When The Students Are Away...

This has become a summer tradition for Dan and I:

 


After the guys head to bed at night and leave for summer school and work in the morning we sit down and play a few rounds of Dutch Blitz. So far I'm up 6 games to 2. (If I did hastags they would be: hekeepstrying; winnerwinnerchickendinner; dutchblitz; morningritual; whenthestudentsareawaythehouseparentsplay; practiceforthegameswiththegirlsinthefall; solongasIkeepwinning; janaewinsmostgamesweplay hesagoodsport)

I Hate It When That Happens!

Just one piece and the border would be complete!

Time to hunt through all 55 million other pieces to find the 1...grrrr....

Pondering the Mysteries

A couple weeks ago I entered the student home living room to find Dan "diligently" keeping an eye on things...

Thankfully it was a home where the students were good enough this wasn't much of a concern.

Trust is Important in ALL Relationships

After seeing the following, a student came to us saying his computer had "trust issues:"

We thought it was a very clever description of the error message.


P.S. I'm trying to enter posts as close to chronologically as I can so scroll down, there might be one or two older ones I just posted.

"Patience Prudence" As Mom Would Say

One night I was running errands on my night out. When I entered the bathroom stall in Walmart this was sitting on the back of the toilet.

 

 

I thought, "Seriously, you are that desperate to know the results that you can't go home do this in the privacy of your own bathroom?" It's kinda funny actually. Hopefully the results were what they wanted.

An Imaginative Distraction

This was a stethoscope & magnifying glass for the 3-year-old girl who sat on my lap in church today.

Of All the Things That Fade with Age

Dan loves to brag about having a great memory. After his typical comment comparing his mind to a steel trap we had the following conversation last night:

D: "My mind is like a steel trap."

J: "Uh huh"

D: "Did I take my pills?...I know  got them out but don't remember if I took them or not."

J: "How's that steel trap working for your now?"

 I'm still laughing about this conversation and the timing of his questions. How he keeps me entertained.

Spring & Easter

While strolling through a store we'd not been in before, I kept smelling and hearing chirping. Eventually we discovered the source:

They had two big water troughs with chicks for sale. It was fun to watch them interact, sleep and climb on top of each other. We opted to leave them all at the store even though we found them fairly cute. If you are interested, I'm sure they are a better deal now that Easter is over.

For Christmas, Amanda gave me cute homemade serving plates/dishes for a couple holidays. I "patiently" waited for Easter to arrive so I could pull this one out and fill it with goodies:

It was a fun addition to the few other decorations I have.

A while ago, I saw this picture and the tutorial and thought, that looks easy enough:

Originally found here



 

I blew up balloons, purchased some yarn, and got the other supplies to make these. I thought I would start with three of them to figure it out first and see if I needed to do any adjustments. Two were with yarn and one with embroidery floss. I made sure to let them dry for a couple days so that I wouldn't have that problem, however, when I popped the balloons something didn't seem to work quite right:

 

They just shrivelled up and lost their egg shape.

 

 

At least I had one work...but those aren't very good odds...and they look nothing like the tutorial. Whoops. Maybe next year I'll try again but this time I suppose I'd better do it exactly how they suggest rather than using what I have and following the suggestions of others.

 

 

"I Had to Laugh..."

"I had to laugh" is a phrase my dad frequently uses to start a story so I thought I'd borrow it. :)

A few weeks ago I was in a thrift store. I can't remember exactly what I was shopping for but on this particular day I decided to stop in and browse. As I strolled through the aisles, I found myself in the book section. The order of these books seems somewhat appropriate:

Yes, sometimes the Idiot's Guide to Dating does need to include The Idiot's Guide to Organizing your Life.  As a result, you might even change your Body for Life, and then hopefully you Flourish regardless of the relationship. An employee must have been bored while shelving books.

The end of February Dan's beloved Uncle Harold passed away (more details on that in another post). On our way back from the funeral, we made a pit stop and this sign had me giggling out loud each time I looked at it:

A very cleaver "marketing" icon. I think I need to find (or recreate) this to post in a guest bathroom followed with the comment, "Relax, you made it just in time." Ha ha ha ha...

Hair-Still a Topic of Conversation

Last month my sister posted about it being Dr. Seuss week and some of the fun things my niece's class was doing to celebrate. For "Wacky Wednesday" my niece did her hair like this (with help from her super, fabulous, and creative mom):

That evening I was in the store (Wal*Mart to be exact) and saw a woman with her hair like this:

You can't see it super well but she has green and purple stripes in her hair.

Don't know if she did her hair especially for "Wacky Wednesday" or not but I hope so....

An Apple Just Discovered

I was going through some pre-digital pictures for another project. It was so fun to have so many great memories run through my mind as I looked at the pictures from years-gone-by (1987-2002).

When I saw this picture of me from 1996...

It reminded me of these pictures just a few years before of Amanda & Sid (about 1993, it's so strange to think we could have crossed paths before we actually did)...

Years before we knew about the pictures or each other and yet there seems to be an ever so slight familial similarity. Who knew???

Another Apple...

What is it with them and this attraction??!! I mean seriously...I'm beginning to get VERY worried about them!

 

 

This was NOT part of the agreement when I joined the family.

(Didn't I just blog about this??? Oh yeah, right here.)

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far...

Not really sure where she gets it, maybe you can help me out...?

Overgrown Juvenile Delinquent

The church across the street from us often has uplifting quotes on their sign. They change the sayings every couple months or so. Well, when Dan saw this one he began to laugh out loud.

I asked him what was so funny. He said, between laughter and giggles, "I think it would be funny to change the sign to say, 'God is Harry Potter.'" He had even quickly figured out that he'd take the missing letters from the other side (which mentioned the times of their services) to make sure he could make the phrase say what he wanted.

He laughed about it for days, almost every time we drove by.

In fact, shortly after the idea he said that if I woke up in the middle of the night and he was gone, that he was at the church changing the sign. I said that was fine but that I'd have no problem reporting that he did the vandalism. Imagine the shock on the faces of the police and church leaders to find that their culprit was a 50-year-old man.

Lucky for him (and the church), the tiles with the letters are covered by a locked case. I suppose his years of tormenting innocent people with "good, clean fun" as a teenager are still too fresh....Some people's children...

Caution: Laughter Likely

We just received an email from Sid letting us know his 5th and final area for his mission--Rugby, ND to open a new area and train a new missionary! (Or for the next 6 weeks at least, I suppose he could have one more transfer but it's not likely as they usually train a new Elder for 2 transfers.) Here's a little from Sid's letter regarding this new transfer:

"I've been given a special assignment. Rugby, ND is a new branch and the area has never seen missionaries before. I will literally be going in and starting from scratch. And I'll be with a new missionary! Rugby is...almost literally in the middle of nowhere...This is missionary work at its rawest and purest form. President Layton told me that he spent a lot of time fasting and praying about who he was to trust with the assignment of opening this area and getting the work started there. I am honored to be trusted with this assignment."

I looked for Rugby on our map . At first I could only find Minot (next closest area in his mission) but thanks to Google Maps, I was able to figure out which direction to look to find his new area. It's an almost 11 hour drive from Casper (his current area) to his new area and just over an hour's drive to Minot. He thinks he's closer to Canada than Minot but again using Google Maps it looks like Minot is about 2 hours drive closer than the Canadian border.

He included a few pictures with his quick note. This one had me laughing out loud because there seems to be an appropriateness to it!

 

Maybe that seemed so appropriate after seeing pictures like these from his most recent 4-some companionship:

Sid's view from inside the bathroom...

(Can you find all three Elder's faces?)

The view from outside the bathroom...

(They are either super fast or Sid was in there for a VERY long time..)

I'm so excited for our goofball to come home! Only 89 days from today until Sid is home!

Bahaha & LOL

A few weeks ago, we bought these postcards on our return drive from visiting Amanda. They made us laugh out loud so I thought I'd share them for you to enjoy as well. (Late one night while I was contemplating what to write on the backs, I reread these and had to stifle my laughter so I didn't awaken Dan.)

One of our funnest and favorite date nights!

Dan has his third interview with them next week.

On Second Thought

We've done well to rotate our mattress and a few weeks ago Dan suggested that we should rotate it more than every 6 months. Our mattress is made such that we can only rotate the head and foot, flipping it over doesn't work. By his saying we should do it more frequently he was saying right that very moment. I was somewhat supportive of this suggestion. Now if you have ever rotated a mattress you know it's not easy and takes some maneuvering. We have a king sized bed and have only a couple feet of space from the bed to the walls. To try to utilize our space, I suggested we use my dresser as our foot board. Needless to say, rotating our bed in this bedroom would be challenging. Part way through this task, Dan also realized just how difficult this might be...

Aloha! From Idaho

Amanda went to Hawai'i for work in January! (We don't hold that against her any longer, well not often anyway...) She was kind enough to send us a package of goodies and prizes that she picked up for us on her trip. We each received some Hawaiian clothing, Dan a shirt and me a dress with the instructions that we were to take some crazy pictures in our new clothes and send them to Sid.

We willingly accepted this challenge, however, due to the craziness of our life at the time the assignment just pressed on my mind. I can proudly report that our assignment was finally completed the Friday night of Independence Day Weekend.

Dan and I put on our Hawaiian outfits and some leis then walked down to the elementary school a couple blocks away for our "photo shoot." It was just the two of us so we took turns with the camera and used the self timer. It was a fun memory and we enjoyed completing the assignment.

Ha ha ha ha...

Muchas Thankas

Did you know there's a National Volunteer Week? I didn't, which I suppose is not a good thing, but now I do. It's in April, which is also National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Because Safe Harbor had so many other things going on in April, we delayed doing any celebrating and thanking for our volunteers.

I had the idea that I'd like to do a gathering/party for our classroom volunteers I'd been working with. They all stayed much longer than their required 15-50 service hours and became such good friends that it seemed that we needed to do something a bit bigger for them. So a BBQ was planned right before we moved so I could be there too, not to thank me but for me to to be there to help thank them.

The crisis nursery had been given some small, portable grills which Dan and Bryce put together. After that was finished we loaded it with charcoal, the only problem is that there wasn't any lighter fluid in the charcoal and I didn't buy any. We used come paper to try to start the grill but with the winds whipping around us, all we lit was the paper. So much for a traditional summer BBQ.

We moved inside to finish prepping the food. There was plenty so if anyone walked away hungry, it was their own fault.

The party wasn't a surprise. So as part of the fun we drew names and gave that person a $5.00 white elephant gift. The ideas started popping and everyone did a great job coming up with some super creative ideas.

Marta was so creative with her gift. She hunted thrift stores for just the right items. Her person (Karson) wasn't able to attend but Marta show us Karson's gift anyway:

Marta determined (correctly I might add) that Karson is one who would suddenly break into song while strolling through the forest in a Snow White kind of way. So Marta hunted for all the little figures and hot glued the figures and flowers onto the hat for Karson to wear when that urge strikes.

Nick received a package of mustaches similar to these:

Found the picture here.

It didn't take long before everyone was sporting a different mustache while we played games:

Abby

Nick

Marta

Sarah & Bryce

I don't understand why everyone laughed hardest at my mustache. It got so that no one could look at me without cracking up. And Dan wouldn't give me a kiss either. So much for building my self-confidence.

This is where I received our little one. Definitely another creative white elephant gift.

We played games together and just laughed and laughed. Karson, Kourtnee, and Hannah were all missed. We tried to schedule it so everyone could be there but life has a way of altering the best laid plans.

Those I worked with at Safe Harbor are as much apart of me as the children we helped. Each of teens at the party graduated from high school this year, as did Karson and Hannah. I wish them all the best as they move forward with college, work, and all else their futures have in store for them. I truly miss each one of them and hope we will continue to stay in contact. Everyone I worked with at Safe Harbor have left hand prints on my heart.