my two cents...

As I was driving down I-15 the other day, I noticed that they were painting the long line of gray concrete barriers, tan. Yes, they were painting them. Seriously?! There was a person walking along holding the painting sprayer hose, that was attached to a truck, that was being driven by a person. So, ever since then I can't help but wonder how much this process costs. How many hours does it take to paint concrete barriers that run all the way down the highway? How much does it cost to pay for the paint itself? How much money does it cost to pay the sprayer, hose, carrier, dude? How much money does the truck driver make? How much fuel does it take to run that truck while it's being used to spray paint the concrete barriers? Is this REAlly necessary? I don't know about the rest of y'all but my purse strings are pulled very tight these days. We have to budget every single penny and evaluate all purchases to decide whether they are necessary or not. We are trying to be responsible with our money and we have cut so many "extras" from our lives. Shouldn't the government have to cut extras too? Now, don't get me wrong. I am in full support of spending whatever it takes to make sure that our highways, streets, bridges, etc. are safe and sustainable. But, I'm pretty sure that painting the concrete barriers has absolutely nothing to do with the safety or sustainability of I-15.  And, that my friends, is my two cents...

Yeah, Itching really bites!

I've been itching non-stop for like a week or so. It started on my back. Now, my arms and legs itch, AND my back itches. My back has scabs all over it from me scratching the crap out of it. Now, my arms and legs have little scabs all over them, too. I have my trusty bamboo back scratcher that helps me out. I don't like to be very far from it. And Gracie LOVES to put lotion on my back and to scratch it for me, so I take full advantage of her lotion fetish. My skin doesn't look or feel dry. I was diagnosed with vitamin D deficiency about 6 weeks ago. I took 50,000 UI's once a week for 6 weeks. Now, I'm taking 5,000 UI's daily for another few weeks and then I'll go have my blood drawn again to check my levels. I have to say that I was having a lot of symptoms that the the vitamin D has really helped to feel better.  I've looked up all of my medications to see if any of them have itching listed as a side effect or anything. None of them do. One vitamin D website says that if you are overdosing on vitamin D or if you are allergic to it, you might experience itching. I feel that taking vitamin D has really helped a lot of the symptoms I was having so I really don't want to stop taking it. I'll just itch for the next few weeks if that's the reason for the itching. Benedryl doesn't make the itching stop. I never in a million years would have thought that the symptoms I was having could be caused by a vitamin D deficiency. I thought I had an auto-immune disease or something because they were pretty miserable symptoms. But this itching is CRAZY!!!  I just can't stand it! UGH!

Fall Break

My family lived in Kansas until I was 16 years old. Before that we would come to Utah to visit family for a couple of weeks during our summer vacations, most years. It was THE most fun! We all had cousins around our ages. My best pal was John. We had so much fun hanging out together. When we went to Lagoon, John and I rode all the rides together. Our families all went to the zoo together and Liberty Park and Rose Park. And we would play football at the school playground that was close to our Grandma Irvine's house. We'd walk to 7-eleven. We'd pick cherries from the huge cherry tree. We'd swim at Deseret Gym. We would go to movies. I'll never forget how embarrassed I was when we went to see Ghostbusters and Grandma went too. Every time there was anything said or done that was inapproriate I about died!

We packed a whole lot of fun into just 2 weeks!

One of my favorite memories has to be going to Temple Square. We loved to see the Christus statue. Who remembers the cute little Family Home Evening show that had the little boy sitting in the tree in front of a his house? I LOVED that! I miss it! We'd tour the Beehive Home. The coolest was riding the elevator to the top of the Church Office Building and being able to look down and see the whole Salt Lake Valley.
Living in Utah now and having things like Temple Square close by has made it so that we don't go there very often. Like, we haven't been there in years. We've been to look at the lights a few times. Once we just drove by and said, "Hey kids, look at all the pretty lights on Temple Square", because we were just too wimpy to brave the cold.
Well, the kids had their "Fall Break" a couple of weeks ago and I really wanted them to feel like they had a fun break so I started trying to think of things we could do that would be fun and *free* or REALLY cheap. We were able to have our nephew, Josh, spend part of the first day with us, which is the coolest for the kids! They LOVE Josh, his sister Emily, and their new baby Jacob! So, first, we went to Macey's (the grocery store not the department store haha) and everyone got an ice cream cone. The ice cream cones there are HUGE and yummy, but best of all...they are cheap!  They LOVE that! We went to the cheap theater in town and saw Brave. We all loved it! They have drinks for a buck, bags of popcorn the size of brown paper lunch sacks for a buck, and candy for a buck, so everyone got their own of each. We ate Papa Murphy's Jack-O'-Lantern pepperoni pizza and Chicken Garlic pizza and drank root beer, for dinner . After all of that we had to take a walk/run around the block to help work off some of that sugar. LOL!  Didn't think that one through too well! :) On Friday, we made a trip to the $1 store and everyone got to get something. Then, we visited Josh's new brother and his mommy at the hospital, where everyone got to "hold" the baby. (I hold him on their lap but they still feel like they got to hold him so it works. Zack got to hold him by himself since he's 12 now and everything :) ) Then we made a trip to Krispy Kreme donuts. Once again, it had been years since we'd gone there, so the kids had a great time for like $10 bucks. Then we met Brian for lunch in South Jordan. Then, we went to Temple Square. I was so excited!
Now, let me just tell you some very helpful information. If you are like me, and have lived under a rock for quite some time now, you need to be aware that if you want to park on the street or in parking lots in Salt Lake City, you still have to pay for parking, but, now you have to pay with your debit card, credit card, or some how with one of those new fandangled "smart phones". The parking spots on the street have the debit card reader on the back of them, you can't see that from your car, but they are indeed there. In the parking lots you just look at your parking spot number and type that in to the machine when you are paying for your spot.
Anyhoo, first, we walked up to see the Christus Statue, where we took a few pictures. Then, we walked all through the North Visitor's Center, which was really cool! Next, we looked in the old Tabernacle building and the Assembly Hall, before walking through the South Visitor's Center. After that, we went to the top of The Church Office Building. The kids loved looking across the valley. When we left the building and stood outside of it, I showed them where we had just been. They were so surprised at how high they had been! We finished our little visit by going on a tour of the Beehive House. As we walked back through the Square, we stopped for a few pictures along our way. We saw several brides and grooms having their pictures taken in some of the traditional places. I couldn't get over how BEAUTIFUL the grounds were. It's been so many years since I've been there when it wasn't wintertime or early spring. I have to say, October at Temple Square it my most favorite time, as far as the beauty of the grounds goes. I took lots of pictures. Of course, it's hard to capture the beauty with a camera but oh it was just beautiful! I plan to go this time of year, every year from now on!
It was not a super fancy break but it was fun to spend time together and to see some things that the kids hadn't seen before. And, I enjoyed sharing one of my favorite places, with my cute kids! :)

 By the way.....taking pictures of 4 kids at the same is just crazy...

Just some things I jotted down

~Well, I always think of things to blog about but by the time I actually have a chance to sit down and type up my ideas I have forgotten what I was going to say. I hate that! That is why my posts are really random though. I like to use my blog as a journal also, to kind of keep a bit of a record of our family. So, anyway, here are some of the things I actually remember.

~Gracie has always been so incredibly sweet! I have enjoyed being her mom so much~ she slept through the night from day 2. She was such a mama's girl. She was the cutest little baby girl I'VE ever seen! She's still cute and sweet and lovely until her brothers come home. The other day she kept sneaking out of the house to go to the park with her brothers and I would put her in time out. Well, I brought her back inside again for the 2nd or 3rd time that night. It was the day it was colder this week and she was barefoot and didn't have a jacket on. She had started a cold that day too. I wasn't a happy mommy. I brought her in the house and sat her on a bar stool so I could keep an eye on her while I made dinner. She said, "YAY! Time out is fun! I was like...WHAT?! Time out is NoT fun! I took her off of the stool and put her in a corner. She turned to me and spit toward me. I touched her mouth and said, "No! We don't spit!" She started laughing...What the....!!! I thought who the heck are you and what have you done with my sweet little girl?! Today, though, she ran to her room and pouted on her bed (this isn't a new thing) when I told her she can't kick Grandma's pretty T.V. stand. Her brothers had woken her up this morning at 7:00. She normally sleeps until 9:00 or 10:00 so she was a bear all morning. While she was pouting on her bed she fell asleep and slept for 2-3 hours. So, if she's going to fall asleep when she is acting like a stinker then I'm all for that! :0)

~It is still lots of fun to be with her during the day usually. She says and does the cutest things! She collected "feafs" (leaves) with Zacky and they did that thing where you put paper over them and lay a crayon down on its side and ran it over it to copy them. Well, a few days later Zacky found a really big leaf on the way home from the bus stop and brought it for her to copy again. I thought that was so thoughtful and sweet of Zacky. She loves him so much!

~I had so much fun at Target the other day! I got to buy Gracie some clothes and it was so much fun! She lives mostly on nice hand-me-downs and gifts from my mom. She always has. We have been so blessed that way. So it was especially fun to be able to buy some cute clothes for her myself. :)

~We survived speaking in church again. I actually didn't even mind it as much this time as I usually do. I got to speak about service so the hard part was deciding which of the many examples of service I thought of and found to actually use in my talk. It went pretty well so it's nice to get it over with.

~I worried so much about Zack adjusting to a new school. Yesterday we were driving down the street when, out of the blue, he said that he likes living up here sooo much more than he did living in Price. Whew! What a relief that is! HUGE!!!

I don't WANT to look freakish!

I used to pay to have my eyebrows waxed whenever I could afford it. I absolutely HATE tweezing them myself! Not just because of the pain but mainly because I get so confused about how much eyebrow you should keep and what shape they should be. It's a personal preference kind of thing. Every woman has a different idea of what they "should" look like. Also, eyebrows, as with everything else in the world, are influenced by the time period you are in. Think...Brook Shields for intense.
Well, when Brian was out of work this last time I decided I couldn't justify spending $8-$12 bucks to have my eyebrows shaped when I could just reluctantly force myself to do it myself.
I finally got my hair done a few weeks ago for the first time in a long time. When my hair dresser was washing my hair she asked, "So have you been doing your own eyebrows?" I told her that I had been. She never said anything else about it. Of course, ever since that day I've been so self conscious about them. Apparently I did such a bad job that she could tell that I had been doing them myself. LOL! But what part did I get wrong? So, I feel like they need to be done again but I'm scared I'll screw them up again. I don't  WANT to look freakish! LOL!!!

Never Say Never...

When Gracie was around 1 year old we came to visit my parents and went to church with them. We weren't sitting by my parents. We are always late for church. For some reason Brian wasn't with us. I think he may have been delivering a rental boat for J.J. because he did ride home with us. I can't remember why but anyway, there we were at church, just sitting there, minding our own business, attending church like we are supposed to, when all of a sudden Gracie starts puking. Everywhere. It got on some of the stuff that belonged to the people in front of us. It was a hard wood floor so it just kind of hit the floor and splattered everywhere. I...was...stunned! I literally froze. I don't know why but I just didn't know what the heck to do. I finally processed what I was seeing and  decided to just grab her and take her to the bathroom just in case she wasn't finished barfing. Some wonderful women from the ward rushed to get some paper towels and cleaned everything up.

Some of the words that were going through my mind as I was cleaning her up in the bathroom were: Embarrassed. Humiliated. Disgusted. Helpless. Grateful. Worried.

Embarrassed, humiliated and disgusted are self explanatory.

Helpless: Because there I was with 4 kids, one was stinky and covered in vomit. And she was wearing her Easter dress and her brand new lacy topped socks with her brand new white dress shoes. :(  And I couldn't just go back in there and help them clean it up because she was a time bomb, so they had to clean it up on their own.

Grateful: Complete strangers cleaned up that horrible mess on the floor during Sacrament Meeting. Now THAT is service let me tell you!

Worried: If this was a nasty virus then everyone in that area of the room were going to probably have puking families. Not cool! AND...we had to drive an hour to get back home with a puking child so that Brian could work the next day .

I made a FIRM decision that from that day forward I could NEVER step foot in my parent's ward building again. NEVER!!! Sooo...flash forward 2 years and we LIVE in the ward boundaries now and attend that ward every single week. No one has said anything about it. I have absolutely NO idea who the people were who cleaned up the puke. They did split the ward since then. Wouldn't it be so awesome if all of the nice people who shared that disgusting experience with us that day all go to the other ward now?! That would be soooo awesome! Awe, who am I kidding? With my luck they are all in our ward and have our faces permanently etched in their minds and will never forget the experience of being vomited on or cleaning someone else's kids' puke up. I am just going to try to put it in the back of my mind and hopefully no one ever brings it up because I would absolutely DIE of humiliation all over again!