I'm a weeenner!

Woo hoo!!! Woo hoo!!! Oh, for joy! I won a lottery I never even knew I entered! Two of them, in fact! I have won 870,000 British pounds (which, according to this currency calculator is $1,588,968!) and also $7,500,000!!! I'm the luckiest person on the planet!!!

All I have to do to claim the winnings in the "BRITISH E-MAIL LOTTERY" is to send all kinds of personal information to a Mr. Barr Jeff White, who can be reached at his googlemail address (I always thought it was gmail, huh) any time of the day or night. They would like my:

1. Full name
2. Address
3. Marital Status
4. Occupation
5. Age
6. Sex
7. Nationality
8. Country of Residence
9. Telephone Number
10. Fax Number
11. Email Address

Oh, and if I should have a change of address, I'm "adivced" to inform their fiduciary agent (the above-mentioned oddly-named Mr. Barr Jeff White) at once in order to avoid uneccesary delays and complications.

I'm on it.

I was notified of my $7,500,000 winnings by a gentleman in Nigeria, a Mr. Ali Yusef, who wrote me this kind message:

"We bring to your notice,that during our randomly select of the(CHEVRON OIL/PETROLEUM)lucky winner,your mail was the luckies winner of our CHEVRON ONLINE BONANZA.So all you have to do, right away is for you to go on with the forms filling,so as to no the identity of our luky winner,you have to quickly as fast as possible,once again CONGRATULATION."

Yep, definitely something I need to cash in on. I'll just email them both and wait for the cash to come rolling in!

I'm so excited!!! What will I ever do with nearly $1,900,000?! Any suggestions?

This, too, shall pass

Yesterday while I was on the phone with a friend, Ellie suddenly made a slight gagging noise, coughed once, and then looked up at me with a truly shocked expression and said, "Mommy, my penny went down to my mouth!"

So now I'm like the audience at a magic show, waiting in awed anticipation for the magician to make the penny reappear.

FHE with the Eberts

Family Home Evening with little kids is an exercise in patience. And an education in humor. Last night Vicki added a Special Musical Number to the routine and played the Star Wars theme on the piano. Then Ellie decided she needed to be in charge of the music. So she stood in front of us and waved her arm around while we sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "If You're Happy and You Know It". When those songs were over, we had the following conversation:

Mom: Okay, time for prayer!
Ellie: No! We have to sing the flower song!
M: What's the flower song?
E: The. Flower. Song!!!
M: Okay, you sing it, because we don't know it.
E: (singing) Flower, flower song. Okay, everyone, now we have to sing the shawich (sandwich - I love how she says it) song!

Once we finally finished singing we moved on to the lesson. Chris was talking about prophets, and he asked Lexi if she could name any prophets. Her response?

"Ummmm...Barack Obama?"

Sigh. Maybe we need to stop discussing politics in front of the children.

Drama with the Brownies

You like that? I designed it for a bunch of t-shirts. I'm so cool!

Last night was our annual Brownie backyard campout. Since we have no backyard to speak of, we held it at my co-leader's house. We did this last year, when we just had one troop of 8 girls, and we had a blast. This year we have one troop of 10 girls (Vicki's) and another troop of 6 (Lexi's). Since they've done a lot together over the past year, we decided to just combine them. Although we had one girl that didn't come and one who didn't spend the night, we still had 14 girls between the ages of 5 and 8 packed into tents in a quiet residential area. Plus 2 future Girl Scouts: Ellie and my co-leader's daughter Katie, who are the same age. And 4 adults, one of whom didn't stay the night. Yeah, I know, I'm crazy.

Well, we had fun. We earned our Making Music Try-it (the patches Brownies earn for the front of their uniforms). We danced to different styles of music, everything from Hannah Montana (oh, the screaming) to Skip to My Lou. Yes, they skipped. We sang in a round. We played "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on water glasses. And we learned the most awesome action song a group of Girl Scouts ever learned, and we hope to perform it at our neighborhood campout in the Spring. We also ate hot dogs and cooked the obligatory s'mores over a campfire provided by a wonderful contraption known as a portable fire pit. Then, at 10:00, after a quiet chorus of "Taps", we sent the girls off to bed.

At midnight we finally got the last two girls to stop giggling after threatening - in the I Am So Not Joking This Time and Just You Try Me voice - to call their moms to come pick them up.

At 3:00 in the morning us three adults were awakened by what has nicely been termed a "domestic dispute" erupting in my friend's backdoor neighbors' house. It was a doozy - screaming, shouting, banging, swearing, you name it. The three of us leapt out of bed and called the police. The 911 operator lazily noted our complaint until we mentioned that we had 16 little girls sleeping in tents in the backyard, at which point they leapt into action and summoned not one, but three patrol cars. Apparently the couple had just returned from a "night out" (read: the bar), and the man was, as the officer put it, wasted. The girl apparently claimed she wasn't frightened, just angry. Well, she may not have beenfrightened, but we sure as heck were. Fortunately the police broke up the altercation, the girl left for her friend's house, and the guy went to bed to sleep it off. All I can say is I hope he had a lovely time at 7am when the Brownies woke up. Serves him right. Mercifully, only one of the Brownies claimed to have heard anything, and she apparently has enough trust in us leaders that when she heard our voices she figured we had the situation under control and went right back to sleep. Not so for us, of course. We finally went back to bed at 5:00 and dozed off and on until the girls woke up, cheerfully, at 7:00.

Good times.

So now I'm attempting to function on roughly two hours of sleep (turning on a movie for the girls and staring at the computer screen for two hours is functioning, right?), and of course the girls are already talking about what we should do at next year's campout.

You might be an Ebert...

...If you can't figure out why this comic stip is supposed to be funny.

Being married to an Ebert, I laughed my backside off when I read it. This strip has been cut out from the newspaper and is now hanging on our bathroom mirror to remind a certain someone (not naming any names, of course) to chill out.

Ugly brown box of pure refreshment

Our home teacher (for anyone reading this who's unfamiliar with Mormon terminology, he's a guy from church who visits us on a monthly basis and shares an uplifting, gospel-related message as well as making sure everything is okay with us) brought us a present yesterday. Nothing new or fancy, just something he's had sitting in his garage for several years now. It's brown and ugly and we worship it like a gift from God. Which it is.

Weather.com says it's only 95 degrees outside right now, but we came home from the grocery store an hour ago and I swear it's already over 100. Humidity, ugh. But in our house...ahhhhhhh. A balmy 79 degrees. How did we ever survive three summers without one of these babies?

BEST link EVER!!!

Okay, so like you all know I totally have the best life EVER!!! My girls are seriously the cutest and sweetest kids IN THE WORLD! And Chris is the hottest, most FREAKIN' AWESOME hubby ANYONE could totally ever hope for!!! Right? You all totally know what I'm talking about. I'm, like, so dang BLESSED to have just the BEST life.*

But if my life is the BEST!!!, then this chick is a close runner up. This is one of the funniest things I've come across in a long time, so naturally I have to share. Enjoy!



*If I ever blog like this again, feel free to shoot me.

It's a birthday!

Yesterday was Lexi's 6th birthday! I can't believe how quickly they grow up! She has been counting down to this day since, oh, about April. She woke up to the streamers that I hung from her bed and a card from Chris, something he always does for the girls since he leaves before they get up. She felt like a queen all day long, even though we did pretty typical mundane things. She and Vicki did decorate the living room with streamers, which helped to pass the time. By dinnertime, though, she was nearly bouncing out of her skin. We had rice and chili at her request (so much for fancy birthday meals!) and then it was time for...PRESENTS!!!

We got her a decorate-your-own-ballet-outfit kit, a Fancy Nancy card game, and a Webkinz persian cat, which she named Muffin. Also, Aunt Adrie sent a really cute and cuddly bear and a whole bag o' horses. Plus the clothes for her Molly doll that came from Grandma & Grandpa Youngberg on Thursday (which we didn't have the heart to make her wait to open), the outfit from Grandma & Grandpa Ebert which came Friday, and the clothes for Molly from them that arrived just minutes ago. (Thanks everyone!) Lexi was thrilled with everything and, in true kid fashion, is already counting the days until she turns 7.

Make a wish!!!

Sprinklers!

Last week we went to the sprinkler park at Blue Lake Park with some friends. We picked the perfect day and time to go - it was warm, but not too hot, and we got there right as it opened, so it wasn't too crowded. We went right after swimming lessons, so we were a little worried that the kids would be all done with water, but they had a blast!

Vicki thought it was really funny to sit on the sprinkler and block it from spraying. (this sentence has been approved by her, by the way)

Lexi just loved getting sprayed from every direction. I didn't get many shots of her where you could actually tell who it was, because there was too much water all around!

Ellie danced all through the water. She has some unique moves.

This is my favorite picture from the whole day. She kept running over to me and saying, "Mom, I'm really wet!" or "really cold!" and then running back into the water.

Teeth again

Some of you will remember this post. Or this one. Vicki's still loosing teeth faster than she can grow them. Yesterday she wiggled her most recent loose tooth all through church. She pushed and pulled and complained to everyone within hearing distance that it was painfully loose. She had one little girl offer to punch her in the mouth to help it along, but thankfully she declined, which is good, because I know this girl, and she would totally have followed through.

Honestly, it really wasn't that loose, but it was clearly bugging her. Plus, the kid loves to lose teeth. So after church she got some dental floss and asked me to tie a slipknot in it. I told her it wasn't loose enough to come out yet, but once she has her mind set on something, it's really hard to persuade her to change course. So she slipped the knot over the tooth, tied it to the doorknob, and pulled. Nothing happened, of course, because Mother is always right.

After a few tries she gave up and set to work trying to get the dental floss off. Rather than gently loosen it with her fingernails, she grabbed the end of the string, which was no longer tied to the doorknob, and tugged. You see where this is going? Chris and I watched, bemused, unable to do anything, as her arm and neck muscles strained while she pulled with all her might on the string. Then her tooth popped out and flew across the room.

So now she has a giant gap and we tease her mercilessly about her missing teeth, but secretly I think she loves it.

Slumber Party!!!

I like this picture because it's a lot like what the girls' room looks like right now - two sleeping bags and a girl on the bed. We're having our very first sleepover ever! Vicki and her friend Shelbie cooked up the plans on the phone all day long yesterday (seriously, all. day. long.) They spent a good part of their phone calls trying to keep me in the dark as to what they were talking about, but Vicki kept coming to me with questions like, "What time do you go to bed, usually?" (after you're asleep) and "Are you a light sleeper?" (heck, yeah) Hmmmmm... We had pizza for dinner, they watched The Princess Diaries 2 while eating chocolate, and they danced to the last half of the finale of So You Think You Can Dance. Shelbie was disappointed by the winner, Vicki was not. After that they were so wound up that I had to yell, "Girls!" in my mommy-warning-voice (the one that used to drive me nuts when my mother used it at my sleepovers!) several times before they finally settled down. I can still hear quiet talking, but my bet is that Lexi is asleep (thrilled to have been included), Ellie having crashed during the dancing, and the other two are probably pretty close. I'm not going to sleep before it's totally silent, though. They stopped talking too many times as soon as I entered the room for me to give them that opportunity! They also wanted to know if I slept with my bedroom door open or closed when Chris is gone (yep, he managed to be out of town for the girls' night). I don't know what they're planning, but I will be on my guard all night long. I don't think they're old enough to know about bras in the freezer or fingers in warm water, but they have vivid imaginations, so I'm sleeping with one eye open tonight!

Amateur photography

I did something the other day that I know will come back to haunt me one day soon ("But you let me one time!") and let Lexi use my camera to take pictures of whatever she wanted for the afternoon. I narrowed the selection down so I could post a few of my favorites. There were about 15 of different eyeballs around the house, mostly hers, but a few baby doll ones, and several American Girl catalog pages with flash glare on them. Also, I finally figured out why she was always behind me when I turned around and am NOT posting any shots of my rear end.

Blue-eyed beauty

Diamonds are a girl's best friend

Sarahbelle, the fancy fish

Hooray! Mom's making breadsticks!

This one is just weird.

The earless Care Bear.

Piano hands

Feet!

It's amazing our TV hasn't slid off the shelf yet!

My personal favorite! She's such a cutie pie!

One more Ellie-ism

(I forgot to add this in yesterday)
This one's for you, Ron.

Ellie usually identifies her grandparents according to the Grandma's hair color. So Chris's parents are "the yellow grandma and grandpa" and my parents are "the black grandma and grandpa". We have no idea where she got the idea to do this, but it's funny. Well, the other day we were looking at a picture of Chris's whole family, and she was naming everyone as I pointed to them. I pointed to Grandpa and asked her who it was, and she answered, "The bald spot grandpa."