Q&A

The quiz (as copied from Shawn & Bekah)

Just for fun...let's compare where we all live by answering a brief survey:

1. Price of gas today: $2.29/gallon

2. Temperature today: 51 degrees (in the afternoon)

3. Sacrament meeting topics today (this week): A returned sister missionary spoke on children and family (from October conference) and I missed the remaining talks because I was in the mothers room feeding Janie and a friend came in and I ended up talking to her instead of listening. Oops.

4. Biggest news story of the last month: This isn't pleasant, but the biggest news probably was about the 15 year old girl who was raped and strangled by a 14 year old boy, who then left her body in the Dixie Downs Park. It is a horrific story; nothing like that has really ever happened here before.

5. What your kids are doing/did for 100 days of school: Megan was bummed to find out that once you reach 2nd grade, you no longer celebrate 100's day. She came home all disappointed, complaining about it and Madelin broke the news that 100's day was only for the "little kids". Which reminds me of a story of when Madelin was in kindergarten. For 100's day, Madelin was given an assignment from her teacher to write the numbers from 1 to 100 and to collect 100 items to bring to school. She didn't want to bother to write the numbers and told me, "100's day? That's not even a real holiday. It is just something teachers made up to give us homework!" And I couldn't argue . . . she definitely picked up Mark's aversion to busywork.

6. Restaurants indigenous to your locale: Pizza Factory, Cafe Rio (until they sold out to the Subway franchise people!)

7. Top 3 attractions near you that people would be interested in visiting: Jacob Hamblin Home, Brigham Young's summer home, Zion National Park

8. Closest temple: St. George Temple, 10 miles away.

9. Distance from your house to where you attend church: 1 mile.

10. Number of different denominations you pass on the way to church: nada

11. How long have you lived in the house where you live? 1 month (but 5 1/2 years in the neighborhood)

12. The team everyone roots for in my city is: ummmm, I am not sure. There are alot of BYU and U of U alums that get a little 'fanatic' each year.

13. The number of visitors that could sleep comfortably at your home if they were to visit: The whole extended family; come on down!!

14. Distance between you and the next closest relative: Dan & Sara and Rachel & Paul in Provo, at least until June when Steve & Michelle make their move to Vegas.

Sleeping like a baby?

Jane has slept through the night the last 4 nights in a row. I don't want to jump to conclusions and I am not declaring "My child sleeps through the night" just yet; I'm going to consider it a lucky fluke until a serious pattern emerges, just so I don't get my hopes up. Mark was out of town Wed-Sat nights and I decided to do an experiment. Jane has been escaping her swaddle for quite a while now and I thought maybe she wanted to be a little more 'free' at night, so I dressed her in a blanket sleeper and put her down. She was up twice that night. Then I pulled out the "miracle blanket" (a purchase I made back in August). The miracle blanket is a special swaddle blanket that pretty much straight-jackets the kid into the swaddle; it is supposed to help infants sleep longer. I tried it when Jane was a newborn; it was too big and difficult to use. I tried it when Jane was 2 months old and it didn't seem to make any difference at all in her sleep times. I decided to give it one more shot on Thursday night. That night Jane slept from 7:30 pm to 6 am. The next night 9:30-7 (she had some wacky naps due to shots that day); and then the next two nights 7:30 pm- 5:30 or 6 am again. Miracle blanket?? Maybe . . . Waking up at 6 is an awkward time for me because I truly want to go to sleep again after that but it is difficult because it is already morning, but I can't complain too much over that. Even if this doesn't pan out as a permanent sleep schedule, I am grateful because I know that sleep begets sleep, meaning, the more Jane does sleep through the night (accidentally or not), the more likely it is that she does it in the future. So it looks like we've turned a corner . . . now if she could just get a regular nap schedule down. I keep wondering when that happens. It is still 1 hour here, 2 hours there, seemingly all over the place. All I remember is that both Meg and Madelin took two 2-hour naps a day up until age 2-3 and then took a 2 hour nap after lunch until kindergarten. I don't remember when the whole 2 naps a day pattern emerged. Any help on that?

I am connected

Just for the record, I have highspeed internet again. Yea!

Janie's on a Roll

This is a video of Janie rolling over. Though she looks a bit haphazard in this bit, she really is getting good at rolling over. I took her to her 4 month well-baby check today. Jane is weighing in at 13lb 1 oz and is 24 inches long. She's definitely my biggest girl yet because she is in the 35th percentile for weight and 50th for height. To put that in perspective, Meg and Madelin were both 10th percentile girls (height and weight) until they were over 2 yrs old. Both did not make it to 20 lb before they were 2 years old; maybe Jane is going to buck that trend. She has been a little sleepy today; probably due to the immunizations. This is good news to me because I got very sick last night (I'm thinking food poisoning) and had a miserable night. Jane and I have both been recovering by napping today. I really think I should only get sick when Mark is in town so he can pick up the slack . . . and clean up after me when I throw up. A little graphic, I know, but seriously, no one who is sick enough to throw up needs to clean it up too! I imagine Mark is secretly happy he got to miss out on that service. I am feeling better and even eating again, but not shrimp. I ate shrimp yesterday and now it will probably be a while before shrimp scampi sounds appealing again. How does that joke go. . . "Do you like sea food??"

Come walk a mile in my shoes

I scored some killer shoes today! At book club last week, Sara L. was wearing some wedges that were so, well . . . me. I asked her where she got them and she told me "Christensen's". Despite the fact that I have lived in St. George for 6 years, I have never stepped foot in that store (it is a staple of many Southern Utah shoppers, but for some reason it just didn't interest me). Last year for Christmas, The Boulevard gave Mark a $40 gift certificate to Christensen's. It has been sitting in my purse for 12+ months and I had not gotten around to using it until now. I figured I would use that $40 towards some shoes like Sara's. Up until now, I have found most of my shoes (4 inch heels) at Zappos.com. Imagine my surprise to see wedge after wedge after wedge lining the display tables in this store. I had the salesman bring me over 9 pairs of shoes; closed toe wedges, open toe wedges, wedge sandals. It was wedge nirvana. And they were cheap--around $25!! I ended up buying three pairs (I don't think Mark reads my blog, so he doesn't need to know. I am wearing a pair right now . . .

And speaking of heels, Madelin is slightly obsessed with my shoes. She seems to think that she is this close to fitting into my shoes. She is a size 2 or 3 and I wear a 6 1/2, so she has a way to go. The size discrepancy, however, has not stopped her from borrowing my shoes and clomping around the house. She actually navigates quite well in 3-4 inch heels; I was never that skilled at her age! But . . she crossed the line this Sunday. We were halfway through sacrament meeting when Mark told me to look down at Madelin's shoes. She was wearing a pair of 4" wedge sandals with printed tights. First of all, sandals with tights is just wrong, but even more so when they're your mothers. I am not sure how she snuck out in them without me noticing, but she succeeded. We let the girls out of the car to get us a seat (they weren't very successful; see below) and I was told later that Madelin wobbly strutted three times around the chapel in my heels. So much for subtlety. Mark took her home after the meeting to change into more appropriate shoes. Well, sort of appropriate. She came back with her own shoes, but unfortunately chose another pair of open toed sandals. Tights with sandals? Have I taught her nothing??

So slow

I finally just gave up and got a dial-up account for my internet. The cable company has yet to return my call and let me know when I would actually have service here. I figure that is not a good sign. So . . . I am trying to make due with this dial up, but it feels like I'm slugging through quicksand as I navigate between webpages now. It is frustrating. It is weird that I managed to do my whole masters degree online using dial-up. I was crazy.

I am also running into email issues. Charter has been bought by Orange communications and just emailed me to let me know that my charter email address will be disappearing next month. They then proceeded to give me directions to set up the new email account BUT- their directions do not work. I'm not an email idiot; I'm setting it up correctly. From the error message, it looks like the issue is on their end, however, it is just one more call I have to make to resolve an issue that I didn't create. I also now need to change the forwarding address for my byu email alias; however, their website will not let me navigate to the page that will allow me to do this. So there's another call I need to make. All these internet related difficulties are giving me a headache.

Madelin spoke in primary today. Oddly enough, they leave the talks until the end of sharing time. Madelin had about a 5 minute talk, but they didn't call her up to talk until after the 2nd bell rung (meaning, 2 PM, quittin' time). I have never taught her how to abbreviate a talk when time is short, so she just went on and on and on. It was a good talk, but the primary leaders just didn't leave any time for the talk and scriptures. They were still doing singing time up to the second bell; not sure why. I felt a little dumb as a mother having my child keeps everybody late after church but it wasn't Madelin's fault that there wasn't any time left for her. She pretty much just read her talk, but she speaks clearly and at a good speed, which I am glad to see. I like to see my kids comfortable with public speaking because I think it is a very useful skill.

Tom taught gospel doctrine today and he was really funny. Had the whole room rolling with some of his comments. It makes me wish I was a bit more funny myself when I taught, but really, it is not something you can force. I think I can be entertaining, but I don't think I have a lot of natural comedic talent. It is probably a good thing that Tom, Denise and I are such different teachers because is gives some good variety to the class. Nothing is worse than hearing the same voice each week; teaching with the same mannerisms, the same cadence, the same methods. I don't teach again for another 2 weeks; I am enjoying this schedule. On an related church note, we arrived at church only 5 minutes early and ended up sitting on the hard chairs. It (honestly) has been over 2 years since we have ended up on the hard chairs; we've made it a habit of leaving 20 or 15 minutes early to get a bench (on the left side of the chapel, of course). I wasn't even feeling rushed today; I am not sure why we didn't make it out the door at the right time. After sitting in the back--hard chairs and echoing gym floor and all--I will be extra sure we make it early enough to get a bench again.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Janie rolled over today! She is 3 1/2 months and was able to roll from her front to back, going both ways. I had no idea she could do it until she did. I was absolutely surprised. She rolled about 10 different times for me, but then wouldn't even try when Mark was standing there. Guess she doesn't have anything to prove. I never recorded anything for Madelin and Megan (bad mom!), so it is good that I write this down. I forgot how proud you feel as a mother when your little baby reaches those milestones--how fun!

100 Things

100 things about me:

1. I copied this idea from Stacie’s blog
2. I am 5 ft ½ in, but I like to round up to 5’1”
3. Other than running shoes, I don’t own any shoes with under 3 inch heels
4. I prefer 4 inch heels, especially wedges.
5. None of my pants fit unless I wear heels
6. I’ve lived in Santa Clara, Utah for 6 years
7. I’ve moved 12 times since I’ve been married and have built 5 houses.
8. I like this current house the best
9. I never wanted a swimming pool; Mark had to talk me into it.
10. Now I wouldn’t move unless the new house had a pool.
11. Our first apartment was in the Avenues in Salt Lake City.
12. It was an old polygamist house that had been converted into apartments. The kitchen was huge, but did not have a dishwasher or disposal.
13. I moved next into the ‘dead guy apartment’. We got the apartment after the previous tenant died of a drug overdose in the bathtub. He was in there a week before anyone found him.
14. I was thrilled to take the apartment because we got new paint, fixtures, carpet, etc.
15. We built our first house in Riverton, UT in 1997; it had a green roof and log pillars. As terrible as it sounds now, it was our ‘dream house’ at the time.
16. My first teaching job was at East High School in Salt Lake City; East High is where High School Musical was filmed.
17. During the summer off between teaching, I worked at a bagel shop because I liked the food.
18. I got pregnant that summer and ate a lot.
19. I had seven or eight students that year who were also pregnant.
20. I quit my job after having Madelin and cried regularly because I missed teaching so much.
21. I got over it; I tutored students in the afternoon to bring in some extra $$$.
22. In-between building houses, we usually rented an apartment or a house for a year or so.
23. We built our second house in Riverton, Utah. This one had a huge family room above the garage with dormers built in. I loved it!
24. We put the house on the market after living in it for 3 months and it sold the first week.
25. We moved to an 800 square foot home in West Bountiful, Utah. The house was renovated, but was extremely old. It was originally the house for the overseer of the church farm that used to be in West Bountiful. We lived there 2 years.
26. As a kid, I took piano lessons for 11 years; I was pretty darn good.
27. I have not regularly played or practiced piano for 17 years; and I am not so good anymore.
28. I played the clarinet for 5 years and in junior high when the band leader wouldn’t move my friend and I up to first chair (he assigned chairs by grade level, not necessarily ability), I organized a coup and convinced all the second chair clarinetists to quit the band.
29. I have never played the clarinet since.
30. I competed in public speaking in my senior year of high school; I did oratory.
31. I made it to state for oratory, but narrowly missed placing for nationals.
32. I always loved acting and am still secretly convinced that I would be fabulous in plays.
33. I never tried out for plays in high school because they were mostly musicals and I cannot sing.
34. I always wished I could sing.
35. The first play I tried out for was a play at BYU.
36. I made it to final call backs for the lead character, but flubbed the audition when they asked me to improv.
37. I am terrible at improvisation. I’m usually only clever and convincing if I have thought something through first.
38. I have not tried out for a play since.
39. I believe that teaching is part theater; it fulfills that entertainer itch I have.
40. I love school. I love taking classes and taking tests and getting grades.
41. I take standardized tests for fun.
42. I’ve given standardized tests to my girls for fun.
43. I graduated from high school in 1991.
44. I was not valedictorian and was really bugged about it because I wanted to speak at graduation.
45. I did get to speak at Baccalaureate.
46. I did not apply to any other schools except BYU.
47. I received a full ride academic scholarship to BYU.
48. I graduated from BYU in mathematics education in 1995.
49. I did not walk in the main graduation ceremony because it looked like too much trouble.
50. I did watch a portion of the main graduation ceremony from the seats in the auditorium.
51. My least favorite professor, who was a complete misogynist, ended up being the one handing me my diploma in my math program’s graduation ceremony
52. He mispronounced my name.
53. I graduated from WGU in 2004 with my Masters in Math Education.
54. I worked at WGU for the next 2 ½ years.
55. Since 1998, I have always had an active gym membership.
56. Barring pregnancy complications and post-surgery, I have regularly gone to the gym 5 days a week.
57. I hate dieting and would rather work out to get or stay in shape than give up food.
58. I like eating dry brownie mix, especially the kind with the chocolate chunks in it.
59. I don’t really like cake.
60. I do like chocolate and also tart candies and desserts.
61. I make, but do not eat, banana bread.
62. I met Mark on a blind date.
63. Before Mark, I made a point of only dating guys who were 6 feet or taller.
64. I initially bonded with Mark because we both like Clive Cussler books.
65. I still pick out books for Mark to read; he depends on me to always have books on hand.
66. I read between 2-3 books a week.
67. Mark was the first date I had gone on in 1 ½ years where I felt some “chemistry”.
68. I dated as much as I could at BYU to help stretch my food budget.
69. I was impressed by Mark because he had his own car. It was a blue Toyota truck.
70. I was impressed by Mark because he had a job and would take me out to eat and would buy me gifts.
71. At age 20, I was clearly impressed by the deeper things in life.
72. I hated the typical BYU coed stereotype, but I did have a missionary.
73. I dear john-ed the guy after getting engaged to Mark.
74. I got married in the Portland, Oregon temple even though my family was living in Seattle at the time.
75. At age 16, I got to volunteer in the Portland Temple during the open house and decided then that I would be married there.
76. The day I was married (April 28, 1994); it was 70 degrees and clear blue sky, an absolute miracle in Portland for that time of year.
77. I have three girls, Madelin, Megan, and Jane.
78. I waited 7 years, did 5 IUI’s, had 6 surgeries, and did 4 IVF’s before having Jane.
79. I had over 300 injections during the IVF cycles. Mark did about half, I administered the rest.
80. I am no longer afraid of needles.
81. I’ve had all my girls via c-section.
82. I’ve loved being a ‘first-time mom’ all over again and have been just as paranoid as the first time around.
83. I will be 51 years old when Janie graduates from high school. Ugh!
84. I like going to bed at 10:30 pm.
85. I usually take a bath every night.
86. I always read in the tub.
87. I have a bad habit of leaving wet towels on the floor.
88. I enjoy spending time on the computer, playing with Photoshop, and blogging.
89. I did not have internet in my house until 1999.
90. Now I cannot imagine living without it.
91. I like buying makeup, but I never buy it at department stores. I am a drugstore makeup junkie.
92. I absolutely love lip gloss and have a hard time resisting buying another tube each time I go to Target.
93. Target and Costco are two of my favorite stores.
94. Mark and I go to Costco for entertainment; I enjoy wasting an afternoon wandering the aisles of Costco and eating samples.
95. My favorite date is dinner and a movie; with the exception of when we have a new baby, we usually have a hard time finding videos to rent because we have seen everything.
96. I prefer Mexican and Chinese food, but I haven’t found a Chinese restaurant that I absolutely love here in St. George. I still dream about the Mandarin in Bountiful. Yum.
97. I don’t drive nice cars because I don’t take care of them very well.
98. I love playing Dr. Mario—an old school Nintendo game. Mark and I still challenge each other to Dr. Mario competitions.
99. I always want clean countertops in my kitchen. I hate piles.
100. I think furniture polish makes almost everything look better—countertops, refrigerator, sinks, bathroom fixtures, tables, baseboards, you name it.

The Good, The Bad, and the Unemployed

I've known about the possibility of my job at WGU being phased out for a couple months now, but now that they've told me that next month (most likely) is my last, I am absolutely bummed. This was the BEST JOB EVER! I cannot stress that enough. I guess it was too good to last; I've been doing it for 2 1/2 years, so that's a pretty good run. I still have feelers out to see if I can get creative and make up my own position with the math department, but I don't have a lot of hopes of that happening. I know I could get a job as a Progress Manager, but there is no way I could or would want to commit to fulltime work right now, even if it is from home. I don't even think I would accept a 20 hr week committment; that is still more than I want to give. I may just have to resign myself to losing my discretionary income. Maybe it is time for me to be unemployed; it is just weird because I have had some type of a job since I moved here on December 30th, 2000. That's 6 solid years of me bringin' home the bacon (limited though it my be in quantity). I guess now that I have this university position on my resume that it might be easier now to pick up a distance learning position at another school. I'll need my internet up to do some searching if I want to pursue that. I guess I am due for a change; my typical pattern is that each job is better than the last, so there could be something absolutely fantastic out there, ready to challenge me and help me keep my teacher cred (like street cred, but much more geeky).

Be it ever so humble . . .

there is no place like home. Not so sure this latest qualifies as humble, but cut us some slack; Mark is a builder. Think of it as a living resume. Barbara asked me to post some pics, so here you go:

Tag-Team House

I'm currently over at the 'old house', because that's where my internet access is. Every day I am back and forth about twice. Today I needed to do my work and also download some info for the gospel doctrine lesson on Sunday. Jane is currently asleep in her stroller and I would like to keep it that way, so I am now wasting time on the computer. I have been searching for some hats for Jane and found a site that had some cute ones www.lovelyknits.com. I ordered her some hats; I think I like them better than bows now for decorating a short-haired baby girl (Jane seems to like wearing them better than bows too). Landscape guys have been working at the house; they've got a couple days left to wrap things up. Currently there is a huge pile of rocks blocking my side of the driveway. I'll be glad when it's gone. Give it another week and I will probably have my house to myself---there have been workers in and out of my house doing various odd jobs since we moved in: plumbers, electrians, paint touch-up, deck coating, etc. I'm done with unpacking for a while; everything that is left in boxes can stay there for a week more. I'm burnt out on moving. Getting the windows measured for blind is on my MUST DO list. We're definately over-exposed at this point. Janie just woke up . . time to switch houses. :)

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

I do not have any internet at my new house . . . and it is driving me B-A-N-A-N-A-S, bananas! I keep having to due a drive by of my old house to catch the wireless connection. The dumb dumb developer of my new street didn't have either the cable or phone cables installed in the street, which means I am out both a phone line and highspeed internet for about a month. A MONTH. Let that sink in. Aaggghhhh! I am currently downloading all my email for my work. I come over in the AM, download email, then correct papers & check off assignments, then hopefully remember to come back over again in the evening to send it all out. This is archaic. I miss my technology. This blog is going to be pretty slow until I have an internet connection back up and running.