Author: christy

We’re down to the wire on Mother’s Day gifts and I’m not sure what to send my mom this year. She’s just had surgery and so she can’t do much. She’s allergic to everything under the sun so I can’t send her chocolates or a gift certificate to a nice restaurant.

What are you all doing for your beautiful wives and mothers this weekend?

As most of you know, I sell Home Interiors and Gifts. This is a home party plan that keeps me sane, allowing me to associate with adults since I am a “stay at home mom.”

So this past weekend was our Home Interiors seminar in Denver. Talk about a party. They have such a demand for this seminar that they split it by region into two seminars. I attended the second wave of 5000+ women (and a few men).

Have any of you ever been to the Denver convention center? The place is enormous. Huge. It’s a good half a mile wide and much longer.

Besides tons of recognition for the top people in the company, we have spirit day, and we learn about all the upcoming decorating trends as well as see all the new merchandise that will come into our line this year. SO COOL.

Spirit day was a ball. Imagine 5000 women dressed to match their team to signify something. My district was “Bobbi the team builder.” So we wore jeans, bright green shirts, a hard hat, and a tool belt with recruiting tools in it. Everyone screams and shouts trying make their team win the spirit stick. Crazy? You bet ya.

The down side to all this is bathrooms. Due to the elevation increase from many of our hometowns, we were highly encouraged to drink lots of water. This creates large lines in and out the door of the bathrooms. Now the funny part is that they close most of the bathrooms to the men and make them women’s bathrooms. So the men that were there had to hunt for a restroom to visit. Most of the time I left the general area of the current session in search of a restroom that was not overcrowded.

I do have to say that I was truly amazed at how organized the whole event was. 5000 women can certainly create chaos if allowed, but they had hundreds of people available to help and guide us to and from everything.

I’ll definately be going again next year. It’s an undescribable experience. Our key note speaker was Joel Zeff. Anyone heard of him?

Have any of you attended any amazing conventions?

I’m sure you’ve all noticed the new avatar for Matt. Apparently, he left the story to me!

All of our children are hands on learners. My house is never clean no matter how hard I try, due to this lovely learning style.

So most babies like to play in toilets, but Joshua, who just turned 15 months likes to play IN toilets.

The first time this happened, I was out with the ladies for the evening. When I got home Matt was totally frazzled. He had been trying to get computer stuff done and keep up with the little messes left everywhere by each child.

Matt was fuming as he told me that Joshua had climbed into the toilet. I just started laughing and couldn’t stop. I asked him if he’d taken a picture. He hadn’t, but Sara was the one that fished him out of the toilet. Later Matt admitted that it was pretty funny. Then he proceeded to tell me that he was sure Josh wouldn’t mind if I put him back in the toilet to take his picture.

As bad as I wanted the picture to blackmale him later in life, I couldn’t bring myself to putting him in the toilet.

So the next day I was on the phone with a friend and told her about Joshua’s toilet bath and we got a good laugh together. Then I heard Josh sounding frantic and starting to cry. I rushed to check on him and lo and behold, there he was, sitting indian style in the toilet and couldn’t move. I grabbed the camera and as I laughed, he calmed down and started to giggle, too.

Now this may have reinforced a bad behavior, but I have records for all of our posterity to enjoy. He still climbs in, but has learned not to sit down. He’ll stand in there, and dunk something of great importance (my alarm clock, the remote control) and then climb back out. Soon we realize that his ankles and feet as well as several spots on the carpet are soaked.

Elijah has become our potty patrol. He guards the doors and drags Joshua out of the bathroom when needed. What a good helper!

All of our children have done something of tremendous magnitude to frustrate their ever loving parents. Joshua being the fourth has had to be extra create.

Today is April 15th. Time flies when you procrastinate. Have you finished your taxes? I have not.

This morning at the early hour of 6:30 I was signing the log at Curves and noticed that today is the 15th. It is the day we must file an extention.

I hate tax time. Though we tend to get a good check back from Uncle Sam, it is not a part of my daily routine to sit and do paperwork, total up numbers, do my business inventory and call our tax lady. It must be done sooner than later as we will be living off that money shortly, but I will procrastinate one more week.

A great excuse is that our tax lady is so busy that she’s hard to get an appointment with any time after February. Maybe next year I’ll call her in Feb. This year, we probably won’t be able to see her ’til May when her life slows down a bit and when I quit procrastinating.

The nice thing about our tax lady is she is excellent. She asks all sorts of questions to help us get more back. She knows her stuff. I’m looking forward to deducting Matt’s new computer next year!

So what are you going to do with your tax money this year? Or what have you already spent it on?

Warren Jeffs, self-styled prophet and leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been predicting the end of the world for quite awhile. Three of his predictions have fallen through and the world goes on!

He led 10,000 RLDS followers in southern Utah and once again predicted that today would be the end of the world. He took 2500 of his followers with him to Texas to “wait it out.”

So live today like it’s the last day of your life…..and tomorrow!

Frankly I hope he stays there. And I hope that the 7500 followers still in southern Utah have the opportunity to free themselves of the lifestyle they’ve been stuck in for all these years.

EDIT by matthew: Fixed leader name.

After following the story with much debate on what is appropriate for such a situation, Terri died this morning after going two weeks without food or water.

It is time for me to get my living will in order.

Last Thursday in the mail we received some local ads. Even though we’re between jobs, my brain said, “I can’t miss out on a deal, I’d better glance through and see what’s going on in town.” So I’m flipping through nonchalantly and didn’t find anything in particular. On my way back through, I noticed a $100 off coupon from a butcher. HMMMM.

As I’m reading through their sale flier I thought, “I’ve always wanted to buy a cow.” So I called up my good friend, Emily and asked her if she might like to split a cow with me. She discussed it with her husband and said yes. I made the appointment for yesterday and got real excited.

While on the phone with my mom over the weekend, I mention that I’m buying a cow this week. She says, “So who’s going to milk it for you?” I about fell off my chair laughing. She laughed, too, as I explained that we’re buying the cow from a butcher and splitting it. I figure if we’re out of work for awhile, we’ll have plenty to eat between the meat and the other food storage I’ve been building! Mom was thrilled and said she’s enjoyed the half a beef they bought awhile back.

So Tuesday rolls around and Emily and I drove to American Fork (an hour south) to the butcher. We took the back roads, and as we passed a cow farm, we were making jokes about our cow. Of course now none of them seem all that funny, but for Emily and I this was big adventure!

Once we find the butcher, the haggling starts. Those of you that know me, know that I’m cheap and I want it on sale, so I was a little nervous about the price of the beef being what was on the ad. So the guy sits down with Emily and I at a table to discuss what cuts of meat we’re wanting to buy. He says most people come in and buy $1500+ of beef at a time and I’m sure he saw my eyes about fall out of my head. So after telling him I don’t want to spend $7 lb. on meat he says he wants to make me a deal and am I interested. Suddenly I’m feeling like I’m at a high pressure sales car dealership.

So he goes to the back room and pulls out several hunks of beef and takes us back to show us what we’d be getting and tells us what kind of cuts they would be. I started to think about this and realized I didn’t have to buy any set amount of anything, he’d sell me whatever cuts I want. So I told him to put back the expensive cuts and bring out more of the middle grade cuts and tell me what $$ we’d be looking at. Then he tells me, if we’re that close we might as well add a little more so that we can get some extra free groceries. Doing this and including the “free” foods into the initial cost of the beef brought our price under $3lb. which I decided was just fine considering steak is typically so expensive.

I felt like I haggled him down well, discussed with Emily how she felt about the new deal, and we began to cut. YEAH! We’re buying a cow, or the same parts of several cows. Anyway, people appeared out of the woodwork, big machines turned on and they put Emily and I at the end of the table to stamp our packages so that we would know what was in each package. It became very exciting as many different types of steaks as well as roasts, london broil and ground beef were individually wrapped, taped closed and stamped, and put into grocery bags that were waiting in grocery carts. They filled up fast.

So, in the end we purched 160 lbs. of beef and received 50 lbs. of other free foods: sirloin steaks, chicken, bacon, hot dogs and veggies of our choice. Yahoo! I bought my first cow and so far, those sirloin steaks were delicious! My freezers are clean and full of food and we will eat like kings while we’re in search of the next job opportunity!

So for those of you who are foreign to this type of shopping, here’s a song that our family loves!

Cows with Guns

One year ago today, I had a baby. Nine lbs. 10 oz. He came out the size of a two month old and is still big for his age.

I’ll spare you the gory details, but my baby, who never was small, is one today!! He’s taking his first steps, but is in no hurry to walk rather than crawl.

So we went out on the town…to Walmart since that’s all our town has to offer! Got a free cookie and some chocolate at the register, as well as a small birthday cake for the birthday boy and some ice cream to go with the party!

In the process of our party preparations, Elijah who is nearly three, wanted a birthday cake and wanted to be the birthday boy. I would imagine that is how it will go during the party. Picture this: We give Josh the presents, Elijah takes over, opens them and plays with the cool new toys. (As if we need any more toys since we just had Christmas one month ago.) Joshua gets the wrapping paper and the boxes, and will be perfectly content. He will, however, go nuts over the chocolate birthday cake and ice cream. We’ll see if we can post some of the birthday pictures of our cute little one year old!

As part of our anniversary, we went skiing at Brighton. In the past when Matt went skiing, I was either pregnant or nursing and couldn’t go. So this was a big deal for me!

A good friend of mine highly recommended taking lessons before I hit the lift, so I decided to follow her advice. Brighton has a great package deal with a lesson so I was thrilled.

I picked up my equiptment and headed out. By the time the lesson started my feet were numb…my boots were much too tight. So back into the building I went to change to a bigger boot. When I got back out to the next lesson, no one else had shown up. So the instructor and his two side kicks in training gave me personal instructions.

The instructor found that I caught on rather quickly to what he was teaching and flew through his curriculum and started the next class. I was thrilled to be taught to classes with a personal trainer in the time of one class, for the price of a group lesson! He took me down the bunny hill twice and I didn’t fall once….YET.

So then Matt and I met for lunch and warmed up a bit. Shortly thereafter, we were headed up my first real lift. It was only a green, (in the direction I was headed, anyway,) somewhat of a short mountain and boy was I in for a surprise. The mountain was plenty big and there were several rather steep parts. I stopped two or three times just for need of slowing down. I made it to the bottom without falling, but realized I had a terrible headache. I thought about it for a moment and decided it was because I didn’t breathe on my way down the mountain. *note for next run….breathe*

So Matt and I got on the lift again and headed back up, only to discover we were on a different lift taking us much higher than the first lift. This run was mostly blue, and I terrified. But, there’s only one way down, so down I went. I figured out my problem, fear of speed. I got going so fast I decided there was only one thing to do. So I headed for the side and threw myself into some softer snow. I think Matt thought that was pretty funny. So my first fall was intentional.

My next fall was quite unintentional. I was looking at someone else to make sure I wasn’t in his way and down I went. Arms and legs and poles flailing madly. Surprisingly, my skiis stayed on. I did manage to put a huge bruise, about the size of a softball right below my knee on the inside of my calf. I was thrilled that I didn’t break a leg.

On another run, Matt was ahead of me when he went down, not very gracefully, on a rather steep spot and I swerved around him yelling, “HOLY CRAPOLA.” I managed to get to the bottom without falling, but was sure I was going to take out several people trying to slow down and stop at the bottom.

One other time I fell and my skiis came off. It took me forever to get them back on because of the angle of the mountain.

Anyway, I’m no longer sore and I’m ready to go again! We may attempt the next one up in Idaho after Christmas. I must say, that’s the most expensive two pounds I’ve ever lost!

Not quite. But Elijah will be turning 3 in March and he is starting to say those cute things that three year olds say.

Elijah’s vocabulary and speaking ability is improving by leaps and bounds at this point, and it’s fun to listen to him try out his new found language.

It’s common for toddlers to mix up questions and responses, such as, “How old are you?” “I’m fine.” Elijah’s daily mixup is so cute. Every morning when he wakes up I say to him, “Good morning. How are you today?” He always responds, “I’m Elijah.” I’m afraid the kid is going to have an identity crisis wondering why he has to introduce himself to his mother every day. But this week he has started to ask me how I’m doing, so hopefully he won’t confuse that question for too long.

Elijah is at a stage where he loves to draw and I often find him drawing on my walls. This morning as I ate breakfast it sounded like he was drawing on the fridge so I asked him what was in his hands. He and Joshua (10 month old) were on the other side of the island playing. Elijah came around the cabinet looking at his hands and said, “UUMMM, fingers?” For once he was innocent and his response was truly classic.