Right now I am pondering on the pointlessness of writing this particular update. Assuming that people WANTED to hear about our trip to New York in the first place is one thing, but to imagine that there would be any still interested in reading an account of the trip two months after the fact is really quite presumptuous. Nonetheless, history must be recorded, and so I will write on.
I left off my last account as we left
We did eventually make it to
The car didn't need to be returned for a couple of hours, so I decided to take mom and Alisa on an impromptu driving tour of
Unfortunately, we went into a station that only had uptown trains. We went back up and crossed the street to get to the station with downtown trains, but our subway passes wouldn't work. The lady at the counter explained that you have to wait 20 minutes before you can use your pass again at the same station. So we stood there in the subway station, watching trains come and go, for 20 minutes before we finally could board a train downtown. Standing in a hot, musty, un-air-conditioned, interesting-smelling subway station for 20 minutes in August is not my idea of fun, but it passed soon enough and we made it home.
Monday morning we set off on our first day of adventure. We had a delicious breakfast at Noho Star-- where Alisa and I shared Brioche French Toast and Goat Cheese Scrambled Egg Bruschetta with Pesto and Sun-Dried Tomatoes (yes, this is the NY I'm talking about!). Then we set off to meet Marissa Ereksen (one of our mutual friends from the music program at BYU). After we met up we walked around
After getting our fill of window shopping, we set off to see Grand Central Terminal. Then we took a train uptown to get a hot dog. Yes, a hot dog (but it's Julia Child's favorite hot dog). After braving the heat of the tiny un-air-conditioned Papaya King, we enjoyed our delectable hot dogs and had some of the weird fruit drinks they make. Mom managed to spend $10 (at a $1.50 hot dog store) trying to get food that would meet the requirements of her food plan-- and she still had to get more vegetables after that. =] (Sorry, mom, I just had to make fun of that.) After our hot dog stop, we took the subway back to midtown and did a little walking tour. We went through the Parker Meridian Hotel and saw Carnegie Hall before we came to that most incredible of all NY destinations: the Steinway store. Yes, we spent a leisurely hour or two reveling in the beautiful instruments surrounding us and playing pianos that cost more than a small house. It was heaven on earth.
After our stop at this sacred mecca, we headed for a whirlwind tour of downtown: Wall Street, Federal Hall (site of
By this time it was very late and mom was about to starve. Unfortunately for her food plan, the only thing they sold at Grimaldi's was pizza, root beer, wine and beer. Sorry, not even a salad. So mom still had not eaten. We got her a fabulous (if somewhat belated) dinner at Better Burger before embarking on a night tour of Times Square,
Tuesday morning dawned hot and humid. After catching a quick breakfast, we were off again. At this point in our trip, we found that there was a slight difference in travel strategy between mom and I. My idea of "conquering
We decided to go to somewhere close to our apartment and so went to Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill. But--- it closed about 5 minutes before we got there. After unsuccessfully trying to find an alternate venue for our meal, we took a cab to a teeny Mexican place called Itzocan that was fairly close to our apartment. It was rated a 24/30 for food in the Zagat guide, but when we got there it was well past lunchtime and were the only ones there. We sat in the kitchen-sized restaurant, ordered our food and waited.... and waited... and waited. Here I started to get frustrated. I was responsible for choosing this place and we waited for an interminable 45 minutes in a not-so-snazzy-looking hole-in-the-wall, wasting away our afternoon when we could be seeing more sites....... and then our food came. Pan-roasted stuffed chicken breast with goat cheese, vegetables and red mole sauce, a quesadilla with shredded beef, mushrooms, baby greens and cheese (THE best Mexican food I have ever had) and a quesadilla with pumpkin flower, chicken and monterey jack cheese. Some things are worth waiting for-- even in NY.
We went back to our place and got ready to go to a broadway show that night. Of course "on the way" there we went to
On Wednesday we woke up at 5 am to the sound of New York being bombed. It turns out that we were not under attack-- it was only VERY LOUD thunder, lightning and pouring rain. By the time we woke up again it was clear and sunny and hot: 95 degrees with 97% humidity-- no that is not a typo. We went in the subway station to take a train uptown to the art museums, but before long we figured out that that particular subway line was closed because of flooding. As a result, huge crowds of people-- including us-- were herded through the station with people squeezed to the very edge of the platform-- not for the claustrophobic. We finally took an alternate line and got breakfast on the way to see
Thus began the Rogers Family Reunion: all of the
Then Monday morning we were off to
At this point, I started to realize that it had been several years since I had actually been camping. There were no flush toilets-- only spacious wooden outhouses inhabited by germs and flies. The campsites, while very beautiful with lake views, were covered in a fine layer of dirt that instantly covered anything it touched. We hadn't been there five minutes before Camryn was sitting in the dirt and playing in it like sand. I started to become very tense, envisioning a week of taking dirt-blackened children to germ-covered potties. I realized that this was not going to be a very fun trip if I spent my time being germ-phobic and picturing ruined outfits, so I decided to accept the fact that everything that we brought-- kids included-- was going to be covered in dirt for the next few days and IT WOULD BE FINE. And it was.
And so we had a great trip. There's not a whole lot to write about. We sat in the lake on floaties, lay in the sun on the shore, went sailing on one of Nate's boats, ate yummy food at camp, roasted marshmallows on the fire, played cards or watched a movie in the motor-home at night and then repeated the next day. It turns out that we did have cell phone coverage at camp, but we didn't feel that it was necessary to disclose this particular detail to Dave's office. =]
We managed to have two minor adventures at camp. We attracted huge swarms of bees every time we made food. Dave and I set out one morning to buy yellow-jacket traps and also came back with a bug zapper-- a tool shaped like a small tennis racket that would zap a bug with an electric shock when you hit it. It became the popular new sport of the trip-- to see who could zap the most bees and flies at lunchtime. One of Nate's boats capsized on the last day of camp-- with Dave and Leah inside it. Luckily Dave and Leah fared better than the boat-- which needed some major repairs afterward.
We drove back to
And there I will leave you, coming back at some point to write the exciting conclusion..... Hopefully in less than a year after the fact... =]
Karen
Saturday, September 29, 2007
The Travelogue Part 2: New York, New York!!
Thursday, September 20, 2007
It's Time To... Mom My Ride
Well, yet another week has passed. And now that we have gotten settled into school I have started yet another round of cooking adventures-- ha, ha-- NOT. No, we have been as busy as ever and are subsisting on such culinary wonders as Costco ravioli, Costco potstickers, potato bar and waffles.
On Tuesday, I believe I set some kind of world record: I went to mall for black skirt and came away with.... 1 black skirt. Yes, I know it's hard to believe. But before I make myself sound too virtuous and frugal, I have to say that I had several things on hold at two stores, but I just didn't have time to decide what to buy before I had to leave to make sure I was home to get Jared from the school bus. As it was, I drove down our street just as the school bus was coming up, so I guess it was a good thing I left when I did, and I'm sure Dave appreciated my self-sacrificing frugality, even it was outside-enforced.
On Tuesday night we had a GREAT relief society enrichment night. We had a guest speaker who spoke about depression; then they had a demonstration where we all made lavender bath salts and bath fizzies. Meanwhile they had a sign-up for everyone to get massages from two massage therapists (from the other ward) and then they finished it off with a chocolate fountain for dessert. It was quite the fun night-- chocolate and massages-- hard to beat.
On Wednesday morning while Camryn was at preschool, I had got together with one of my friends from the piano program at BYU to play duet music. We have been trying to practice to put together a little mini-concert of duet pieces, despite the obvious setbacks ( i.e. children). This rehearsal was much better than our previous ones as we had both actually practiced a little bit beforehand instead of just bashing our way through. Amazing the difference that makes.
On the way home, I borrowed keys to look at the music at the stake center and see what needed to be done to organize and sort it (which I did with some others yesterday morning). Unfortunately, I unintentionally offended a few people by my audacity to a) Look at the music unattended (which actually belongs to two wards-- not the stake) and b) Suggest that we buy enough file folders to actually organize the music in the cabinet. After writing an apologetic email and just offering to buy the folders myself, the storm blew over and all is well.
On Wednesday night, I finally talked Dave into going and looking at a minivan that I had found for sale on craigslist. On Thursday morning, we bought it. Yes, Dave and I have taken the final step of parentifying our lives and now are the proud, if somewhat less cool than before, owners of a minivan. If this seems a bit sudden, yes it was. Although I have been tracking used minivans on craigslist since early this summer, I quickly figured out that to get anything with less than 100,000 miles on it was pretty much out of our league. I did my research on consumer reports and the three minivans they recommended were the Honda Odyssey, Toyota Sienna and Mazda MPV. We had long been coveting an Odyssey or Sienna (and apparently the rest of the parent world has been too, judging by their high resale prices), but I started looking into the MPV also, since they are not as expensive.
A few weeks ago, I noticed a 2000 MPV on craigslist, but it seemed ridiculously low priced, so I thought there must be something wrong with it. It was still there this last week, so I called on it. No, it didn't have a salvage title or crash damage, but it was missing one of the captain's chairs on the middle row. Other than that, it was fine-- clean title, 72,000 miles, looked nice. Then I realized with how low it was priced (over $1000 under low blue book), we could pay for almost half of it by selling one of our other cars. Then I called an auto salvage place and found that you can buy a replacement captains chair for $125. Done. I was sold.
So then came the task of selling Dave..... Me: "Dave, I found a used minivan on Craigslist, it's a great deal and it's in good condition." Dave: "Well, that seems like a good price. Having a minivan would be nice, but how exactly are we going to pay for it? We don't want a car payment right now." Me: "I have it figured out right here: we sell one of the cars, take a bit of savings, etc., etc." Dave: "Well, OK, maybe we could make it work. But we need to make sure of something: is this really a need or is it a want?" Me: [?*@!?*!@*?] "Well..... I suppose TECHNICALLY speaking it's not exactly an urgent ABSOLUTE need. I guess THEORETICALLY I could squish all three kids into the back seat, LEANING over Camryn to buckle the baby in, with no cargo room for trips and no way to take even a single extra person in the car with us.... Or I suppose we could wait until after the baby's born and hope we find another good deal...." I finally convinced Dave to look at it.... and buy it. I felt quite triumphant that the next two cheapest MPVs that I could find were roughly $2000 more-- and had either a salvage title or 50,000 more miles. To be completely honest, I felt very blessed to have this fall into our laps. We had pretty much written off getting a minivan until next year and then suddenly, it just happened.
So thus began our crazy weekend. Thursday morning we went to sign on the minivan and pick it up. Meanwhile I listed our Toyota Corolla on craigslist, thinking it would take a little while for it to generate notice. I got my first phone call within 5 minutes of posting it. Oops. So we bought the minivan, I dropped Dave back off at work, took the minivan to emissions, got gas and a car wash, traded cars with Dave at work, took the corolla to get washed and took it home to clean it and start showing it to people. Meanwhile I tried to field upward of 10-15 calls or emails about the car all day and schedule times to show it, making sure I had time enough to clean it first.
I wanted the car to sell quickly so I listed it at the price I wanted to sell it for-- despite Dave's suggestion to put it a few hundred higher. The very first person to call me dropped by in early afternoon and "wanted to buy the car." This was great. He looked at it, test drove and then offered me $400 below what I had listed it. "Not a chance," I replied, "I listed it at the price that I wanted to sell it for." "What about $300 under?" No. "What about $100 under?" No! So I assumed that we were done, but he didn't leave. "What if I give you X amount in cash?" "No. I will accept what I listed it at. I've had 15 calls and you are the first person to come by." So he stood hanging around while I started cleaning out the minivan (one of the perks of buying a car that's a great deal is that it probably needs deodorizing-- in our case it was wet-dog smell that we had to get rid of). Finally he came up to me and said, "I think I want the car. What if I give you a $200 deposit and then I'll come back later to decide." By this time I was getting sick of this. "No. If you want the car, buy it. If you're not sure, come back later."
So to summarize, this man stayed on our driveway for 2 1/2 hours. First he discovered that the car's tags were not current. So he wanted that resolved before he bought it. It turns out they really were expired because although we had done emissions, we needed to have the car insured before registering it and then brought back in to be "officially" registered in our names, which step was -- ahem-- forgotten. But it wasn't a big deal-- we had the title -in our names- and it would just require a $50 extra fee. Then he said, "Well take off the $50." I probably would have if he hadn't annoyed my so badly and sat on my driveway for the whole afternoon. So I said no. Then, "Well what if it doesn't pass emissions?" "The emissions place is 2 miles from us. If you're so concerned, take it there now and see if it passes." So he took the car again, came back 20 minutes later and said, "I didn't go to DEQ, but I called my wife and she decided she didn't want it. Sorry for your time." And there went almost 3 hours of my life.
While I was enduring this endless negotiation process, Camryn and Jared teamed up with one of the neighbor kids to make a Flower Stand on our driveway. They picked some of our ornamental oregano (no, not your typical choice for cut flowers) and made a sign that said, "Flawrs-- $5 or 5 cents." After disappointing levels of interest, they decided that Camryn and Sophie should get dressed up as princesses and then wave and pose at cars as they passed by. I was too busy to wonder if I should be worried by this behavior, but it kept them busy, despite their lack of sales.
So I guess by this tortuous process I realized that I am not cut out to be a used car saleswoman. I got to hear lots of sob stories... like the teenager: "I'm saving the money for it myself," or the down-on-my-luck: "I really need a car and I don't have that much money-- I only have this much," or my favorite: "My car caught fire and burned to the ground so I really need a car and I was hoping you could knock a couple hundred off the price." We did sell the car on Saturday (to someone who had his previous car stolen), for asking price minus the $50 and I was greatly relieved to be finished with my first experience in car sales.
The impetus for Jared's innovative flower sale came from the desire to raise money for his school "Fun Run." I just have to mention in passing how much I HATE school fundraisers. Jared came home from school one day SOOO excited because if he raises ONLY $250 for his school fun run then he gets a skateboard (actually, he would be in a DRAWING for a skateboard) and if he raises $1000, then he gets some huge prize and this is just so great. So first he starts raiding his jar with birthday money and then asking to go door to door and pestering me to start saving so he can reach his $250. Now, at the risk of sounding unsympathetic and scrooge-ish, do they really expect me to let my 6-year-old go door to door collecting money? All the people that we could ask to donate already have kids that go to his school-- or some other school having its own fun run (like Camryn's preschool). And besides doesn't it seem like they'd make a lot more for the school if they didn't spend so much on prizes? Why can't I just write a donation check and be done with it? And why do they have to get my 6-year-old so excited about prizes that he talks about them constantly and pesters me all day long. So we took a trip to target.com and found that you can buy a skateboard there for $15 or $20. End of discussion.
In spite of my lack of school spirit, on Friday I volunteered to assemble hamburgers for the Hopkins School BBQ. It was actually kind of fun-- assembling 800 hamburgers in an hour and a half. And in the process I finally figured out why school hamburgers taste so bad. For this "barbecue," they used pre-cooked hamburgers, which they heated outside on a grill (to give them some credit). Then they brought them into the kitchen where they reheated them in an oven until they had reached a certain internal temperature. Then we scrambled to put them on buns and trays and then they were covered with plastic bags and put into a warmer for the next hour or two. Yum!
On Saturday we cleaned house and yard and bought three trees for our backyard-- all of which fit into our minivan, I might add. Sunday was my first performance directing our ward choir and it went quite well, despite not having a ton of people. Aside from that, we are pretty much just plowing along as usual.
On Tuesday, I had another ultrasound with the perinatal specialist. When the doctor came in to talk to me about the ultrasound, he said that if he had never seen a scan of me before, he would have said that the ultrasound was of a perfectly healthy normal baby. This doesn't rule all problems out for sure-- as the baby gets larger, it gets harder to see and measure the nuchal fold-- but it is definitely VERY good news. The doctor was extremely positive (for the first time). We appreciate those of you who have kept us-- and the baby-- in your thoughts and prayers. Meanwhile, I think the baby is practicing cardio kick-boxing. He's an active little guy-- and he's already 3 lbs.
After this week of adventure, I must have been worn out, because after lunch yesterday I hit the LoveSac and couldn't stand up again for several hours. =]
Karen
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Quotes of the Week:
Camryn: "Our house is beauty-ful! Let's stay there forever."
Jared: "If you do $1000 for the fun run, you get the biggest prize ever! So mom, you'd better start saving."
Camryn: "When you play Wii baseball, if someone catches the ball you get an out. But sometimes you get a single."
Jared: "Mom, do you want to buy some flowers from me? They cost either $5 or 5 cents."
Camryn (in the dressing room at the mall): "Why did God make all of these walls?"
Jared: "I don't get hurt anymore because I'm 6." "I get to eat more treats than Camryn because I’m 6."
Camryn: "I miss marty-dog. He's the best dog."
Friday, September 14, 2007
School Days
Hello everyone,
I'm going to skip ahead and write an update for this past week before continuing with my travel updates.
As I mentioned, Jared started 1st grade and Camryn started 4's preschool the first week of September. So after years of waiting, my "me" time is finally here! I have three mornings a week with no children! And Jared doesn't get home every day until 2:30. So of course, now this means that with all of this "spare time" on my hands my house is always perfectly cleaned and organized. Right? Right????
To be honest, it's actually been quite a transition for us, even besides getting Jared off on the bus at 7:30 am again. It is really a strange feeling to have Jared gone. For the first few days, as soon as the time came that Jared would have come home from Kindergarten, Camryn would get whiny and clingy and want lots of attention. I think she actually misses him. This seems odd to me since they basically just fight and tease each other all day, but I can't think of any other explanation.
Now that school has begun, I realized that now the time to become a domestic goddess has begun. After all, now that Jared's in school, what's my excuse? So I celebrated the first day of school by doing 3 loads of laundry, scouring two bathrooms, cleaning the kitchen and scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees. By the end of the day, I literally was so tired that I could not stand up. (The house still wasn't clean when I finished.) And I have been exhausted ever since. I made 3 important observations in the process: 1) I really am pregnant-- and the third trimester is hitting me like a brick. 2) I need to learn to pace myself or I am not going to survive. 3) You cannot travel for 3 1/2 weeks in a single month without a huge amount of catch-up to do when you come back.
Now all of this wouldn't be such a big deal except that two days into school we had a meeting of our cooking enrichment group. A wonderful, beautiful, talented lady in our ward invited us over to show us how to make and can applesauce. So I canned for the very first time and brought home a jar of homemade applesauce as proof. (What is it that you said, Mom-- that you only have to can twice to automatically make it to the celestial kingdom. This means I'm halfway....). So this was a great activity: it was fun and really wasn't as hard as I expected. But.... I was so impressed by her impeccably clean house, her attractive appearance, cheerful nature, and mad canning skills (she cans 35 jars of applesauce, plus peaches and raspberries every year!!) that I was absolutely inspired. Now that Jared is in school, it is the time for me to get my act together! I determined that now I would make sure that my house was clean like hers, that I was dressed each morning before 11-- or at least 10-- with make-up on, that I would be cheerful and happy AND I was going to buy canning stuff and start being a real mom. The problem was, I came home to 6 loads of dirty laundry, 2 clean loads that needed to be folded, a dirty kitchen with an abundance of dishes, 1 stinky bathroom, no groceries in the fridge, a bedroom full of stuff to be sorted and a pile of bills to be paid. So canning would have to wait for a few hours. And the end result is that I have been working like a dog for a week, exhausted every night and I am still not caught up and I haven't BOUGHT any canning stuff, let alone canned anything. So the end result is that I have had a hard adjustment to Jared being in school and have spent this past week absolutely exhausted. Needless to say, I am starting to realize that my plans for complete domestic mastery may have to wait for another year. To sum it up, I will quote a sign that one of my friends from
But, on the upside, Jared is enjoying 1st grade and Camryn loves being back in preschool. On Sunday, Jared taped paper together to create a 3-dimensional triangular shape. He attached a pencil stuck with paper clips and informed me that he had made a beehive for bees to make honey in. He insisted that we spread honey on the top of it and hang it on our 
deck so he could watch the bees (this was after a 20-minute detailed explanation of how it was supposed to work). Camryn has been making paper butterflies, with a crayon "holder" in the middle and a crayon to weight it on each side (taped to the paper). A few days ago she drew a detailed picture of Grama Rogers, complete with teeth, glasses and large green ears. Jared is also proving that he really is turning into a boy: he repeatedly demonstrates his prowess at burping on command and can even burp some of the alphabet.
One afternoon this week I had hit my exhaustion point, so I let the kids watch cartoons for a few minutes while I checked my email. The "few minutes" expanded into an hour and a half. When I finally came down to check on the kids, luckily they had only caused minor damage to the kitchen (shredded wheat crushed on the floor and go-gurt dried on the floor and counters). Camryn was eating food and carrying a shopping bag. I asked her what was in it and she said she had packed a snack, in case she was hungry. Apparently she must have been worried that I was never going to feed her again: she had packed 6 go-gurts, 5 string cheeses, grapes, cheez-its, snap peas and 2 apples. I guess this is a girl who wants to be prepared....
In other news, Dave and I were released from Primary music. I was called to be the ward choir director!!!! I am so excited-- I have only been waiting for 5 years to get called to do this again. So now I have a new thing to obsess over-- and believe me, I have spent obscene amounts of time pondering over music choices, planning rehearsals, trying to recruit people, sorting music, making flyers, putting together music binders, etc. and enjoying every minute of it. The guy who was called to replace me in Primary will be gone on the day of the primary program, so I will actually be conducting for the program still and sticking around to help out with that for a while.
There is one other tidbit of interesting news. On Saturday, instead of our usual routine of getting up late and having a leisurely breakfast, Dave was up, dressed, and had eaten breakfast by 9:00 am. He had to return some things to Fry's Electronics and asked if I wanted to go. I wanted to sort choir music, so I told him to just go himself and take one of the kids. So he and Jared went off to Fry's. When they came back, Dave said, "Ummmm, Karen, guess what? They had a Nintendo Wii in stock at Fry's........... and I got one." I knew that Dave had wanted a Wii, that they are out of stock almost everywhere and he had been kind of trying to find a place where they were in stock, but I had no idea he was serious. (I should have known better when he was up and ready to go out the door at 9:00 on a Saturday-- he had called and found out they had some in stock-- he just neglected to pass that detail on to me). So we had a discussion. Dave: "The Wii is really fun and interactive. You don't play shoot-em-up games, you play tennis or bowling and play with other people instead of zoning off by yourself. They are REALLY fun." Me: "I guess I don't really have a problem with it if the games aren't violent, but that's kind of a BIG impulse purchase. Are you sure we need to get it NOW?" Dave: "Well, you did go to
So that was last week. For the sake of not having a 10 page update I will wait to put my remarks on this week in a separate email. Hope you all are doing well!
Karen
...................................
Quotes of the week:
Camryn (saying her prayers): "Please bless that I won't have the scary jellyfish dream. Please bless that I won't have the scary shark dream. And please bless that I won't have the scary smoke detector dream."
[This is typical for the past year...] Me: "Jared, what do you want for your bedtime song?" Jared: "'Where Can I Turn for Peace' and a back-scratch." [Now he specificies, "Where Can I Turn for Peace and a back-scratch and the second and third verses."] Camryn: "I want 'I Love to See the
Jared: "Today was the 3rd or maybe 18th bad day I've had. Camryn got to do 5 things that I didn't do."
Jared: "Today I am really sad because there were 3 or maybe 16 sad things that happened, like I didn't get a dinner treat, Camryn got to say her prayer first....
Camryn: "Mommy, I washed my hair with water and soap so I look fabulous. But mom, don't kiss my hair because then I'll have to wash it again with just water."
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
The Travelogue Part 1: The Boston Trip
Hello everyone,
I'm going to skip ahead and write an update for this past week before continuing with my travel updates.
As I mentioned, Jared started 1st grade and Camryn started 4's preschool the first week of September. So after years of waiting, my "me" time is finally here! I have three mornings a week with no children! And Jared doesn't get home every day until 2:30. So of course, now this means that with all of this "spare time" on my hands my house is always perfectly cleaned and organized. Right? Right????
To be honest, it's actually been quite a transition for us, even besides getting Jared off on the bus at 7:30 am again. It is really a strange feeling to have Jared gone. For the first few days, as soon as the time came that Jared would have come home from Kindergarten, Camryn would get whiny and clingy and want lots of attention. I think she actually misses him. This seems odd to me since they basically just fight and tease each other all day, but I can't think of any other explanation.
Now that school has begun, I realized that now the time to become a domestic goddess has begun. After all, now that Jared's in school, what's my excuse? So I celebrated the first day of school by doing 3 loads of laundry, scouring two bathrooms, cleaning the kitchen and scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees. By the end of the day, I literally was so tired that I could not stand up. (The house still wasn't clean when I finished.) And I have been exhausted ever since. I made 3 important observations in the process: 1) I really am pregnant-- and the third trimester is hitting me like a brick. 2) I need to learn to pace myself or I am not going to survive. 3) You cannot travel for 3 1/2 weeks in a single month without a huge amount of catch-up to do when you come back.
Now all of this wouldn't be such a big deal except that two days into school we had a meeting of our cooking enrichment group. A wonderful, beautiful, talented lady in our ward invited us over to show us how to make and can applesauce. So I canned for the very first time and brought home a jar of homemade applesauce as proof. (What is it that you said, Mom-- that you only have to can twice to automatically make it to the celestial kingdom. This means I'm halfway....). So this was a great activity: it was fun and really wasn't as hard as I expected. But.... I was so impressed by her impeccably clean house, her attractive appearance, cheerful nature, and mad canning skills (she cans 35 jars of applesauce, plus peaches and raspberries every year!!) that I was absolutely inspired. Now that Jared is in school, it is the time for me to get my act together! I determined that now I would make sure that my house was clean like hers, that I was dressed each morning before 11-- or at least 10-- with make-up on, that I would be cheerful and happy AND I was going to buy canning stuff and start being a real mom. The problem was, I came home to 6 loads of dirty laundry, 2 clean loads that needed to be folded, a dirty kitchen with an abundance of dishes, 1 stinky bathroom, no groceries in the fridge, a bedroom full of stuff to be sorted and a pile of bills to be paid. So canning would have to wait for a few hours. And the end result is that I have been working like a dog for a week, exhausted every night and I am still not caught up and I haven't BOUGHT any canning stuff, let alone canned anything. So the end result is that I have had a hard adjustment to Jared being in school and have spent this past week absolutely exhausted. Needless to say, I am starting to realize that my plans for complete domestic mastery may have to wait for another year. To sum it up, I will quote a sign that one of my friends from
But, on the upside, Jared is enjoying 1st grade and Camryn loves being back in preschool. On Sunday, Jared taped paper together to create a 3-dimensional triangular shape. He attached a pencil stuck with paper clips and informed me that he had made a beehive for bees to make honey in. He insisted that we spread honey on the top of it and hang it on our deck so he could watch the bees (this was after a 20-minute detailed explanation of how it was supposed to work). Camryn has been making paper butterflies, with a crayon "holder" in the middle and a crayon to weight it on each side (taped to the paper). A few days ago she drew a detailed picture of Grama Rogers, complete with teeth, glasses and large green ears. Jared is also proving that he really is turning into a boy: he repeatedly demonstrates his prowess at burping on command and can even burp some of the alphabet.
One afternoon this week I had hit my exhaustion point, so I let the kids watch cartoons for a few minutes while I checked my email. The "few minutes" expanded into an hour and a half. When I finally came down to check on the kids, luckily they had only caused minor damage to the kitchen (shredded wheat crushed on the floor and go-gurt dried on the floor and counters). Camryn was eating food and carrying a shopping bag. I asked her what was in it and she said she had packed a snack, in case she was hungry. Apparently she must have been worried that I was never going to feed her again: she had packed 6 go-gurts, 5 string cheeses, grapes, cheez-its, snap peas and 2 apples. I guess this is a girl who wants to be prepared....
In other news, Dave and I were released from Primary music. I was called to be the ward choir director!!!! I am so excited-- I have only been waiting for 5 years to get called to do this again. So now I have a new thing to obsess over-- and believe me, I have spent obscene amounts of time pondering over music choices, planning rehearsals, trying to recruit people, sorting music, making flyers, putting together music binders, etc. and enjoying every minute of it. The guy who was called to replace me in Primary will be gone on the day of the primary program, so I will actually be conducting for the program still and sticking around to help out with that for a while.
There is one other tidbit of interesting news. On Saturday, instead of our usual routine of getting up late and having a leisurely breakfast, Dave was up, dressed, and had eaten breakfast by 9:00 am. He had to return some things to Fry's Electronics and asked if I wanted to go. I wanted to sort choir music, so I told him to just go himself and take one of the kids. So he and Jared went off to Fry's. When they came back, Dave said, "Ummmm, Karen, guess what? They had a Nintendo Wii in stock at Fry's........... and I got one." I knew that Dave had wanted a Wii, that they are out of stock almost everywhere and he had been kind of trying to find a place where they were in stock, but I had no idea he was serious. (I should have known better when he was up and ready to go out the door at 9:00 on a Saturday-- he had called and found out they had some in stock-- he just neglected to pass that detail on to me). So we had a discussion. Dave: "The Wii is really fun and interactive. You don't play shoot-em-up games, you play tennis or bowling and play with other people instead of zoning off by yourself. They are REALLY fun." Me: "I guess I don't really have a problem with it if the games aren't violent, but that's kind of a BIG impulse purchase. Are you sure we need to get it NOW?" Dave: "Well, you did go to
So that was last week. For the sake of not having a 10 page update I will wait to put my remarks on this week in a separate email. Hope you all are doing well!
Karen
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Quotes of the week:
Camryn (saying her prayers): "Please bless that I won't have the scary jellyfish dream. Please bless that I won't have the scary shark dream. And please bless that I won't have the scary smoke detector dream."
[This is typical for the past year...] Me: "Jared, what do you want for your bedtime song?" Jared: "'Where Can I Turn for Peace' and a back-scratch." [Now he specificies, "Where Can I Turn for Peace and a back-scratch and the second and third verses."] Camryn: "I want 'I Love to See the
Jared: "Today was the 3rd or maybe 18th bad day I've had. Camryn got to do 5 things that I didn't do."
Jared: "Today I am really sad because there were 3 or maybe 16 sad things that happened, like I didn't get a dinner treat, Camryn got to say her prayer first....
Camryn: "Mommy, I washed my hair with water and soap so I look fabulous. But mom, don't kiss my hair because then I'll have to wash it again with just water."
