Wicked!

I have been really bummed about not getting tickets for the Denver showing of wicked while they're here. They sold out pretty quick and so I had resigned myself to waiting for them to come back in a couple of years. John just bought himself another "get out of jail free" card by surprising me last Tuesday night with Wicked tickets he had bought from someone at work. Loved it.

Balloon Boy

Another Halloween has come and gone and once again I had to come up with 6 different costumes since my kids are required to wear a costume resembling a character from a book to school and they never want to wear that costume to trick-or-treat in. We stewed for some time about what Bryton could go as until John suggested he go as the infamous "balloon boy" that's been usurping the news channels as of late. That's treading on dangerous territory, I know. What would he have done if he had actually run into the real balloon boy while out trick-or-treating? Awkward. At any rate, we decided to take our chances. In interest of time I checked to see if by chance anyone was selling "balloon boy" costumes on line. Surprise, surprise, they were. I found a web site that was selling "balloon boy" costumes for the low, low price of $13.00 plus free shipping. All the costumes that I'd seen in the stores were selling for around $25.00. To me, that seemed well worth it. There was an instant costume that I didn't have to put together or even spend time looking for. Plus, it was guaranteed to be here by or before Halloween. (I ordered it the Tuesday before.) I started to get nervous when school got called off two days in a row that week due to snow. If the school busses weren't running, how were mail trucks going to fair? What is that saying? "Neither rain nor snow..." Something like that. I shouldn't have doubted but I did.
When Halloween got here I walked nervously down to the mailbox and opened it up with great disappointment. There was a 5x5x5" box inside but it was too small too fit a Halloween costume in. Or was it? I took it home and opened it up and this is what I found:



One balloon that I would need to find a way to inflate with helium
Two 5" pieces of wrapping paper ribbon
One cupcake holder
One clip that I never did figure out how to use
One paper with the instructions on how to scotch tape the costume together

I felt like the giant balloon that was supposedly carrying balloon boy when it landed. Deflated. I wondered if everything having to do with "balloon boy" was a hoax. We didn't bother putting it together. Instead Bryton grabbed a pair of fairy wings out of his sisters' dress up box and went out. I started kicking myself for being cheated out of $13.00. Not to mention letting my 11 year old walk around with fairy wings on his back. If I'd been thinking I would have just bought a package of balloons and taped them all over him. Done. If I'd been really thinking I would have advertised this costume on the internet and sent it to people with a package of scotch tape for twenty bucks a pop...no pun intended.

Snow Day!

Backyard Pictures

A Cinderella Story

I just recently became an advisor to the mia maids at church. This is a group composed of girls ages 14-15. As their advisor, I help them plan activities and teach them lessons and do stuff with them. When I got asked to do this I didn't think it would be that difficult of an adjustment for me since I had been teaching Sunday school to this same age group of boys and girls for about 4 years. Boy was I wrong. It's a completely different world and it's going to take some getting used to.

For example, the other night I got asked to chaperone a dance. I said I would be happy to without even stopping to think, "How does one chaperone a dance?" I just assumed that because I'm an adult it would come naturally. The people who asked me must not know how immature I am or they would never have asked such a thing of me. Just because I'm close to 40 does not mean that I necessarily know how a 40 year old is supposed to behave. For example, if being 40 is supposed to mean that you don't mind walking around alone all night while everyone around you is having the time of their lives then I am SO not anywhere near 40. I could have buddied up with my Bishop since he was the only other adult there that I really knew but I just didn't feel that was the way to go. My other option was to hang out with the youth from my ward. Yeah, right. LIke that's gonna happen. :) I'll tell you, I didn't feel as awkward as I would have as a youth but there was definitely awkwardness going on. I kept calling John at home just so it would look like I was doing something rather than gawking at the youth. He got tired of me calling him so I eventually started pretending to text. Can you say, "Social Anxiety Disorder"?

For a while I decided to just sit and watch the youth dance. They're kind of fun to watch because there are a lot of songs that they have synchronized dances for. I thought that was very cute and fun to watch but I would much rather have been out there dancing with them. I wonder what they would have done if I had just gotten up and joined them. Would the space around me have gotten bigger and bigger until I was out there performing a solo? I'll never know. I did see that happen to one chaperoning couple who got really excited when the song "Shout" came on by Tears for Fears. I secretly got excited about it too because that is a song from my generation but when I saw how nerdy they looked singing along so that everyone would know that they knew the words and how quickly the dance floor cleared out I was glad that I had contained myself.

After a while I decided it might be prudent to roam the halls in search of unruly children. Have you ever seen an airplane that looked like it was about to crash so you kept your eye on it and when you saw that it wasn't actually going to crash felt just a twinge of disappointment? Not because you wanted anyone to get hurt but because if it wasn't going to crash then why did you waste your time watching it? That's how I felt as I roamed the halls. Every time I looked into a room and didn't find anyone being naughty I felt just a twinge of disappointment. Because, what was I doing here if no one was going to be naughty? Not that I would know what to do if I caught anyone being naughty anyway. I only encountered two scenarios that came anywhere near disorderly conduct and I found myself encouraging it. When I found kids trying to suck the helium out of a balloon do you think I said anything about how dangerous this was or how it kills brain cells and brain cells never grow back? Of course not. Instead I offered suggestions on how to get higher doses of helium out of the balloon. I ask you, is that the mentality of a 40 year old? And when I decided to scour the parking lot for juvenile delinquents and found a boy and girl sitting together in a secluded area behind the church do you think I demanded they return to the inside at once. Nope. Instead I walked by, quiet as a mouse, not wanting to interrupt their intimate conversation.

After this I came inside and found a "click" to latch onto. The people in the group all had one very important thing in common. We were old. This attachment didn't last long because soon after, one of my youth came out into the foyer and started engaging me in conversation. As I chatted with her I watched my "peeps" disappear one at a time until I was the last "old timer" standing. The night was growing late and I could see that my mia maid would be happy to oblige me with arm wrestling matches and dinosaur drawing competitions until it was time to go home. As I was just about to add the last two legs and toenails to my stegosaurus and the clock was about to strike 10 I looked up and something magical happened. My prince charming walked in. He had dressed up in his black suit and tie and driven all the way out to Loveland so that he could have the last dance with me. I ditched my stegosaurus and my mia maid as he grabbed my hand and led me into the cultural hall. They had just started playing the last slow dance of the night and he led me out to the dance floor and swept me off my feet. (sigh). It kind of reminded me of that scene in "My Best Friend's Wedding" where she's at the reception alone and all of a sudden her friend shows up and dances with her. MAJOR kudos to John for that one. It's funny how one little gesture can turn a would be disaster into a memorable night.

The Young Women's president in our ward has a saying that she sends out with each of her emails. It reads:

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow." ~Mary Anne Radmacher

To me that means "the next time you get asked to chaperone a dance, bring a date!!!" You see, all it will take is a little adjustment, and eventually I should get the hang of this.

Stanley and Vida Petersen Reunion

Here are a few highlights from the family reunion.

I am very proud that I can now name all Glen's (John's dad) siblings. In this picture it goes: Glen, Audrey, Jean, Karla, Lareen, Mary Kate. Lester his brother is missing and Beth and Gayle have passed away.


We had fun pretending to run a pioneer day care.

One of the kids' favorite pass times was rolling down the mountain over and over again. They had fun climbing the mountain too until Sydney got tangled up in barbed wire and sliced her skin open in a couple of places. She probably should have had stitches but fortunately Brandon is a CNA and took care of everything. Her wounds are all closed up now. I'm so glad that he and his family came. It was fun to see them.


The wildlife was a big distraction for Bryton. During the baseball game he'd look for mice in the outfield rather than watching for a fly ball. He said he counted about 24 of them. Of course, a place where there are so many mice is going to attract snakes and finding the snake above was 100 times better than the mice. In fact he liked the snake so much that when the airplane came to drop candy down to us he almost couldn't be bothered with it. I on the other hand thought that this was the highlight of the trip. Maybe because I am old and I realize that I'm probably never going to see something like that again in my life time. Laureen was able to get a crop duster to come do this for us. She's been working at an airport for the last 30 years and has connections. About 1000 times better than a pinata if you ask me. She passed out tiny bags to all of the kids to collect the candy but there was so much to collect that they were stuffing their pockets and anything else they could think of with it.
If you look really closely at this picture you can see the candy falling out of the airplane.



After all was said and done though, I think the kids' favorite part was playing with their cousins. Alexa and Whitney bonded as they roasted s'mores and argued about how to pronounce the word "marshmallow". Alexa insisted it was okay to shorten it to just "mallow" to which Whitney strongly objected.

Notice the s'more remains smeared across their faces. :)
It was a really fun trip despite the short stay and long drive. To top it all off, Brooklyn and Whitney had a ball riding home in the car top carrier and it made for a peaceful drive for the rest of us.


Not!

Unnoticed Miracles

Last Monday night we weren't sure what lesson to give for family night so we decided to have one of the kids pull an object out of our FHE grab bag and give a lesson on whatever came out. After we went through all of the torment of reasoning with our other 3 kids and explaining why Brooklyn was going to be the grabber this time she reached in and pulled out a journal. Okay. So the lesson was to be about writing in our journals. I figured I might be able to pull this one off because I kind of sort of actually have a journal if you're allowed to count blogs and so I wouldn't come off as completely hypocritical. The kids were ready to have the lesson as soon as she pulled it out of the bag so this didn't allow for a whole lot of prep time. Fortunately I had just watched the short video posted on lds.org where Henry B. Eyring talked about writing in his own journal. He explained how when he was much younger he decided that he was going to write in his journal every day about how he saw the hand of God at work in his life. ( I know this sounds like something from Oprah Winfrey but apparently she wasn't the first person to think about trying something like this.) I decided this was what I would talk about with the kids. I have always believed that miracles happen all around us every day and sadly go unnoticed. This was confirmed to me at the end of my lesson as I began to try to come up with examples to share of what I might write about for that day.
The first example I shared came from our bike ride to the library we'd gone on. After we arrived we parked our bikes and were in the library for quite a while. When we came back out and I started to get back on my bike I noticed that someone had tampered with my left brake, completely disconnecting it. This wouldn't have been that bad if my right brake hadn't already been completely useless due to a missing pad. As I fiddled with it I started considering whether or not I could get a hold of John at work so that he could come rescue me. I pretty much ruled that out since it's been impossible to contact him at work ever since he became a manager. In the old days I could call him any time of the day however often I felt like to ask him things like, "Hey John, do you know where the remote control is?" "Hey honey, what color do you think I should paint my toenails?" "John, I have an itch, do you think you could come home and scratch it?" I was given a new role along with his. I suddenly had to become a little bit more independent. Which means fixing my own brakes on my bike when stranded at the library. I have to say, there was a time in my life when I knew everything there was to know about my mountain bike. I could take it apart and put it back together again no problem. But since I've been married (and gotten a new bike) there's just never been a need for me to know such trivial things. That's what husbands are for. So as I tried to fix my brake at the library I felt and probably looked a lot like a monkey with a socket wrench. The only person around was a lady next to me preparing to embark her own bike for departure. She heard me lamenting about my brake and came to have a look. Somehow she knew that the doohicky had to be unscrewed and the thingamabob needed to be pulled taut and inserted just so and...voila'. My brake was functioning again. I thanked her and as I rode away I looked back at her once more to consider whether or not she had been an angel. This was fleeting though and I forgot about her and the incident almost instantly and would not have remembered it again if it had not been for my random lesson on keeping journals.
The second example happened on my way home from WalMart that day. As the kids and I were approaching our neighborhood I saw 3 dogs running down the sidewalk next to a busy street without an owner. I felt compelled to stop and pick them up. I had the kids walk down the sidewalk to try to coax them into the car. The two giant ones got in without hesitation and the medium one took off running. I drove the two big ones home and stuck them in my back yard. When I was done wiping the hair and dog slobber off of my gallons of milk I picked up the phone to call the number that was on their licenses. If you are a person that sometimes tries to call me you will not be surprised to know that of my 3 different lines, none of them were working. I can not tell you why for sure but I think it's some sort of conspiracy or practical joke being played on me. If ever one of my phones isn't working all I have to do is hand it to John and it will start working. And it has nothing to do with the "monkey/socket wrench" thingy because I KNOW how to use a phone. Anyway, I started panicking a little bit because I felt like I needed to inform these people ASAP that I had their dogs. After pressing redial on each of my 3 phones over and over for the next 20 minutes Brooklyn came in the house and said that a lady had come for her dogs. She lived about a half mile from our neighborhood and had been driving around asking people if they'd seen 3 dogs go by. She drove into our cul-de-sac at the exact time that Brooklyn went out to get something out of the car. She asked Brooklyn if she'd seen her dogs and Brooklyn said, "Yeah. They're in our back yard." She thanked us and said she wasn't worried about the other one because as long as he didn't have the 2 big ones with him, he'd come straight back home. Again, if not for my family home evening lesson this is something I would have forgotten completely.
One could argue that these were simply coincidences, but I prefer to think of them as miracles. I like to picture angels all over the place helping out whenever they can.
After the lesson I decided that we should start coming up with miracles we saw that day each night before bed. We have done that a total of 0 times which makes me sad because I wonder what kinds of things we have overlooked since then. However, I did have something stick in my memory despite my negligence in writing it down. Last weekend we went to a family reunion where John and I had been assigned to prepare dinner with another family. Since we were going to be traveling a long distance to get there we decided to let them buy the food and we would reimburse our share. When it was time to prepare the taco salad the person who had done the shopping told me that she hadn't bought any tortilla chips or taco shells because she felt like the dinner was getting too expensive. She thought they could just eat the taco fixings off their plates but I wasn't sure everyone would think that was such a good idea. Wouldn't that be similar to eating sandwiches without bread or spaghetti without noodles? I didn't say anything but I secretly panicked about it for a while until somebody opened one of the otherwise empty cupboards and found boxes and boxes of taco shells. We don't know how they got there but we accepted them as a gift from heaven and were able to have taco salad with taco shells for dinner.
What I thought was interesting about this was that while we were discussing our little gift one of the people at the reunion scoffed at the notion that heaven could have had anything to do with it. He made it very clear to whoever he could that he had lost his faith somewhere along the way. What struck me about this was that this person had just recently recovered from lymphoma. Not a miracle that easily goes unnoticed. It just goes to show that it doesn't matter the size of the miracle. It could be the parting of the Red Sea but if you are a faithless person you will find a way to rationalize it away. I prefer to look at everything as a miracle rather than picking and choosing because if miracles really do exist, then everything is a miracle, isn't it?

I Hate...

...cellulite.
...dumbness.
...rudeness.
...lack of self control.
...junk mail.
...any kind of pain.
...lack of air.
...lack of a housekeeper.
...dead grass spots caused by dog pee.
...broken things.
...infidelity.
...immorality.
...dishonesty.
...gossip if it has to do with myself. If it has to do with someone else I still hate it but I find it interesting.
...TMZ.
...weeds in my garden.
...heights.
...waking up early.
...sitting for hours.
...sand on my wood floor.
...using my ottoman as a computer chair.
...being cold.
...losing contact.
...dust in unreachable places.
...socks with holes in the toes.
...whole milk.
...furniture shopping with John.
...chapped lips.
...buying things that aren't on sale.
...background noise.
...lost puzzle pieces.

I love...

...Monday Night Special pizza and crazy bread at Little Caesars for 5 bucks.
...summer nights in Colorado.
...robins making nests and laying eggs in my hanging potted plants every spring.
...dollar movies.
...having a Super Target shopping center across the street.
...living 1/4 mile from John's work.
...new stuff.
...having a trampoline.
...cousin camp.
...living across the street from the library.
...the walking path behind my house.
...neighbors.
...our view of Long's Peak.
...the yellow canaries that flutter around in our bushes.
...bike rides with my family.
...going on dates with John.
...digital cameras.
...the internet.
...Big City Burrito.
...rain.
...snow.
...all appliances.
...the garbage man.
...college campuses.
...children's books.
...Spring.
...Summer.
...Fall.
...Winter.
...living in a cul-de-sac.
...my feet.
...bed time.
...firepits.
...thunderstorms.
...life.

Mother's Day

My family and I went to California over Christmas break. While we were at the beach we met a woman who was scouring the beach for sea glass. She claimed that she had been a successful restaurant owner until she was taken ill and moved near the ocean for health reasons. She said that she made enough to sustain herself by collecting sea glass and turning it into jewelry to sell. For some reason John and I were a little skeptical of her story but learning about sea glass was interesting enough. We had never heard of it but apparently it's somewhat well known because there was a story about it in National Geographic that we read a few months later. Basically what it is - is garbage. Back before everything started being made out of plastic everything was made out of glass. People would dispose of glass bottles and the like into the ocean. The waves shape the glass pieces over many years kind of like a rock polisher and they turn into pretty little stones. My kids had a hey day searching for sea glass with this woman. And they had an advantage because while the woman only looked on the surface of the sand, my kids would get dirty digging down deep in search of the glass. They actually found quite a bit. For Mother's Day John had some of the glass they found made into a necklace for me. Here it is.

I love it because it is sentimental and a one of a kind. Not to mention it cost about 10 bucks. And I'm not saying that to make John look bad because to me it is absolutely priceless. Thanks John. You're a stud.

May Day!

For my kids, May is always the grand finale of the school year. This is the month where they do their final field trips, their final programs, their end of school parties, their mother's day tea, field day, projects, etc., etc.. Today was one of those crazy days where each of my children had something special going on with their classes, and each event started at 9:00.

After a crazy morning I got to school just in time to see Brooklyn off on her limousine ride to the Fort Collins Lincoln Center to watch "Slim Jim Goodbody". Some sort of program they put on to encourage youngsters to make healthy choices. They got to go in a limousine because one of the parents in her class owns a limousine company. If she's lucky, she'll be in this kids' class throughout grade school.

As I was seeing her off I watched Bryton's class load on to their school bus (how lame) to head over to the Fort Collins Museum. Almost everyone was dressed in Cowboy/Indian/Pioneer attire. I embarked his bus to take a picture of him and his cuteness but when I saw him he was dressed in what he came to school in. When I asked him why he said, "I'm not really a dress up kind of guy." I decided to punish him by not taking a picture of him. (That will teach him.) Although I regret that decision now because, costume or no costume, he's pretty darn cute. And at least I could have gotten a picture of him on the bus surrounded by "dress up kind of kids".
After seeing them off on their excursions I went inside to Sydney's classroom where they were having a Mother's Day Tea. Sydney very appropriately wore her "mommy's girl" shirt. We moms sat with our kids and had a great brunch that the teacher had secretly organized with the dads. It was actually a pretty impressive spread.
If I'd known how much food would be there I would have forgone my Fiber One Pop-Tart and saved more room in my stomach. After our brunch we took turns going up to the front of the class with our kids and reading the poems they had written for us. Before Sydney and I had our turn one of the boys announced that Sydney's poem was the best. I watched Sydney's face turn red as she quietly shook her head in protest. Cute. She really is quite poetic and detailed for a second grader. Here is her poem:

Oh, did I mention that we got to wear princess crowns as we sat on our throne and read our poems?

Time Efficient Mush

Kids can be so amusing. I just caught Sydney taping tin foil over a cereal bowl. I asked her what she was doing and she proudly told me how she was getting ready for school tomorrow now so that she wouldn't be late. She had poured a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with milk to have for breakfast in the morning. When I told her what they would look like by morning she just laughed and decided to have them for an afternoon snack instead.

Brooklyn's Candy/Fruit Robot

Brooklyn came home with this great essay last week.

"My invention is a candy cleaning robot. It can clean up my room and I can just say candy and it will come strat out

"of his moth. It is my favrit candy. My favrit candy is choklet egg those are good. I would biy it because it can never run out of batreas and it can give frit too so that is why my Mom and dad would biy it. I wonder if my

"Mom and dad would like it when I get home. I will ask Mom and dad if they would like it. I bet they would love it because it gives out frite and my favritee candy. So ill just ask Mom and

"shell say no to candy and yes to frite It is my favrite cinde of frute so I love that robot. My mom and Dad will toduly love it too, but they could say no to it. But I think she is going to say yes

"so that is so a asome robot. I wonder if my Dad could make one of them. I''ll just ask him if he can. I wonder if he will. I bet he will say yes I can't wait when I tell him I

"was going to tell him but I forgot to tell him all just tell him tomorow and if I forget agin then all put it on a pies of papper and then I can remeber"

John spent all day yesterday building it with Brooklyn just for fun (how could he not!). She woke him up on Saturday morning asking "when are we going to build it? When are we going to build it?"

It really cleans, it really dispenses fruit and candy. John even rigged it so that it didn't require coins to get the goodies. It was as fun as building a pinewood derby car, with the added bonus that we didn't lose in the end.