Happy Birthday Care!

One of these days I'm going to scan all of our childhood photos into iPhoto so we can see who looked more like Shirley Temple, Cara or Ainsley. Until then Care, here are the few photos where you are NOT behind the lens. I know, you probably wish I'd done a collage of photos you've taken instead, but it would have taken too long to pick my favorites. 

BTW, are you older than Dad yet?

Goodbye crib!

I hate to tempt fate by announcing that we have dismantled the crib for the last time. Ainsley was getting herself in and out of it anyway, so we thought a bed might be a little safer. We bought bunk beds when Ellie moved out of the crib, knowing that they'd probably share a room at some point, so we just needed the mattress and bedding. The girls were so excited about the new beds that it took them a while to actually go to sleep. They seem to be having the same problem tonight. 

Now if we could just be done with diapers...

Am I Bizarro Rachel?

Okay, I don't think I'm her polar opposite, but reading her blog lately, I've decided that we are living parallel lives. Compare Rachel's post to my field trip to Wheeler Farm with Joey's class yesterday.

The biggest difference is that she went on a nice sunny day, while ours was rainy, cold and muddy. Joey didn't mind, and I loved spending some one-on-one time with him. Don't forget, this is the same kid who wiggles his teeth until he can yank them out (sound familiar?).

We just read the same book, too. 

Here's where I become the bizarro, though:

Not only are there no knobs on the closets in our room, but my front door knob has been gone for months now. And even if Rob happens to have a generous co-worker with a great doorknob collection, I'm holding out for a new front door first. Let's hope it doesn't take ten years.

Anyway...Rachel, keep up the blogging—maybe when I get behind I can just copy and paste for our family record.

Daily Haiku

Photo Scrooge has started a new blog, called Just Seventeen Syllables, where he will delight readers with his poetry. I told him that it would be even cooler to have a dueling haiku blog, with two or more haiku posted so people could vote for the best one, but I wasn't about to up against him. Although I did offer up this one last night:

Leaky foundation,

mold...who knew? The b@$!*#^s who

lived here before us.

Zero for Two

Joey was so excited when Rob said maybe we could hike up to the living room on Saturday that he had his jobs done in record time. I was looking forward to it too, since hiking up to the living room was the first date Rob planned for us that didn't also include Troy and the ski centurion (NOT that I minded those dates). We had planned on hiking after we both got off work, but when I went to leave, my car wouldn't start, so I called Rob and our hiking date turned into a run to Ralph & Judy's to borrow jumper cables, and then back to Crossroads Plaza parking for my Acura. Judy wasn't home, but it was the first time I met Ralph. Although Rob and I saw each other pretty much every day after that, we never rescheduled our hike to the living room. That was almost thirteen years ago. We knew our second attempt wouldn't be the romantic, watch-the-sunset and make-out kind of hike—we were just hoping to get all four kids up with a minimum amount of whining. It was a perfect day, blue skies but not too hot. And amazingly, we didn't hear much whining (just Ellie, when she saw a bug on her hat or one of the many dogs we met on the trail). However, we did not make it to the living room. We forked left when we should have gone right. We did make it up on a nice ridge overlooking the valley though, and we had a good time. We're thinking about trying geocaching next. We may even try to get to the living room before another thirteen years flies by.

Avoiding responsibilities

I've got a bunch of things on my to-do list: 

• help Robbie finish his rocket before the Cub Scout space derby tomorrow night
  
• plan menu & go grocery shopping
• get remodeling bids from contractors
• buy teacher appreciation gifts
• pay bills
• work on Relief Society lesson
• clean the house!!

I spent the weekend successfully avoiding these things, instead doing this:

• e-mailing Rob with ideas for Mother's Day gifts
• dinner with Ralph & Judy (great company, but we don't recommend TGIFriday's three weeks in a row)
• seeing Iron Man (two big thumbs up from both Photo Scrooge & Scrapbook Nazi)
• watching a 4-0 blowout by Robbie's soccer team, the Oddballs
• not finding The Living Room, our family hiking destination (see the next post)
• reading a 619-page book about aliens, prompting speculation by my family that I had been abducted
• sleeping in, and enjoying two meals cooked for me in the same day
• forcing my kids to have their pictures taken with me
• using my new salad spinner 
  
• lots of laundry

I did get to cross one thing off my list—my pots are planted. And the yard looks great since that job is fortunately on Rob's list.

Mayday, mayday...

I'm known around here as the scrapbook nazi, which is laughable since I've only created about three pages in the past year. And you'd think that a scrapbook nazi would be all about photo shoots...but no, like photo scrooge, I don't really enjoy the process. It's the result I'm after. So when Cara called this morning to tell me that, of the 200+ shots she took yesterday, NONE of them are good, well, let's just say I'm happy that Davy has great photoshop skills. Or maybe my mom would be happy to get this one (that I took) for mother's day: