the Sacrament. As I sat out in the hall, one of my friends came out with her daughter, and she said, "Shh! You need to be quiet," to which her daughter responded, "Why, because of all the people who are sleeping in there?"

Then, last night, at Greg's parent's house, the girls decided to put on a play, moderated by the oldest cousin, Brynn. Brynn said (giving Ellie her lines) "the princess said, 'aah! a mermaid!' and ran away."
So, Ellie, being an obedient actress, said "Aahh! A mermaid! And ran away!" before leaving the 'stage.'


Tomorrow is Sarah's birthday, so this morning, I asked Sarah what tomorrow is, and she said she didn't know, so I told her, "Tomorrow is March 4th," to which she replied, "March 4th! I thought you were gonna say it was my BIRTHDAY!" (I guess she did know after all!)