BILLBOARD

We were out and about this afternoon and on the way home we were on the highway just driving along. I hear Evelyn singing in the back and she is happy and having a good time to herself. Then I hear her say "hey look!! Up there!! It's me mom, it's meeee!!"

Up ahead on the opposite side of the road there was a huge billboard. It was a black background with big, bold, writing that said "THE EXECUTIVE - GENTLEMEN'S CLUB". And in the corner of the billboard there was a picutre of an attractive, barely dressed woman with long blond hair - just like Evelyn's hair.

I said "that's not you Evelyn! That lady just has nice pretty blond hair like you huh!" She agreed and that was that.

Then I thought to myself ..."and I better not EVER see you on the top of a billboard like that - EVER!"

Oh, Evelyn!!!

14 days...and counting!

Just thought you should know.

Smokin' Flowers!

Why do you think people buy flowers? I buy flowers because they smell good (and they are pretty, but for this post, mainly because they smell good.) I expect flowers to smell like ... nothing but flowers! So excuse my "hot and bothered" remarks about my recent experience with a "florist".

On Thursday evening of this week I was hosting a baby shower for my good friend Mindy. I love her and I wanted her shower to be great and for her to feel special. I thought it would be a cute idea to have the soon-to-be-mother wear a corsage.
I wanted rose buds. Little baby rose buds. With baby's breath and blue ribbon since she is having a boy. I had it all imagined in my mind how it would look.

Task - find a florist.

Conveniently enough, there is a florist shop at the corner of my street before entering my neighborhood. I drive by it almost every day. I thought this was perfect! I'll just drive up there, pick up a beautiful corsage for the occasion and Voila! It would be done.

I drive up to the store. I walk inside and as soon as the door cracks open the tiniest bit I enhale and the entire place reeks of cigarette smoke. It was an awful smell. Burned my throat it was so bad. All I wanted to do was turn around and run from the store as fast as I could so the smell wouldn't have time to seap into my clothes and my hair - I hate that! But I couldn't run. The second I stepped inside and had that second to look around I notice how small the store was and the check-out counter was literally just a few steps in front of me with the two store owners standing right there staring at me ready to greet me.

"Hello" they said.
"hi" I said back.
"How can we help you" the man said.
"oh, um...I was interested in a corsage for a baby shower today."
"Great! We can help you with that. What do you want it to look like?"
...
I didn't want to be rude. I didn't want to hurt their feelings and leave because I was about to die from the intoxicating air. I am not rude like that, so I limit my breaths and endure the next 15 minutes of the corsage making process. EGH!

...15 minutes later...

"Here you go ma'm. That'll be $X.XX." the man said.
"Ok, here's my card." and as soon as the receipt was in my hand, I was out of there!

I get home and I set my package down - pleased with how cute it turned out. Then came the test. I thought surely since the flowers were kept behind a refrigerated, heavy glass door that the smoke smell would have no affect on them at all. But I had to know for sure!!
I opened the bag, pulled out the corsage and held it up to my face and inhaled through my nose. I about died! The stench was awful. The flowers were completely polluted by cigarette smoke that there wasn't even a trace of the smell of flowers!

REALLY!?

Who in their right mind would own a flower shop where the flowers are supposed to smell divine and fresh and like they are in a garden and then smoke in your shop!?!? I mean HONESTLY! What were they thinking!?

Oh yes I did - I got right back in my car and drove the 30 seconds back up the street, held my breath and walked back into the shop.
"Umm, I need to return these flowers" I said.
"Is there a problem?" asked the owner
"Yes, they smell like smoke and nothing like roses." I said
"Really?" the man said opening the bag to smell for himself
"yes, really. and it's pretty bad too. Your shop reeks of smoke and I was hoping that the flowers wouldn't after I got them home and away from the smell, but they smell awful and I can't use these." I said
...he smells the flowers himself and then says to me "I can fix that!"
...I had to control the sudden urge to laugh out loud in the man's face, and instead just said..."Noooo, I don't think you can. I'll just take the refund back on my card please." How in the world was he going to "FIX THAT"?!!

I left the shop and I chuckled to myself because I had to return flowers for smelling like smoke. Never thought I would have to do that before. You know that saying "Oh this is disgusting! Here...SMELL this!" Yeh, who's going to smell it after you just said how disgusting it is?!! Ha! Well, take my word for it and please don't visit the little flower shop on the corner by my house.

Why do I torture myself?

(so I know I don't have an oriental little girl, but this picture was the best! LOL!)

I try to be a good mom. I try to do fun things with them. Sure there are days where there is just nothing going on and we end up just playing around the house or in the garage. But then there are days like today...I wake up thinking "I have a few places to go, it would be fun to bring the girls and get them out of the house today." WRONG-OOOO!

The outing was a success -meaning I got everything I needed done.period.

Was it a fun outing? Was it smooth sailing? Was is like how I imagined it would be.......me, dressed up and accessorized for the day, the girls in cute outfits and hair pretties, my hair flowing in the breeze, bounding joyfully from store to store checking off my perfect boxes on my perfectly outlined "things to do" list.........EEERRRRRRR!!!! PUT THE BRAKES ON!!! Because it was SOOO not like that.

We started off at the mall, it's was time to clean the jewels, we were there no more than 3 minutes and the meltdowns began. Claire pooped and for some strange reason, the diaper bag was missing a key componant to a diaper change - the wipes! I felt frazzled and unprepared wondering how am I going to change a poopy without wipes and I am not driving 15 minutes home to get them! So I leave the jeweler and walk to the OPPOSITE end of the mall to find a family size restroom so that all of us and the double stroller will fit in. Evelyn needs to use the potty - great, help yourself - and I begin changing Claire with watery/soapy paper towels! Sorry Claire!

After the bathroom trip, we make the long haul back to the jewelry store only to pick up where we left off with our meltdowns. Thanks to my friend Meg who came along for our adventure today, the girls were somewhat entertained with cheerios and gold fish while we all waited patiently to finish things up at the very busy jewelry place! Then it was off to Michaels.

I am so excited to say that I am crafting with girlfriends tonight and I was super excited to pick out my stuff that I was going to make (I will post my craft a bit later when it's complete). So into Michaels we go and into the cart goes Claire. Well, she didn't like that very much and she fussed and fussed until I finally let her down -which was immediately regretted! She took off down an isle and darted to the front of the store- the child is a speed demon and she was out the automatic doors in a heart beat!!! I grabbed her and went back to Meg who was watching Evelyn while I chased Claire through and OUT the store.

Finally I am happy with what I have chosen for my craft and we are ready to check out and leave! Then it starts with Evelyn - a temper tantrom because she is not ready to leave and she wants to play hide-n-seek with Megan in the store! She gets put in timeout in the store on the floor - yes I picked an isle and we sat there until she was done. I just wanted to leave, but I was so close to just paying for the stuff that I didn't want to leave and then have to come back again!! GRRRR! So we fought it out in line and Meg took the girls outside while I finished paying.

Finally out of that store and there's one more stop to make - Target. My girls LOVE target so surely they will calm down in here. All I needed was diapers, so Meg said she had the girls and told me to just run and get the diapers. So I speed race to the BABY section and there's no diapers!! CURSES! Now, the reason I am confused and out of place is because this was a Target I have never been in and it's one of those Targets that has the diapers/wipes/bath section at the front of the store SEPARATE from the baby section - don't ask me why! So I take a deep breath after a LONG irritated sigh and I book it to the opposite side of the store desperately looking for diapers and praying that the child I just heard scream from the other end of the store is not mine!!

I find the diapers - now, where's Megan and the girls?! Ha ha!

Now I go looking for my friend and my daughters in a store I am unfamiliar with. EUREKA! I found them - it wasn't that hard - and then we go to check out.

We make it back to our cars and give our hugs and say our goodbyes to Meg (THANK YOU MEGAN IT REALLY WAS FUN!) and then we headed home.

Really? Did I just take my kids to THREE stores all in a row? I was exhausted the girls were exhausted and as I was finally sitting in the car ready to pull out, I look down to my right and guess what I see? The wipes case...right there on the floor in the car. Not that having the wipes would have made this outing any easier, but I just had to laugh as I remembered Claire's soapy, naked little bum getting cleaned and patted down with stiff paper towels. LOL!

The good news - we all survived and now I remember why I wait until the husband gets home to run my errands - without 2 kids in tow!

Before I forget...

I had a marvelous Mother's day, but before I go into ANY detail about how MY day was, I first want to tell my mom how wonderful she is. The woman is amazing - really. I don't have the privelage of living near my mom so I miss her. I miss her a lot. Some days are easier than others, but on the days that just seem to never go right - I wish she were near. She has this way of calming things down and helping me to see things in a different light. If I call her frustrated about something (the kids, the hubs, the house, friends, church...LIFE) she always helps me to see a different perspective and when I do, I realize -most always - that I over reacted, got offended, was prideful, or was just plain wrong. When I see things that way, I am able to change my attitude and then I feel so much better about the thing I called her about. It's like magic.
I always get off the phone and think, "I would have NEVER thought of that or to do that or to react like that..." She is an amazing woman. She is Christlike. She is humble. She is funny. She is beautiful. She is MY mom. I love you mom. I love you for being the strong woman that you are. I love you for raising me the way you did and for putting up with me and my stubborn antics. I am a grown up married woman now and I think (for the most part) that I turned out ok and it's because of you and your loving example. Thank you for teaching me and loving me. I love you and I always will.

Phew - now excuse me while I get my box of tissues!! :)

Being a mom truely is the greatest calling on earth. I love being a mom. I love my girls. I love the way they love me too. I get smothered in kisses every day and my favorite is when out of the blue my Evelyn will say "Mom, you're the best!". I love walking in their rooms at night and seeing their peacefull faces and listening to their deep breaths - well, except for Claire because the second you open her door she'll sit right up and say "hi"...the child never sleeps. But I still go in and I still pick her up and get those snuggly late night loves.
I love my homemade cards from the girls - with daddy's help of course! And I love how excited they are to spoil me and to do things for me. Evelyn helped daddy make my favorite breakfast- french toast, sausage and eggs. MMMMM! I could eat that every day! I am a breakfast food girl - especially when it involves syrup! Evelyn also helped pick out the most beautiful boquet of red roses to give to me and everytime I look at them I think of her and picture her wondering in the store with dad and picking out the best flowers for her mom. So cute.
The love of my life treats me like a queen and every day is Mother's Day for me when he's around. I am one lucky girl to have such a loving, devoting husband. He cares for me and shows me his love for me every day and I just want him to know I love him. Thank you my sweet family for making my day special.

A child's prayer

Isn't it every mother's dream to see all her hard work in raising her children to do the right thing and to know that it's finally all paying off and working?? I know that Evelyn is only three years old, but I am beginning to see little glimpses of that dream come true. Among many things like being consistant with having Family Home Evening, sitting together around the dinner table, sharing with each other...one of our goals as parents is to teach our children to pray.
Evelyn is praying on her own and in the beginning, a prayer was something like this:
"...bless my bed, bless the books on the table, bless the floor, bless the window, bless mommy and daddy and Claire..."
Evelyn's prayers would mainly consist of the things she saw around her room and they would each be blessed when she would look around the room while she prayed. ADORABLE!
But as adorable as that was, we wanted her to really THINK about what was truely important and to include those things in her prayers - like praying for the missionaries, for opportunities to serve others, to bless our prophet Thomas S Monson, and to pray for our family and friends in need.
On Friday, my good friend Heather and I were hanging out and she asked a favor of me to keep her father in law in our family prayers. He has bone cancer and is declining in his health. I told Gordon about this opportunity to pray as a family for him and since we were working with Evelyn on HOW to really pray, we took that as a teaching opportunity. We told her about a man who was very sick and needed her help to pray for him. We told her his name and that we needed to include him in our daily prayers from now on and to ask Heavenly Father to help him to feel better. This weekend, she did a wonderful job improving her prayers to include him asking for him to be blessed and to feel better.
His name is Patrick Syryllo and on our drive home from church, Evelyn chimes in from the back seat and asks "how is Patrick Syryllo? He's going to be not sick anymore cause we prayed for him. It's a good idea to pray for him to feel better." I thought back to the last time we even mentioned his name. He is not a family member of ours and Evelyn has never met him. Our last family prayer that included his name was Sunday morning at breakfast. We then enjoyed the morning for a few hours before heading off to church. With it being Mother's Day and a Sunday and all of the many responsibilities and distractions that come with Sundays, that morning family prayer was long forgotten in my mind. And by the end of the day I wasn't expecting any sweet reminders from my three year old about him. But there it was, the tiny glimpse of a dream come true. That she was listening to our teaching moment. That she was sincerely praying for someone. That her faith was growing in the power of prayer.
I have not heard from my friend Heather about how Patrick Syryllo is doing, but my faith has been increased and my prayers have been increased for him - all because of the example of my Evelyn. This was an eye opener for me and Gordon to see that our children - while wild and crazy sometimes - really are listening to us and it made us proud of her and ourselves as parents.

What you don't see...

I blog stalk (guilty)! And I found this on a friend of a friend's blog and it impacted me so I thought I would pass it forward and share.

What you don’t see, By Tiffany Gee Lewis.

What you don’t see, when we all march into church on Sunday morning, is the chaos of the morning that happened just 10 minutes earlier. What you don’t see, when you look at my four little boys in their suits, is that the 7-year-old is wearing Dad’s socks because we couldn’t find his. And they go all the way up to his knees. What you don’t see, when I pull out the lovely quiet book I made a few years back, is that below it, in my church bag, are five baggies of smashed raisins because I haven’t cleaned out the bag for months. When you enter my house, with its shining entryway, you don’t see the three loads of laundry dumped on my bed. Or the dirty pots I stashed in the oven. And you will never see the interior of my minivan, not until I find the time to vacuum it out. When you admire the hand-sewn pajamas I made for all the kids, we don’t talk about the three nights I got no sleep to make those. If you look on my blog, you will see pictures of homemade chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles. You won’t see my confession to popping in a frozen pizza THREE times last week for dinner. Or the night we ate Cheerios for dinner, dry, because we were out of milk. There is a zoom on my camera for a reason. There is a delete button for a reason. I don’t think we’re all playing a part. We naturally want to put our best selves forward, so that is what other people see. They don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes. I like to think that good parenting is like a duck on the water. What you see is the gentle, almost effortless gliding, not the furious paddling that happens underneath. I keep a mental list of about ten people I want to stalk by camera, from morning to night, to see how they do it all. Are they up at 4 a.m.? Can they survive on three hours of sleep? Do they have a housekeeper? Because I drop balls just as fast as I can grab them. My intentions are of pure gold, but they come out as tinkling brass, at best. I started a blog last fall. I dragged my feet into it for many reasons. One of the main reasons I hesitated was I didn’t want to be another contributor to the cyberspace guiltosphere out there. Especially where mothers are concerned, do we need one more reason to feel guilty? Because from the looks of things, other families are happier, their houses are cleaner, their marriages are better, their clothes are more stylish and their craftiness is even more crafty. Their lives are perfectly lovely, while my kids are running around screaming in their diapers. My worst fears were confirmed last week when I got an e-mail from a friend who asked, “How do you do it all? Your column, your blog, all the things you do with your children? You’re amazing!” I looked around at my house, at the six bins of winter clothes waiting to be transported to the garage, at the sewing projects stacked against the wall, at the state of the toothpaste crusted to the sink … I let things go, a lot of things. A spanking-clean house is not a high priority for me. I’m a big believer in mud and its importance in a child’s life. The time I take to write is time away from scrubbing that bathroom sink. I would rather read with my kids than shop at the mall, so I am certainly not up-to-date on the latest styles. I’ve been listening to the same music for 20 years because I can’t seem to keep up with the latest music scene. And I require a lot of sleep. We all have priorities. For some, it is keeping a spotless house, and they are good at it. For others, it is writing, or exercising, or serving others. And yes, there are some who seem to do it all, the Benjamin Franklins of the world. I tell myself I don’t have to be them. And also, Benjamin Franklin was not much of a family man. Even he let things go. What we don’t see, when we look at each other on Sunday, or on blogs, or in our shiny kitchens, is that we all have different talents and unique situations. I tell my kids all the time: Life is not a race. The only person you are competing against is yourself. What we forget to see, when admiring others, is our own personal finish line.

New Post

Ha ha! Thought you lost me didn't you!! Well, here I am FINALLY making a new post - well sort of!

Just thought I'd say HOWDY and to let you know we are still alive and going strong!

Life is good.

Life is busy.

PS
Don't hate that I am going on a cruise in less than 30 days!!! BAAAHAHAHAHA!