Number 2 off to School!

Marley's first day of kindergarten was yesterday, and she was pretty excited to finally get to go to school with Larrin. Kindergarten is all day here, so to be honest, I was pretty excited, too. Ahhh . . . a whole 2 hours to myself while Lucy naps. What will I do with all that time?

Okay, so it was kind of weird (and extremely quiet) with only Lucy and me in the house all day yesterday and today. Lucy really seemed to eat up the one-on-one attention, though, so I didn't get any complaints from her.




Marley and her friend Dylan are in the same class.



Marley in her classroom really hoping that I'll stop taking pictures and go home soon. Dang! She's standing by Fernando's coat hook. I'll have to pose her more strategically next time.

Well, she seems to really love school so far. She's come home excited and happy every day, and she's convinced that her teacher invited her over to have hotdogs tonight at her house. (Um, huh??) Marley was pretty disappointed when I told her I didn't know where her teacher lived. Other than that, school life has been great.

The Camera Loves Marley

Oh, I forgot to post my very favorite one of Marley. Now there's a super model in the making . . .

New Family Pics

Okay kids, prepare yourselves. We just had family pictures taken, and I'm about to post a whole slew of them. Feel free to comment on which ones you think are best because I haven't decided which to print out yet, and I could use some free advice. Although, if you really want to help me, you'd come over and go through all 160 of them with me. I'm just guessing you're thanking me for not posting all of them here . . . .




The Fam

I didn't realize until I was posting these that I had picked out all these black/white and sepia pictures of the girls. There are some really great ones that I like in color, too, but I am seriously not going back through them all again to decide which ones to post here. You're just going to have to deal with the lack of color.

The Girls

Larrin's Glamour Shot

Marley "Looking On"

So much depends upon

Lucy beside the wagon wheel . . .

Slip Up

Okay, so I'm not going to lie: I love wearing skirts. Seriously, nothing is more comfortable than a skirt and sandals, and I feel bad for guys that they don't have such a comfortable clothing option. What I don't love wearing, however, are slips, nylons, and any shoe that would require me to wear aforementioned nylons. In fact, I don't think I've worn a slip since I was in middle school (sorry Mom, but it's true).

I mean, do I really need an extra layer when I'm going for breezy and comfortable? And I hate worrying about that stupid lacy edge showing at the bottom of my skirt. No sir, I've sworn off slips entirely.

So, with that in mind, I was racing to church last week because we were running a bit late (surprising, but true), and Marley had a talk in Primary. We'd gotten about a block, when I noticed a bit of a breeze a little higher up on my legs than I was used to feeling. I looked down, and sure enough, my skirt is about 3 inches higher than it should be. So now, I'm towing Marley with one hand, and frantically trying to keep my skirt down where it belonged with my other hand for the 5 blocks it takes to get to our church.

After Marley successfully gave her talk, and I was about to run to RS, I realized I'd forgotten about half of the things I needed for an object lesson in my Sunday school class. Drats! Out the door again, and I'm walking briskly back home to retrieve the forgotten items.

Once again, I'm fighting the skirt down and starting to feel a bit like a street walker as I walk past several people out for a Sunday morning stroll, and I'm showing a bit more leg than I usually do on the Sabbath.

So I started thinking, "Huh. Maybe a slip would have come in handy in this situation." Right? Is that how they work? Do they keep your skirt from hiking up? I can't really say from experience, but it seems like they could do the trick.

Now, have I become converted to slip-wearing? No, not really. I guess the inconvenience of actually purchasing and wearing a slip outweighs the embarrassment of flashing a few pedestrians on my way to church.

Friday Free for All: Winner or Loser?

FFA Topic of the Week: What is something you are completely fantastic at, and what is something you are really crappy at?

So last night, we'd just gone to bed, and I asked Ellis what was something I was really good at. After a minute, he said, "You're really good at making stuff." Curious, I said, "What kind of stuff?" And because the man can fall asleep within seconds of getting into bed, I guess I was lucky to even get an answer. Before drifting off, he kind of mumbled, "You know, poster boards."

So I lay there thinking, "Poster boards? What in the crap is he talking about? Is he already asleep??" His response kind of made me laugh for the next 10 minutes, but then I thought, I guess I have made some pretty impressive things on poster boards.

I have made large Frog Prince posters for Larrin and Marley's princess birthday parties so they could play "Kiss the Frog." I've made baby shower games, yard sale signs, YW posters, displays of authors and their works for my English classes, and some pretty killer candybar posters.

So there you have it, folks. Where do my talents lie? In the posterboard arts.

Now, what am I crappy at? The thing that comes to mind most at the moment is my complete lack of ability in the garden and/or yard. When it comes to growing things (other than weeds), I'm a complete mess. Every plant I've ever owned has come to an unfortunate and ugly death.

Now that we own a house with a yard, I've gotten ambitious to make the yard look nice and plant a garden. It has taken me weeks and weeks to weed all the flower beds, and now that I've gotten that done, all the freaking weeds have grown back. Argghhh!!

I was at Costco a month ago looking at fertilizer. Do I buy the one with just plain weed killer, or the one that kills crabgrass? Do I have crabgrass? I don't know. I look at the picture of crabgrass and think, "That doesn't look like anything we have in our grass." So, I purchase the regular weed killer, bring it home, and take a look at our yard. Yep, we have crabgrass.

I planted a little garden, and I was kind of proud of myself. Then, when Peggy and her family were at our house a while ago, her husband Scott says to me, "Have you ever planted watermelon before?"

A bit warily, I anwer, "Uh, no. Why?" Apparently, watermelon needs A LOT of room to grow. More than the one foot I gave it? I guess so.

Then this morning, I put the ol' sprinkler on the little garden. When we got back home at 9:30 tonight, I remembered about the sprinkler. Yep, it had been on ALL day. I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that's not really good for a garden.

So yeah, I'm a bit horticulturally-challenged. It's something I keep trying to combat, but I think it's time to just admit it. I suck.

Tag! I'm it!

So, Peggy tagged me, and amazingly, I'm actually going to do it. It's not that I don't always have the best intentions to do these things, but somehow I manage to put them off until no one even remembers that they sent them to me. So here goes:

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
Let's see . . . 1998, huh? Ellis and I had just moved into the tiniest little 1-bedroom house you can imagine in Salem, Utah. And when I say tiny, I'm talking 600 sq. ft. If you stood in the center of the house, you could literally turn in a circle and see every room in the house. I was also doing an internship at Spanish Fork Middle School where I was basically a 1st-year English teacher, but they only had to pay me half salary.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today?

• Exercise - check
• Grocery shop - check
• Weed the flower beds and/or garden - nope
• Find a Father's Day present for my father-in-law - well, I didn't find it, but Jenni gave me a fantastic idea
• Return this bag of stuff to Linens N Things that has been sitting on the floor of my bedroom making me crazy - CHECK
  

3.What are some snacks that I enjoy? Oh, where to start?

• I love ice cream of all varieties except fruit flavors. Don't waste my time with strawberry ice cream, okay? And no, sherbet/sorbet is not ice cream.
• Movie theater popcorn sans the nasty butter they're always wanting to squirt on it.
• Cherry bites (you know, those little licorice bites? Yummy.)
• Cold cereal (yes, it's a snack)
• Jr. Mints . . . they're very refreshing!
• Those little 100-cal packages of striped fudge shortbread cookies

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire.

Ah, let's see . . . pay off all of Ellis's student loans and buy a house with an actual garage attached to it. Give a whole load of it to charity -- I always want to do that, but I inevitably feel like we're too poor to contribute to anything. Then I feel guilty about it, and I always want to assure the grocery store clerk who wants me to donate to the Save the Children fund (every time I go through the line) that I really will donate once I actually have some money to donate. And yes, I do need that carton of ice cream. I'd like to team up with the Gates family and Bono and see what kind of good we could do. I would also love to travel to all the places that I've repeatedly made Ellis promise me we'd go someday.

5. Places I've lived.

California, Utah (Spanish Fork, Salem, and Midvale), and North Carolina.

Now I tag:

Debra, Kristy, Joey, and Jenni-O

Taking back the yard

So, in the process of weeding this spring (during the times that it was actually warm enough to be outside), we discovered this big thistle growing in the back corner of our yard. It looked pretty big, but I wanted to get the flower beds weeded first before I tackled that part of the yard. Well, fast-forward 2 months, and this is what I find:




This thing was a complete monster. I made the kids stand by it to prove I wasn't exaggerating (and I have tall kids!) Right before I whacked the thing down and dug it up with the shovel, I kept having this nagging feeling that it was going to start singing to me, "Feed me, Jami," or I'd discover bodies hiding under it or something. It was a little creepy.