This was NOT in my Franklin

My plans for Monday:
8:00 a.m. - take Voice Male clothes to dry cleaner
9:30 a.m. - watch Eden participate in a Nativity play (as Mary)
10:30 a.m. - visit Irene
11:30 a.m. - visit Charlotte
12:30 p.m. - attend the USU Registrar's Office Christmas party (have lots and lots of fun laughing with old friends and remembering good times and agreeing as everyone goes on and on about how cute Eden is)
2:00 p.m. - put Eden down for a nap and do laundry

How Monday actually went:
4:30 a.m. - wake up with a bad stomachache, lay on the couch
8:00 a.m. - take Voice Male clothes to dry cleaner - Convince a really nice woman to rush our 9 pairs of pants and 12 shirts so that I can pick them up Tuesday
9:00 a.m. - lay on the couch
10:00 a.m. - watch Eden (while moaning on the couch) as Mary in the cutest pre-school version of the Nativity (five preschool boys and my Eden)
10:30 a.m. - yeah, you guessed it, the couch which is where I spent the remainder of my day (except when I moved to my dad's bed so I could watch some mindless television. Did you know that Kirby Heyborne was in a Lifetime original Christmas movie this year?)
2:00 p.m. - watched my mom do my laundry (thanks mom!)
3:30 a.m. Tuesday - finally feel well enough to get some sleep
6:30 a.m. pack up everything, pick up the VM dry cleaning and go pick Phil up at the airport.

We got to Phil's parents' house and he left for the Thanksgiving Point show afterwhich Eden promptly puked her guts out all over me. Poor Eden, she hasn't ever thrown up before. She was pretty upset by it all but rebounded quickly and, for now, is sleeping. . .

Just as I wrote that, she woke up. Now it is several hours later and she is attempting to sleep.

yeah, not what I had planned at all . . .

Oh What a Day!

Thursday night Eden just couldn't settle down. We'd spent the afternoon having Thanksgiving dinner with our friends the Dewsnups. Eden loves these people (as do I). Seriously, Eden often prefers Corrie (and she says her name so well and cute) rather than mommy. She likes to watch football with Brian (the dad) and plays with all of the kids. It is so fun for her to have such good friends. Anyway, she was quite excited and when we got home she just didn't want to settle down. Finally around 9 I convinced her she had to try. For the next hour we heard content-but-not-tired noises coming from her room. They sounded like this:

"Corrie, Corrie, Corrie"
"all done, all done, all done, all done"
"kitty, doggy, kitty, doggy, kitty, doggy"
"night-night"
etc.

until 10:30!

You'd think she would sleep in but that is where you'd be wrong. At 7:am she was up and ready to go! She took a pretty good nap in the morning (a rare thing these days) but didn't take an afternoon nap. By evening she was irrational, cranky, and trying the patience of her parents.

At dinner she wanted a "cookie, cookie, cookie" and didn't want to eat good food. She dropped her bowl of chowder on the rug. She poured her water all over the table. She attempted to dump her yogurt all over but I had put it in a container with a lid and straw (sometimes I'm smart). Finally she ate some yogurt, about 8 raisins, sucked the juice out of a tangerine, and had a pumpkin cookie (does that count as a vegetable?).

Next it was off to the bath. I made the comment to Phil that it was brave of me to bathe her right after she had raisins. Yeah, I'm dumb sometimes. Sure enough just as I was getting the towel she relieved herself in the tub.

Poor Phil, he got to clean up all the messes (the chowder, water, and poo).

It was good to say goodnight to her.

Eleven Years Without It - sorry Philo

Approximately eleven years ago I decided that cable was an expense that I could live without. I was just done with my masters and hadn't started making the big bucks yet and had student loans to repay so why not get rid of television? Besides, it gave me an excellent excuse to visit the boys two doors down when NBA playoffs came around*. I haven't paid for television since. No cable. No satellite. Not even rabbit ears.

It was seriously one of the best decisions (and easiest to live with) I've ever made. I can't imagine how I ever found the time for "must see TV" every Thursday night. I'm able to watch LDS General Conference online. I'm even able to watch a few other shows online these days (Monk and Psych are a couple of favorites). I've saved lots of money.

I was a pretty faithful follower of a few shows when I discontinued my television watching. I tried to have high standards and not watch trash. Then I saw some of those same shows and I realized that I had become very desensitized to them when I was watching every week. With a little distance between me and my beloved plots and characters I realized they were feeding me a large dose of yuck. I don't need any more yuck in my life.

Phil and I have discussed what to do about TV as our family grows. We don't want it to be the forbidden wonder that resides in the homes of friends and therefore gets partaken of in excess when accessible. For now, we'll stick to our decision to keep it out of our home. We'll probably be those weirdos who don't have TV for the rest of our lives.



*I ended up marrying one of those boys even though he never watched the playoffs with us.

Wanted: A Sister-Wife

Ok, my husband would actually be off limits so the job description would probably read a lot more like a MAID.

But here is the deal: I'll do your cooking if you do my cleaning.

Any takers?

So tell me...

What is it about Obama that you like? I don't mean the superficial stuff or even the semi-superficial stuff (like that he is charismatic). What policies that he represents make you think, "hey, I'm going to vote for Obama-Biden?"

On the other hand, what is about McCain that makes you want to vote for him? Again, I'm not interested in hearing some emotional response to him or an emotional response to his competition that makes you want to vote for him. What issue-based reasons have made you support the McCain-Palin ticket?

A Birthday Never to be Forgotten...

I am somewhat known for planning great birthday celebrations for those closest to me (see here for one such opinion). In fact, Phil often lists "a thoughtful giver" among the qualities he most appreciates in me. So, imagine my horror when I realized that in booking our flights to NY (for a Design Conference - a whole week of typography bliss! more on this later) I booked our return flight on Phil's birthday. Not just any birthday either, but the big 4-0! Yup, I did. How would I turn this into something better than terrible? I got him some nice gifts and incrementally dished them out (which he pretends to hate but I think he likes early gifts just as much as anyone - as long as there are still gifts left on the actual day!). I asked my friend, Alisha (and her able helpers: Bayley, Kendal, and Trey) to decorate our house and leave a cake so that when we got home at 10pm there would be a ready-made birthday waiting. This could be saved, right?

I gave Alisha the key, the balloons and streamers, the cake mix and frosting, and the "4-0" candles. The day we left I made sure to unlock the storm door in the front. I was pretty excited that this was going to be a fun surprise for Phil (and save my reputation).

Wednesday, July 23, arrived and I received a phone message that basically went like this:

"Heidi, hi, this is Alisha. We are at the house and ... well ...
the storm doors are both locked. Is there another way in?
We can't really decorate without getting in and
we can't get in because the storm doors are locked."

Dang! My thorough husband did one last walk-through and re-locked the storm door.

I admitted to Phil that I was defeated and a failure at adequately celebrating his big day. We laughed. Then it happened...

Our flight was delayed. There was no way we'd make our connecting flight. After several hours in the Rochester Airport we were given the assurance that we would be on a 6am direct flight to Atlanta. We were given a voucher for a night at the Holiday Inn (actually a very nice room!) and 4 $5 food vouchers*. As luck would have it, our luggage was able to make its way to Detroit and then Atlanta, unlike us. Therefore, we didn't have any of our clothing, toiletries, scriptures**, or the like. Therefore, Phil spent the evening of his birthday washing clothes in the sink and then drying them with an iron***.

Thursday we awoke at 4am (ah, 5 hours of blissful sleep) to catch our 6am flight. Imagine our frustration when we were informed that we had not been booked (actually Phil had, I hadn't) after all. Oh, and by the way, there are no open flights out today. Did I mention that we were trying to get back so that Phil could meet with the Oncologist and have a chemo treatment? Yeah. So after some tense moments (in which I got a little cranky - not yelling, just cranky - with an airline employee) we were sent to another airline. They got us on a flight to Detroit and then on to Atlanta. We missed the doctor stuff (still trying to figure all that out because it isn't a good thing to be off schedule). Eden was AWESOME (I'll do another post about all the cute things she did).

We're home now. Alisha and the kids decorated the door. There is a cake in the oven. Phil has opened his gifts. He gets a weekend without chemo (perhaps the best gift of all). The pressure is totally off for next year. I no longer have to live up to the perception that I am a great celebrator of birthdays. He'll probably be happy if I just don't book a flight on his big day.

Happy Birthday Phil - at least you got a poem from Char! :)

Phil's chocolate and PB cake (I used PB to "decorate" the cake - quick thinking I'd say).

Phil opening his presents (the ones that were still unopened on his b'day)



*these had to be used in the airport. We couldn't go over the $5 on any purchase (so we couldn't buy something for $5.23 and give them a voucher and a quarter) and there was no change back if we bought something for under $5. It is an interesting puzzle to figure out what to buy that will come closest to $5 without going over (it was like the Price is Right or something!).

**hooray for lds.org - we were still able to have scripture reading!

***Char and I learned this trick when our luggage was "lost" (we knew where it was the whole time, just the airline didn't) for several days on a trip to NYC.