Witty Title

Update time. Let's go youngest to oldest.

Tess (a.k.a. Tessida, Baby Love, Stressly)

Age: 2.5

Loves: applying Chapstick, steak for breakfast, painting her nails, eating imaginary frogs, milk, her wubbie, grumpy old farts (i.e. Gru from Despicable Me, the Grinch, etc.), Elmo, cats, and salsa.

D.J. (a.k.a. Chancho)

Age: 4.5

Loves: Monster trucks, mass destruction in any form, orange, trains, orange trains, anything with wheels under it, pushing his sister's buttons, Cars-shaped chicken nuggets, road construction equipment, "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black-Eyed Peas.

Olivia (a.k.a. Livie Livie Lou Fuss Fuss, Lia Lia Quesadilla)

Age: 6.3

Loves: teddy bears, Junie B. Jones books, giving gifts, porcelain dolls, riding her bike, McDonald's Happy Meals, chocolate milk, coloring, playing the piano, learning about the universe, but NOT loud noises.

Macey (a.k.a. Fez, Bella, Macey Face)

Age: 7.5

Loves: earning money, horses, playing pranks like throwing ice water on her OWN MOTHER in the shower, riding her bike, praise, listening to my iPod, bossing people around, exercising her independence, learning the piano, hugging, sending text messages.

Darrell (a.k.a. D.J., Dad)

Age: 29.9

Loves: Alaska, shooting at animals, money-making schemes, guns, his wife, his iPad, cold weather, fishing, movies with good vindication (think The Count of Monte Cristo), 1980s Toyota pickup trucks, snoring, fixating on things, Sportsman's Warehouse, beef jerky, trying to negotiate the price of everything, crappy Mexican food, the theme music from Legends of the Fall.

Elise (a.k.a. Moooooom, I want some egg nog!)

Age: 31.1

Loves: summer, D.J., baking sugary treats, word games like Scrabble and Words With Friends, Benja Thai, running, buying music on iTunes, having my back scratched, barbecued meats, laughing at things, elasticized clothing, making lists, Facebook, green apple Chapstick, cheeseburgers, READING, rain, Chevy Tahoes, convenient packaging, Lake Powell, smart people, green smoothies.

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So there, Us magazine

At 2:30 Monday morning our Christmas tree fell over. I use the term "tree" loosely. Stupid "tree."

Later that morning, my cousin Bodie broke my toilet open with a big wrench to figure out why it wouldn't flush. There was a smallish wooden ball in the pipes. (For the record, I do not feed small wooden ball toys to my children.) After being smashed to smithereens by a wrench, however, the toy ball was the least of our toilet's problems.

I escaped the toilet situation by going to Walmart during Christmas. You know what I hate about Walmart? Almost everything. You know what I love about Walmart? That I always see my friends there. And the low prices.

That evening we hosted the Haynes Christmas party. Since DJ's parents and three of his grandparents have passed away it was just DJ's siblings and our children here for the party. Do you know what this means?! I'm the third oldest person in our branch of the Haynes tree. DJ's sister is a month older than me and here is the last remaining grandparent:

You decide. Is Macey a really tall seven-year-old or is grandma Marilyn a really short 76-year-old?

I'm not actually sure if grandma is 76. She might be 75 or 74. Anyone? I would know if Grandma was on Facebook. Come on, Grandma!

Chancho's wildest fantasies came true in the form of a Christmas train:

My husband never reads this blog and as punishment I post pictures of him in his patriotic jammie pants. To prove that I still have a soul, here is surveillance footage of me in my scary jammies:

Can I tell you how much I adore those ratty old sweats? They are--nay, WERE--DJ's Marine Corps sweatpants. They are soft and warm and huge and absolutely non-binding. You know what I DON'T adore? That our security system has documented my sweats and they are now floating around in a complex web of satellites and internets that I don't fully understand and it seems absolutely feasible that they (the sweats) might turn up on the cover of Us magazine. I am preemptively posting them here so that I can explain how comfy they are. So there, Us magazine.

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a gift for all of us

Everyone (and by everyone I mean my husband) keeps asking me what I want for Christmas and I've finally figured it out. Someone needs to figure out a way to duplicate me. Believe me, this will be a gift for all of us. I would like three clones of myself: one for cleaning my oven, one for figuring out how to make the wedding cake that I've been asked to make, and one for concocting the 20 table centerpieces that I've been asked to make for our ward Christmas party which falls on the same day as the wedding. Let's make this happen, people.

Ugh.

In related news, I've begun a new ritual wherein I wake up every morning at 4:00 and have a panic attack about the wedding cake and the table decorations and Christmas and the 2012 presidential elections and Darfur and melting polar ice caps and I don't fall asleep again until 3:45 in the afternoon when I'm on Bluff Street driving the carpool. It's exciting.

[Think of something witty to write here as a segue.]

Thanksgiving was awesome.

Since you guys are already busily discovering a way to duplicate me, can you figure out how to breed a five-legged turkey while you're at it? Between DJ and my four children there never seem to be enough turkey legs to go around. With the exception of Disneyland, I'm not a fan of the turkey legs. I'm not fond of being smacked in the face by snapping turkey leg ligaments. But the other people I live with? They're sickos.

After Thanksgiving we cut down our Christmas tree. It was kinda chilly in Pine Valley this year, so after searching for a while I decide to wait it out in the car with my kids, my Carpenter's Christmas CD, and my bag of mini old fashioned donuts. I gave DJ my full Christmas tree power of attorney.

I am an IDIOT.

He had to cut the bottom AND the top off to fit it in our house. Even then he had to snap it into place like one of those toilet paper dispenser things.

I guess that's all I've got to say today. Chancho keeps getting all up in my face and yelling "CAN I PLAY ANGRY BIRDS????" and blowing his bacon breath all over me. That's my cue.

Happy December, everyone!

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Tupperware destruction and wild arm hair

It's a shame you're not a part of my family. You just missed a truly momentous Family Home Evening wherein the father of my children backed over a piece of Tupperware to demonstrate the consequences of being run over by a Chevy. I think it made an impression. And rest easy, it was a Tupperware with a missing lid.

Guess what else happened today? We had parent-teacher conferences. These are always a good time. I enjoy looking at the artwork and writing and report cards of my children. Here's a little gem from today:

"My dad is a hero. He sells security systems." I love it. Here's the letter about me:

I may not be a hero, but at least I'm "really tanned."

As a reward for his work as a sales hero, DJ won a watch that is so large that he's announced that he will eat Thanksgiving dinner off of its face. I tried it on tonight.

I think I'll always wear obnoxiously oversized accessories because they make my arms look petite. Unfortunately, it does nothing to draw attention away from my primate-like arm hair. Another handy thing about this watch is that I can tell what time it is even when I'm in the kitchen and DJ is in the foyer. Or Canada.

Finally, to round out the day Tess passed out on the Lovesac.

I'm next, I think.

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my thing

(Really quickly, before I start today--can we stop pretending that this is my family blog? You and I both know that this is the Weblog de Elise. I'm fully aware that I never update you on the other five members of my family. Guess what? They don't care.)

Back to me. A while back my dad's sister, Auntie Kiki (whose given name remains a mystery to this day), posted this picture on Facebook:

She inspires me. Seeing my fifty-something auntie exit the crashing waves with a surfboard tucked under her arm sparks something inside of me. When I look at this photograph I get the same feeling I do when I listen to "Blackbird" by the Beatles. Like "Today will be the day that I accomplish something monumental in this world!"

So I gird up my loins, strike out into the world, and accomplish...

..............

this.

Not exactly monumental, but it was necessary. (You'll notice that the "before" picture has been shot at a Dutch angle, giving the room a feeling of uneasiness and chaos. I think the Dutch angle was overkill in this circumstance. My whole life is at a Dutch angle these days.)

I have a bucket list like a MILE long, so why is it that I spent an entire afternoon with my kids organizing the toys/food storage/junk room, barking out commands like a crazed drill sergeant? And why do we have a junk ROOM? Why can't we limit it to a DRAWER like most people?

Ugh.

The problem is, when I set out to check something off of my bucket list, I turn around and my children have done the snowglobe trick on the junk room. It's a vicious cycle.

These thoughts have been stewing for a few weeks now, but with the help of Pinterest and New York Times Best-Selling author Ally Condie, I think I've found the answer. First, I have this Pinterest buddy who pins a lot of inspirational quotes, like so:

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.'" Erma Bombeck

and

"Be the girl you were too lazy to be yesterday."

Last weekend I went to to a book festival where Ally Condie spoke and did a little Q&A thing. At one point she talked about how she juggled writing and raising her three (?) children. With her first books she did her writing after her children were in bed, between like 7 PM and 11 or 12 PM. She wrote, revised, revised, and revised a bunch of books this way. While I was...lemme think...watching Smallville on DVD? I don't know.

So, ladies, the solution is obvious. Scheduling! We all have 24 hours in our day just like Ally Condie, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney (let's keep this blog non-partisan, eh?), Jenn Keyes, Gandhi, and everyone else who accomplishes so much with their life. I guess if I want to do it, I just have to schedule it in.

To think it's come to this.

Here's where I rope you guys in. (Don't panic, it's not MLM...this time....ah ha ha ha!) I know most of my friends have a list of things they want to accomplish before they die--learn Italian, be a good visiting teacher, plant an herb garden, play the cello, run a marathon, finish college. Whatever your thing is, let's DO IT. This week!

I'll tell you my thing: Writing. Like, a novel. I KNOW. I feel kind of sheepish even admitting it. I just have this fun story in my head that's been driving me nuts for the past two years. I've written about forty pages of it. This week I'm going to start to finish it. I'll let you know when it's done. In twenty years.

So, what's your thing? That ONE thing that you can't imagine leaving this earth without accomplishing? If you don't have a thing, then that's your assignment. Find a thing.

This is going to be SUCH FUN!

Aren't you guys STOKED?!

GUYS???

I lost you at "plant an herb garden," didn't I?

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Halloween and a little rant about cellulose

Highlight of our Halloween? It's a toss-up. Maybe it was watching my ten-year-old nephew eat a Pixie Stick while I drove the carpool. I mean, he ate the paper tube and everything. It was at once disturbing and totally impressive. It reminded me of those little wax soda-bottle-full-of-corn-syrup candies they used to sell. Were we supposed to eat those little bottles or just bite the top off and drink the corn syrup out? I don't know. One time I ate one and I remember feeling like a farm animal chewing and CHEWING on the wax bottle and eventually I just had to swallow it. Kinda like the time I ordered octopus sushi on a date. (Bad idea.)

The things we eat, huh? This morning I saw an article on ksl.com about how some (A LOT) of food manufacturers use cellulose--which is essentially wood pulp--as a filler in their products. Here. In the United States. In 2011. I forgot to do it today, but I think tomorrow I'm going to make a serious effort to check my food labels.

Oh yeah, Halloween. Another highlight was Tess as Po the Teletubbie. What's a Teletubbie, you ask? It is a *free* costume donated by your neighbor friend, Donna, that's what.

I think I love the idea of my children parading around as hilariously outdated and obscure TV characters. Next year we'll dress up as the characters from Quantum Leap.

My mom trick-or-treated with us in her awesome witch costume. Best. Grandma. Ever.

My sisters-in-law are totally into Halloween. I am totally into wearing my old Marine Corps Ball dress and then complaining all night about how I can't breathe/bend over/remember what year it is. It's the only thing I have that sort of resembles a costume besides my usual frightening wardrobe. So, what was I? Mom In a Prom Dress. A classic.

Here are all of the kids anxious to get themselves some free candy:

As candy-centered holidays go, it was a success. I got to wear blue eye shadow + no one passed out Fun Dip = SUCCESS!

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The Taste of Freedom

Recently I made a goal to try a new recipe every now and then. I like to keep my goals vague so that when I fail I don't go on a depression-induced Berry Burst Oreo cookie bender. Anyway, one of this week's new recipes was for Yellow Curry a la Benja Thai Garden.

The recipe called for two teaspoons of fish sauce. Behold, the only size bottle of fish sauce available at the Asian grocery store:

It's in the door of my fridge now, where it will remain until one of my children discovers my hidden bottle of Thai "root beer." That will be fun.

I was hesitant to make yellow curry at home. I've only ever eaten it on dates with DJ or on girls-night-out with my sisters-in-law, sans children. I've said before that yellow curry "tastes like freedom" because I've never once been interrupted from eating it by someone who wants me to cut their food, change their diaper, or wipe food off of their face. It's like, every time I take my first bite of yellow curry I hear faint ukulele music, feel the trade winds blowing, and I'm sitting on a beach somewhere TOTALLY ALONE. Just me and my curry. And someone mysteriously scratching my back, even though I'm TOTALLY ALONE.

It's that good.

You can see why I finally gave in and made it. Here's Macey checking out my big double batch:

Here's the recipe, for those who are interested in complete and utter happiness:

1/4 cup yellow curry paste
2-14 oz. cans coconut milk
2 large chicken breasts, chopped
4 potatoes, sliced
1 large onion, chopped
2 cups frozen stir fry vegetables (this is absolutely not an authentic Thai ingredient; I went with Great Value brand)
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1-2 teaspoons sugar

In a big pot, saute curry paste in a little vegetable oil until your kitchen smells exactly like the Asian grocery store. Stir in chicken and cook until done. Add remaining ingredients, cover, and simmer until the potatoes are tender. Serve over steamed jasmine rice.

Chock-dee-na!

(That's how you say "good luck" in Thai phonetically. Thanks, Google. And in case you find yourself in a bind: "Where is the toilet?"--"hxngna pi thaang hin?" For real.)

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Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, eh?

Happy belated Canadian Thanksgiving, everyone! And you thought I forgot! I wouldn't forget. We celebrated Thanksgiving with our northern neighbours this year, but between Pinterest, my selection of silly LDS fiction, and thinking about folding my laundry I haven't had a minute to report about it until today.

The mass text I sent to my in-laws said this: "We are BBQing Monday at 6:00 to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. Everyone's invited. Practice your accent and dress like a Canadian." I forgot to dress like a Canadian. Or to be more accurate, I don't own any beanies. And the only accent I can pull off includes me saying "eh?" after everything. But, oh...how we partied.

I'm unsure what constitutes a traditional Canadian Thanksgiving, but I figured it would involve these things:

...and family:

...and a selection of barbecued meats:

...because nothing says "Canadian harvest celebration" like a bunch of Americans barbecuing hot dogs and wearing shorts when it's eighty-five degrees in October. Good times, eh?

I have this calendar that reminds me of the national holidays of nearly every foreign country, so I have an excuse to party on almost a daily basis. Today: Día de la Raza (Mexico). I don't know WHY we're celebrating, but mark my words: there will be cookies. And possibly a $2 meal deal from Taco Bell.

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slow news week? um, yeah.

This has been the week of making stuff. I have this insatiable appetite for painting and sewing and baking, on the condition that whatever project I start must be completed within three hours and require minimal craftiness skills. Anyway...here are a few of my creations:

Pillow covers made from mismatched fabric remnants and a little frame that I repainted and turned into a chalkboard. I gotta get rid of that chalkboard paint. I'm up to my ears in homemade chalkboards.

Next, I experimented with microwaving bacon:

Who knew that microwaving bacon carried with it the risk/excitement of exploding dishes? Not I. I should mention that that was not my plate. Do you guys have dishes like this? Foreign dinnerware that mysteriously appears amongst your other dishes? I apologize if that was your plate. I actually quite liked it. It was my go-to microwaving plate because it didn't get scorching hot. I guess the bacon pushed it over the edge. Rest in peace, plate. You were a good dish.

[Speaking of bacon, a few nights ago I decided to play a little game to see how well I know my offspring. I asked them a random list of their favorites--color, food, movie, animal, book, et cetera. I tried to predict their responses in my mind before they answered. Ugh, FALL. Anyway, I asked Olivia her favorite animal (which is a two-way tie between sheep and kitties, for the record) and after thinking for a second she asked, "Mom, which animal is bacon?" Heh heh. That apple didn't fall too far from the DJ tree...]

I also made this face:

I pulled that face just for my friend Marie. You're welcome, Marie. Voluntary public humiliation is a mark of true friendship. Unlike INVOLUNTARY public humiliation:

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de-funking

Is anyone else really bummed that the satellite didn't crash land in southern Utah? I thought for sure it would. Psht. NASA.

Anyway, what's new with you guys this week? Good news! I think I'm pulling out of that funky funk I've been in these past few weeks. For future reference (in case you or I find ourselves in another slump) these have been the most helpful rungs in my de-funking ladder:

1. President Uchtdorf. I'm too lazy to find the exact quotes online, but in my notes (neeeerd!) I wrote "be thankful for small successes--God notices them" and "everyone has strengths and weaknesses--stop punishing yourself" in large, underlined letters. Let's take a minute and thank heaven for President Uchtdorf, huh? He has his finger on the pulse of your average Mormon mom, that's for sure. Out of respect, I also drew this in my notes:

2. I had an opportunity to scratch my creative itch (without having to bare a child) thusly:

I also learned something important about refinishing furniture. It's a lot like running in that the entire time you're doing it you're thinking "I hate this! Why am I doing this to myself?!" but when you're done you think, "That was FUN! Let's do it again!"

3. My children. They are weird, they smell like puppies sometimes, and one of them (you know who you are) still wears a diaper, but they bring me a lot of happiness:

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Hi. I'm Tonje.

I wash my laundry and then I wait a week to fold it. If you follow the same laundry schedule I do, you will have noticed that somewhere around day three, laundry congeals and conforms to the shape of your hamper.

Heads up, on day nine your laundry will crawl out the door, hitchhike south on I-15, and get a job at the Bloomington Walmart, where it will provide mediocre customer service.

For the past few weeks I've been a really bad housewife. I enjoy my job as a mom. Sure, the labor is menial, the salary is nonexistent, and the hours are ridiculous, but I get to MAKE PEOPLE. I mean, come on!

It's the housewife part of my job that I've shirked lately.

Up until two or three weeks ago, I found quite a bit of satisfaction in running my home. I usually enjoy having a tidy house, planning and cooking meals, and being able to boss everyone around. Not lately. Lately I find myself asking questions like this aloud: "What's that on the carpet? A cockroach? Or a really old olive? Do I care?" And we've covered the laundry situation.

Somehow the fire under me has been snuffed out. Am I having a mid-life crisis?! AM I GOING TO DIE WHEN I'M 62?!?! Maybe I need a new hobby. Maybe I need give more service. Maybe I need to be more grateful.

One thing's for dang sure, I need to act fast before I turn into this lady:



(If you're like me and you rarely click on these things, allow me to offer you some incentive in the form of bribery: I will personally bake, decorate, and deliver the cake of your choice if you can name the initial on the white-hatted gangsta rapper's giant necklace at 1:51 AND be the first to mention it in a comment. Yes, this is a test.)

I saw this video over the summer and filed it away in my mind under "Things That Are Blog Worthy" and then immediately forgot about it because I accidentally misfiled it under "Things That Are Not Dorky" and I never open that mental file, obviously. But this weirdo Norwegian lady popped into my mind this week.

Eight years ago I made the decision to be a housewife. Actually, if I'm being honest, I made that decision a long time ago....

I've kind of always wanted to be a "crappy housewife," as Tonje so eloquently puts it. So what's my dealio? I need to find some motivation, I think.

Rewatching that spectacle of a video is actually quite inspiring. If I choose to abandon housewifery, this is my other option? A nearly abandoned discotheque at what appears to be three o'clock in the afternoon? I'm suddenly looking forward to scrubbing my toilets.

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Dum Dum Doctors

I'm having a hard time getting my creative juices flowing, or any of my juices for that matter. I'm tired. It all started last night.....

{{{entering Saved By The Bell-type flashback sequence}}}

We went to my sister-in-law's house for mango sticky rice. Also for the company, but the mango sticky rice was the main thing. As groups of small children are wont to do, there was quite a bit of noise and rough-housing between my four children and her...one. It really wasn't ONLY my kids making the noise, but I digress. At one point someone produced two large inflated bouncy balls that I'm sure were manufactured for the purpose of an adult using them to sculpt their abs. Our children used them for the purpose of rolling face-first onto the carpet.

So consumed was I in the enjoyment of my mango sticky rice that I didn't see when Tess, apparently, rolled face-first into a tangled wad of children.  She screamed and cried. She refused to move her left arm. She refused to be soothed by my singing "Leafy Treetops" or my knock knock jokes. That's when I knew it was serious.

Fast forward two hours. DJ took Tess to Instacare whose motto is, "We'll pop your kid's bones back together so you don't have to!....for a small fee..." where he discovered that Tess had dislocated her elbow. The doctor popped it back in, it popped back out again, he popped it back in again, he gave Tess a Dum Dum, and DJ brought her home. She was still crying and refusing to use her arm when she got home, but we figured she was just being dramatic, so we spanked her and sent her to bed so that we could watch Smallville.

Not really.

In reality we were up most of the night with her, trying to pop her elbow back together the way the Dum Dum doctor showed my husband. She wimpered. She screamed. She cried herself to sleep a few times. At two in the morning DJ searched "how to pop an elbow back together" on YouTube. The only thing the videos resulted in was me getting nauseous.

Finally, the sun came up. Tess still wore her yellow Sunday dress, which was soaked in purple children's ibuprofen by that point. Her scrawny little arm just hung there like a ventriloquist doll arm, only less weird. I immediately drove her to our doctor, who is actually a physician's assistant, but it's okay because he's witty and has the drawer full of Dum Dums.

He popped her elbow back together and outfitted her with the smallest sling possible by today's technological standards. In my exhausted daze I mentioned offhandedly that the YouTube videos weren't at all helpful. This got a good laugh from the doctor who cracked some kind of "I got my medical degree from YouTube" joke. Like I said, witty. Usually in circumstances such as this I would respond by demanding my doctor's home phone number so that I could call in the event of another 2 AM not-quite-emergency-room-worthy moment, but he hadn't given us the Dum Dums yet.

He told me to leave the sling on Tess for 48 hours to give her elbow a chance to rest before she pops it back out again. "Looks like she's going to be wearing that dress a little while longer!" was his parting shot after he gave Tess her Dum Dums, and with a flurry of white lab coat and antiseptic he was gone.

Tess was happy.

In fact, she was riding such a Dum Dum high that it was hard for me to get a clear picture of her.

{{{Returning from Saved By The Bell flashback}}}

Now, Tess is catching up from her all nighter.

I'm so grateful that Tess is happy again I don't even care that her dress is layered with ibuprofen, ketchup, Dum Dum goo, and swingset grime and I can't take it off of her until tomorrow.

Yes I do.

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Monday Monday...dah daaaah, dah dah-dah dah...

Has it really been two weeks? Did you grow out a beard while I was gone? Read the Old Testament? Plant and harvest a crop of zucchini? Are you anxious to hear about our adventures? Since it's been so long, I will kindly reconstruct the events of the past two weeks in numerical order. I'm SO kind.
1. DJ came home from Colorado. There was much rejoicing.
2. The next day we drove to Logan, Utah to attend the blessing of my niece, Jamma Jammer Jamie Astrid Alfred. The blessing was eloquent, the luncheon was pink pork, and I left without helping with the dishes because I am a TOTAL DORK.
3. The next day was Labor Day and we had a picnic in Pine Valley.

4. A few days later this spider crawled up my husband's leg as we snuggled upon the Lovesac:

. I named him Harry. And then I sprayed him with half a can of Raid and flushed him down the toilet.
5. The next day, we decided to exact our revenge upon Nature by camping at Yankee Meadows.

6. The next day was Marianne's baby shower. My assignment was cake. I accepted the assignment gladly, since I figured my other options were things like making people race to drink lemonade out of baby bottles or being pregnant.

7. The next day was September 11th. We watched YouTube videos of the attacks. I cried about it all over again. In case you haven't caught on yet, I avoid discussing painful reality on this blog. Moving right along...
8. That brings us to the present. See? You didn't miss much. Hairy Spider of Doom, campfire, Supercake. Tune in next time, I plan on unearthing some embarrassing childhood photos and revealing the secret to a happy, fulfilling life. Or it'll be another recipe and dumb story. Only time will tell.

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