Shiner

My overwhelming grace has struck again. The natural flow, the ability to move with style .... doesn't happen with me. EVER.

Actually, I'm writing this while squinting. Yogurt Island struck last night. Literally. After a high school band festival (great music by the way!), DJ, Tre', and I went out to grab something to eat. I was introducing Tre' to the joys of building your own yogurt creation and demonstrating how to add said creation building joys to my yogurt. While pulling the handle down to add slivered almonds (MMMM!) to my pineapple-mango tart yogurt (double-MMMM), I pulled a teensy bit too hard. It rotated over off the shelf and smacked me on the cheek--right by the eye.

What's funny was my reaction. I felt about 13 years old and embarrassed--apologized to the shop, meekly paid for my yogurts and then Tre' and I ate them. This morning, I woke up to the glories of my first black eye.

Josh's Writing Assignment

We don't have the world's scariest dog.....in fact, DJ would contend that Maliboo (or "Boo" as we call him) is more rat than dog. He's great at shedding...think of the line in Despicable Me --"He's so FLUFFY!" He's also fantastic at darting out the door and then joyfully running through the neighborhood; the only way we can get him home is to drive (yes, drive) up next to him and open the door. He'll jump in for his ride home.

However, he's part of the family. He's been to Lake Powell (thus the life preserver), Utah, Mexico, Canada, Alaska, and back. He's the one who goes on walks with me in the morning. He makes the rounds at night and ends up sleeping in almost everyone's bed.

You'd think this would make an impression on Josh. However, when we went to Parent/Teacher conference today, the 1st grade teacher gingerly brought out a sample of Josh's writing. He was supposed to write a paragraph on "dogs." Here's what he wrote:

Dogs can run.
Dogs can jump.
Dogs have rabies.
Dogs can die.

Hmmmm....I think the time that DJ showed the "edited" version of Cujo to Josh made more of an impression than the years of Boo. Thanks, DJ!

Never Argue With Your Daughter (oops--I mean ibex)

Not that I'm SAYING anything, but this might be what having a teenage daughter is like at moments.....



Love you Reagan!

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

It's science fair time AGAIN.....and STILL....and any other word I can use instead of the expletive that I'd really prefer to think and say. Really--I'm glad the kids like them, but it's driving me CRAZY. The nice thing is that they're getting a little more independent in getting them done.

Independence, however, is a relative term. Tre' is independent, but his project involves driving to opposite sides of our valley at least once a week to collect water samples from natural springs and from golf courses (i.e.--Do golf courses cause pollution? As a side note--was that really a brilliant move on my part to suggest this since I'm employed by a golf course? Thank goodness the pollution is minimal--frankly, the coyotes cause more than the people!)

Our desert doesn't get a lot of rain--so when DJ heard that we were getting a rainstorm this weekend, he told Tre'. Tre' wanted to get samples before and after the storm, SO.....we started collecting water at 6:30. The desert (and golf course) are DARK at 6:30. We got through the golf course, and then headed up to the hills. Our home is a mile or two from the San Andreas fault line and we have a ridge of palm tree oases with natural streams, etc. It's also the home to several packs of coyotes--we can hear them frequently at night. It was blowing, cold, and dark by the time we got out of the car. I looked at my 7 year old, and he was wearing his snowboots from our trip to Utah (I've had to peel them off his feet several mornings on his way out to school. I will NOT have Napolean Dynamite for a child). We started hiking through the desert, and I went into "mom" mode (i.e. "If you let go of my hand the coyotes will eat you"). As a result, Josh was literally glued to my leg. Madi decided that it would be a lot of fun to howl at the coyotes--and I decided to join her--and then the coyotes decided to join in as well! Tre' kept disappearing into gloomy palm tree strands with a zillion coyote footprints leading in as well. I kept imaging a whole herd/flock/pack/snarl of them....waiting in the gloom....

Guess what--it was SO MUCH FUN!!!!!!!

I now have teenage kids (or at least one teenager and one who THINKS he is). I can remember growing up and having a boyfriend's mother "gently" tell me about how effective an apricot scrub could be (Sidetrack: Do you wonder why he was only a boyfriend? Can you imagine a lifetime of "gentle" comments like that one?)

My kids are blessed with good skin for teenagers--nice complexion, not too many "owies", etc. However, I noticed that Tre' was starting to get some blackheads and so I picked up the above-named apricot scrub to "help" him out; I told him that he needed to squeeze this out and mix it with a little bit of water and rub it on his face.

A couple of weeks passed...I asked him how it was going. He said he wasn't using it because it was "defective." "Defective?" was my reply..... "Yeah, defective. It has all these little pieces of rock inside of it." Pause. Laughter--from DJ and I.

Crickets

No--not the sporting event beloved by the British Empire. I'm talking the disgusting insect that infests the desert (as seen above). We have 3 geckos and a turtle (along with the 6 parakeets and the dog) as pets, and crickets are a staple of their diet. We had run out earlier in the week, so on Friday, I had to pick some up.

I was running late so I didn't pick them up on the way home from work, but after a ward activity (which ended up involving a Jello food fight, but we didn't start it. REALLY.), we had just enough time before the pet store closed to pick some up. Because I also had to pick up a birthday present for the following day with Madi, I sent Reagan and Tre' in with instructions to pick up 15 minnows (for the turtle) and 20 crickets (primarily for the lizards).

Imagine my surprise when I got a call from Reagan, just AFTER closing time, asking where I was because she had 200 crickets. 200 crickets? Did I hear wrong? Nope....she got it wrong by a factor of 10. 200 crickets. AAARGH! Oh well, the lizards wouldn't be hungry for a while, right?

WRONG--she got baby crickets instead of the regular large ones we go for, so the actual food content was probably about the same. Fine. We dumped them all in the cage. About 15 minutes later Madi was shrieking as the baby crickets came pouring out of the mesh top of the cage (about 1/8" square mesh holes). Yes, I now have 190 crickets jumping around my house (the lizards ate 10 to begin with). I have just enough time to call the bug guy......

Campaign 2010

We've move into election mode in the Risk house--every summer, we start plotting and planning our strategy and then we run through a variety of different logos with associated themes with focus groups (usually we'll find our focus group in the various friends over during the summer). Once we're good with what it looks like, we'll brand the entire campaign, from posters to the speech he'll give. Oh--and buttons. Did I mention those? This year, we've made over a thousand buttons to hand out at the schools.
Reagan is running for president and Tre' is running for vice-president in their middle school. Madi is running for vice president at her elementary school.
Reagan and Madi both liked the same theme--there have been a lot of discussions at their school between different groups of students (English vs. Spanish, etc.). They wanted to find a way to use all the different languages to say that everyone could like a candidate. We didn't want to limit it to just English and Spanish, so we went through a variety of languages (English, French, German, Russian, Mandarin, and Spanish). To honor Madi and her love for animals, we chose dogs from all the different countries. For the buttons, each button has one of the dogs and the phrase "I like Madi (or Reagan)" in the associated language. (At least I HOPE the button says that. I was relying on the translator that was in Word. As long as it doesn't say "Eat at Joe's", we'll be fine.) You can see their posters above--with the pronunciations for each phrase. We'll see how it works out.