Soundtrack of My Life

Thanks Jill, I am so excited about this post...should be a blast to put up!

"If Your Life Were a Soundtrack, What Would the Music Be?"

Here’s how it works:
1. open your library (iTunes, winamp, media player, iPod, Juke)
2. put it on shuffle
3. press play
4. for every question, answer by typing the song that’s playing
5. new question — press the next button
6. don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool (*if you're already cool, I understand)

opening credits:
Times Like These, Jack Johnson

waking up:
Over Thinking, Relient K ("I was thinking, over thinking Cause theres just many scenarios...cuz I think way too much" This must be why I am up at 4am, and 5am, and 6am...or maybe I can blame those boys of mine)

first day at school:
Say I Will, Peter Breinholt ("if you ever feel afraid, you can sing this little song I know and you can fall asleep again...")

falling in love:
Situations, Jack Johnson ("Situation number 1, it's the one that's just begun. Evidently it's too late.)

breaking up:
Picture to Burn, Taylor Swift ("you love yourself more than you could ever love me...I hate the stupid old pick up truck you never let me drive...there's nothing stopping me from going out with all your best friends...you're just another a picture to burn" I swear I did not rig this)

prom:
Tomorrow Morning, Jack Johnson ("well, I'll be home when tomorrow morning comes")

life’s okay:
Life of a Salesman, Yellowcard (I love this song!! "Taught me how to stand, dad Took me by the hand and you showed me how to be a bigger man, dad Listen when you talk, dad Follow where you walk, dad And you know that I will always do the best I can...now I'm older I wanna be the same as you")

mental breakdown:
Holes to Heaven, Jack Johnson (Who knew I had so much Jack? I don't think I have listened to any JJ for over a year...)

driving:
E Chiove (And It Rains), Andrea Bocelli (Okay, I admit it, I drive "slow"...but in my defense I am driving the speed limit. "How narrow this street is, the people do not fit in, they form a procession that progresses very slowly" I am not kidding. This is the translation.)

flashback:
Good People, Jack Johnson (Are you kidding me? Man, I need to add some more stuff to my little Juke. "it's bad getting worse son, where'd all the good people go?")

getting back together:
Per Te (For You), Josh Groban (I smell in the air the scent of you Little dreams had lived with me Now I know, I don’t wanna lose you That sweetness which has no age Your beauty has no rivals My heart wants only you)

wedding:
Older, Colbie Caillat ("Waited all my life for this day to come...it's tough getting older. I always thought that I knew where I'd wanna go, but now I'm here I'm just getting colder. Time for me to choose one way now, if I take a chance, what lies down the road")

birth of child:
La Gioconda, opera in 4 acts: Cielo e mar!, Amilcare Ponchielli (Trust me, it was not at all this calm with James, but Matthias on the other hand...I was taking a nap 10 minutes prior to his appearance)

final battle:
A Place in this World, Taylor Swift ("I'll be strong, I'll be wrong, but life goes on. Oh I'm just a girl trying to find a place in this world")

death scene:
If I Could, Jack Johnson (Honestly folks, this doesn't seem all that random when 6 out of 17 songs are Jack Johnson...oh well, the words work out nice on this one "I brand new baby was born yesterday just in time...News from a friend the other day, the doctor gave him two weeks to live, I'd give him more if I could...they say new life makes losing life easier to understand" )

end credits:
Wonderful, Idina Menzel (Wicked) ("They think I'm wonderful")

DVD menu music:
Por Ti Volare (Con Te Partiro), Andrea Bocelli ("Time to Say Goodbye" When you are far away I dream on the horizon And words fail And yes, I know That you are with me You, my moon, are here with me My sun, you are here with me

Book Club

Last night we had book club at my house. The book we read and discussed was Wild Swans. It was my second time through and I really enjoyed it even more than the first time. This book is worth your time to read. It is so fascinating and enlightening. I always come away so grateful for my life and circumstances.

I also came away with an incredible desire to learn. To know, to understand. There is so much that has happened and is happening. So much knowledge I have not yet untapped. I am so excited to read and learn and know! So excited that at 10 pm I not only spent 1 1/2 hours talking to Taylor, but then read an excellent article in the Smithsonian about The Forbidden City in Bejing. And for those of you who know me, to give up sleep is not something I do.

I love learning and understanding.

Jury Duty

T received a summons for jury duty in the mail last week. He has to go in the end of April. Besides Bec going in once (right?), this is the first person I knew to get called for jury duty. Then I talked to my brother a few days ago and he was at jury duty. He said most people he knows have been in jury duty, including my sister-in-law (his wife)...he does live in LA.

So, my question to you...have any of you (or someone you know) been called for jury duty? Please respond to the poll on the right. Thanks!

$3.49

All other posts must be postponed in order to document the find of the decade. Yesterday after Matthias pushed our crock pot off a chair, the boys and I headed to Kohls. We went to not our usual Kohls, but another one. There we found these crock pots with hinges...looked like a pain to me, so I almost settled for a smaller one just to avoid the hinges. Then I look on the shelf and spy this beauty. Same as the hinge ones, but an older model with no hinge.

The sale price was $29.99 and I was willing to pay that for this great crock pot. But when I got to the register it rang up as $3.49...a manager was called, the price was confirmed and I walked out with a $40 crock pot for under $4!! And I used a gift card from Exxon, so really it was free and we still have $25 left.

Mmmm, I smell the split pea and ham soup cooking now...

Garden

We transferred/planted our vegetables last Thursday and put in the flowers on Saturday. Here are some pictures of our front flower garden and also our vegetable garden in the back yard. We are really excited for fresh vegetables this summer and hope our crops do well. We planted zucchini, squash, cucumber, green beans, peas, and bought some tomato plants. Also, Taylor bought me some calla lily bulbs which are planted with the other flowers. I will post pictures when they bloom.

James Speak

On Friday we made some "Easter" sugar cookies. My big cookie cutter bucket has a bunny, an egg, a butterfly, and flowers for the Easter cookies. James saw the star, pumpkin, fish, and number 3 cookie cutters and wanted to do them. I told him we were doing the Easter ones and then went on to explain that flowers and butterflies were for Easter because Jesus made them and we are reminded of Him. James countered with "Jesus made fish and stars and pumpkins. We should do them. And He made numbers."

Yesterday during Easter dinner...
James: Why did Jesus have to die?
Mom: So He could be resurrected for us.
James: Good job. Why do we have Easter?

I guess I have quizzed him enough on the meaning of Easter. =]

Happy Easter!

We celebrated today by watching Finding Faith in Christ together as a family. Matthias actually sat for almost 15 minutes! He kept pointing at the screen and saying Jesus, it was super cute. Then we got ready and took some Easter pictures, posted here. The boys look so cute in their suits and ties! James was especially excited because his tie has a killer whale on it.






Then we had a little lesson looking at pictures of the Atonement and Resurrection in the New Testament Stories with Taylor reading out of the Bible. And we sang some Primary songs, "Did Jesus Really Live Again?" and "Beautiful Savior". By this time the boys had enough cooperating and rebeled, so we sent them for a nap.

After church we'll have some yummy ham, funeral potatoes, and homemade rolls!

I am so grateful for this opportunity to remember the sacrifice of my Savior and His infinite love for me. I am thankful for His Atonement and the Resurrection. And I am so glad to have the blessing of sharing my testimony with my two beautiful boys.

The Great Hunt: Eggs & Baskets

The Easter bunny visits our house on Saturday morning, so we can focus on Christ on Sunday. This morning the boys were very excited to see what was left for them (despite the 1:04 incident, James was still in high spirits).

Matthias found an egg on the little rocker, but failed to notice the basket hidden behind the rocker until later. Notice the drool dripping down his chin as he finds his basket, having already put up to 8 whopper eggs in his mouth.



James finds his basket in the quilt rack. He was very excited about his Tyrone bath buddy. Both the boys loved their sand toys and with the new sand purchased today at Home Depot they had a blast!



Mom finds hers and dad's basket on top of the fridge and is captured in an oh so flattering shot.


The boys hunt for Easter eggs...

Coloring Eggs

Last night we dyed Easter eggs. I failed to find any Paas, so we just made our own water, vinegar, food coloring mix. It worked beautifully. The boys had a blast. (We saw some of the egg in the 1:04 incident.) Many pictures ensue...

My mom is amazing!

Taylor and I went through the single most dirty, stinky, messy, yucky experience of our parenting career to this point (let's hope we don't see much worse!). At about 1:04am Saturday morning, we heard a gagging noise from the boys' room. Matthias regularly makes cough/gag noises, so we ignored it. Then James started crying and came in our room. Being the excellent mother that I am I hurried to the bathroom when I heard him coming so Taylor would have to deal with him. =] (Lately he has been coming in our room about 2-3 nights a week and asking if he can sleep on the floor...I figured this was another such instance and Taylor could get him a pillow and blanket this time.)

Well, after listening to him cry for a couple minutes with no response, I came out. My nose was immediately accosted by the smell of vomit. "Taylor, it's smells like puke, bad." "I can't smell anything." I sniff James more closely, "Yeah, he stinks." My first thought..."If he is still sick tomorrow he won't be able to wear his Easter suit and his new killer whale tie!!"

I head into the bedroom and see that his bed is covered by about a 2 foot by 3 foot patch of throw up. I take James into the bathroom and turn on the light...he is covered from head to toe in throw up. By then Taylor has joined me and we clean up everything (including the floor between his room and ours) and get James back to bed (on our floor). Saying thanks that we have our own washer and dryer and no longer have to depend on a laundry mat.

This is where I realize my mom was amazing. This whole time not only was I getting more and more nauseous myself (due to smelling stinking barf, not due to any internal factors), but I kept thinking...I just want to go back to bed. Can't someone else clean this up? I'm tired. Thanks mom for always coming out and making sure I was okay when I threw up at night...even when I made it to the bathroom. You're great!

Pump it Up

Yesterday we had some fun at Pump it Up!! We have wanted to go back for a while now, so it was a lot of fun to take the boys yesterday with some friends. Now that we have been there four times James was totally loving everything and wasn't at all scared. He went through the obstacle course a dozen times and down the big slide a ton.




Matthias was fearless as always, but was too small to do anything himself. I took him on the big slide several times and through the obstacle course once. Other than that he just had a blast bouncing in the bouncer or just jumping on the pads at the end of the slides. We love Pump it Up!

James and Mom (and books)

James and I had a rough start this week, but have since figured each other out again. Yesterday he picked a beautiful flower for me that we put in some water and set on the counter. He is so thoughtful and loving!

Whenever we sit down for dinner James asks Taylor, "So, how was your day?". Yesterday we sat down for dinner before Taylor got home, so James turned to me and said, "How was your day Mom?" Me: "I was with you all day. We did the same things." James: "What did you do when I took a nap, when I was sleeping?" Me: "You didn't take a nap." He is so silly. So then I told him about what I did even though he was there for all of it.

Also, James and reading have been asked about...All I can say is James loves to read and I would like to take the credit, but I don't know that I can. James LOVES reading, Matthias is finally starting to hold still for 2-3 minutes. Matthias will bring us books because he likes to sit in our laps, but can only make it through one. I did read to James more as a baby, but even when I tried with Matthias he was out of my arms as soon as he could figure out how, so part of it really is personality.

The longest consecutive time I have read to James is probably 40 minutes and then we stopped because the book was over. I honestly think James may be able to read indefinitely. Even at age one he would sit for 15 minutes or more for a book. When he was 6 months old I remember reading 2 or 3 books in a row to him (and he could crawl at this age, so he could have escaped if he wanted to). James has such a love for reading that I fear he may be as bad as Taylor and I when he gets older. My best friend and I used to lay on the lawn during the summer and read books all day. Taylor rarely puts a book down until he has read front to back (so we always hope for short ones!)

James gets so intrigued with what we are reading and really gets into the plots and characters. Sometimes during chapter books he just stares off into space and I swear he isn't paying attention and then he'll bring up details or ask about why someone did something. He has amazing reading comprehension and obviously I am biased, but he really remembers everything!

My tricks? I have none. I wish I did have a formula to create an avid reader, then I would use it on Matthias. But I continue to read to Matthias every night before bed and he is getting better. Happy reading!!

Ahh, lumbar support...

Finally I can blog in comfort (and without squeaking). While I was convinced some WD-40 would solve the problem, Taylor insisted that our blogging/computer chair was not ergonomic enough. So hence the new addition to our study.

Before:


After:

I apologize to anyone reading this blog that may (hypothetically) be confined to a bed with his/her leg propped up and is very jealous of my new chair. Your day will come.

Mathy Fun and lots of Reading!

We checked out several of the Sir Cumference books yesterday from the library and they are great! While James did get a little bored during the math (mostly geometry) discussions at the end, the rest of the book was entertaining and fun. We got Sir Cumference and the Isle of Immeter and Sir Cumference and the Sword in the Cone.

Another book we happened upon at the library is The Bugliest Bug which turned out to be a fun read!

Also, I am looking for any one's suggestions on short chapter books/series to read with James. We read The Spiderwick Chronicles recently and he LOVED them. Something about 100 pages long and fairly simple. We also really enjoy the Magic Treehouse series. These two series claim they are for 9-12 and 4-8, so anything in that range.

Let me know if you have great ideas! Thanks and happy reading!

Luck of the Irish

A little leprechaun visited our house last night and left us a pot of gold! The boys were very excited to see it this morning...yum! Daddy also went into work late so we could all have green pancakes together. They were so tasty!



Tonight for dinner we will be having some Irish dinner-corned beef, cabbage, and red potatoes. Plus some green jello!!

Also, we found out last night we may have actually missed St. Patrick's Day as it was moved by the Roman Catholic Church to March 15th this year since today is Holy Monday. But I'll still pinch you today if I catch you without some green on!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Shop, shop, shop

Me and some friends (Kim, Nannette, Shelley, and Mary) went out to the San Marcos outlet malls this weekend and had a blast!! There are two outlet malls out there-Tanger and Prime. We got three hours of shopping in on Friday night and then had a late dinner (9:30). We stayed in a hotel that night and then shopped all day Saturday. I spent the 2nd least, but lost the contest for whose husband calls the most. I say it's because we love each other the most, but everyone else claims it's because we're the most newly wed. Plus they counted texts...hardly fair.

So the big finds: I got a shirt for $1!! And an easter dress and a purse I was hoping to find.

One of the best finds was some winter gear for the boys for 50 cents each! Since it's in the 80s out here now, I figure they need it...really it's for next winter when we visit Utah. They love their new hats and gloves and the frog shirts I bought them.

Boys' Night

While I was gone shopping the boys had a fun filled night and Saturday. They did everything on James' list to do:

Play with Big-T and dinosaurs
Dive with Matt
Captain & Ship

Then they headed to Sam's Club to buy me some flowers and Best Buy to get Backyardigans Mighty Knights. After a yummy Chicken Dinos dinner they watched the movie and then headed to bed.

Our blinds had finally arrived so Taylor stayed up until 1am installing them! Isn't he wonderful?

Saturday morning the boys slept until 8:00!! Then they headed to the zoo all morning came home and played and ate some more. I made it home just as James was heading to bed. The boys night was a big success!!

Utah at the Uries

This is our last post of the visit to Utah. I figure we were there for ten days, we can get some good blogging out of it. =] Spending time at Grandma and Grandpa Urie's always means playing with Legos. And if Uncle Scott is there it is twice as fun! The boys built lots of towers and cars and dinosaur houses. The best part is always knocking everything down when you're done, or even before you are done! And I just had to add one more picture of the snow! It is gonna be in the 80s here today!! Summer is just beginning...

More Utah fun

While at the Harvey's house the boys had a blast playing with Uncle Cameron. Matthias took to him immediately and would want him over anyone else. Which was pretty funny considering his absolute distress to anyone so much as looking at him the day before. For some reason he loved Cam! Here is a video of him playing with Cameron and Lesley.



Also, the boys had a blast playing around in these two stools with Grandpa Harvey. They thought it was great fun and really liked having one for each boy just the right size. And they enjoyed some fun time with Grandpa in the snow!




Today James asked me when we are going to Utah again...since it's spring break next week a lot of the families in the ward are heading up that way! We are pretty jealous, but it has been so beautiful here lately and we have about 1,314 birds living nearby that like to serenade us all day long. I swear some of them are nocturnal. Either that or I am dreaming about chirping birds at 2am. We'll be back to Utah when our weather turns nasty!

Geniuses

James did his first addition problem today. We were counting sheep and I said "I have two over here and there is one over there. How many does that make?" "Three." Brilliant, I say, brilliant. This kid is destined for amazing things!

Matthias can currently speak the following words...dad, mom, dog, shoes, Jesus, and teeth. He also gives attempts to James, but is not consistent enough yet for me to pick out what sound means James all the time. With these added to the dozen or so words he signs we are able to have some great conversation folks.

Musical anyone?

For my blog post today I ask you to visit my friend Jill's post from yesterday. Nothing I say could be more funny.

Click here.

What time is it really?

I have spent the last week in anticipation of sleeping in until 8:00 on Sunday morning (since Matthias wakes up at 7am generally and that would translate to 8am DST). So we changed our clocks and went happily to bed only to be woken up at 6am!!

Which translates to 5am.

What? Matthias it isn't Fall Back, it's Leap Forward.

But then it turns out for some strange reason our cell phones didn't change themselves so it is in fact still 6am, or now 7am. And Matthias wakes up right on time even with Daylight Savings. And why do we do this you ask?? An excerpt from the grand Wikipedia...

"The prominent English builder and outdoorsman William Willett invented DST in 1905 during one of his pre-breakfast horseback rides, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through the best part of a summer day. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk. His solution was to advance the clock during the summer months..."

I better get outside and start enjoying the best part of the day.

More about DST.

Be Prepared

Today was a day of preparation at our home. Taylor spent 11 hours in the yard working on the garden. He took out the sod, hauled dirt, and built a step garden (similar to this, but with three sections and for only $60 with wood and dirt). The boys and I even took five loads of dirt from the front yard to the back. I will get a picture of the garden in the morning and also next week after I transfer our young plants.

Kroger has an awesome deal on strawberries ($0.99 per pound), so we have been collecting them (you can only buy 4 at a time). I made three more batches of freezer jam today and we still have 5 lbs left!! Guess we'll just freeze 'em for smoothies. Yum.

The boys had a ton of fun out in the yard ALL day. James is sunburned on his nose and right side of his face only. Me and Matthias of course avoided any burning of the skin. Taylor has pretty bad burns on his arms and neck, but his face isn't too bad.

Can't wait to eat all our fresh vegetables and yummy jam!

(As a side note, I just found out that President Spencer W. Kimball was born in 1899. Who knew I was old enough to actually know (remember) someone born in the 1800s? Shocking.)