A walk through time

My sister scanned a bunch of pictures of me growing up on her blog as a birthday tribute. Pretty mortifying to see those 'ugly years' pictures again. But since I'm someone who will go to the grocery store occasionally in my jammies and without makeup, I'm not so vain that I'll hide the ugly pictures from my friends.

Click here. Enjoy. :)

2 of my favorite Facebook birthday wishes

MISTY!!!!! Wow i love you so much! I hope your birthday was so fabulous! I am so lucky to have an aunt like you. Thanks for always being interested in my life, letting me babysit your kids, play Beatles Rockband, steal your Propels, go to movies with you, sleepover at your house, the list goes on and on. HAPPY BIRTHDAY:) love you, Maddie
MISTY. i love you. you are one of a kind and i sure look up to you. i mean none of my friend's aunts have taken them to get their ears pierced without permission!! i love being with you and am so lucky i could have lived next to you for so long! i'm gonna miss you:) i hope you have a great birthday and that mike spoils you a lot;) i love you!!!!! ali

** These beautiful girls are 3 of the 5 Blake kids (my nieces and nephew) who will be moving to Cali soon. We live literally 2 minutes apart from each other. Their family is the reason that our family moved to our house -- to be close to them. And for 10 years, we have been. And now they're leaving and I'm still in shock about it. I'm excited for the adventure that they'll undoubtedly have, but I'm sad that it will be so far away from us.

I know we'll have many road-trips in the future (as we did in the past when they lived away). But I've been spoiled having these great people so close by. And, oh, the memories.... countless sleepovers, carpool rides, cousin playdates, babysitting trades, food borrowing, clothes & jewelry borrowing, DVD/CD borrowing, Sunday dinners, late-night girls' movies, phone calls, loving each other's babies, quick drop-ins, supporting each others' school/dance/choir events, crying and laughing together, lunches out, late-night Target runs for upcoming holidays, running into each other at the grocery store or wherever, date nights, cousin hand-me-downs, family vacations together.... Sniff, sniff.

Good thing that this time they live away, we'll have e-mail, cell phones, blogs, Facebook and texting. I'm hoping that modern technology makes the miles seem a whole lot closer.

Sure love you, Blake fam.

Drama -- literally

Christian and Paige were in their school play last week, which actually consisted of 3 short plays. Drama runs pretty strong in our family and the kids didn't disappoint.

Christian was the swamp devil in one play. He loved playing the bad guy and, according to Paige, brought the house down during the performance for the kids at school.Paige played a chicken in one play. It was overly obvious that she adores being on stage. She strutted her stuff as a chicken and kept pecking at the other actors, even while they gave their lines. Not sure that was in the script but she was having a great time.She was also a townsperson in the last play and sang her little heart out. My mom leaned over and said, "Someone is stealing the show up there..."Many thanks to great parents who pull these productions off with no funding but a dedication to the arts and these kids.

My man can't remember my birthday.

I don't mean that he forgets to celebrate it -- quite the opposite. He's thrown me surprise parties and is an incredibly thoughtful gift giver. What Mike can't remember is the actual date of my birthday, which is March 26th. In fairness to him he's never missed my birthday, but for some reason he seriously cannot remember if it's the 26th or 27th. He struggles with it every year. At first, I was kind of bugged by that. I mean, he remembers everything. He remembers what I wore on our first date (no kidding). He even remembers past girlfriends' birthdays. But now I find it amusing and use it to mess with his head. I'll casually mention the 27th while we're discussing birthday plans, just to see what his reaction will be. His face will kind of glaze over as he tries to pretend that he really does know which date my birthday is on. Love you, honey! :)

True to form, Mike had a fun theme for my birthday gifts this year. Growing up, my mom used to say, "Have a yellow day!" which meant a happy, fun day. Mike handed me 3 packages and said, "These are to help you have a yellow day." I know, right? The first was concert tickets to Michael Bublé (completely awesome), then yellow sandals and a yellow daisy bracelet. Yep -- a yellow day.Other things that have made my birthday festivities yellow: a birthday lunch with the women I work with in Primary, homemade bread from a master bread-maker, birthday cake at book group,a late night New Moon viewing party at The Rachel's house -- she also hand-knitted me a pair of Bella's mittens from Twilight (Rachel totally 'gets' me), a Twilight puzzle from Steph who 'gets' me in other ways but mocks my addiction to Twilight :), a friends lunch this next week, shopping and lunch with my mom and sisters at Nordstrom Bistro, using some birthday $$ to buy Elle a 'blingy' pair of shoes that she fell in love with, dinner alone with my hubby, and lots of great birthay wishes on Facebook .... It's great to be 38.

My girls aren't the only ones with attitude

Found this hanging on Christian's door...

It has begun

Having 3 girls at our house, I'm well aware that someday the girls will have steady streams of babysitting jobs for neighborhood kids or whoever. I just didn't think it would start so soon! Haley's only 8, but she had a paid babysitting job last night for a little neighbor girl. True it was only an hour, and true we were just a few houses away so it was a really good 1st babysitting experience. But she's my first little girl and I'm freaking out just a little bit.

Clearly, the $$ bug has bitten her, though. And bitten hard. She's already asking what I'll pay her next time I have her watch Elle for a bit.

She wishes.

Quotes

Paige walked in on Mike and me kissing. She said, "Awww ... why do you always have to do that? Think of the children!"

On Groundhog Day, Paige asked, "Did the warthog see his shadow today?"

While listening to music in the car, the guy singer said something about "kiss you." Elle said, "He say, 'I wanna kiss you'?! I wanna kiss him!" Trying to steer the conversation away from boy/girl kissing, I said, "No, I wanna kiss yoouuuu..." She adamantly replied, "No, I a big girl. I wanna kiss that boy."

After seeing all of the elderly people at Chuck-A-Rama one evening, Paige said, "We should call this place Chuck-A-Grandma!"

Christian excitedly said, "I know what CIA stands for!! Christian Is Awesome. I have an agency dedicated just to me!"

Trying to explain when she burped, Elle said, "I just tooted in my mouth."

After a recent conversation about genetics and getting certain physical traits from your parents, Paige looked at her winter-dry-cracked hands and asked, "Who did I get these dry hands from?"

While doing homework, Haley said, "I hate the letter 'q' -- it's just trying to be fancy with its pointless little tail."

"I have 7 senses -- sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch, a sense of humor and my fashion sense." Paige

While trying to name all 7 Dwarves, Paige listed, "Happy, Dopey, Sneezy, Gropey..."

Girls' day out

Mike and Christian went skiing last Saturday, so we girls had a girlie outing. Pedicures for everyone. :)That wasn't the first time any of them had gotten a pedicure, but we've never gone all together to get one.Elle was just a tiny bit excited. She sat on my lap and shared my foot bath.Haley couldn't stop giggling when they scrubbed the bottom of her foot. I know the feeling.And the finished flowered and polka-dotted toes ...

Fighting with a 6 yr old

Paige is a dramatic child. I've blogged about that before. Most of the time, her drama makes me smile and makes life funny. But lately, we've hit a bit of a wall in our relationship.

Most of the problem centers on the fact that she has started sucking her thumb again. And that frustrates me to no end. She quit sucking her thumb when she was 4. And it wasn't all that hard, to be honest. I told her that if she would stop, then I'd take her to the store and she could choose a toy. Which we did. It all worked great -- until a couple of months ago when she picked up the habit again.

I've tried gentle reminders ("Paige, thumb."), bandaids on her thumb, constantly painting her nails so the taste would deter her (which it didn't - nor did the bandaids), and finally resorted to scaring her. I've told her about getting teased myself when I started kindergarten and was still sucking my thumb. The peer pressure worked for me. But apparently no one teases her about it. I've told her that she'll have buck teeth. I've pointed out the large bump that has reappeared on her thumb as a result. All to no avail.

Saturday, the girls and I had a little outing to get pedicures (I'll blog more about it later). On the way home in the car, and after dozens of more gentle reminders to stop sucking her thumb, I kind of lost it. I angrily pulled her thumb out of her mouth and not-so-nicely told her to STOP SUCKING HER THUMB!! When we pulled in the driveway, she bolted from the car, turned around and stuck her tongue out at me. All before locking the rest of us out of the house. After she finally opened the door, I sent her to her room. She screamed in frustration and slammed her door.

Once she was in her room, I'm sure her thoughts went something like this: "What can I do to REALLY get back at mom? What would she hate the most? Oooohhhh... I know. Look how clean my room is. Look how spotless my closet is. I'll throw all of my clothes on the floor. Awesome! Everything off of the hangers, too! This is so great. She'll be furious! Now, I'm gonna pull all of my sheets and everything off my bed. How about those drawers, too? She's gonna be so mad!! Lastly, I'm going to scratch off the adorable pedicure I just had. That'll really put her over the edge."

Let me tell you ... seeing the total disaster that was her room was the 2x4 that broke this camel's back. Good thing Mike was home by then because I totally lost it. I knew I absolutely could not deal with the aftermath. Mike was a much better parent than I that day.

She picked up the room, of course. And has since apologized. But we're still left with the thumb-sucking issue and I'm at a total loss. All of you reading this -- feel free to heap on some negative peer pressure. Convince her to stop. Thumb-sucking aside, though, fast forward 10 years with her strong-willed personality and we're in serious trouble. No joke.

5th grade field trip

The 5th graders went on a double field trip this week. They all dressed up and we headed to the symphony. It was pretty fun to hear the ooh's and aah's out of some of the kids who hadn't been to Abravanel Hall before.Also very fun was when Christian saw his friends from his old school. We were one balcony above them and so they were shouting hello's and waving to each other (all pre-show, of course). :)

After the symphony, we ran (I hobbled) to the bus and ate our lunch .... on the way to the Children's Museum. One of their employees, an 18'ish yr old funny guy, met us and proceeded to go over the rules. "Behave yourselves" -- that sort of thing. The following is an account of what happens when you turn sixty 5th graders loose in the younger section of the Children's Museum.Notice the flying building blocks. The kids went from "construction mode" to "destruction mode" in no time flat.Playing Wheel Barrow Chicken. Good times.See the kid in the back? That bale of fake hay was airborn shortly after this picture was taken.Christian and Ben were hanging out in the General Store when ........ the 18yr old museum employee started a fake food fight. No joke.He started hucking fake asparagus and bananas at kids before they even knew what hit them. Kids started picking up fake cans of beans and peanut butter and chucking them right back at their "leader."We parents just looked at each other and said, "HE started it." It was awesome! The employee would stop them occasionally and say, "OK, ok, ok ... wait, wait ... we really shouldn't be doing ... THIS!" And then he'd throw more food and the fake food fight would continue. By the end, the little grocery store looked like this...Luckily, all of the little kids had cleared out long before. (I would have, too, if I'd been there with my little girls.) The employee helped the kids clean up every last bit of food and everyone had a smile on their faces. Priceless.

Doings

Movies:
* Avatar (twice in 2D, once in 3D -- loved it)
* Young Victoria (Emily Blunt is fabulous; how refreshing to see a happy monarchy)
* The Lightning Thief (saw it in a theater full of elementary kids and their parents, arranged by our school. Very fun movie experience!)
* Valentine's Day (little bit naughty - be warned)
* The hubby and I just watched Time Traveler's Wife on DVD

Books:
* The Lightning Thief series (loved, loved it!)
* Boy in the Striped Pajamas (fascinating take on the Holocaust)
* Wizard & Witch (2.5 stars)
* Outlander series (still working my way through it, and loving it)

Volunteering:
* Kindergarten -- Weekly, helping test the kids on reading (I'm absolutely amazed at the extreme differences between what each kid knows and can do at that age)
* 3rd grade -- Playing the piano and helping to teach Haley's class an opera that they wrote. No joke. They wrote the story and lyrics, the Utah Opera Company came in and helped them figure out the tune and then wrote the score for them. They'll perform it next month. I'm totally blown away.
* 5th grade -- Help with reading circle, always about various "creepy animals." We've learned about giant squids, man-eating tigers, etc. Perfect for 11 yr old kids.

Church:
* Newly called to help out in Primary. Didn't realize how many bulletin boards there were in the primary room, all of which get updated often. Love the change and love being there with my kids.

House:
* I'm on a painting kick ... as in painting the walls, not portraits. I've painted the cabinet and walls in one bathroom, installed a new light and changed hardware. Moving on to the front room and the rest of our main floor, all of which has needed an update. My home improvement skills are getting a little better as I go.