Sunday, April 24, 2011

Happy Easter!!!

Yeah, I know. I haven't updated this thing in AGES.....and oh well....life has been so ungodly hectic I just literally have not found the time to sit down and blah-blah-blog about my life in gory detail......HOWEVER....since i would rather blog than clean my house....sit back and be prepared to get caught up on the Wonderful World of Herman (hmmm, that sounds like a brilliant reality TV show, no?)

In addition to the usual stuff going on: scouts, flute, choir, church, we've had a few major things happen the last couple months......and now, oh yeah.....it's ball season! Softball games start THIS WEEK (seems kinda early to me!), and tball and baseball will be starting up shortly. How I'm going to manage to be at 3 games at the same time is still up in the air, but I will do my best since I strive to be Supermom like that!

So let's start back where I left off with the blogging.....

Late February (sheesh, that's really bad, even for me).......Karl did the Polar Bear Plunge again for Special Olympics. This year he dressed up as Cousin Eddie from National Lampoon's Christmas vacation. You don't want to know the lengths we had to go to to get a cheetah-print speedo in his size......and I would argue there's a valid reason for that:

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Alaina had her 10th birthday:
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I cannot believe my baby girl is 10 years old. a whole DECADE has gone by and I swear it's just not possible. She wanted a Monster High coffin cake.....so that's what I made...and compared to some cakes I've tackled in the past, this one wasn't too bad! She loved it, of course. She and her friends were too much in a hurry to get to the pool anyways......

My girl scout troop went to a lock-in at the St. Louis Science Center.....what a FUN night! Such a great experience!
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And our toop met the Mayor during national Girl Scout week:
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We had a food drive:
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And were honored by the City of Grafton for our contribution to the food pantry:
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(yes, I love getting photo ops for my Girl Scout troop.....it's my goal to get us in the paper every week, bwahahahahahaha!)

And here's another one.......our troop made and sent origami Cranes to the Girl Scouts of Japan after the earthquake/tsunami:
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And not to diss the boys.......Matthew's cub scout pack's Blue and Gold Banquet:
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Karl was ordained to the office of Priest:
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And Zach's preK class went bowling:
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So that brings us up to April....

Horseback riding for my troop:
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Alaina's final concert for the semseter in the Riverbend Chilren's Chorus. She had SUCH a fun time in the chorus.....we will totally be signing up again for this in the fall.....I'm tempted to join the adult chorus! :D
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I took the Juniors of our troop to a Wildlife workshop at the Treehouse Wildlife Rescue Center:
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Karl and I went to hear President Veazey's annual address at the Temple:
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Zach's PreK class had an Easter egg hunt and party:
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And today is, of course, Easter Sunday......so from our (yes, we are completely color-coordinated) family to yours:
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Have a Blessed Easter.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Slide show

just for fun, and since i can't seem to update the one on the side anymore.....I created this:

Day 26: Party of Five

Day 26-Picture of your family

Being an amateur photographer, I always take a picture of the 5 of us every year for our Christmas card. This year, Karl got me a lighting kit for my birthday/Christmas present……so I didn’t have to borrow my sister-in-law’s stuff! Yay!

Zach was sick this day, so he wasn’t the smiley-happy guy I’d like him to have been, but oh well…….and no, we’re not wearing any shoes…..because I didn’t want to get the backdrop dirty! It was new, dernit!

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Here we are......our little Herman party of 5!

Day 25: The Herman Shuffle!!!

Day 25-Put your iPod on shuffle, first 10 songs

YAY! I'm going to LOVE this assignment! I did this for a thing on Facebook a year or so ago.....I couldn't stop at 10 then, and I won't this time either, so kick back and prepare for a long post!

Here we go!

1. “Found out about you” – Gin Blossoms. I listened to this album relentlessly in college. Haven’t listened to the song in ages and actually didn’t realize it was on my iPod. Cool!

2. “Photograph” – Nickelback. Wow, I could write a whole post about that song. It darned near makes me cry every time I hear it, because I can so relate…..just reminiscing about your life and all that…..the older I get the more I ponder such things……mostly so I don’t forget, because my memory is cr@p!

3. “Soak up the Sun” – Cheryl Crow. MAN, does that sound GOOD right now! A warm beach, some sunshine…..yes please!

4. “I can be your friend” – Veggie Tales. LOL……I put all the Veggie Tales songs (most of them are Sunday School songs) into our iTunes library and onto Alaina’s iPod……and I guess they ended up on mine as well (can you tell how often I look at my library? Not often!). It’s a great song though…..it talks about accepting people that are different and how you can all be friends anyways. Cute song.

5. “Good Enough” – Sarah McLachlan. Oh yeah……I remember this one. I love her, and I remember singing this one many a time back in college…….I even remembered the harmonies just now. Yay me!

6. “Monster High Fright Song” – Monster High Soundtrack. Uhm, gag. Alaina is currently all into this Monster High fad. We were being cool parents and downloaded this song and set it up to be the ringtone on her phone. I’m already sick of it btw…..skipping ahead now….

7. “Better Days” – Goo Goo Dolls. Ooooh, another good one I haven’t listened to in forever. I even have the sheet music for this and can play it on the piano….well….until it gets to the difficult parts. :D lol……I was actually thinking at one time that it’d be a good solo for a friend of mine to do at church. Hmmm….I might have to revisit that idea.

8. “Nothin’ But a Good Time” – Poison. OH YEAH! I have this one on my running playlist now. Talk about your blasts from the past. Late 80’s-early 90’s……I was all about Poison. I’d still love to go to a Poison concert. One of my favorite bands of all time……..ah, memories of my BFF in junior high rocking this on the guitar and me doing the vocals…….*sigh*….good times, good times.

9. “The Power of Love” – Huey Lewis & the News. LOL……great song! I love Huey Lewis! What’s funny about this song is that it TOTALLY reminds me of my childhood. I downloaded this song to put in a slideshow I made for my brother Dean’s 40th birthday a couple years ago. Deano was a HUGE Huey fan, so I got to hear this song like 10 billion times, so it reminds me of him……him blasting it on his stereo…..mom yelling to turn it down……me (being the annoying little sister), trying to weasel into his room to sing along……him kicking me out…..and me singing along anyways since I could still hear it. Ah, good times!!!

10. “Where I Stood” – Missy Higgins. Not sure if this was a really popular song or not……I think it came out a couple years ago. The lyrics totally spoke to me though……I “get it”….been there….done that……I could sing this one and truly understand what she’s saying. I usually cry when I hear this song. I’m such a sap.
I’m having fun with this, so I’m gonna keep going!

11. “I Gotta Feeling” – Black Eyed Peas. Did you see their Super Bowl halftime show? The kids were totally digging the costumes that light up and changed colors! And then there was that clip on youtube of that college up in Canada that made the video to this....I always think of that when I hear this song. Fun song!

12. “Happy” – Sister Hazel. I don’t think this was even a single released by them. But it was one of my favorite songs on the album (Somewhere More Familiar, in case you care). One of my favorite song lyrics of all time is in this song: “I remember thinkin’: who’s content and who’s for rent”……not sure why that stuck with me all these years, but it just did. It’s a profound lyric really if you stop and ponder it (like I obviously have). Am I content? Can I be ‘bought’? am I after material gain and that’s why I’m not content? Interesting song though……give it a listen if you’ve never heard it before……it talks about why we’re happy and why we’re not……deep stuff man!

13. “The World I Know” – Collective Soul. I always loved the cello in this song. I love cellos. Any song that’s good some good strings in it, and I’m hooked. :D I wish I could play the cello……..maybe I’ll add that to my goals list!

14. “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” – They Might Be Giants. O.M.G I am laughing SO HARD right now…..the coworkers are giving me funny looks. This is great. I completely forgot about this song. I actually saw these guys in concert back in college. It was a blast! Such a goofy, funny song! I’ve got to move this to a playlist so I can actually hear it once in awhile (can you tell I never put my iPod on shuffle with the whole library? I have a couple playlists that I listen to and forget about all the other stuff! That’s a shame obviously, as I’m having fun with this ‘assignment’)

15. “Land of Confusion” – Genesis. Hmmm….. this is what happens when married people combine their libraries! I’m not a HUGE Genesis fan, and I can definitely say I didn’t put this on here. I just remember the video though, with all those puppets? Remember that? Hilarious. I’m going to have to go look it up on youtube now. Good song though…..great message. Phil Collins always looks like he’s in pain when he sings though…….why is that?

16. “Arrival to Earth” – Transformers soundtrack. Are we the only wierdos that download musical scores? Surely not. I like instrumentals. They’re frustrating in the fact that I can’t sing along when there’s no words…….but on the flip side, it’s a nice change of pace to be able to really sit back and LISTEN to the music vs. concentrating on the lyrics like I usually do.

17. “Take a Chance on Me” – ABBA. Okay, I’ll give the hubby this one. I like this one. Not one I put in the library, but I won’t begrudge him this one. Which reminds me……I need to get Mamma Mia on DVD! :D

18. “Before he Cheats” – Carrie Underwood. Ooooh. This is on my short-list of Karaoke songs. Without going into specifics or incriminating myself…….let’s just say that ‘someone I know’ did deflate a certain boyfriend’s tires when she caught him cheating on her. Smashing headlights and ripping upholstery would’ve equated to a stint in jail, and the guy wasn’t worth that whole vandalism rap. But deflating tires? It was cathartic…..for ‘her’. Sing it, sister! Amen.

19. “Daydream Believer” – The Monkees. WTH? How did this get in here? I didn’t even know karl liked this one. But it’s kinda funny. And I actually have a history with this song, amazingly enough. My first car was a 1977 Mercury Comet. And it had an 8-track player in it. (let me tell ya, back in 1991 when I inherited it……that was SO COOL. Not!) And the only 8-track we had was this song. Any idea how many times I listened to this song? When my only other source of music was the AM (no FM, mind you!) radio???? Oh yeah…….cheer up, sleepy Jean…….oh what can it mean……my girlfriends in high school were NOT amused. :D

20. “Safety Dance” – Men Without Hats. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Again, I’m laughing my arse off here. Why? Because I can’t hear this song without laughing hysterically. Back when we were dating, Karl and I would spend way too much money at Best Buy on CDs. Well…..one particular Saturday we were at Best Buy and Karl bought this 80’s compilation CD that had this song on it (Karl is a big 80’s music buff, in case you haven’t figured that out yet). I just rolled my eyes like I always did. Then that evening, we went to see a movie. A TERRIBLE movie, btw, but it had its funny moments. I should’ve known better since Pauly Shore was in it, kwim? Anyhoo….we went to go see “Bio Dome”. And there’s a scene in this awful theatrical mess where Pauly and whoever (I don’t remember) are in this Bio Dome and refuse to come out……so the ‘suits’ say “here, this will get them out” and they play this song….and of course Pauly and his sidekick just start dancing and such instead of going insane like a normal person would. I was laughing hysterically in the theater……..laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Karl had JUST BOUGHT THIS CD….and here’s this movie mocking it. I found it hysterical. Still do. Karl didn’t think that scene was nearly as funny as I did. *snicker* He still gets mad when I laugh and remind him of that movie. Lol…

5 more, and then I’ll shut up, I promise!

21. “Our Song” – Taylor Swift. Now, admittedly, I am not a country music fan (I abhor the sound of a steel guitar….it’s like nails on a chalkboard to me). But there are a handful of exceptions to my anti-country mantra. Taylor, Carrie, Shania, and Faith are basically those exceptions…..maybe a couple others that’ve slipped my mind, I dunno. Anyhoo…..I love Taylor. I think she’s a better songwriter than vocalist, but what do I know? she’s the one with the Grammys, not me! nobody’s paying to hear ME sing, now are they? :D Alaina LOVES her, and this is one of the first songs I remember Alaina memorizing in its entirety. I think she was like 6 or 7 at the time. Cuteness.

22. “Superman” – Five for Fighting. LOVE this one. I’m a total sucker for piano ballads. I actually have the music to this one and could play it once upon a time……I might just have to dust it off and give it another try one of these days!

23. “What is Love” – Haddaway. Uhm, all I can think of when I hear this song is ‘Night at the Roxbury’, and how my hubby would insist on doing the dance at every wedding reception we’d go. My apologies to every bride that got caught up in this song……..literally. (if you’ve seen the movie, you should know what I’m talking about there). I tried to stop it, but the idiocy cannot be contained. It is kinda funny to watch though…..I’m sure some home movies exist of the Herman brothers dancing to this song…….God help us all! Our children will never live it down.

24. “Break Away” – Kelly Clarkson. Wow. Almost darned autobiographical. Seriously. If I could write a song, I could’ve easily written this one. It’s like my life in 4 minutes. :D

25. “More” – Usher. My current fave song of the moment. I get in a mood where I’ll listen to a “new” song on repeat for a couple of days until I’m thoroughly sick of it. :D Good song for my running playlist actually…..most remember to move it there….

And an “extra”, because this one came on and I just HAVE to comment:

26. “Don’t Stop Believin’” – Glee cast. Yes, I paid money for this song. Alaina insisted. She LOVES this song. She can sing Rachel Berry’s part just as good as she does (not that I’m biased or anything). Amazingly, when I played the ORIGINAL Journey version of this song, Alaina didn’t care for it as much….said it wasn’t as “peppy” as the Glee version. To each generation their own, right? But still….can’t have enough Journey songs in our lives, can we? :D And I gotta admit, this is one of the best songs they’ve ever done on that show…….kinda barbershop quartet-ish with the background vocals, but it still rocks…..and of course Rachel steals the show, as always. :D sometimes Alaina will sing Rachel’s part and I’ll sing Finn’s part……sometime she’ll sing it all and I’ll just listen….sometimes she wants to do all that “da-da-da-da-da”ing in the background and I’ll rock out on lead. Do they have this song for Guitar Hero I wonder? We would totally kill this! :D

Funny how I have so many stories to go along with songs……I could probably do this for a couple hundred more songs, but that would probably get boring for anybody actually reading this…….i would enjoy it most thoroughly though! I’m a big music nut and have the uncanny ability to equate songs with my past…where I was when I heard such-and-such a song…….is anybody else like that? have a ‘musical memory’??

Day 24: What I've learned...

Day 24-Something you've learned

Uhm…….I’ve learned a LOT of things in my 35 years. How to sum it up in one blog post…

I've learned to never underestimate the power of Prayer. So many times things have happened to me or a loved one that seemed insurmountable at the time....impossible to get through.....but after offering it up to God in prayer, we always come through it......maybe not the way WE want to, but we get through it nonetheless.

I’ve learned that it never hurts to plan ahead. I’m a planner. I’m of the mindset that you should “Plan for the worst and hope for the best” Most of the junk that has happened to us or people we know could’ve been prevented with better planning. Of course, I say that NOW…….hindsight and all that…

I’ve learned that time goes by way too fast. I can’t believe how big my kids are already. I look back at pictures of them from just a few months ago and they’ve already changed so much!

I've learned that I worry too much. I'm working on trying to do something about that, but it's way easier said than done!

I've learned that it's okay to not do everything 'just right'......sometimes ya gotta settle for "good enough" :D

i could go on all day......but I'm tired, so I won't. :D

Day 23: Vacay Time!

Day 23: Your favorite vacation.

July 2008, 10 days in England/Ireland. By far my favorite vacation!

The trip to England/Ireland was our 10-year anniversary present to each other. Karl was leading an EF tour (student trip), so we had a guide, a tour bus….lots of high school and college kids to chaperone (and they babysat for us too!)…..it was a blast of a trip.

We flew into London and spent a couple days there touring the city….
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then north into Oxford and Wales where we visited Oxford University, Shakespeare’s birthplace, a couple castles (actually, we went through so many castles on this trip, I had to google them when I got home to remember their names!).
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Then we had a ferry ride to Dublin where we had a couple days there. We didn’t tour the Guinness factory….some of the kids did, but we went shopping instead….Guinness was consumed though…..I just won't admit how MUCH! Then we toured Ireland southward……more castles (kissing the Blarney stone!),

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more amazing scenery,

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The Cliffs of Moher....on a really really foggy day:

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and we flew home from Shannon under the direction of Captain Matthew! That was SUCH a memorable moment: matthew took a wrong turn boarding the plane and ended up in the cockpit hanging out with the pilots! The captain asked me (who ran up there, camera in hand, to capture the moment of course!) if I thought Matthew could do the welcome greeting, so we practiced it with him a couple times and Matthew did the announcement to the flight saying what our flight time was, etc......and that Captain Matthew was in charge of the aircraft. It was the cutest thing EVER!

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Awesome trip. Highly recommend it!

Here’s another of my favorite pics from the trip…….i had a grand total of about 5 seconds to get this shot…..we were ‘behind schedule’ on our tour and our guide was making us literally RUN here…..so it’s a miracle that this shot even turned out. But still….GORGEOUS. Torq falls, County Galway, Ireland:

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I’m trying to talk Karl into organizing another EF tour so we can go someplace cool on the cheap again……he’s considering it…..anybody up for a Germany/Italy/Austria/Switzerland trip in the summer of 2013? :D Anyone?

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Day 22: Makin' it up as I go along.....

Day 22-What's in your makeup bag

Makeup. Duh! Well….since I have the uncanny ability to make an entire blog post out of a one-word answer, let me rephrase that. In my makeup bag there are TONS of cosmetic essentials, I’m telling you!

Let me preface this by saying this: I don’t really wear makeup. I don’t like how it feels on my face and I don’t have the foggiest idea what I’m doing when I put it on. So my morning face routine consists of me putting lots of moisturizer on, grumbling about my laugh-lines (crows’ feet, WRINKLES, whatever) and my clogged pores…..and then dealing with whatever child just yelled at me since those 15 seconds is all the time I’m allotted to myself for my beauty routine.

But back to my makeup bag: There’s foundation…..which I wear once a week, tops. For church, and that’s it. And I haven’t even been wearing it to church lately because my skin is SO DRY right now, when I put foundation on, it makes me look like a lizard. No joke. It’s gross. So I just haven’t been wearing it. Maybe I need to switch brands, I dunno. Makeup is not my forte. I should’ve put “learning how to correctly apply makeup” as one of my goals. I need someone to show me how. Seriously.

There’s blush (which I never wear, so I’m kinda stumped as to why I even have it….and am curious as to how old it must be), eye shadow (which again, I never wear except maybe those 2 times a year karl and I go out on a fancy date), eyeliner (which I DO wear……probably more often than anything else actually), mascara (again, rarely wear this because it gets in my eyes and bugs the bejesus out of me), moisturizer (which I use religiously yet still my cheeks are so dry they actually HURT at the moment), toner (which I haven’t been using since my skin is already so darned dry the thought of using toner right now seems ludicrous), some dental floss (which isn’t makeup, but it’s in the bag!), a tube of carmex (which I hate, so I’m not sure what that’s doing in there. I’m a Chapstick person. Karl’s the Carmex person), 3 tubes of lipstick (that I got free and they’ve basically remained untouched since lipstick is my least favorite makeup item. Even when I wear makeup I rarely wear lipstick. HATE the stuff….but for pictures and special occasions, I’ll put some on. Grudgingly.), and a travel-sized tube of toothpaste (half-used from my last overnight stay somewhere).

That was fascinating, wasn’t it? I hope you learned a lot about me…..and my lack of cosmetic skills.

Feel free to send me some makeup tips……or a gift certificate to Clinique. :D I’ll gladly accept either one!