I Need to Vent or My Shoes Rock So Shut It.

I need to vent. My best friend is out of town, my Mom is always busy on Sunday, and Eric doesn't fully appreciate the emotional pain I am in, so I am going to throw this out there to my sister and sisters-in-law who I know will understand.

For some reason my ward (whom I really do love) just doesn't seem to understand me. I knew I was in for a different type of town when I walked in the Target for the first time and not only was I the skinniest person there but I was also the only one not in pajama bottoms. I knew from looking around our ward the first time that most of the women were the wonderful homemaker types that favor one piece dresses and practical brown shoes. It was all fine. It was a welcome breath of fresh air.

The only problem is they don't see me the same way. It started a few months ago when I wore a new pair of shoes and the ward choir had a ten minute discussion about how many pairs of shoes I own, and why it was ridiculous....while I was sitting there at the piano. I felt like the penguins from Madagascar "Smile and wave boys, smile and wave."

Then a woman took me aside to tell me that I was "brave" to own a pair of zebra stripe heels because "I couldn't own a pair of shoes I could only wear with one outfit." I held my tongue and didn't say "Well that shows you lack imagination. I can think of 10 outfits, at least, I can wear with these."

I held my tongue when that same woman told me she wouldn't wear my shoes because she had been raised with different values (they were open toed).

I smiled and laughed when someone told me my beautiful knee high boots "seemed a bit much."

I also held my tongue when a different woman in the ward told me "your shoes are too busy," while I was wearing my metallic snake skin shoes. Well, I am done holding my tongue (and by that I mean the only person in this city that reads my blog is my best friend Melissa and she will commiserate with me because she actually has a sense of style).

Today our Relief Society had a great lesson on addiction. It was based on one of my favorite conference talks and I was loving it, learning and feeling the spirit. I laughed with everyone else about our addictions to chocolate, or tv, or shopping, but I stopped laughing when the teacher, closing up the section on shopping addiction said "I don't really get it. I'm not like Sister Stott and her shopping or shoes..." okay, wait, what? I admit I love shopping and I LOVE shoes, but what in the world. I had to raise my hand and laughingly say (just for the record) that I have never shopped to the detriment of my mortgage payment or kids clothing, or food needs. I know I don't quite fit in, and I know I can be overly sensitive, but am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? How do I deal with all these women who take it on themselves to point out how wrong I am? Arrrggghhh.

I Hate February

For some reason, every February I take less pictures than any other month. I have noticed this trend since Ethan was born. I don't know why this has happened for 8 years, but I do know why it happened this year: We were sick for 3 weeks, our computer cord died, and we lost our computer battery recharger. Add those together and all we have are a few cell phone pictures of a few random events. Our Valentines Day consisted of me and Eric coughing, sitting on the couch, Eric playing Mario Brothers and me watching Monk. Romantic (at least we weren't in the hospital), but not very worthy of taking pictures to commemorate.

Right at the beginning of "the illness" we were able to babysit the Bagley's dog, Bentley while they took an overnight trip to Denver. Bentley is a doll. He loves to cuddle, he's the right size to hold and he's so fluffy... He really saved my sanity that weekend and I felt truly awful. I could just sit and pet him and he would cuddle up in my lap. When he wasn't in my lap he struck the weirdest pose I have ever seen. Over and over I would glance over and see this:
We were also blessed with an amazing ward while sick. We had almost a week of food brought to us, which was awesome since I felt worse than I did when recovering from my C-sections. Melissa use to work at a Jamba Juice and made the most amazing smoothie (I really miss things like Jamba Juice...and Barnes and Noble....and a grocery store that sells cheeses other than cheddar). After eating the best meal ever of the smoothie, her homemade chicken noodle soup, left over mashed garlic mashed potatoes and a cheesy biscuit I felt almost good for about 2 minutes!

I Think An Alien is Growing in My Head

It seems like we are always sick. I asked the doctor on Thursday why and he answered "because you live here. It's humid during the day, dry at night, we have to run our heaters all the time, and we have the sugar beet factory." Wow, one more reason to not want to live here.

This time we really are all sick. Eric and I have sinus infections and bronchitis. The kids have the flu and strep throat. We are a big, gross mess of coughing and runny noses. We have so many medications you can barely see the kitchen counter (although, to be honest, that's mostly because I haven't cleaned all week).

Two of my friends heard of my predicament and forced me to let them bring dinner last night. I say "forced" because there is nothing I would need so badly as to want to let anyone see how disgusting my house has gotten in the last week. Luckily they ignored me and brought the most delicious dinner ever.

I have no shame left so I am sharing what the disaster looks like. We've mostly sat on the couch playing video games and watching Monk, this generations Murder She Wrote. Sure we are sick, but honestly... a hanger?

One of the highlights, the mashed potatoes, were homemade with just a hint of garlic. They were amazing. I was relishing them when I looked over and realized Livi was playing with them ala Close Encounters.

I asked "what are you doing?" (asked because my voice is too far gone to yell).
Livi answered "Making snowman!"
I croaked "That's not snow, it's mashed potatoes."

She thought for a moment and answered "It's mash potato snowman!"

I did manage to get a picture of the aftermath.

What could I say. She was technically right so I shrugged and went back to eating. I'm sure in a few days after the antibiotics have cleared things up I will be horrified, but right now I'm too tired to care.

I Finished a Room!!!!! ....kind of

Before

In the rush to get our house looking as presentable as possible before our parents got here for the baptism I ended up getting one room mostly done. Now when the UPS man comes to drop off my books (we have a horrible library here, and only one little book store) I wont be embarrassed to open the door to him.
The Living Room (stupidly named because you don't live in the living room, you live in the family room) is a hard room because it is long and narrow. I have no idea how to arrange the furniture (I'm standing by the front door), the color on the wall is NOT what I thought it would be and I still need to slip cover the chair, stain the bookcase and add drapes, but it will just have to do for a year or two (until I finally feel up to tackling it again....maybe at Ella's baptism). Even though it turned out no where near what I had in my head I still love it when I walk into it because of a few touches that I adore. Here they are, the things that make this room part of my home:
Firstly the art my mother got me for Christmas. It is a painting by Sandra Rast and the mother and toddler in the picture look uncannily like Me and Livi. It is in a beautifully impressionistic style (which I adore) and I love it.

The second thing is the family rules sign I made. I was looking at some on Etsy when I thought "I could do that." That phrase gets me in so much trouble, but occasionally (like the lego necklaces or this sign) it turns out awesome. Toot toot.
It's twice as big as the ones I was looking at, cost half as much to make myself, and I got to hand pick all the sayings on there. If you can find the Beesley family motto on their props to you! I think my little Stott families new motto should be "Oh, I can't understand whining. Try talking in a normal voice," but that gets pretty lengthy to put on a board so I just put "No Whining."

The third thing(s) are all on the bookcase in the back of the room. There is my princess art book, all our family photo albums, and inspired (directly copied) by my beautiful sister, and the Checkout Girl, the felt 'anniversary' home I made.
Forth is my piano and what is on top. I like the pictures, but the felty I won from my sisters blog makes me grin every time I see it. Her description is pretty awesome too:

"Campfire Stories"
The father hedgehog decided he needed to toughen up his kid, and thus took him to go rough it in the wilderness (I imagine it being in the desert). The son (I'll call him "Mikey") was used to having a bedtime story, and thus asked his father to stand in for what was usually his mother's niche. The father, being what I like to call a "Dad", used this opportunity to tell his son about the "Petshop of Doom". Upon returning home, Mikey was unable to sleep in his own bed for the next two weeks without night terrors, and consequently his mother forbid any more camping trips or scary stories. This scene is the pivotal moment where Mikey and his father got so close to bonding. . . and yet, alas, it was not to be.

If you want to see more of her creations she is on a felty marathon, making 52 this year and they are all funny, so check her out at: thejujubee.blogspot.com

That's it for now. Hopefully we go more than 2 days being healthy and I can get more of my house wrapped up. I'm not counting on it though.

How Does Superman's Slogan Turn into a Pooping Stork?

While our parents were here we all decided to take advantage of being together and play a couple games (okay, we had to force our dads, but they were ultimately good sports). Ella had gotten a board game for Christmas that was really fun with the kids, and I thought we be a blast with adults. I was right "toot, toot" (me, tooting my own horn).

The game is Scribblish (which my mom needs to promptly forget so I can get it for her for her birthday). It is as if Telephone and Pictionary had an ugly baby they weren't very proud of and gave it a weird name nobody could pronounce.

You start off with a card with a caption to illustrate. After you draw it out you cover them and pass them to someone else who looks at your "masterpiece" and has to re-caption it. Then you cover it again and someone else gets it and has to illustrate the new caption, and so forth. You don't see the parts people have done before, just the drawing or caption immediately in front.
For example this one was

"The world's biggest toaster"
Which someone drew as:
Which someone captioned as: "There are little people living in my toaster"
Which someone drew as:
Which someone captioned: "I like to see my pet toaster people"
Which someone drew as:
Which someone captioned "How did our canoes end up on the roof?"
Which ended up as:

Some stay pretty close but some get whacked out of proportion (mostly if my mom is drawing or Eric is captioning). It was really fun and I hadn't laughed that hard since Emily Smith wore her surrogate grandmothers orange cape at Thanksgiving dinner!
Here was our favorite of the night:

"It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a tank"

"The bird flew into the tank"
"The hummingbird killed the tank"
"The mutant stork pooped in my wagon."
Ta Da!

I can't wait for the cabin, or even Aspen Grove, getting my siblings and in laws involved and seeing what happens. Hilarity will ensue, I'm sure (hilarity...insanity...it's pretty much the same when we are all together). Get ready, Jes, you may even like this board game!

I Finally Made The Bed....

I thought Livi was being a little too quiet while I was cleaning (in anticipation of our families coming). I turned around to find she had pulled her step stool over to my bed and crawled into the bed I had JUST made. Before I could think I heard her tiny voice say
"Look Mommy, I cozy!"
Ahhhh, how can I get mad at that.

I Belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints...

I can't believe my baby is baptized. It seems like only 2 years ago that Eric and I were sleep deprived, doing lunges down the hallway in church for all 3 hours (oh, wait we were, with Livi).

We've been preparing Ethan for his baptism for months now. Family Home Evening lessons were on baptism, the sacrament, and the Articles of Faith (over and over). I really wanted him to understand what he was committing to and why it was important. I thought we were on the right track. Then Ethan had his interview with the Bishop a few weeks ago and on the drive home this is the conversation he and Eric had:

Eric: "So what did the Bishop ask you?"
Ethan: "He asked if I knew the purpose of baptism."
Eric: "Did you tell him?"
Ethan: "No, I couldn't remember, but he told me what it was."
Eric: "Well, what is it?"
Ethan: "I don't remember."
I guess it didn't quite sink in, but he still chose to get baptized and the Bishop still let him.
Ethan was baptized on Saturday and we were lucky enough to have both sets of grandparents with us.

I may have stressed out a little before hand, but once everyone was there we had a great time. Livi was crazy all through the great talks Joan and Dad prepared. Melissa was great and tried to keep her quiet, but there is no stopping that girl. She even pulled poor Carter in on it until this is what they were doing in the middle of everything:

Alan was very generous and took us out for a celebratory lunch, which of course meant we fought over who got to play "Angry Birds."(Ella won this time)

My babies are getting older, and one of them just made an awesome decision and took the first step to being a great man. Good job, Buddy, we love you and are so proud!