I Think This Makes Me Old

We made it to Utah.  We survived the 12-hour car trip with minimal screaming and very few tears.  The DVD players helped immensely.

I learned something interesting on this drive.  Apparently kids these days come with a gene that triggers when they hit about 4th grade.  Suddenly they can text and do all the fancy-schmancy internetspeak.  They don't have to own a phone to be able to do this; their mother's phone is sufficient.

My mom asked us to text her periodically to let her know where we were and how the drive was going.  I honestly never thought I'd see the day when my mother asked me to send her a text message, but I guess keeping track of my younger sister and brother for so many years has made her proficient, and on a drive where our reception is intermittent at best, short and sweet text messages seemed like a good idea.

Vicki was bored, so she asked if she could do the honors.  For a kid who hates to write (and I mean hates to write - it's like pulling teeth to get her near a pencil and paper, except pulled teeth mean a prize from the dentist, while writing assignments just mean stupid writing work), she sure does like to text.  She's the one who showed me how to use the automatic spell feature on my phone (T9?  Is that what it's called?), so I don't have to hit so many buttons just to say hi to someone.  See what I mean?

Anyway, she sent two messages to my mom.  The first one was: "We are in between baker city and ontario.  Still in Oregon. (sigh) ;) Love, Vicki"  The second said, "We. Are. In. Utah! Yay! Love, Vicki"  Where does she learn that?  How did she know that if you're sighing about something, you put it in parentheses?  Or that you separate words with periods to give them emphasis?  I learned that by emailing and by reading other people's blogs.  She doesn't spend much time on the internet, and when she does, she's playing Webkinz.  She has an email address, but she hardly ever checks it.

I don't get it.

It's Friday But I'm Still Feeling Random

A former roommate of mine just posted the most hilarious take on the upcoming worldwide life-changing event that is the release of Eclipse, the third film in "The Twilight Saga".  If you're like me, and you enjoyed the books to a certain extent but think the world is going waaaay overboard, check out Danielle's post, Total Eclipse of the Heart.  You won't be disappointed.

I meant to put a link in yesterday's post so you'd know exactly what the new toy we got ourselves is.  I forgot.  This is it:

We caved and bought a dual screen DVD player for the car.  You strap it to the headrests.  Our single unit is good, but we have three kids.  'Nuff said.

I like reading the comics.  Particularly the weird ones.  This Bizarro has kept me laughing since Sunday:

Tonight Chris and I are going to see Josh Ritter in concert.  I'm so excited.  I loooove Josh Ritter.  Anyone who can sing like that, and write songs like those...wow.

Then, tomorrow, at around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, we're leaving for Utah.  I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight.  Should be an interesting drive.

I really have nothing else to say, but I had too many things to share to do any sort of normal post.  I may or may not post while we're gone.  So if  Thursday comes and goes and there's no randomness from me, well, someone else will have to step up, I guess.  Happy summer, everyone!

Random Thoughts Thursday

Alrighty, you spoke and I listened. Okay, well, actually, only five of your spoke, but I’ll take that to mean that four out of five of my readers would like to participate in Random Thoughts Thursday on a regular basis, and I’m all for it. In the next couple of weeks I’ll be setting it up so anyone who participates in Random Thoughts Thursday can link their blog to mine, and this will be sort of a Random Central. I believe this is what’s known, in the blogger world, as a meme. So even though it’s not all official this week (it’s been crazy-busy around here lately), feel free to join in! If you decide to do a Random Thoughts Thursday post, just leave a comment so I (and anyone else who’s interested) can come read all your randomness. It’s a good way to spend a Thursday.

Today is my little brother’s birthday. He’s 21. I feel older thinking about my siblings’ ages than I do my own. Why is that?

The sun is out! Glorious sunshine! I know I shouldn’t complain, so I won’t, but it was kinda hot last night. But I’m not complaining, Mr. Sun. Please, please stay now. We love you. And we are not above groveling.

Soon we will be leaving on another fabulous road trip with the girls in tow. It’s time for our bi-annual pilgrimage back to the fam in Utah. This time we bought ourselves a new toy to keep the kids entertained. The single unit we already have just isn’t doing it anymore.

Despite the pending trip, I have no interest in cleaning my house.

Yesterday the girls and I spent the afternoon tie-dying giant rectangles of fabric. We made ourselves sarongs to wear at the beach. We are awesome.

I keep forgetting to update our Netflix queue. Consequently, we keep getting movies we aren’t really in the mood for but at some point thought we’d like to watch. It’s amazing how much better “Dracula” was in my memory than in real life.

Playdates are awesome. Especially when they leave me with only two children in my house, only one of which is my own.

You know it’s time to clean the fridge when your four-year-old is concerned about stuff in there. Better not let that go another week, huh?

Random Thoughts Thursday

I'm in the process of redesigning the blog. Like it so far? I do.

However, in the process of all this redesigning (I'm also redoing Project 365) I somehow deleted my little blurb about myself from my profile. Whoops. Now no one will know anything about me; what a shame.

Today is our 11th wedding anniversary. I did a special post last year for #10, so I'll spare you all that, but I will just say that it's been a great 11 years.

It's also officially 15 years since I graduated from high school (I don't know why I remember this, except that I'm really good at remembering stupid stuff and not so great at remembering anything that's actually useful, but I'm pretty sure my graduation was June 16. Either that, or that's the day we left England for good.) I can't decide whether that makes me feel old or not. I know a lot of people reading this will have an opinion about that, though.

It's the middle of June and I'm wearing a sweatshirt. Not because I really like it, but because I'm freezing and refuse to turn on the heater. It's June, for crying out loud! Time to move on from the record rainfall, alrighty Mother Nature?

Suddenly there is only one more day left of school. How did that happen? Then I'll have a 3rd grader and a 5th grader, and I'm so not ready for that. 5th grade? That means middle school is right around the corner. Oy.

Last week Vicki's class had their "family life" discussion and video, and that evening we successfully embarrassed her at the dinner table. It was great.

Already the summer is going by too fast.

Why does safety have to be so expensive? We could feed our family for several weeks on what we spent for swimming lessons for the summer.

There are days when I feel guilty for letting Ellie and our babysitting friends watch videos all day, and there are days when I really wish I had so my house wouldn't look like three very small but very far-reaching tornadoes ripped through it.

However, my room and the kitchen are fairly clean, and the laundry is actually mostly done, so I don't feel too bad. Until I think about what the hall bathroom looks like. Then I feel really bad. So I don't think about it.

I know a lot of people like the random post idea and copy it to varying degrees. How about if I made Thursday an official Random Thoughts day and invited other people to join in and link their blogs to mine, so we could all read lots and lots of other people's crazy random thoughts? Would people actually participate?

I'll leave you today with this picture of Ellie enjoying the school talent show Monday night:

Clearly she loves Justin Bieber.

Talent

Monday was the annual talent show at the girls' school.  Despite the numerous Justin Bieber songs (none of which I had heard prior to that morning, and hopefully none of which I will hear again), it was a lot of fun.  Vicki played "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" on the piano and sang "Lean on Me" with the choir, and Lexi's class sang a song about loving everyone, regardless of differences.  There were also a few dancers (one who definitely stole the show), a tiny boy who sang with a piano accompanist (as opposed to the many who sang along with a CD and could barely be heard over the original singer), a little mini-Beyonce in a long shiny pink dress (who Chris described, in an admiring way, as "the girl with the Sideshow Bob hair"), and a handful of pianists.

However, the true stars of the show were these guys:

They danced to "Gettin' Jiggy Wit it".

The blue one is the principal.  Our school rocks.

The adults thought it was hilarious.  The kids thought it was hilarious, too, but they also thought it was Cookie Monster and Elmo.  I had to educate my children by showing them the following video.  I thought you all might like it, too.

Saturday Morning

It's Saturday morning around here.

Chris took Vicki to a Daddy-Daughter brunch at the church and I'm here with the other two, supposedly supervising their Saturday jobs.

Right.

What I've actually been doing is discovering a new blog that I may have to add to my list.  She's funny.

Lexi finished her jobs (so she says) and Ellie is supposed to be cleaning the playroom and the upstairs bathroom.  She picked up some pieces of paper, ran the vacuum until I noticed she was actually sucking her clothing into it, and then she disappeared downstairs.  I can hear the TV and the unmistakable sounds of children fending for themselves when they've been abandoned by a mother who is, at the moment, feeling very lazy and significantly more interested in blogs than a clean house.

I like Saturday mornings.

Random Thoughts Thursday

It would be so nice to come home from vacation and not have to do anything. Too bad life doesn’t work that way.

I fulfilled a life’s goal (it hasn’t been a life’s goal for all that long, but that doesn’t really matter, right?) last weekend. I saw Elvis, alive and well, on the streets of Las Vegas. And I snuck a picture when he wasn't looking (because otherwise he wanted "donations"):

After I mentioned this on facebook, I was reminded by my mother that in high school my best friend and I had matching “I Love Elvis” bracelets. She has the picture to prove it. So, yeah, life’s goal: check.

A day in Vegas and I still have no idea how the game of craps works. Or slot machines, actually. But everything there is real shiny.

Yesterday I walked about 30 blocks down Sandy Boulevard in my jammies. How liberating.

On our way to St. George from Vegas Friday night we were stuck for two hours on the freeway in the middle of the desert as a result of two separate car accidents, one of which was about five cars ahead of us. While waiting for that to get cleaned up (fortunately no one was seriously hurt, but stuff had spilled out of a trailer all over the road), we heard another crash on the other side of the freeway.  Accident #3. Both directions were completely blocked and unmoving for several hours. Crazy. I hope everyone’s okay.

Apropos of nothing, Cinnamon Toast Crunch sounds really good.

I like the phrase “apropos of nothing.”

Blogger is being slow. That really bugs me.

Tomorrow all the 4th and 5th graders at the girls’ school are getting “the talk”. They get to watch a video and have a Q&A session (divided by gender, of course.) I Googled (verbing!) the video, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same one I watched in 4th grade. I realize there’s no new information, but you’d think they’d update for the sake of changing fashions, at the very least.

Why is it that the very day I get down on my hands and knees to scrub the bathroom floor is the same day I hear the words, “Um, Mommy, I kind of missed the potty a little bit”?

I bought a skirt in Vegas from a street vendor and managed to talk her down 50%. As proud of myself as I am, I’m also slightly bummed because I’m pretty sure she would have come down more if I’d tried harder.

There are three small girls in my house right now. It shouldn’t be this quiet, but it is.

Random Thoughts Thursday

I’m hoping for a day without rain today. I’m not holding my breath, and my umbrella is still easily accessible, and honestly, all I ask is for it to be clear enough for the girls to walk home.  After that, I’m okay with whatever. That’s not too much to hope for, is it?

Last night, while attempting to drain the spaghetti, I somehow managed to pour a large pot of boiling water down my front. I would not recommend trying that at home. I was, thankfully, able to lean away from my pants (don’t spend too much time trying to imagine how that works), so all that got burned was my right foot, but, dude, it hurts.

I would like to point out that some things are just really, really wrong, no matter how good the idea seemed at the time. Case in point: The Manllow.

Tomorrow morning I embark on a child-free long weekend with my hubby. It’s an anniversary/birthday/Chris’s-job-has-been-really-stressful-for-at-least-3-years-now gift to ourselves. I’m not sure who’s more excited, though, the two of us or the girls, who are being split up and shipped off to friends’ houses for a three-night sleepover without their sisters. Party time for everyone.

Today I went to the grocery store with three princesses in full regalia. It was awesome, but I was seriously underdressed.

Usually I feel frantic the day before a trip. Today, not so much. Maybe it’s due to the fact that the kids aren’t coming with me.

Guess I'm not feeling terribly random today.  We're all okay with that, though, right?  Until next time...