Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Thirty-two.

So.
Things have been a leetle busy. Hence the blog silence. BUT, yesterday was kind of a big deal, so here I am.
Just to jog your memory, recall that in October we join together to celebrate the lives of two people: Christopher Columbus and me. Yesterday was my thirty-second birthday. It seems so OLD when it's written out like that.
To celebrate I bought myself a used bike off of Craigslist.
And Carrie threw a surprise party for me.
I also got a new phone which I love with an unhealthy love. Really. It's a problem. One handy feature that it has is the screenshot, which allows me to share the following ridiculous exchange that occurred tonight between DJ and my running buddy, Audrey:
Happy birthday to me.

Monday, October 8, 2012

My Cold War globe, ballet day, and more!

Hiya, all.

First thing's first. I bought a globe at the D.I. today.

And then I painted it yellow. And then I noticed Ceylon, which is now Sri Lanka. This discovery piqued my curiosity  I found Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. East Germany. West Germany.\

How old is this globe?!

Obviously I am going to need a Sharpie marker or my kids are going to have problems in geography class.

This reminds me of how, when I was a teenager, my family owned a set of World Book encyclopedias, copyright 1988. I used to read them all of the time when I came home for lunch while I would eat my bowl of Frosted Mini Spooners/Corn Pops/Marshmallow Mateys/(fill in any number of Malt-o-Meal cereals here).

(This is probably why I never dated in high school. I was just too darned smart for high school boys. Yep, that's it.)

Anyway, because encyclopedias do not magically update themselves like Wikipedia, all of the factoids I memorized were from 1988 and prior. I used to know all of the winners of the Kentucky Derby up until 1988. Really. I had all of that crucial information committed to memory. I knew SO MUCH about West Germany, it's disgusting. And I was really happy when, in 2001, I finally learned that the Berlin Wall fell. Good for you, Germany!

Besides painting a globe yellow and taking a trip down memory lane, I also took my girls to ballet today. That is the view from the driver's seat, while waiting for Macey to get out of her class. I have a lot of thinking time on ballet day. Two 45 minute ballet classes, back to back. 45 minutes is an awkward chunk of time. It isn't enough time to go shopping or go home, but it's too much time to sit in the car and stare at Olivia's leotard butt.

Anyway.

In case you didn't catch it on Facebook, I also wrote this thing about mobile phone addiction for St. George News. While I was researching (yes, I research - don't act so surprised) I came across this video that I thought was quite nice. It's really worth a look.

Monday, October 1, 2012

It's not the weekend anymore!

I have all of this stuff rolling around in my brain like marbles in the bed of a pickup truck. I'm going to dump it all out right here, right now, on the Internet.

I may regret this.

We had a relaxing weekend. Saturday was Chancho's first day of City of St. George Smart Start flag football. Let me see if I can break this down for you: Smart Start basically means that you pay the city to go to a public park and play catch with your own kid. But it was an organized game of catch, followed by some running and kicking. Chancho loved it. He puffed his little chest out with pride as we walked back to the car.
We drove to Las Vegas for my husband's brother's engagement party. I hate Las Vegas. Have I ever mentioned that before? Anyway. We had some cousin time. This is every grandchild on the Haynes side of our family:
And these are all of the Hayneses, minus Seth who is still in Kenya:


Kind of a sad thing about this gathering was that both of DJ's parents have long since passed away and they missed the whole thing. Unless they were haunting us...oooOOOOoo....

Even Grandma Marilyn was there, wearing the Playboy bunny necklace that she found at a yard sale, bless her heart.

On Sunday we took a drive up to Pine Valley because we had HAD IT with the desert.

We rolled down the windows and just snorted in that mountain air. It was rejuvenating. What is it about mountain air? It's just so fresh. The laundry detergent people try to copy it, but they're not even close. I love the mountains.

Oh yeah, and I wrote this thing for St. George News. I felt kind of "eh" about it, but whatever. Something had to give this week.