Christmas Past

I always have extreme inner turmoil when it comes to Christmas shopping. I always end up spending money on a lot of little things that frankly are crappy. I'm trying to spend money instead on a few really good things. This year I have been thinking a lot about what my parents did for us for Christmas. I have also been lamenting the fact that there doesn't seem to be the "it" gift for a 5 year old. When I was growing up, it seemed like there was always something that you HAD to have. I realized as the girls get older they will want their iPods and other gadgets, but until then, I'm stumped. OK enough rambling, here's what I'm getting at, I wanted to share some of the best gifts my parents got us.

1. The first IT gift I remember getting was a Cabbage Patch Doll. My sister Katie and I asked Santa for one and I didn't think there was any way in Hades we would get one. We woke up on Christmas morning and there was one for each of us. Mine had brown hair like me. I loved it. My mom would periodically make new clothes for the dolls. I think she still has them.

2. Katie really, really wanted a Nintendo when they first came out. Again we asked Santa for one and didn't think he'd deliver. Lo and behold he most certainly did. We were so excited and it was definitely a favorite over the years. We never had that many games, but believe me, I'm a pro at Super Mario Brothers 3.

3. Katie was always older and cooler than I was. She had a pair of Girbaud jeans that I coveted. I would steal them out of her closet after she had left for Junior High. I was only in 5th grade then, so I had a window of time when she wasn't home. The trouble was certainly getting back in the house without her seeing me after school. Anyway, I really, really wanted my own pair. I asked for them in sixth grade and again was so surprised to get a pair. That was the only thing I got for Christmas that year and I couldn't have been more pleased. I loved them. They were a dark wash, so I couldn't easily wear them everyday like I wanted, the color was too noticeable. I had this awesome goldenrod sweater that looked so good with them! I was one stylin' 6th grader!!!

There were a couple of other presents that have grown in status since we received them. One year we got these crazy dolls that were about 3 feet high. They had soft bodies and huge hard heads. Katie and I fought, a lot. She always would whack me with that stupid doll head. It hurt a lot. We often laugh about those crazy dolls.

Every year I want my girls to have as memorable an experience as I had. I don't think we can do that every year, but I do want to teach them to be grateful for what they have and not to lose sight of what Christmas really is. I'll let you know how this year turns out. I've put more thought than usual into it, hopefully we don't go down in flames.

What are some of your more memorable Christmases?

Gigantor the snowman

I'm a little bit late in getting this posted... the batteries were dead in the camera. Roger and the girls went out to build a snowman a little while ago. When Roger builds a snowman, he builds a snowman. I have dubbed this one Gigantor, it's as tall as Roger is. Good grief! Unfortunately someone knocked it over that night and stole his scarf, dumb kids (am I old enough to say that?). All the snow then melted, even the pile of snow that was Gigantor. Hopefully we will have more opportunities to make a snowman, scarf-free though!

My Husband of the year

Hollywood from Hollywood Flakes wrote this hilarious post about The Husband of the Year awards. I remembered that we have defintely had a Husband of the Year moment. This was obviously on our wedding day and it was February and it was raining. Roger was nice and dry though. There's also some choice footage on our wedding video of the same thing, except I was walking about 10 feet behind him while he held the umbrella. In Roger's defense, he claims it wasn't raining at this particular time. Really though, he's not here to regulate (he's on vacation), so I will claim what I want!

Really Roger doesn't usually act like indicated above. When things like this do happen it's just because he wasn't paying attention, not because he was being rude!

Free rice

I was perusing snopes.com yesterday and came across a site that I thought was way cool. It's called freerice.com. Here's what you do: for every vocabulary word that you can correctly identify the definition, they donate 20 grains of rice to people in need. It actually is a legitimate thing. They work through the United Nations and the advertisers on the site pay for the rice. It's pretty addicting too. I like to think that I'm smart and know what words mean and I felt like I did pretty well. For every 3 words you get right you move up a level. There are 50 levels, but they say that hardly anyone goes above 48. My highest level so far is 38. What has been funny about identifying the words, is that I know most of them because of the scriptures. Whoever said that reading scriptures was a waste of time?

Pour Some Sugar on Me

Sugar be Sweet

Does this look familiar to you? It doesn't really to me, I'm too young. However, I do know the goodness of Pour Some Sugar on Me. My sister Sandee, who is about 12 years older than me, loved and I mean LOVED Def Leppard. She had this song and we would crank it up and sing as loud as we could. Who didn't? Our microphone of choice was a curling iron. I heard Pour Some Sugar on Me on the way home from Breakfast with Santa today and it absolutely made my day. Seeing the kids talk to Santa has nothing on Def Leppard! I found a video for the song, view at your own risk.

Winter fun

We finally got some snow and the girls couldn't wait to go play in it. Unfortunately for them, I have become a complete wuss about being out in the cold. I put it off as long as I could yesterday, but finally took them out after Ashby got home from school. They wanted to make a snowman, but I'm not that good at it when you can't roll a ball to make it bigger and bigger. The snow wasn't quite wet enough for that. The girls just settled for snow angels and a few snow balls.

I can't remember the last time I made a paper count down chain. I was so excited to make one when I remembered (about the 3rd of December instead of Nov. 30th, oh well) The girls got a kick out of it and I was impressed at how well they could apply the glue and make the paper into a circle!

Didn't they do a good job?

Ready for snow.

Ashby snow angel.

Avery snow angel.

This is so humiliating...

But I'm doing it anyway. It's time for a new top five and I'm willing to put myself out there to get a few laughs... Roger and I have longstanding jokes about celebrities that I have a "thing" for. By "thing", I mean that I like them more than others and usually because they have starred in a dream or two. Roger thinks it's hilarious, so don't go feeling bad for him. Also know that I would never do something about this. As in, I would never try to meet any of these people, I will stay far, far away. So with that in mind, here's the new top five.

Top 5 celebrities I have a "thing" for:
1. Dave Matthews. All through college I had quite a thing for him. It's that voice and the mad guitar skills...
2. The Rock. I don't know what it is about him, he's real cute though and I like him.
3. Rafael Araujo. I developed a thing for him when he played for BYU. Don't worry I know all about his elbow-throwing ways, but have you seen those arms? This one causes the most laughter for Rog.
4. Ned, the Pie maker. Pushing Daisies has become my favorite show and it's not just because of the pie maker. However I do think he's rather cute, probably because he reminds me of my sister's junior high boyfriend. I didn't have a thing for him, but he was cute and nice.
5. There isn't another that I like as much as the previous 4, however there are a few other men out there that I think are very cute, but haven't dreamt about. (OK, I know I'm so weird) They include: Chris Drury, David Duchovny (who doesn't love Fox Mulder?) and Reggie Bush. I'm sure there are more but I'm done humiliating myself for one day...

Dave Matthews

The Rock

Rafael Araujo

Ned, the Pie Maker

Let the mocking commence. If you are going to mock though, you have to make a confession of your own first....

Stockings?

I mean, they are stockings right?

We also put up and decorated our tree. We have never had a tree before and I am so thrilled with this one. I know it looks kind of skinny and maybe a little pathetic, but I seriously love it so much!

"You just decorated a Christmas tree, what are you going to do now?" Stand here against the wall and pretend like we aren't having fun.

The Great Thanksgiving trip

We had such a great time in Virginia for Thanksgiving. Thank you so much Nancy and Richard, Mom and Dad, and Kevin and Kelly. They made the trip truly wonderful for us. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at Nancy's house followed by a movie with Grant's school projector on their living room wall (does it get much better than that?) Friday Margaret was kind enough to watch the kids while we had a day out with Bryan, Anna, Reed and Kyle. We went to Tyson's Corner and did a little shopping. I've never gone any where near a retail establishment on Black Friday, but it actually was quite fun. Friday night included dinner and a short Christmas program at Grant and Margaret's. Saturday included the watching of the BYU vs Utah football game at Kevin and Kelly's. GO COUGARS!! Apparently Roger and I put on quite a show while watching the game. If the Utes and Cougars could quit playing heart stoppers, we wouldn't make such fools of ourselves. We had a great time even with the humiliation! We left for home late Saturday night.



We had such a great time. Thank you Chris and Kim for letting us stay at your house, it was so great. We miss all our friends and family in Virginia so much. I caught myself a couple of times wondering why we ever moved.



The other great thing I did while in Virginia was cut off my hair! About a year ago I cut off 10 inches of hair to donate to Locks of Love. My hair was getting longer and longer and was driving me more and more crazy. I didn't have quite 10 inches to donate but luckily I found out about Pantene's new Beautiful Lengths program. They only need 8 inches. Anna agreed to cut off my hair. It's shorter than I've ever had it before and I love it! Luckily hair is not one of those things that I feel emotionally attached too. I plan on cutting it off to donate again as soon as I can. It's something that's easy for me to do, so why not do it? I may not be very good about donating time and money, but I sure can donate hair!


The boys (by boys I mean Kevin, Bryan and Roger) made this game more for themselves, but it got taken over by the grand kids. Avery was very serious about it.

Before, man that hair needs to be cut!

During the cut. You maximize hair to donate with more ponytails and really it's quite a fashion statement.

After. I was very done having my picture taken. Anna did a good job huh?

Wouldn't it be more interesting?

I was up way too late last night doing what I do that keeps me up way to late... getting sucked into the black hole known as the blogosphere. I was reading a few different blogs and I like to look at writers profiles. As I was doing that I had an overwhelming urge to throw up. I'm not a normally cynical person, but give me a break. How many times do I have to read that so and so likes to read, to cook, go to church and spend quality time with their children. Alright already. I guess it's mostly my own insecurity and inferiority that's making me pick on poor blogging women. Wouldn't it be more interesting if in profiles we read about peoples weaknesses and funny things that happened to them? I think you can tell a lot more about a person's character with things like that. That's why I've update my profile. What do you think? Are you in?

Haircuts

It was time for hair cuts this week, or rather haircuts were way over due and I decided to do something about it this week. I had one of my haircutting fears come true. I was cutting Avery's hair and was doing OK but soon realized I was cutting more and more off. When I combed the hair in front of her face to compare the left side with the right side, one side was much, much longer. I had to just about start over and cut all of it again. Her hair ended up really short, but we actually really like it. Every morning when she would wake up, pre-haircut, her hair looked like she'd been rubbing her head back and forth over her pillow all night. Post-haircut, not so much. It's actually easy to comb and she doesn't get as mad at me, that's a definite plus! Ashby's hair could be shorter. She wanted it really short, but then wants to wear ponytails. So now it's long enough that it still gets in her face and bothers her but it's just a little too short for a ponytail. Looks like she's headed for a mullet, that's the only solution right? Here are the before and afters.

Avery before in her favorite place in the house. I like how she has pulled the computer monitor all the way to the edge of the desk. Apparently she has a hard time seeing it when it's back two inches....

Ashby before. We got these fun hats after Halloween, so she had to ride the rocking horse and sing at the top of her lungs.

Both girls after. For whatever reason they smile like this when I ask them too. No real smiles here anymore, just fake ones.

Weekend of great theater

Friday night Roger and I were able to go to Midland, PA to watch Reed (Roger's nephew) in a production of 42nd Street. It was so amazing. He was so amazing. We went to the same place to see him in Cats and I really enjoyed this one more. (both were great, of course) Reed is truly so talented and I count myself very lucky to get to see him perform.

A very pleasant side effect from 42nd street was that we got to see Richard and Nancy and their family as well as Grant and Margaret who were in town to see the play. It was very fun to have Richard and Nancy stay with us. I don't think I saw our kids almost the whole weekend, they were very busy with Naomi. Of course I forgot to take pictures, but we had a great time!

The other theatrical event (I use the term loosely) we witnessed was our ward's primary program. When Ashby was younger I couldn't wait until she was primary age just so that I could see her in the program. Believe me, she didn't disappoint. You know how there's always that kid that sings louder than every one else and slightly off tune? You know how there's always that other kid who picks their nose while on the stand? Well I am very happy to report that she was both of those kids! I attribute the loud off key singing to her age. She did know all the words at least, but she doesn't quite understand things like key and pitch (wait, I don't either....). She had several lines that she memorized and said almost perfectly. She had the first speaking part in the program, she did great. She loves all of the primary songs and knew them all quite well. It was so fun to see her doing something that she loves. I look forward to many years of fantastic primary programs! I didn't get a picture of her on Sunday so this will have to do.

Green week

OK I know I watch too much TV, because I happen to know that NBC is doing a green week. They have done things like leave the lights off in the studio during Sunday Night Football halftime and post game. They said that saved enough energy to power a household for a month. The contestants on The Biggest Loser worked out for a whole week without electricity. And so on. I always say that I'm an activist at heart. Things like global warming always pull at my heart strings, but not enough for me to do anything about it. You could say I'm a passive-activist (he, he, he). Anyway NBC green week got me thinking about somethings that I can to better to conserve, recycle and reuse. So here's my list (by no means am I doing this to toot my own horn, rather to keep brainstorming about ways to improve).

When we moved into the house in March we saw that we had grape vines. I was kind of grouchy about it at first because I thought it would just be messy and annoying. However when the grapes started growing, we got excited. We were able to can about 24 quarts of grape juice. It was our first experience with something like this and we loved it. It was nice to get something from your own property, i.e. free!

While my parents were here, my dad helped Roger build a garden box. Gardening wasn't something I was ever too interested in doing, but lots of people do it around here and I now think it's way cool. We have a little yard, but we will make the most of it. We also started a compost pile. Roger will probably build two more boxes in the spring. We are just doing a little at a time.

This is now my new favorite thing. Giant Eagle has these reusable bags that you can buy to cut down on the use of plastic grocery bags. We all know it takes forever for those to decompose. These bags are quite a good size so I won't need as many.

I'm sure I am making a lot of people laugh with this post because these things are probably not that significant, but it's a place to start. Our borough doesn't offer recycling, but there are places to recycle paper and some plastics nearby. Little by little we are doing better.

What tips and ideas do you have to make a difference, big or small?

Halloween

Introducing Princess Avs and Panda Ashby. I thought they looked pretty darn cute. It apparently is serious business posing for photos on Halloween, no one would smile. Some of the definite highlights of the day were:

• Avery and I going to the grocery store, she was the only one in costume and got lots of oohs and ahhs.
• Avery's dress was long on her so she would hold it up in the front when she walked. She did that with a royalty like reverence, it was so funny.
• The weather was unbelievably good for trick or treating. Neither girl needed a jacket, long sleeved shirts did the trick.
• When the girls would trick or treat, they wouldn't hold their pumpkins up to let our neighbors put the treats in, they just held them in front of their bodies. The girls are short, so the poor people had to bend practically to the ground to land the treats in the pumpkins.
• We managed to hand out all of our candy (really we left it in a bowl on the porch while we were talking to our neighbors and it mysteriously vanished....)
• The girls did actually fall asleep prior to midnight. Hopped up on all that candy, I thought we'd be in for a long one!

The no TV week

Last Tuesday after I put the girls to bed, I was up decorating cookies while Roger was securing birthday gifts. It's not uncommon in our house for the girls play in their room before they settle down for the night. Last Tuesday was no exception. I could hear them playing and didn't think anything of it until Avery starting crying and was coming downstairs to tell me something. I met her in the stairwell and saw that she was covered in white stuff. That's never, ever a good thing. I went upstairs with her and there was white stuff everywhere. Said white stuff was my expensive face lotion. I was furious. I continued to investigate and saw that lotion was all over Avery's bed frame and the carpet near her bed. I looked in the bathroom and there was RED stuff all over. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was so furious that I removed myself from the situation. I left them upstairs until Roger came home. Apparently they found a couple of tubes of lipstick and thought it would be fun to paint everything in sight, including themselves. Then realizing that they weren't supposed to be doing that, they tried to clean up with my lotion. They were also using a towel that is now permanently covered in red lipstick. I hate, and I mean HATE, things like that. I know they know better and it infuriates me. We thought it was appropriate that they lose TV privileges for a week. It actually didn't punish me as much as I thought it might. I will be the first to admit that my girls watch way too much TV. I think I'm just nervous that I won't know what to do with them when the TV is off. But I think we did just fine this past week. Here are some pictures of things we did.

We played with play doh. Those are snowmen because we are excited for snow. Have you ever tried to make stick arms out of play doh? It's not that easy, that's why my snowman looks like a penguin.

We carved pumpkins. Roger was working late so he missed out! Avery didn't want me to carve hers, she opted for coloring on it instead!

And we made more cookies for school. What's Halloween at school without sugar cookies?

Overall it wasn't too bad of a week. I learned that we are capable of entertaining each other without the TV. I will now make a renewed effort to reduce how much we watch!

I was tagged

I was tagged by my friend Alisha on Wednesday. That means that I'm supposed to write six interesting things about myself. I've been racking my brain to figure out something that maybe everyone who knows me doesn't know, but so far I'm coming up blank. Alisha is harassing me to write it... so here goes nothing!

1. I started taking dance lessons when I was 8. The studio I danced at changed ownership right before I started high school so I stopped taking classes. However, I was then a member of the Cottonwood High School Dance Company, so really I didn't stop dancing regularly until I was 18. I have so many great memories of dance. I feel so torn about it now as a mother. My mom spent so much time and money for me to dance and sometimes I really, really hated it. I am so grateful now, but I don't know how much I would push my girls to dance if they didn't want to. I probably wouldn't and then would regret it. Neither girl is enrolled in dance now, but it's really something I would like both of them to try.

2. My memory is really, really good; about some things. For example, I can remember that my junior high friend Jessica Freed's birthday is on April 21st. I haven't spoken to her since probably 1997. However, I can't remember any grammar rules or what I learned in eighth grade French class.

3. I used to loathe the color pink. I don't so much anymore, but it's still not my favorite. Part of the loathing was probably that I didn't want to appear to be girly at all, it wasn't something I was very comfortable with. I knew lots and lots of girly girls and I just didn't think it was for me. I realize now that even though I didn't feel like I was one of them, there were better ways to deal with it than to despise the poor color pink!

4. I grew up in Utah, minutes from the canyons and I'm a terrible, I mean really truly horrible skier. I took lessons through the school in eighth and ninth grade and I was the worst in the class both years.

5. I've never stayed up for 24 hours before. My friends and I would try to pull all nighters when I was younger, but I couldn't ever stay up for the entire 24 hours. Ask anyone who knows me, I need my sleep!

6. I learned last week that I like to sew. I've had a sewing machine for a while now and haven't used it much. I was doing a very simple project last week (making bags for school kits) and I realized that I liked it. I felt amazed at what I could create when I was sewing. I know my abilities (they are few) when it comes to sewing, so I think that if I stay within those boundaries and learn a little more at a time, that I could probably make myself a good little hobby!

This kind of turned into a trip down memory lane . I figure that the people I am friends with now, probably don't know much about my childhood anyway, so it's ok...right?

I think I'm supposed to tag some people too, so here goes (you can send me all the hate mail you want, just do it!) All you Virginians are it.... Kelly Worth, Nancy Worth, Margaret Worth and Kim Ellsworth!

Ashby is 5!!

Today was Ashby's birthday and I thought we had a pretty fun day! She slept in (yea more for me I guess). Then we had under the bowls (a variation of the Worth family tradition, under the plates) and opened a few presents. She wore new clothes to school today and took some cookies with her. Then we came home and read some books until it was time to meet Roger at Chili's for her birthday dinner. After that we came home to cake and her biggest gift... a new bike! Unfortunately the screen on our digital camera isn't working so I couldn't see how blurry the picture was, but I'll post it anyway. I think she was happy with her day. Of course she made the comment that she didn't get all those things she wanted that she saw on TV.... we are terrible parents huh! Lucky for us, we get a much needed break from the TV, more details about that to come.

I can't believe my little girl is 5. I remember thinking when she was brand new how long it would be before she would be 5. Now it's here and I can't believe it. I hardly remember my life without her. She a truly such a joy, we love her so much!

Birthday cookies for school. (they are supposed to be spiders, but I couldn't find black string licorice.)

Ashby at Chili's. She wore her hood up the whole day, it was very cute!

Ashby with her requested birthday cake. Can you tell what it's supposed to look like?

She did a great job blowing out her candles.

Blurry picture on bike. She has a purple helmet on, but it looks like a mullet, cool.

My sister-in-law Kelly, requested a picture of Avery on her bike and here it is. She hasn't really ridden her bike since she got it (Avery, not Kelly). Hopefully she will want to now that Ashby has one too.

Do we really care?

I've been a terrible blogger lately and I'm going to try to do better. I saw such a funny headline on CNN today that I thought I would write about it. Here it is....Martial arts TV star picks presidential candidate. The martial arts TV star in question is Chuck Norris. I was laughing so hard. Does the American Public really care who Walker, Texas Ranger picks for US President? I do have to admit that I have kind of a soft spot for Walker, Texas Ranger because of Conan O'Brien. He used to have the Walker, Texas Ranger lever that he would pull during his show to show random clips from Walker, Texas Ranger. It gave me many a good laugh. However, I still don't think Chuck Norris' political opinions will influence my own!

The visitors

OK not like from another planet like it sounds, just from Utah. My parents came for a visit just a few weeks ago. I've been really slow to update the blog, it was protesting pictures last week and I'm just barely trying again. We had so much fun with them here. We did lots of fun things as well as lots of relaxing! Roger was off the whole week which was so unbelievably nice. Here's a load of pictures to prove the fun!

Avery wants to be a princess for Halloween and her birthday was the perfect excuse to get a princess dress. Thanks mom for accommodating! Ashby fell at school and skinned her nose, lovely huh?


Grandma also brought their Christmas presents. These dresses were too darn cute to not let them wear already. I love it when they will wear matching dresses!

Here's a view of downtown Pittsburgh. We rode the Duquesne (pronounced Doo-cane) Incline up to the top of Mt. Washington and tried to take pictures of the breathtaking view. The incline was built in the 1800s to get workers from their homes on top of the mountain to work near the river. They had a museum up at the top where we learned lots of cool stuff about Pittsburgh. They had these amazing old newspaper photos from right around the turn of the century that showed Pittsburgh in the middle of the day, but it looked like night time because of all the pollution. Pittsburgh definitely benefited from pollution restrictions.

Ashby and Grandma looking beautiful in brown!

We took a fun trip to Wilmot, OH. There we met one of my mom's friends that she met through work. Joann told up about the world's largest cuckoo clock. Unfortunately the actually cuckooing was rather anti-climactic, but we enjoyed the buffet lunch. After that we continued west into Amish Country. The drive was absolutely beautiful. We enjoyed a day of shopping in Berlin, OH. There were so many fun homemade things to look at (we tried not to buy!)

Another definite highlight was the dinner cruise on the three rivers. The view was amazing. Here's our little family on the boat.

We love you Grandma and Grandpa!

Also while they were here we canned grape juice, went hiking at Harrison Hills Park and ate lots of good food! We miss my parents a lot and were so glad they could come for a visit.