Please Pass The Blogger Ketchup - *SQUAT* - September & October 2011

Over the summer and first part of fall, Steve was working on a monstrous job. Monstrous. (And I am so thankful for that monster, really I am.) A large portion of that job was painting yellow stripes on the warehouse floors. He and his guys worked around the clock for about 2 months on this project. As they were nearing the deadline and still had quite a bit to go, he came to me for help. They had to paint numbers and letters on the yellow stripes to mark each bay. He asked if I thought I could find a friend to help me do that part and he would pay us. I enlisted my dear friend and neighbor April to help with this wonderful endeavor. She got paid. I have yet to receive my compensation for working some of the longest most grueling hours I have ever worked in my life. I'm just saying.

I was HARD work. Hard doesn't even begin to describe it. I really wish I had done this post back when it was fresh in my mind. It's kind of like childbirth. You know it was really painful when you were going through it but over time you forget just how painful it was. It is the same with this job. It was backbreaking, but I know this post so many months after the fact, just won't do it the justice it deserves.

This is what we had to do. Squat down to measure and mark the middle of each bay so we would know where to put the numbers. Stand up, move a few feet, squat, mark. Stand up, move a few feet, squat, mark. Over and over and over and over again. Then we had to Squat, tape down the stencil, stand up, move a few feet. Squat, tape down the stencil, stand up, move a few feet. Over and over and over and over again. Then we had to squat, spray the number, stand up, move a few feet. Squat, spray the number, stand up, move a few feet. Over and over and over and over again. Then we had to squat, remove the stencil, stand up, move a few feet. Squat, remove the stencil, stand up, move a few feet. Over and over and over and over again. I can't remember what the final count was, but in all we painted over 700 letters and numbers in this fashion. So we basically spent day after day after day doing squats. All dang day long. And you know how much weight I lost in this whole process? I didn't lose SQUAT!

I just found this picture at the link I included above of the warehouse now that it is stocked. See all those boxes stacked up. They know where to stack them because of the numbers I painted on those lines. It's OK, they can thank me later. Just like Steve can pay me later....Either way, I won't be holding my breath.
This is what I gained from this experience. A deeper appreciation for my husband and the hard labor he puts in every day for me and for our children. I really had no idea. Now I do. And if you think I loved him before, I love him even more now. I could not do it. So I am thankful he does. Every day. And I also have a deeper appreciation for the ability I have to stay home every day and take care of my children and my home. Because it was hard getting up and going to work and putting in those long hours of squat after squat after squat. And then having to come home exhausted and barely able to move and do all the mom stuff like make dinner, help with homework, give baths, do dishes. I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father and to my Dear Husband for blessing me with the ability to be a stay at home mom. It seems trivial to complain about a sink full of dishes after this experience. I am glad I didn't blog about it before because I am glad to have this reminder today. While I have a sink full of dishes just waiting for me.

Here are my hands after our first day of work. This was after scrubbing them raw to get most of the black paint off. April and I acquired some gloves after that first day. But we both still had the nastiest looking hands for weeks. I felt like Charlie on Lost. Every time I looked at my hands I had an overwhelming desire to take a pen and write FATE on my knuckles.

I will say it was interesting being a girl on a construction site. April and I got some interesting looks. And comments. For some reason every single person felt the need to say something to us when they walked past us. every. single. person. Had something they thought was funny or witty to say to us. And this one guy from the fire department who was there to check the emergency equipment stuff was really really super interested in April's booty the whole process of spray painting numbers on yellow lines.


So other than that whole working woman post, I did a pretty good job of staying caught up on posts in September and October. Here are a few pictures I have found that I thought could use a little blogging. For Activity Days in October we decorated cupcakes. Addy was there with us and she decorated this delicious looking cupcake.

Crazy Sock Day at school





Crazy Hair Day at school

Please Pass The Blogger Ketchup - November 2011

On Veterans day in November, the girls had a program at their school where they honored Veterans in our neighborhood. The girls were so excited to have there dad go and be a part of the program. Each grade sang a patriotic song and the Veterans introduced themselves and said what branch of the military they served in and what wars they served in. After the program Steve and Addy and I went to lunch at Applebee's where Steve received a free lunch for being a veteran.

One day we had tuna sandwiches and Zac made this disgusting triple decker tuna sandwich.

I love my neighborhood and my ward. We have this running joke in our Relief Society about spandex. Our Relief Society Presidency declared October "National Visiting Teaching Month". In November we had an ABBA party for everyone who did their visiting teaching in October, and there was spandex a plenty. I think we have the greatest Relief Society Presidency ever and I am very excited to have recently joined ranks with them as their secretary.


The Wind Storm of '11. This actually occurred on December 1st, but for some reason the pictures are in my November folder so here they are in my November Ketchup post. The kids went outside to check out the wind. This black fence is huge and runs all through the neighborhood. During the storm each post on the fence collected a nice pile of tumbleweeds. Two months later and all those tumbleweeds are still there where the wind left them. Except for the posts in our yard, because we made the poor overworked kids clean them up.

It was time for new glasses. Zac, Em and I all got new pairs. Here are the kids in their new specs.

Flashback/Flashforward Friday - Grandfathers & Grandmothers

Flashback: 1951

I was helping my mom clean out her storage room the other day and we found this picture of her with her great grandfather, Ernest Guy Walker.

Flashforward: 2011

Here is a picture of my mom, Kay Snow, and her 9 grandchildren taken in July of 2011.

I don't know what it is about babies, but I always think they look like old men. All my kids looked like Steve's dad when they were born (not that he's old). In the picture of my mom as a baby, I think she looks just like her grandfather, Lewis Owen Tolman (pictured below). This is one of my favorite pictures of my great grandparents. These are my mom's dad's parents. Ester Annie May Walker, my great grandmother pictured below is the daughter of Ernest Guy Walker (pictured above).

Please Pass The Ketchup - December 2011

My blog serves as my journal and our family's running history. My kids love to sit and read back through old posts and remember things that were long ago forgotten. I love it too. Sometimes however, I am not the most dedicated blogger. There are a ton of things in the past year that I meant to blog about but never go around to actually doing it. I am afraid that if I don't blog about them soon, they will also become the long ago forgotten with no recall available. So I am going to try and get all caught up from last year. I am going to go back month by month and finally get this blog up to date. Here is December:

In December, Emily was in the 6th grade production of "Dig It". It is a play that the 6th graders in our school put on every year. Zac was in it when he was in 6th grade. This year it was Em's turn. She was a skeleton in the skeleton dance scene. She did a fantastic job and we were so proud of her.

Monday Morning Musings - A New Way To Eat, A New Way To Clean, A New Way To Garden, A New Way To Read, And A Chinese New Year

One morning last week, I walked into my kitchen to make lunches and what I saw literally took my breath away. I had to stop for a minute and take in one of the most gorgeous sunrises I had ever seen. This picture I took with my phone just does not do it justice. It was magnificent and I was glad I was able to take a minute out of my busy morning to enjoy it and to give thanks to my Heavenly Father for such a beautiful sight.

This is the first normal week of school my kids have had all January long. For some ridiculous reason the first three weeks were all only 4 school days long. And next week is early out week all WEEK long (ridiculous!). The weekend of the 13th was a 4 day weekend. We were having lovely weather for the middle of winter, so Steve took Aubrey down to St. George with him for work. While they were there he taught her how to ride an ATV at the same place he taught Zac and Em when they were Aubrey's age. That same weekend Zac was able to go have an airsoft battle with his friend and Emily and Addy and I hung out with my mom and Lauren and Sam and Teresa who came down from Idaho for the weekend. My mom decided to try and make tamales again. By herself. With Lauren and Addy and Emily. I now have permission to slap her anytime she ever talks about making tamales again. I had to remind her that when we made them at Christmas we had 7 adults and 4 kids helping. And it took all dang day.

We just found out last week that in 2 years our elementary school will switch to year round so they can have different tracks to accommodate the amount of students we will have. I am not too happy about this at all. When my kids were younger, I wanted so bad to have year round school because summers made me so crazy. But now that I will have 2 kids in elementary and 2 who are not, we will not have the same breaks and I am not liking it one single bit. And now that my kids are older, I LOVE summers off from school. We have so much fun together. I will really hate having them in school part of the summer while the rest of us hang out at the pool.

Saturday was such a nice day. It rained all day long, before it started snowing. We spent the day in our pj's and just hung out around the house. We had crepes for breakfast, played games, watched American Idol. It was fun just hanging around the house all day with the family. Except poor Zac who wasn't with us during the first part of the day. He was on a Scout Klondike Campout. I think this is his 4th Klondike and he has fun every time he goes. He is a better scout than I, that's all I can say.

American Idol! It's back on! It's my most fav-O-rite show ever! When we watched the first episode this season, I must admit that during the opening segment, I teared up a little. It's true. I cannot even tell you the amount of excitement I have for this new season.

Last night when we were reading scriptures, the kids (Zac jumped up as soon as I got the camera out) wanted to read in plank position. I wasn't going to let them because I didn't think it was too reverent. But Steve said to let them because that way they couldn't touch each other or look at each other or bother each other in general. So we read scriptures while planking. I must say, it might have been one of the most reverent scripture reading sessions we've had.

Last week at story time at the library they celebrated Chinese New Year. Here is Addy under the dragon tail, parading through the library.

My mother and sister Lauren I have started this fabulous new way of cleaning our houses. We decided that we would go to each others house for one hour every week and work fast and furious cleaning. That way, with the 3 of us cleaning, it's like getting three hours worth of work done in one hour. The first few weeks we are actually doing this 5 days a week to get everything all cleaned out and all the problem areas taken care of so that everything can be nice and tidy and de-cluttered and then we can just come in and do our hour each week and have it all clean. It has been working out fantastically. We have done some pretty major projects that have been hanging over our heads for a while. Like my laundry room. I keep it locked so that no one can ever accidentally come to my house and find that door open and see into the pit of all pits that it was. But now, it is so fantastically clean and organized and loverly that I walk in there about 5 times a day just to stand and take in the beauty.

I have started taking an organic gardening class. It is once a week for 9 weeks, and I have been twice already. I LOVE it! LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT! The lady that teaches it teaches in her home. She has the most remarkable gardens (I've heard tales and seen pictures) and even sells her organic produce to local restaurants. She is the sweetest lady, and in 2 lessons I have already learned so much. Not just about gardening but just about improving your life. It's fabulous. She teaches this class every year and I have already decided I am going next year.

After the gardening class, she has a raw luncheon at her house. This is for people at the class if they want to stay, and for really anyone who wants to come. Everything we eat is raw, and lemmetellyou, I have had some of the most interesting and fascinating and delicious things. I don't even know what half of them are, but they are good. It has just opened my eyes to a new way to eat. Last week we had seed porridge. Seriously. It was a cold soup made out of seeds. And it was good. Everyone that comes brings something raw to share. So far I have been really lame and brought carrots the first week and cucumbers the second. I am going to be brave this week and actually make something. I am making raisin seed balls. We shall see how they turn out.

I have a new favorite food now from this raw lunch. Raw sweet potatoes. Yeah, you heard me. I am a raw sweet potato eatin' fool now. The first week a lady brought peeled sweet potatoes that were sliced thin like chips. And she brought raw almond butter that I found out they now have at our local grocery store. It is in a machine and you turn it on and you watch it grind the almonds right in front of you. We spread the almond butter on the sweet potato chips. Hea-ven! (I typed that in a sing-song voice) I'm so not kidding. I went to the store that very day and bought sweet potatoes and almond butter and fed it to my kids as an after school snack. They loved it too. Then last week a different lady brought a version of one of our families most favorite things Black Bean Corn Salad. We usually eat it with tortilla chips. This lady brought sliced raw sweet potatoes and we used those as chips. Delish. Raw sweet potatoes as chips. That's how we roll around here from now on. You really should give it a try. It is fantastic.

How I Spent My Christmas Break

The kids were out of school for 2 weeks at Christmas time. We had so much fun those two weeks, despite all the illness we had going on. My brother Sam and his wife Teresa came down from BYU Idaho and Teresa's parents came up from Dallas. We had our 2nd Annual Family Gingerbread House Contest. You can click on that to see the pictures of the completed houses.

Emily had a party with some friends one night and they played Dance Central and had a gift exchange.

Teresa's Parents, Antonio and Angeles, taught us how to make tamales. We made chicken, pork and bean and cheese tamales. In total we had over 200. They were SO DANG GOOD! We divvied up the spoils and my family had our tamales gone in about two days. We did save some for Steve who was out of town at the time.

We had fun making the tamales but we found out that making them is no small task. It took us all day long and we had 7 adults and 4 children helping.

On Christmas Eve everyone came to our house for dinner and a Christmas program.

After our program, we had a special visitor stop by.

This was Antonio and Angeles' last day in Utah. They left for Dallas early the next morning.

Santa with me mum

We all opened our Christmas PJ's and got all warm and snuggly

On Christmas morning everyone from my mom's house came back over to our house (at 6:45am) to open presents. After the presents were opened we all got ready and went to church.

Addy was so excited about this gift, she would not release her grip on it. This is the thing I sat on the floor at Walmart in Missouri on Thanksgiving Day for. I am pretty certain that my sitting on that Walmart floor in Troy Missouri, in the pharmacy department no less, is what led to our subsequent month long disease-ridden cough laced bronchitis pneumonia fest. It is a mistake I will never make again. But hey, we did get a Kinect out of the whole deal.

The aftermath. This is what our house looked like for the next two days.

We moved our old xbox up to the game room to make way for the new xbox/kinect in the kitchen/family room. Steve and Zac and Sam spent a great majority of the day playing Zac's new game. Poor Z, we didn't know it at the time but he was suffering from pneumonia at the time this picture was taken. His lungs could have collapsed at any moment. I still feel like a horrible mom.

The girls spent the majority of the day playing the kinect downstairs while the boys were upstairs. I am so glad we have 2 xboxes now. It makes things so less argumentative that way.

The kids got these hats for Christmas. They wore them all day on Christmas and pretty much every day since. I love them. Everyone comments on them whenever we go somewhere. Look at those cutie McBooty kids! I love them!

On the 28th, it was Sam and Teresa's first anniversary. They were going to share their anniversary with us and we were all (the adults) going to go see the new Mission Impossible movie. Well, this was the day Zac went to the doctor and Steve and Zac and I ended up spending most of the night in the ER and my mom and Lauren were taking care of our girls. So Sam and Teresa went out to dinner that night and then the next night we went to the movie. The next day, December 30th was Lauren's Birthday and we all went to her favorite place, The Olive Garden, for lunch. Then we went to my mom's house to play games.

The next day was New Years Eve. You can click on that to see our NYE photos. Then the kids went back to school on the 3rd of January. Despite being sick, we had a fabulous Christmas break. I love my family so much and am so thankful for these fun memories we made.

Monday Morning Musings/Never A Dull Moment - It's For The Birds

So our house is under attack by a flock of sparrows. They won't leave our yard and they keep flying into the windows. It started yesterday morning and they are still attacking us even as I type. We had several fly into the windows throughout the day yesterday. This morning when we were in the kitchen eating breakfast, three of them flew into the patio door within 20 seconds of each other. And I have been hearing them hit various windows about every 30 minutes or so, all day long. I'm not sure what to do about it.

Last week Zac had the chance to go to the Student of the Month lunch at his school. He went with his principal and a few other students. They went to a Chinese restaurant and then to Baskin Robins. One of the students that went with him was Chris Stewart's daughter. I had no idea they lived in such close proximity to us. If you don't know who Chris is, he is the author of "The Miracle of Freedom: Seven Tipping Points That Saved the World" and "The Great and Terrible" series, which Zac has read. He is also running for Congress.

Zac was in Ski Club last year and he loved it so much. Neither Steve nor I ski and neither of us has any desire to. So I was glad he was able to ski with his friends once a week last winter. This year my bad mom skills showed themselves when I turned in his application for Ski Club a little too late. By that time there was a waiting list to get in. I tried everything to get him in, including bribing the teacher in charge. Ok, not really. But I thought about it. I thought long and hard. Anyhoosers. I was so so sad last week when Ski Club started. I had to pick Zac up after taking a test after school and all the kids in the club were sitting out front waiting to get on the bus. I seriously felt like the worst mom ever. Because we all know, I'm not takin' him skiing. It was that club or nothin'. But as I was sitting there in the van waiting for him, watching the members of the ski club I had a realization. HE HAS PNEUMONIA! HELLO! He couldn't go skiing, even if he was in the club. Especially because on that very day that ski club started, he woke up having a hard time breathing and had to do a breathing treatment. And he was totally exhausted that day when he got home from school and had to do another treatment that night. The doctor told us it would take at least a month for the pneumonia to clear up and that he shouldn't do anything strenuous in that time. Ski Club lasts for 2 months, which means he would have missed half of it (and lost half of the money for it) if we had signed up on time. It was just a reminder to me that sometimes things don't always work out as we want them to, but we don't know everything, and sometimes what we thought was a bad thing works out for the best in the end.

Addy has this breakfast eating problem. She likes to eat weird things for breakfast. Like soup. Or ham sandwiches. She gets this from her father. Anyway. She also can't eat breakfast within the first hour of waking up. So if I make her something, it just sits there. I usually make her wait to eat after the girls do so that she will actually eat her food. Sometimes this makes her mad, even though at the times I do make her food because she insists she will eat it, she doesn't. She does eat breakfast everyday though. Well, on Saturday I guess she couldn't remember eating. (A problem she has been having lately when she says: I'm STARVING and you haven fed me ALL DAY. And then I remind her of all the times I fed her that day. And she still doesn't believe I have fed her.) So Saturday, she says to me all exasperated and mistreated like, "Why do you NEVER make me breakfast!?!" And I told her that I always make her breakfast. She said, "No you don't. You didn't make me breakfast on Sunday or Friday or Wednesday or JULY!"

Birthday #5 x 2 At Long Last

On Monday, November 28th 2011, Addison turned 5 years old. It is still hard for me to believe that it has been 5 years. Her birth was the post that started this whole Blog thing. We had just returned home from our trip to St. Louis the day before her Birthday. We had a family celebration that night, and my mom and sister Lauren came over to help us celebrate. For her Birthday Dinner Addy requested grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and grandmas salsa. She will not eat any other salsa, and I can't say that I blame her.

I had planned a Birthday luncheon at McDonald's with her friends for that Thursday, but had to cancel it because I was sicker than a dog, and so was Addy. And not only that, but we also had a bit of a natural disaster that day. I thought, no problem. I'll reschedule it next week when we are all better. Well more than a month later, we are finally all better. And the party was on. We went to McD's with her friends last Friday, January 6th. Better late than never, right? Here's the whole gang.