Random Update- As Wild and Wooly as Ever

This will meander, just warning! What's up at our house? The pool is up! I'm having filter issues. The kids are all delightfully sun-kissed to sun burned and turning browner by the minute. That pool may be a pain, but it is the best TV killer around. I wish I could say I spend as much time in my garden, but I can't. I love, love, love, love, LOVE SUMMER! Big time. No getting kids up, the SUN, the blue skies, kids playing, barbecuing, watermelon, the garden, swimming, etc. So I have a million things I wanna do while I am free from the school grind. Unfortunately, too many of these things happen inside and don't involve fun summer stuff. I waste a lot of time, too. Unfortunately, it will all end too soon. I mourn the end of summer. But for now, I have more energy and I get busy. So, I totally blow off the computer half the time. I guess I'm a foul-weather blogger. Don't worry, the foul weather will be back.
In the meantime, It's a 3 ring circus and half the neighborhood seems to be over most of the time. All the kids have managed to scrape or bruise or cut themselves or get stung by wasps and all. Thing 1 was so funny, he came in yesterday with his mad face: red face, tear-filled eyes, on the verge of an explosion. He says something through gritted teeth. I couldn't figure out what it was. I assumed he was probably mad at Gigio. He repeats. This time I understand him: That. BEE. STUNG. me! AHA! So that's it! I took care of his wound but he was so incensed that this, as it turned out to be, wasp had the nerve to sting him! He was just trying to get it off the grill (which Thing 2 called a girl, and Thing 1 just called "the thing Papi cooks on"). He wanted me to go spray it to death. What a vengeful soul.
I am so scattered that I haven't even tried to remember all the fun things those boys have said and done. I used to not write them down because I thought I would always remember with kid 1. By kid 2 I knew better, but by kid 3, who had time? Now with kid 5 I know I'll be lucky if I remember 2 hours later. Makes for a shorter update (heave a big sigh of relief). I do remember sitting with Thing 2 in Primary at church while he waited for the teacher to come, and the music director decided to get the kids to do a song to get out the wiggles. It goes something like "I wiggle my fingers, I wiggle my toes, I wiggle my shoulders, I wiggle my nose" I look at Thing 2 and he is wiggling his nose all right, he has his finger up his nose and is wiggling it from side to side . He gives me his impy grin and says "I'm wiggling my nose!" o.k....
Then Thing 2 asked me to sing (WHOOOPEEEE!! The other exciting thing, they don't scream and tell me to turn off the music anymore. BUT, that's another story) a song called "I Love to See the Temple" Then Thing 1 asked, "The temple the house of Jesus?" Yes, I said. Then he said, "The Church too?" Yes, he knows this. I'm always telling him not to stick his feet up on Jesus' benches and run and yell in there because it's His house. "Oh, He have lots of houses!" You could just see the wheels turning in his head-Jesus is pretty loaded!
Carino, finally, after much procrastination is in a breakdance/tumbling class. He loves it. The teacher was impressed and had the gymnastics teacher look at what he can do. They were amazed. I don't know how much he will remember from one class to the next, but he is excited. Enigma is taking a class too. Gigio wants to do Karate. Mom wants a bigger bank account. I have created a monster. I told the boys I would teach them how to argue. Gigio took me up on it. Someday he is going to take over the world. Poor Carino.... Except the whole idea behind this is that they will learn to argue instead of physically fight, which is good for your health. So, this is his new bedtime story, and he asks me for it each night.
Gigio and Carino got to go to the Utah version of an amusement park with their uncle, who emerged from the woodwork. He's Papi's brother and he can disappear for years at a time. Seems to be doing good, he's back together with his ex for those of you who know him. He helped Papi with the living room floor, then took the boys to Salt Lake, then came to barbecue on Father's Day. 3 days in one week! Hopefully he won't disappear for 3 years. Papi passed his Spring term classes and is in Summer term now. He's working too much but sometimes he still manages to play with me.
Enigma is liking her job except she gets hardly no hours but that leaves her lots of time to babysit for me and she's squeezed in a lot of fun on the side. Now she's on a trip with the grandparents to Idaho to go see her cousin who just got home from Armenia, where she was a missionary. Coming home is so hard. Someone ought to start rehab for it :) But, that's a whole long discussion in and of itself. Enigma also did 2 other fun things. She got her Senior pictures taken. They take about 35 shots, in 4-5 different outfits. She loved it. The cameraman asked her if she models. They might use some of her shots in their ads. I guess she just found something else she likes to do but probably will never do again. We just got to see the pictures yesterday and have the originals we are keeping. Once I get my wallets, I let you peek in my wallet. So the other exciting thing she did was she got her patriarchal blessing, which was so sweet. I went with her and it was one of those moments where you find you turned into your mom. But, happily, I'm still myself. I've decided that I need to make a MormonSpeak Guide or something on my sidebar so all the religious terminology won't leave anyone in the dust. Add it to my list...
So, Utah is one of the few states where you see Highway Billboards with Hotline Info to get out of Polygamy, but I didn't take my camera out before it was replaced with something else. Sorry. Maybe there's one in Texas? I did get a shot of this before my 2nd child destroyed MY camera.


My only question is, if it's for sale, is it HALF off?
So I was reading this article about sheets, brought to my attention by the Suburban Correspondent (go visit her and underwhelm her with my huge amount of traffic, ha, ha. Ask her where's the sheets post and tell her I sent ya hee, hee). Basically it's all about the crazy inconsistencies about thread count and Egyptian cotton and all. You've probably noticed that 150 thread count feels like sandpaper and 400 count feels right nice. Personally, if it looks kinda silky, or if it's made out of t-shirt material, or flannel, AND it's on sale for super cheap, I am so IN. But, the article mentions sheets that cost up to $2000! Isn't that obscene? It makes me sick thinking of all the people in the world who could eat for a year off that amount of moolah. Then I discover that someone has decided to write on my nicest sheets with a permanent marker. Hooray. Someone is so lucky that I was thinking how nice that my sheets weren't so expensive. Those guys who buy $2000 sheets? I think it would be a little bit funny if someone did a graffiti number on them.
Since I'm spending hardly any time on the computer, I joined another blog, called Diet Divas. It's about eating healthy and losing weight and all that kind of stuff. So my little buddy Merrianne wanted help losing some weight before her birthday in a month. I offered to make it into a competition and see who could lose the most weight each week. It worked, she's losing weight! I have discovered that my only proven method of weight loss so far is to have the baby. I know of no other method. So, I'll lose this week (the competition, not the pounds). Maybe by the last week though...I must say I have a new found respect for people who really work at this, it is not easy; I've been all over the place just trying to find a scale to weigh myself and NOBODY has one. Seems they're all bought up. I'm getting lots of exercise running up and down the aisle of every joint in town. AND, watch out, Merrianne, my neighbor lent me a Zumba DVD set. I might actually DO this stuff. So, real quick like I looked up some info from a book I read ages ago about the Sonoma Diet. It seemed like a pretty healthy one, if I could just follow it. It will probably take me half a lifetime to learn to not just stick stuff in my mouth everywhere I go. Before this week, I never realized how much I munch.
The kids are munching on fake fluffy sugary stuff because the pinatas are no longer a myth! After the project dominating the kitchen table for weeks, I finally finished them and everyone had at it. At least I get a lot of exercise picking up candy wrappers off the floor now.
Plus, with the pool, I now have an outdoor room to clean up, and there are more wet items than there are grains of sand running through my washer every day. Oh, and you know what I did? I made homemade laundry detergent. It is working really good and has saved a lot of money. I got the recipe from Anne.
On another note, either I'm losing my mind or things are disappearing more than usual lately. Plus, things seem to come off and on of their own accord. One of the latest disappearing items is the cordless phone. Of course it wasn't the extension downstairs that was so old, it sounds like you are getting a transmission from outer space and the caller ID is all screwed up. It was the one that works fine that walked off the planet. So I sent my super shopper out to find me a new one and we ended up with a set of 4 phones! One of them is waterproof. That may sound crazy, but I think we have lost somewhere in the area of 6 phones or so to submersion experiments. It looks almost indestructible. It should last a few months or so.
Anybody seeing a theme here? How many broken or mutilated items have I mentioned in this post? But, we're having fun!