Antelope Island and pumpkins

We were all out of school yesterday, so Sean took the day off and we all went to Antelope Island to hike and have a picnic. The weather is really perfect right now... summer is too hot out there. We're thinking about actually going back and going camping there in a few weeks if this weather holds, because it's perfect hiking weather.






We carved pumpkins tonight. There are 2 jack-o-lanterns, a spider, a cat, and Brittney's says "BEWARE". The first 3 pumpkins we grew in our yard, which was fun because that's about the only thing that did grow this year. Sean just found the seeds and planted them for the heck of it. I love carving pumpkins and I love Halloween.

Long Weekend

It's a long weekend! Yay! No school Monday or Tuesday. No big plans. Sean and I might go see a scary vampire movie at the drive-in tonight. Maybe go out to Antelope Island and hike tomorrow or something. We'll see. Sean and Josh went fishing with Dennis this morning, so hopefully they are having fun.

Wendi asked about basement pictures, which I do happen to have because my sister requested some also. I don't know how well you can see anything, but you can at least see what colors the girls did their room and that type of thing.



Brittney's room


Courtney's room


Bathroom



Family Room

There is also a laundry room. It's been really nice having the extra space.

Loved the latest episode of Survivor. I'm really, really hoping for a Todd/Frosti vs. Denise/James final four. That would be awesome.

Well, that's about all for now. I'm off to see if my baby is awake from her nap. I don't know why the stupid music player has such a hard time loading most of my music? Lauralee's seem to play fine. Hmph. Maybe it just hates me. Or my music. That "Teenagers" song has swearing in it, so maybe it's better that it won't load. :P It used to automatically start playing "Thriller" when you opened the blog, but now it's not? Curses.

Beware Church Basketball

I saw this lady at Wal-Mart once with a t-shirt that said, "Church Basketball: The Brawl That Begins With Prayer". How true, how true. So the opthamologist worked me in on Monday. You'll be glad to know that my eyeball didn't fall out or anything, although Josh would have loved it if I got to wear an eyepatch. I have some weird long named whatever that I won't explain because it skeeves me out (OK it has to do with my eyeball sticking to my eyelid and then peeling! off! like a scab! ripping!), but it's a result of a previous injury to the eye he says. It's not a big deal; just have to use some drops in it. The only injury to my eye that I can ever remember is a fingernail to the eye during a church basketball game. Like, my eye was bleeding a little. The opthamologist said that's a story he's heard over and over again. So anyway, I'm not sure if that's actually where the injury came from, but I'm kinda glad Courtney doesn't play church ball. It's vicious.

The last few days have been beautiful weather, but fall has definitely arrived. We went and winterized the boat and put the cabin up, and that feels a little sad. I hope it will stay nice like it has been a few weeks longer. Brittney's soccer game on Saturday got rained/snowed out, so they made it up last night and it was perfect weather.

Courtney went to her very first ever debate tournament last night. She did impromptu, which is where they give you a random topic and you have 7 minutes to write and give a speech. Usually you take maybe 2 minutes or so to prepare and then off you go. She placed 2nd in one of her rounds, which is awesome for her first time. The other rounds she did 4th and 5th. But most importantly, she really liked doing it, so that's great.

I don't know what it is, but the 4th baby is the one that is just really kicking my tail. Not her specifically, because she's been my easiest baby, but just the adding of one more person to the family. My body just didn't do as well with the pregnancy as previous times, probably because I'm older, she was a little bit of a stressful pregnancy because they kept thinking stuff was wrong with her, and the aftermath has been quite difficult as well. I'm finally starting to get a little energy back, but I'm still just flat out exhausted like I've never been before. I'm up in the night with her, then up at 5:30, get Courtney to school and the 2 littles to daycare, work, then pick them up, pick Brittney up, pick Courtney up and run kids around, dinner, household chores.... It's kicking. my. butt. So anyway, I would just absolutely die if I got pg again, and I was thinking tonight about her being my last, and the thought just makes me feel so sad. Isn't it funny how that is? No way I could have anymore kids, yet it's sad to think about not having any more.

The Poopinator

Josh will always tell me who he is (Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Hook, Darth Vadar) and who I am (when he is Captain Hook he always tells me I'm Smee. I don't want to be Smee. I want to be Tinkerbell) and what super powers he has. One day we decided that Lexi's super power is her prodigious pooping ability. We nicknamed her The Poopinator. Baby girl seriously has a diaper blowout every day. She had one at daycare this morning, of course, so they told me she was on poop watch this afternoon. About the time she normally has one the daycare teacher had one of the high schoolers checking her diaper every 10 minutes. She's so cute, though. When I put her blanket on her she hugs it and then shoves it in her mouth. When I pulled her out of the car yesterday she was working this cute little pose with her hands all folded.



Something is wrong with my eye, so I went in to see just the regular on-call doctor at my clinic last night, and he couldn't find anything on the surface that's wrong. So he called the opthamologist to see if he could get me an appointment any time soon... October 29. I'll have gone blind before then. I researched it on WebMD, so I know. I think I have acute glaucoma. Love the WebMD. Last spring I had some symptoms that I checked and it told me to seek immediate medical attention for poisoning. I was all suspicious of Sean, asking him if I did something to make him mad. So aaannyyywayyyy, hopefully my eyeball won't explode or anything before I can get in to the doctor. And if I happen to die of some mysterious possibly poison- related cause, tell the police to investigate my 2nd period class. I love 'em to death, but there are some shifty characters in there.

Major Hair Trauma

So today I had some major hair trauma. Ya know, I just want to be one of those people who has it all together... People who already know what their kids are going to be for Halloween... people who have clean windows... people who have cute hair!!
So today I got sick of my hair and went to one of those cheap places to get it cut. Well the crazy stylist must have been smoking somthing funky before I came in because she gave me the craziest worst haircut ever. I was worried while she was cutting it, and then I went home and tried to style it and was like... Ummm Hell No. I could have gone back and had her re-do it for free, but like I'm letting her near me with scissors again? So I went running around looking for another haircut place that's open on Sunday and found another cheapy place. The stylist there fixed it as best she could, but she was like... I don't know what that lady was doing. She just cut a chunk out of here and then didn't blend it there... On a side note, she was all fascinated by this streak of unpigmented hair that I have underneath in back, so then she called another stylist over to look at it too... Gotta love it when you're the center of the freak show. They found a few on top of my head too, so in a few years I may have streaks of pure white hair that can't be dyed. That should be fun.

Sean finished the pantry today, and I'm thrilled to have some extra storage space. The two main things I didn't like about my house were the small pantry and the small laundry room, so we've fixed both issues now. Here's a picture. Pay no attention to the messiness or the amount of junk food.



Here's Brittney's cute little soccer team:

Road Hog and shelves

This week has just flown by so quickly. It's amazing. I don't know where the time goes, and I just hate for life to be flying by so fast! Tuesday was Parent Teacher Conference for Brittney. She's doing great, thank goodness. Wednesday was a soccer game. Sean is putting up shelves in the pantry today, and that will be really great when it's finished. More storage space is definately a plus. I might actually be able to get some food stocked up.

So Josh, little Mr. Movie Quote, picked up "Out of my way, road hog" from some Disney movie (is it The Rescuers?)... and he'll say it when we get stuck behind someone slow or stuck in traffic. But the other day I went to pick him up after school and they have those red and yellow cars that you sit in and move with your feet... so Josh is driving around the sidewalk with other kids and yelling, "Out of my way road hog!" :/ Nice.

I just went to check the blog that my students have to write on, and the topic for the 11th graders is to talk about a current event and give their opinion on it. Simple, right? I swear like one kid has done it correctly. One of my little sweethearts wrote... I don't really keep up with current events or the news, but I think some kid is missing at Lake Powell. I'll have to go home and watch the news to see about it. Um, OK, how about you do that *before doing this assignment LOL Gotta love teenagers.

Well, that's about it for tonight. No major plans for the weekend at the moment, but I think that needs to change. I'm ready to do something fun.

feeling blah

I'm feeling so discouraged tonight about my job and about having to teach to tests and I have all these philosophical questions about what my job really is... I feel a responsibility to expose my students to great literature and teach them write for a variety of audiences and purposes and teach them grammar and root words and punctuation... Yet I also have to look at what the majority of them *need to know for purposes of testing, and what they realistically will use in the future. Anyway, I was coming here to blog about it and get it all out, but Lexi is crying and Sean can't comfort her so I guess I won't be able to. Oh well. I'm feeling discouraged. :( Tomorrow is a new day though....

Tooth Fairy, PTC, and I'm a nerd

I'm happy to report that I did actually get a few things accomplished on Saturday. Found some cute jeans for Brittney, got the grocery shopping done, took Courtney to get her hair cut and it looks cute, returned stuff to a few stores... So that's good. We rented Knocked Up and then were too tired to watch it. Sean put it in for a few minutes before we took it back and what little I saw was pretty darn funny. So I guess we'll be renting that one again. And then we went to Mike's birthday party on Sunday and that was fun to hang out with everybody.

Yesterday was Parent Teacher Conference, which always makes for a long day. Sean picked the kids up and was busy running everyone around all night, so we were both pretty tired by last night. Lexi had a doctor's appointment, and all is well. Still in the 97th percentile for Miss Chubby. Brittney had a make up soccer game. Apparently she wanted to play forward, but the coach wanted her on defense, so she just figured she'd try to score from half field. One shot the goalie got, and the other went out of bounds behind the net. But hey, ya gotta try, right?

So Josh must have heard about the tooth fairy at school today, because he told me all about how it works. Everybody loses their teeth and then loses more teeth and they can't find them (because they're lost) and then the tooth fairy takes you someplace and gets you some money. Sounds like a plan to me.

So I'm a big nerd (not news to anyone who knows me) and I read the newspaper editorial section and get all mad and say how I'm going to write a letter to the editor, and once in a while I actually do. So here's the one I wrote the other day. I can't figure out how to make a link work, but here is the address if you want to copy and paste it into your browser. Or not. It's really not that exciting.

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_7056091