Daily List

Every day I make up a list of stuff I gotta do. I've been doing it since the dawn of time. I love to cross things off, even if they are stupid things like "drive to work" because then I feel like I might have actually accomplished something today.

I'd like to share with you the most recent items that really need to get done, but never quite get off the list:


Finish hanging Christmas lights. I LOVE having a billion lights up. During the 2002 Olympics we lit up the house and yard with a ton of red white and blue lights that we kept up thru the the end of February. With Screamapillar's help, there are currently 600 LED bulbs lighting up the front bushes. And man are they bright. I still have approximately 659 more strings of lights I would like to hang. There is a neighborhood lighting contest on the 16th. Thing Two begged his father to leave me in the dark (ha!) about this, but word got out. I just need to sort through all the lights, figure out which ones are busted beyond repair, then hang them before the temperatures drop below freezing again. Maybe this year I'll actually throw away the busted lights so I don't have to sort through them again next year...

Retake the family photo for the annual Christmas card. Eclair was having a meltdown during the original shoot, and looks like she had been crying. Because she was. Desperately needs a re-do. Everyone looks lame. And then I need to compose the Annual Epistle of Exaggeration and Outright Falsehoods. And then fail to mail it.

Remove the gelatinous pumpkins from the front porch. These are not Halloween ones, just the uncarved punkins from Thanksgiving that I keep meaning to remove to the garden so they may fulfill the measure of their creation and make more pumpkins for next year. One of them looks like a puddle now. Frankly, I've let this go so long that I am now afraid to move them.

Anybody wanna come over and help?

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Tis the season

December. The beginning of the madness. SO MUCH BUSY-NESS!!!!!

Shopping.


Decorating.


Cooking.


Crafts.


Recitals & performances & events.


Family gatherings.


and one other item......


Shopping: for some the madness began last week with Black Friday. Which I swore I would not participate in. You shouldn't swear. It's bad. And it doesn't help much. Especially when your oldest daughter talks you into participating in Black Friday. She was at the shops at 3am. I accidentally slept in until 10:30. And then she carted me hither and yon until 10:30 pm. I got some amazing deals, and so the shopping is almost done and I have lived to tell about it.

Decorating? Well, most of the stuff   never got put away  last year, so I guess I'm nearly done! Just getting the tree up and decorated, with an anti-cat program in place. Last year Gus was a cute little kitten and climbed the tree daily. He broke nearly EVERY glass ornament on the tree. This year he has lost the cuteness factor, and I have sworn (there I go again) to KILL him if he does it again. I have a little tiny pair of shackles with his name on them...

Cooking. Always looking for an excuse to make some good stuff. I won't mind cooking one bit. Bring on the butter.

Crafts! Crafts!!!!! I have 14 billion ideas I want to do!!!! Will they ever be completed? With my track record, probably not. But I will make a valiant effort. And I will blog them for you. I will show you how to make a little tiny cowboy hat ornament out of a styrofoam cup.....magical!

As for recitals, performances, and events:  Screamapillar is performing today at Temple Square in Salt Lake City with her choir. And she sings again Friday at the Christmas party at the church, and another choir performance twice on Saturday. I'm sure there are a dozen other performances that she hasn't told me about yet.

Thing One sings with Mapleton Chorale. They are performing at the Covey Center today and Thursday, and then only a half dozen other performances, one of which might not cost me $12 to attend. She also will be singing at Temple Square. Apparently, if you sing in a choir it is required by law that you sing at Temple Square at Christmas.

Thing Two is a slacker. His sax is gathering dust. He no longer has a band to call his own and there will be no Temple Square for him. So sad. Instead he will (as the only partially sane member of the family) boycott all band and choir performances in favor of playing Halo with people he has never met who haven't made his life unbearable like the miserable beings he is forced to live with.

Luke Skywalker is in a band. A very lame 7th grader band. Have you ever been to a 7th grad band concert? I dare you to label them anything but lame. If you are invited to one, make sure you have a backup plan with something you'd like to do better. Like having a root canal. It's all part of being in 7th grade. I assume that he has a Christmas concert at some point. He keeps telling me every morning "I'll ask my teacher," which is followed up after school by "I forgot." I wonder if we will ever know....

Eclair plays piano. Incessantly. You may drop by at anytime, because we are currently living in a perpetual state of "Christmas Recital." In fact, when Luke Skywalker was downstairs in his room practicing "Silent Night" on his clarinet, Ecliar started accompanying him from the living room. This ended in fisticuffs, as Luke Skywalker (new to clarinet after abandoning the violin) assumed he was being mocked.

Ah, harmony. Ain't is a beautiful thing?

Almost as great as Family Gatherings. It's especially fun in my family. Eveyone comes here to visit, and I'm expected to put my life on hold and follow my extended family's schedule (even if they don't). My sister invests loads of time creating the schedule. It is sent out a month in advance and I am warned that I had better be available for every event. So if the schedule says "Sledding" on Wednesday, I should not prepare my children for sledding. I should be ready instead for a movie, shopping, or perhaps some other activity that pops into my sister's head. Sledding will have happened the day before and I missed it because someone forgot to tell me that they modified the schedule.

She can't really be blamed for it, though. ADD runs rampant through my entire family. We are ALL very impuse driven. We have good intentions, thus the attempts at a schedule. We just have a real failure to follow through. Which makes for a lot of spur of the moment fun.


Now don't forget my "one other item."  The Annual Epistle of Exaggeration and Outright Falsehoods. I have to write it. When I do, I will share it with you. As you know me so well, I am sure you will be able to sort fact from fiction.

Stay tuned.
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HOLY WAR TODAY!

WE'VE GOT SPIRIT

YES WE DO!

WE'VE GOT SPIRIT

HOW 'BOUT YOU?

I apologize to anyone who might have a liking for U of U 

who had to look at the above photo and 

be exposed for who you really are......not really, actually. 

I'm a rabid BYU fan. 

Learn to live with it.

HAPPY GAME DAY, EVER'BODY!

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Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, from the turkey hanging from my front door.

Some things I am thankful for today:

That while my tears and contact lenses froze within seven seconds of stepping outside today, my actual eyeballs did not.

That my favorite grocery store anticipated that I would fail to remember I was supposed to bring rolls to Thanksgiving dinner at Mom's, and got up early to bake some for me.

That I made two pies last night. So that at least one survived until this morning to take to dinner.

That only one of my sisters will be at Mom's today...let's hope they don't read my blog. I don't think they do.

That 33 people care enough to follow this blog and validate my silliness.

But truly and deeply, I am thankful for my wonderful insane family. They think they don't love me, but they do.   Even for my crazy sisters who drive me berserk. For my parents and MIL who do so much for me. For neighbors and friends who help me out and make me laugh when things are crappy. For the employment and education opportunities my family has been given. For the gospel of Jesus Christ and the many necessities of life I am blessed with. I could go on all day, because 

I am very thankful for many blessings today.

Leftovers

If you're lucky, you willl have leftovers. If you went to your mother's house and every relative you have was there and they all are incredible pigs who eat everything set before them, you won't. Have leftovers. And you are a sad panda.

But if you have leftovers, I have some ideas for you!!!

Leftover Turkey: How about some TURKEY and LEEK PIE!!!


Leftover Stuffing: You could use it to make This Decorative Craft! (get it? stuffing? Nevermind.)


Leftover Potatoes: Those should be saved for Home Improvement Projects.


Leftover Cranberry Sauce: Save it for next Halloween and make This Lovely Ensemble.


Leftover Gravy: who are we kidding here? there's never enough gravy. And you know it.


Leftover Pumpkin Pie: We already discussed this. I recommend the Mask.

Leftover Sweet Potatoes: This is a really good one and my own original idea so there is no link. Put them inside a snowball and throw them at people! Imagine their consternation! Pelted with sweet potato! As we are expecting a huge blizzard tonite, I'm really looking forward to this.
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Calorie counting during the holidays

With Thanksgiving coming up, I thought I might share some age old wisdom that i learned from my mother. She knows absolutely everything, and I'm trying to learn it all before I die. The big pig-out is Thursday, and I'm so looking forward to it! Going to try some new recipes for some old favorites.

But how do you keep from gaining weight during the holidays? Here's some useful tips.

Calories are afraid of heights. If you keep fattening foods on top of the fridge, or on a high shelf for at least one hour prior to serving, the caloires will leap to their death.

Breaking items into smaller peices make the fat grams fall out. For example, breaking a cookie in half reduces the fat grams by half. Cutting bacon into little tiny pieces before adding to a recipe eliminates the fat completely.

Gravy doesn't make you fatter. It actually acts as camouflage so the body doesn't recognize the food it is covering. Think's everthing is oatmeal instead.

If you eat while standing up, all the calories drop to your feet and get walked off.

Drinking a big glass of water before the meal can help you lose weight. Cholesterol is unable to swim and will perish by drowning, flushed through your whole system without being absorbed at all.

The color of your food is very important. You may have heard that vegetables with very deep colors are rich in anti-oxidants. Your brain knows this and told your stomach. So if your desserts are rich in color as well, your body will think they are vegetables and you will not gain any weight. So eat deep, dark chocolates and darker creamy caramels just to make sure.

If your hot fudge sundae is topped with a crouton instead of a cherry, it counts as a salad.


And remember: A balanced diet is a brownie in each hand.
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100 Things...

Everyone is doing the whole "100 Things" on their blogs. Except me! Something must be wrong with me. I've had a blog for like 9 whole months now and I have not blogged "100 Things!"  So, it's supposed to be things about me, so maybe you'll learn something new! Here goes:

1. I like to cook, but I hate cleaning up after.

2. I like making crafts, although I seldom finish them.

3. When I do finish crafts, I rarely put everything away correctly until the last possible moment. Or later.

4. I always burn the last batch of cookies because I have ADD and I already moved on to something else.

5. I'm a binge eater - not like I eat tons and puke it up for some insane reason, but I find something I like, eat some everyday for like a month, then I can't stand to ever eat it again.

6. I love to sew costumes & fun things, but for some reason the patterns rarely get back into the envelope - next time I try to use the pattern, essential pieces are missing.....It's like I didn't want to clean up after or something...

7. I have a bunch of half written posts hanging about in my blogger dashboard. Good ideas for posts that never quite made the cut for publishing. Like they don't quite have what is needed to share them with anyone...

8. I recently plucked my left eyebrow but haven't quite gotten around to the right one yet.

9. I started writing up a cookbook of family recipes about 10 years ago, but the project kinda lost steam.

10. The last time I went to the mending basket to work on a project, I found Thing Two's size 3T footie pajamas that needed the zipper fixed. He's 18 now. Don't think he needs those anymore.

11. Are you starting to see a trend here?

12. I make a list of all the crap I need to do everyday, but less than half of it gets crossed off.

13. Every year about this time, I take a family photo and print 30 copies, then compose the "Annual Epistle of Exaggeration and Outright Falsehoods" for the extended family and friends. I never actually mail it.

14.Speaking of not mailing things, Thing Two's graduation announcements are still sitting on the piano. He graduated in May. It is now November.

15.

16.

17.






(Crap. I think my Farmville crops are dying.)


(You need a check for how much for what?)


(IT'S BURNING! You're standing right next to it! Why didn't you stir it?).

(The cat threw up where?)

(No, I don't know where your shoes are. Try looking wherever you took them off.)


(Where the heck is my cell phone? What do you mean "the dog has it?")


(What do you mean I missed your Parent-Teacher conference? The paper is where? Oh. Your backpack. How helpful.)


(She has how many pills left? I guess I'll just drive up to Primary Children's during rush hour traffic to get her refill.)


(What? You missed the bus AGAIN!?!? I told you I'M NOT DRIVING YOU!.......***sigh***  Go warm up the car.)












100. The only things I have ever completed from start to finish took nine months ended in the maternity ward of the hospital.

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