yet another funny comment...

This past Sunday, we drove to Grandma and Grandpa V's house to go to my aunt's welcome home speech for her mission. As we were leaving and getting on the highway, Mister asked me "How fast are we going?"

I said "50,"--as if this number means anything to a 4-year-old.

He said, "Is that fast?"

"Yes, it's pretty fast," I said.

"Oh. Is that 'cause there's no cops on that road?" he asks.

??? Huh??? Where did he even learn the word cop, let alone that you can go fast when they're not around??? Certainly not from me!

CPK

Last night we thought it would be fun to ride the train (Front Runner) to SLC with the kids to hang out and have dinner. It was tons of fun. The kids had a blast. You can imagine the little ones thought it was the best thing in the world to ride on the train. Plus, there was even an upstairs on the train. (Even better!) Then we rode Trax over to the Gateway (a whole 2-3 blocks) and had dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. We thought we were going to have a huge wait, but once the Jazz game started the place cleared out and the seated us quickly. After dinner we hit a couple shops, till we had to run back to the trains. Lots of fun.

Here are some photos of us at the restaurant:

Me with Mister (who loves making faces for the camera lately)

Ben and me with a ghost face. (Darn flash on the dumb camera...*grumble*)

Lemur and Buddy


Missy, Mister (making another face), and Lemur in the back.

Buddy and Bug.

By the way, if you haven't ever ridden the train, and are wanting to...let me pass on a tip that we learned the hard way! When we went to buy the tickets, we were thinking you had to buy separate ones for everyone at $10 a ticket. We thought it was going to cost $50! (The little boys were free.) So we bought one, before we realized there's a family pass--two adults and up to 6 kids for only $16. So get the family pass if more than 1 person is riding.

I guess UTA made their profit on us last night!

Scrabble...

Since Ben's residency we've become Scrabble players. My mom started us on it, and we've become pretty competitive (Mom, Ben, me, and whoever else we can rope into playing it). I thought we were pretty hard-core--apart from using the dictionary to look up words, and using the two-letter-word cheat sheet. Sometimes we play variations of the original. For example: for a quicker game play with only 2 people, you play with 9 letters instead of the standard 7.

Then, the other day I learned that in competitive Scrabble, they play with timers. You only have 25 minutes to make all your words for the game. And you get docked like 10 points for every minute you go over. So, in competition, a Scrabble game between two people would only last 50 minutes. We're nowhere near that fast!

The other night, however, I played the most awesome game of Scrabble against Ben. I NEARLY hit 300 points (297). I even took a picture of the board so I could post it here, and of course, it's not on my dumb camera. (Have I mentioned I hate the thing? I'm getting a new one this week! By the way, thanks for working those extra shifts, honey.)

Anyway, it was a great win. Ben started with a huge word that went from the middle space to one place away from the triple-word-score on the right. We laughed and said it was a race to see who could get an "s" and put it on the end of that word--that way you'd get TWO triple-word-score words. Huge score, for those of you who are not Scrabble players. I happened to get the "s" first, and I even used my "z" in that new word. So I ended up with like 71 points for that turn.

There was no catching me after that. I was smokin'. . . on fire! And I was even trying to keep my turns very short, with this new official rule in the back of my mind. (It only helped a little that I got all the high-point letters, like the "q", "j", "z", and "x".) It's just too bad I don't have the proof (pic) I wanted. Ben's already claiming that game never happened. Though I think I still have the score-card.

funny comments from kids

The last couple of days Lemur hans't been feeling well. Kind of the non-descript malaise and fever. So he's been hanging out on the couch a lot and today wanted to play Mario Super Sluggers on the Wii. I let him and Mister have a good long turn playing and then when they started to fight we turned it off. This made Lemur mad. He started doing the hard-cry and then forcing it. He wanted to play the Gamecube next, and was told no, so the forced fake cry continued louder and longer. Mister walked over to the timer we use to time turns on the Wii and said to Lemur "I'm going to set this, and when it goes off, you have to be done crying. Okay?" I couldn't help laughing. Although it gave me a good idea about how to stop Mister from throwing his fits! "You can have 1 minute, then you have to be done."

PBS junkie...

I've become a sucker for PBS' Masterpiece Classic. A few years ago they did the Complete Jane Austen and I was hooked. I DVRed every one and relished each movie. The next season they had a great line-up including A Room With a View, My Boy Jack (starring Daniel Radcliffe), and a star-studded Cranford which has become one of my favorite movies of all time. I was even suckered into buying the movie if anyone wants to come over and watch. This season has been another winner with Tess of the d'Urbervilles (a great book), Wuthering Heights (again, another great high school English book), and a bunch of Charles Dickens--the first part of Oliver Twist was on tonight.

If you love classic PBS/BBC movies like these, I highly recommend Masterpiece. They are SO much better than the Hollywood versions (i.e. Sense and Sensibility). You can also watch online if you miss them on TV.

If I dream it, it will come, right?

Anyone else yearning for spring? Winter has once again reared it's ugly head, after teasing us with spring weather for a few days. All this snow is like a slap in the face. . . And a kick in the back, as removing all the heavy, wet snow has given me an incredibly sore lower back. I figure I must have moved about 2 tons of snow from in front of the mailbox--all that crap the snowplows throw up on the sides of the road. And, of course, I always finish just in time for the plow to come mess up my hard work. Ugh.

I'm ready for spring. I'm sick of jogging on a treadmill, or around the incredibly small track at the gym. I'm sick of the short days and getting up in the morning before the sun (though grateful that they are slowly getting longer). Seasonal affective disorder...yeah--I'm a believer!

Harlem Globetrotters

A few weeks ago my sister invited us to go to the Harlem Globetrotters with her tonight. It was a lot of fun. We met at her house in SLC and had a quick dinner. Then the big kids (Bud, Missy, and Bug) rode Trax with Aunt Kristin and Uncle Ian to the E.S. arena, while Ben and I drove with the little ones. (It will forever be the Delta Center to me...I don't deal well with name changes.) Anyway, we had a ton of fun. It was a great show--even Lemur and Mister were entertained for the majority of it. Wishe we'd had time for autographs, but Ben had to get to work for the night shift.

Birthday pictures

Bug had a great birthday. Mister and Lemur helped me pick out his presents. They wanted to get him a "backyard habitat" where you can catch bugs (in a bug vacuum, which he also got) from your yard and put them in the little habitat. You can also send for tadpoles (and food) and get them in the mail to grow in your habitat.

He also got a butterfly treehouse where you can grow caterpillars (you have to send for these, too) into butterflies.

Fun with critters!

He also got a fishing pole. Yeah, I'm still thinking "what?" on this gift. When I was shopping, I asked Ben what I should get him. He came back with a couple of smart aleck suggestions, then said a fishing pole. Huh? My husband fishes? My husband wants to take his son fishing? Since when?! Anyway, he was serious in his suggestion, so Bug got a fishing pole. Made Buddy a bit jealous, but I told him we could get one for him, too.

Here's an interesting tidbit of info that I learned: tadpoles do not need to be fed during the time when they're growing their front feet and losing their tails. They get their nutrition from the tail being absorbed into the body. (*yech!*)

Singing Happy Birthday, and blowing out the candles.

Birthday Cake

I tried making fondant for the first time today. It was really fun and quite messy. I'm not great at it, but it looks pretty cool. It's a fun medium to work with.

I'll post pictures of the Birthday Boy later.

Much needed day off...

After working 10 days in a row, Ben finally has a day off. And, boy, am I ready for him to have a day off! I've slowly been losing patience with the kids at home. The noise is just getting to be too much. I often say the only way my mom survived 5 kids in 5 years was that she was half deaf, but I mean it! Sometimes it would be nice to turn down the volume of my kids. I need some peace and quiet.

Bug's 9th birthday is tomorrow. (I'm so glad Ben will be around to help me get everything ready tomorrow.) The little ones and I went to the store and picked out gifts. Bug's not sure what he wants for dinner yet, and he asked for a yellow cake, with yellow frosting (what else, it's his favorite color). I'm going to attempt fondant because I've been watching too much Ace of Cakes on the Food Network and it just looks so cool. Stay tuned for pictures to see if it turns out.

February exercise log

2/3--3 miles
2/6--4 miles
2/7--4.5 miles
2/10--snow removal's gotta count, right?
2/11--2 (?) miles
2/13--3 miles
2/17--snow removal again
2/23--3.5 miles with Erik :)
2/24--50 min. of racquetball, 2 mile jog
2/25--50 min. of racquetball, weights, 1 mile walk