Milebug--great mileage tracker

I just wanted to make mention of a great app called Milebug that is very useful for keeping track of miles driven.  You'd be surprised  how much you can save on taxes if you keep track of the miles you drive for business, charity, or even medical travel.  This app for the iPhone makes it easy to track miles and make reports for tax purposes or for reimbursement.  There are also Android and Windows 7 apps available.

Yellowstone

We were able to go to Yellowstone last week during Fall Break.  We had a lot of fun and it was great to see how excited the kids got about seeing the wildlife and the "thermal stuff".  Here's a digital scrapbook page that I made with a few pictures and a video.  Just click on the picture below and it will take you to the page on talespring.com.

Learning Sign Language

I've been inspired by my cousin Charlotte's good example of doing her very best for her kids. I'm going to finally start really studying sign language and teaching Aaron. He is getting to where he imitates almost anything we do and he even makes up his own signs trying to tell us what he wants so I know he can pick up lots of new signs if I just show him. It's been a while since I tried to write down all the signs he knows but it's somewhere around 120. Now he's trying to talk a lot and he's using some signs much less because he's trying to say the word with his mouth. The problem is that most of his words sound very much the same so it would be helpful if he used the word and the sign together. I think I'll start with 5 words this week that I'll try to incorporate into our day. This week's words will be:

learn, like, teacher, understand, what, why, who

Okay, so that's actually 7 words but I think that's alright. He might already know like and teacher is a noun that should be pretty easy to learn. The others could be a little harder for him so we'll see how it goes. I will report our progress next week.

Entertaining Friends

When J. and I first got married I thought we'd do a lot more entertaining than we do. He seemed to have so many friends that he kept in close contact with that I thought we'd be inviting them over often for games and food and that sort of thing. Well, that didn't end up being the case, probably more because of me than because of him. As I've already explained, I'm not a good housekeeper so inviting people over causes me stress, therefore we don't invite people over very often.

I've decided tonight that one aspect of my new "happy at home" motto is going to be about sharing time with friends and family. I am going to get my house together and organized so we can invite friends over without causing me too much stress and anxiety. There's another motivation to get off my rear end and get some things done. Hopefully an invitation will be extended to you soon.

A New Direction

Tonight I picked up a book that's been sitting on my shelf for a while. It's called The Ultimate Career: The Art of Homemaking by Daryl Hoole. I've read parts of this book in the past but tonight a few things I read caught my attention and they've caused me to think about my life.

I'm not a good housekeeper. Anyone who's been to my house knows that. I'm not a complete slob but I'm definitely on the slob spectrum. I always have been. Dad, if you read this post, you will be able to attest to the truth of that statement. I don't want to be a slob but I have habits that make it difficult for me to change.

So, tonight I opened this book thinking that I need to make some changes in the way that I run my household. I turned to the first page and the first sentence in the introduction is a quote by a Samuel Johnson who was a writer and literary critic in the 18th century. He said, "The ultimate result of all ambition is to be happy at home." That hit me pretty hard. I am often not "happy at home" and one of the reasons for that is the mess and clutter that I live in. I have a hard time finding things when I need them and I'm often stressed by the overwhelming feelings that I get when I look around at everything I need to do. I'm often grumpy with the kids because they have picked up many of my bad habits and it makes for a perfect storm of chaos and clutter.

After thinking about all these things I've come to the conclusion that I want to make this my new goal and motto: Happy at Home. I'm hoping to use this blog as a way to keep track of my progress, ponder on ways to achieve happiness at home, and share any ideas that are successful. I'm excited about this and have high hopes. Here's to being happy at home.

I think I might be back

So it's been a year since my last post. I've wondered about starting up again a few times but I don't think I was ever quite ready. I'm not sure that I'm ready now either but I'm going to give it a shot.

Not much to say today but OrphanAnnie(8) did say something kind of funny yesterday. She was reading an article in the Reader's Digest (this was surprising in itself) and she wanted to tell me about it. She said, "There is this woman and she's kind of young. She has friends..." Okay, so once you get a little older you don't have friends anymore? Hmm. Does she think that I have friends or not...

General Conference

I've noticed recently that after every General Conference there is a talk or two that everyone talks about. In October last year it was the one about hope by Pres. Uchdorf. A few conferences back everyone was talking about Pres. Eyring's talk on the journal in which he wrote about how he saw the hand of God in his life every day. I guess I can't remember others specifically but as I watched this General Conference I wondered which talk it would be that I would hear referenced a lot over the next 6 months. I think it will be either Elder Uchdorf's again on discipleship or Elder Bednar's talk on the temple. It could also be the one by Elder Hales about the economic times and how we need to learn to live within our means. Which one stood out to you?

Things Heard and Seen

I know it's been way too long again and I really need to write a couple of posts about our trip to Disneyland and Destructo's(3) experience with preschool. Until I get to that though, I thought I'd post about a couple of interesting/funny things I've heard and seen lately.

While walking through the girls' section in Walmart I glanced at the racks of training bras. I couldn't help but notice the brand name of some of them: "Sweet Nothings."

I was running around the track at the Rec Center the other morning. Two older ladies, probably in their 60's were walking together and chatting. Just as I passed them I overheard one say to the other, "...and her husband's a tall glass of water, too."

On the radio I heard that in Arkansas there is a bill going through the state congress that would allow people to carry a concealed weapon with them into a church. Right now apparently, the only two places that concealed weapons are banned are in church and bars. Interesting pairing.

The "S" word

Not too long ago, Bookworm(9) was really grouchy and driving me crazy. I finally found out that she had been having some problems with her friends at school and that's why she was in such a bad mood. She told me how they had been having a conversation about some boys in her class and that one of them had used the "h" word. She didn't know what that meant and they wouldn't tell her so she felt left out of the conversation and she also felt kind of dumb. So, she asked me to tell her all the bad words as a remedy to her problem. My first reaction was to refuse but then I decided that she probably did need to know what the "bad" words are to be able to avoid then. I wrote down a little list because I don't like to say them out loud (I know, I'm such a baby) and then explained what they meant. She was so happy to finally "be in the know." We threw the paper away and that was that.

Fast-forward to today. She came up to me and said, "You know the 's' word that means poop? Well, in science class, Mr. L was talking about how scientists can tell what people a long time ago ate by looking through their human waste--I don't like to say poop. And he called it the 's' word."
Now you can imagine that I'm starting to get a little upset thinking that the science teacher said the "s" word to a class of 4th graders. So I said, "Really?! He said..." and I spelled it out.
She looked at me blankly and I realized there must be a mistake. I said, "Do you mean that he said 'scat'?"
"Oh yeah, that's what he said."
"Scat isn't a bad word."
"Oh. Okay."
Maybe we need to have a review lesson on bad words every few weeks.

Economic crisis?

We went out on Saturday night with two other couples in the Elder's Quorum presidency. We pulled into the mall and it was packed. I don't go to the mall very often so I don't know what it's normally like but we had to drive around for a while to find a parking space. Then we went in and tried to get a table at P.F. Chang's. It was an hour wait so we walked down to Spaghetti Factory. There was no wait but still quite a few people were there. When things first really started going south in the economy I saw a few signs of people tightening their belts but I'm not really seeing that anymore. Maybe it's not possible to observe a real change in other people's habits. Has anyone else seen evidence of an economic crisis outside of your own checkbook?

Random post

I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. However, this post is mostly about something dumb, but it annoys me so I'm going to gripe about it. I was reading the newspaper and came across a critic's list of "Best of 2008" stuff: movies, TV, plays, concerts. I love "top ten" lists so I quickly looked at his list of best movies of 2008. Here's my beef. Three of the ten movies are going to be released in Jan. and Feb. of 2009! How does that make them 2008 movies?! Ugh! I think it has something to do with the Oscars, but it drives me crazy!

More Kid Quotes

Yesterday we travelled for a couple of hours to go see my cousin who is leaving on his mission this week. Since it was a lot of time in the car the kids had to entertain themselves whatever way they could. At one point they started playing 20 Questions. It was Littleman(5)'s turn and OrphanAnnie(7) asked him what it was, an animal, vegetable, or mineral. He said it was a cinnamon roll. She said, "No. You're not supposed to tell us what it is. Think of something and then tell us if it's a vegetable, animal, or mineral." He said, "It's a cinnamon roll," and the conversation went back and forth with more and more frustration on both sides until we realized that he was saying "mineral" the way that he knew how, "cinnamon roll."

Later they were pretending that they were being chased by bad guys. Bookworm(9) was sitting in the middle row and OrphanAnnie and Littleman were sitting in the back. OA and LM told BW to shoot the bad guys so she turned around and said, "Deck the halls!" I said, "Deck the halls? What do you mean? What do you think 'Deck the halls' means?" She answered, "Get out of the halls."

A Letter

Dear Readers,
I started reading a new book called The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The story in the book is told through letters sent back and forth to various people and I'm quite enjoying it. The characters' personalities really come out through the words of their letters and it's made me think about letter writing. It really is almost a lost art. I think it's sad but it's not like I've done my part to keep letter writing going. So I'm going to attempt to write a nice letter like the ones in this book.

We had a wonderful Christmas. We're sad that Mr. Dad's parents couldn't join us on Christmas morning because of the weather, but we still had a great time by ourselves. We decided to get the kids a Wii this year. Watching them open that present was so fun. We had wrapped it and then put it a bigger box and wrapped that, etc. until it was wrapped up four times. I've never done that before and that was half the fun. Their reaction when they opened the Wii box was priceless. I got it on video so maybe I can show it to you sometime. We received so many other wonderful gifts, too, and we feel very blessed to have such generous and kind family and friends. I hope you had a great Christmas, too.

The weather here has been crazy. I would guess that we have a total of about 1 1/2+ feet of snow. I've done all the snow shoveling because Mr. Dad's back and snow removal don't mix. I'm getting pretty tired of it. It's been such heavy snow that it's a hard job and my shoulder has been bothering me. I'm not sure if it's the snow shoveling or something else that started the aching shoulder but the shoveling definitely doesn't help.

Now I'm starting to feel like I have cabin fever. I haven't gone anywhere for three days and I'm feeling a little restless. I tried to leave this morning but I couldn't get the car out on the street. I had shoveled the driveway but the city hasn't grated the road in front of our house so I couldn't get through the snow on edge of the street. The bishop was driving by, saw me spinning out and stopped to help push me back into the driveway. I was a little worried he was going to have a heart attack from all the exertion! So, anyway, we've been stuck here. I did go out later and shovel the snow on the street so hopefully we'll be able to get out tomorrow. I'm not the only one who's had problems. The garbage truck got stuck after it picked up my neighbor's trash this afternoon. It would have been funny if I hadn't felt so bad for him.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, too. I look forward to the new year that is upon us. I think it's going to be a good one.

Sincerely,
Kim

Kid quotes

Yesterday, the kids got up a little early and we were trying to sleep in a bit. Mr. Dad got up a couple of times to get them to quiet down and finally made them go downstairs. I came out about an hour later and they came upstairs complaining. Bookworm(9) said, "Daddy made us go downstairs but it was just Littleman(5) being loud and it wasn't us and I was so hungry I was going crazy. It felt like I was going to throw up or like I was having a baby!"

Littleman: "I want some air hockey chicken." (teriyaki)

This one's for you, Julie

This strip is called Argyle Sweater. It can be pretty funny. You can see more here.

A New Word for the Dictionary?

I was reprimanded today for not keeping up my blog. :) I know it is so annoying that I don't post often. I'm going to try to do better.

I've been thinking about this for a while. Have you seen the Circuit City ad where the lady is talking to this huge camera? She says something like, "I don't understand. You have one price online and a whole nother price in the store?" Now, as far as I know, nother is not a word. I say it all the time. I heard someone say it today when I was at book club. I only noticed because I've been thinking about it since I've seen that commercial. I think it's pretty common and I don't even notice it usually, but it really stuck out to me in this commercial.

Hold on. Wait a minute. As I was rambling on about nother not being a real word I thought I'd check just to make sure. There it was on dictionary.com! It is classified as "informal" but it is there. Well. Now I can say it without a second thought. It makes me feel free in a way.
(This is one of my dumbest posts yet, but since I took the time to type it out, I'm going to post it.)

Funny T-shirt

I saw a woman at the gym who had an interesting t-shirt. It said:

Big or small--
Let's save
them all.

I didn't get it at first and then I noticed the pink ribbon.
Get it?

Vote for your team

In preparation for this Saturday's "Holy War," go check out irivalz.com. Vote for your team and find out who really has the most fans. You can also download a free app for your iphone so you can vote that way too. There's even a "smackboard" where you can talk smack if you want to. It's fun, check it out. Go BYU!

Aida

For Christmas the last couple of years, my in-laws have given us season tickets to a theatre in the area. It is a theatre-in-the-round, which means that the audience surrounds the stage and there's not as much stage settings as a regular stage would have. Almost every play or musical we've ever seen there has been excellent. I don't think the actors are paid very well, but they love what they do and it shows.

Last weekend we went to see Aida. I didn't really know anything about it and I didn't know what to expect. It was amazing. The music was great, the acting and singing were wonderful, and it was a beautiful story. This was the Elton John and Tim Rice version based on the opera Aida. It's a rocked out version that I thought was very cool. The princess wears evening gowns and is very fashion conscious, the bad guy's henchmen look like Keanu Reeves and they just stepped out of the Matrix movies, and the leading man looks like a rock star. So even though the setting is ancient Egypt, it has a modern day feel. If you ever get the chance to see Aida, I'd take it.

Election Day

I just voted. I was in and out in a few minutes. I thought that might be the case. There has been early voting going on at the library for the past couple of weeks. I've driven by a couple of times and the lines were coming out the doors and around the building. I wondered if the polls might be pretty slow on election day since so many people were voting early. I went at about 2:00, which isn't usually a very busy time, but I wonder what it will be like during the normal busy hours.



It will be interesting to see what happens tonight. I predict that Obama will easily win. I just hope there will be enough checks and balances in place to keep us from turning into a socialist government.