My people

Today I think it will be fun to update you on my children. Do you know what makes a kid update complete? An outdated photograph from Seattle. You can tell it is outdated because my children are sporting their summertime Oompa Loompa look - you know, red faces, white hair, weirdest boss in the world. Also the leaves on the trees are a dead giveaway. And the trees. We don't have trees like that in the desert.

Let's do this!

(And let's go oldest to youngest since Macey hates when we go youngest to oldest and Tess can't read.)

Macey:

Macey is 8 1/2. She takes ballet. My mom is teaching her the piano. She is in the school choir. And she was recently invited to be a part of the third grade newspaper. This was quite the prestigious invitation. Her first contribution was a fictional story about a puppy who snuck into Santa's sack on Christmas Eve and became his helper. And then he saved Christmas. One day you will say you knew her when...

Macey's latest thing is playing Minesweeper and keeping track of where the bombs are on a sheet of paper and trying to win the next round using the last round's intell. Thus far it has been a frustrating endeavor for her. I half-heartedly explained Minesweeper to her, but she seems sure that she is on to something with her method. She also loves horses and playing with her neighbor friend, Megan. She has also recently fallen in love with the world of Harry Potter. She finished reading the first book a few days ago and says that her favorite character is Hagrid. I think that Macey and Hagrid would be good friends.

Olivia:

Olivia is 7 1/2. She takes ballet. My mom is teaching her the piano. She has a knack for it, which makes me really happy. She takes the piano seriously and practices as soon as she wakes up, when she is supposed to be in bed, and generally whenever I want quiet. Unfortunately, Olivia only has one volume - mezzoforte, which is Italian for "Mom will need 800 mg of Ibuprofen and a box of Swiss Rolls if this persists." I have tried to explain pianissimo to her, but it went over like Minesweeper. No comprende.

Olivia is quite a little smartiepants. She reads like a sixth grader and kicks butt at math. (And yet I cannot drive home the concept of pianissimo? Someone is taking me for a ride.) Olivia loves sheep, steak, salad, riding her bike, texting her cousin Paige, and playing with her neighbor friend, Megan.

Chancho:

Chancho is 5 1/2 and we have yet to drop his unfortunate nickname. He is in Kindergarten and endures it. Coloring and sitting in chairs are not his "thing." Luckily, his best buddy Jack is in his class. Unluckily, they have been banned from sitting together. He loves his teacher, he loves having snacks, he loves recess, but the rest of that crap he could live without.

Chancho is really into flying machines of late. It started at the Boeing museum in Seattle. It is an interest that I am trying to nourish and encourage. Santa brought him a Blue Angel jet and a Stealth Bomber to go along with his M-21 Blackbird. He also got a little biplane that you shoot off of a charger gun so that you can watch it fly thirty feet in the air before landing on your neighbor's roof at 8:00 on Christmas morning. Chancho has decided that he is going to be a Blackbird pilot when he grows up. I have explained to him that if he wants to become a Blackbird pilot he is going to have to endure the coloring and the sitting in chairs.

Tess:

Tess is 3 1/2. Yesterday was her very first day of Sunbeams. For those who are not fluent in Mormonese, that means that she gets to sit in Sunday school instead of staying in the nursery and eating Goldfish crackers while smelling other kids' soiled diapers. Tess is proud of her status as a Sunbeam.

Tess is obsessed with Taylor Swift. I have created a playlist for her on YouTube and she watches the videos for "We Are Never Getting Back Together" and "You Belong With Me" repeatedly. She sings along loudly - even the speaking parts. As in, "This is exhausting, you know. Like, we are never getting back together, like EVER." A month or two ago she asked me, "Mom, is Taylor Swifff never getting back togedder?" I told her yes. For that is an eternal truth.

That is what's new with my little people. What's new with you?

We're ALIVE!

Have you given up on me? Guess what, we are ALIVE!

Not to understate things, but December turned out to be a busy month.

We tried to enjoy the holidays. Look at those little people. They woke up at 3:00 on Christmas morning, but my husband had mercy on me. He forced them to watch cartoons on the Lovesac until 5:00. Yes, these are the same children that I have to drag out of bed by their ankles at 8:00 on school days.

 

Anyway, look at what my husband gave me for Christmas - a weapon!

 It's a Kimber .45 with a nifty laser pointer that makes for easy shooting. And really interesting Singing Time activities.

I joke. Using a gun laser at church would be inappropriate. (That is supposed to be read in your best Church Lady voice.)

2012 was a good year for us. I have been weeding through the year in pictures and I feel kind of overwhelmed by our good luck or blessings or whatever you want to call it.

We visited two oceans on several occasions this year. The Pacific one via Newport Beach, California:

 The Atlantic one via Sanibel Island, Florida:

 The Pacific one via Seattle, Washington:

 And the Pacific one again via La Push, Washington...

 ...this is where we discovered that Washington State does not mess around when it comes to driftwood:

And my Macey Bella was baptized this year:

So many great things happened in 2012, it would take a lot of pictures and lot of words to get through it all. 2012 was good.

But do you want to know what scares the bejeezus out of me?

2013.

The last time we had a year this awesome was 2007. And then 2008 happened. And then 2009. Those were rough years. Those were humbling, learning years. I'm not prepared to repeat them. I am content with my current level of humility and knowledge, which means that 2013 will probably be a learning experience year. Darnit.

In other news, this is what I wrote at St. George News this week. It's about guns. If you have time on your hands, you should find the rest of what I've written in December, since I am too lazy to post them here. Ha.

Happy 2013!

Grace? She passed away thirty years ago...

(Name that movie.)

I know, I know. Two posts in one week. Please, hold your applause until after the performance. Here it is, the 2012 Haynes Family Christmas Tree:

I got to pick this year. And this is what I wrote about it over at St. George News.

In other news, tonight my family and I attended the Kalamity dance show for a cause thingey. That is not the official name of the event - at the moment it escapes me. In a nutshell, it is super terrific dance show, the proceeds of which are given to a woman named Meg who is battling bone cancer. There is another show tomorrow night, so if you are in the St. George area, get yourself down to Desert Hills High School at 7:00 p.m. tomorrow (Saturday the 1st). You won't regret it. It's tons of fun, just remember to take some Tylenol beforehand.

Fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra!

(Name that movie.)

Happy Thanksgiving? Merry Christmas?! What month is it?!

Sorry it's been so long, but here is what we've been up to:

We feasted. Do you know what I see when I look at this picture? I mean besides the Hottie McHottiepants in the background.

My humongous pan of raspberry pretzel Jell-o salad. It is bigger than the turkey or the mashed potatoes or anything else, as it should be. I love that Jell-o salad.
Here we are, eating:

Notice my poor, sad children back there at the kiddie table. See that old, dusty television behind the Lovesac in the background? I told DJ that all I want for Christmas is for that TV to be taken to the D.I. That, or dunked in gasoline and burned to the ground while I do a celebratory dance. That's my Christmas dream, everyone. I hate that TV.

We also went Christmas tree hunting in Kaibab. Here I am acting like the only doe in the world with antlers:

 This is a tradition that my dad started. I'll admit, the antlers make more sense when they are on a guy.

Here is Macey singing with her school choir at the Dicken's Festival:

She is the upper-right-most blur. You know, the one with a black shirt and the blonde hair.

Finally, here is what I wrote last week at St. George News. Can you tell I was coming down from eating half of a Costco pumpkin pie when I wrote it?

Turkeys, hamsters, Santa, and other mythical creatures

Today my mom, my sister's husband Manny, and I ran the Turkey Trot 5K. Deja vu, anyone?

Here are all of our people, preparing for the race by having our picture taken by a stranger. We are so hard core.

Speaking of hard core, here is my mom crossing the finish line:

I think that is pretty awesome. Not just because my kids' grandma runs 5Ks, but check out the turkey, random rapper hamster, and Santa Claus behind the finish line. What a reception! Every race should have mythical creatures awaiting you at the finish line. How motivational would that be?! I would run a marathon if there were a unicorn or Yoda at the end of it.

I love the Turkey Trot. Historically, I have had excellent luck at this race. I always win something. Last year I came home with the grand prize - a pair of running shoes from St. George Running Center. This year as we were making our way out to Washington Fields, DJ predicted that this would be the year that we brought home a turkey.

Behold:

As you can see, Manny also won a turkey, but it is clear that I am more enthusiastic about it by the height to which I have hoisted my bird.

I love free turkeys. And I love how my husband's use of The Secret just won us the main component of our Thanksgiving feast.

(Speaking of Thanksgiving, I wrote this thing over at St. George News...like three days ago. Sorry, I have been a massive slacker about posting these things. You'll like this one. I mention Abe Lincoln. It's very Thanksgiving-y.)

a RAD metaphor

This morning I did the Color Me Rad 5k with my mom and my sister's husband, Manny. It was super fun and also a metaphor for our earthly lives. We start out pure and white and clean, and as we go through life people throw paint at us until our perfect white hoodie is ruined. RUINED, I say.

















After that, you decide that since you're all filthy and ruined that you might as well ruin your sister's/daughter's/wife's lives as well:

And then you die and go to heaven to take a shower and find that somehow the evil of the world has made its way under your hat and onto your hair.

And then you take a shower and the color mostly washes off, but you still find paint powder all over your car and your house and everything you touched between the finish line and your shower door. I suppose it is not a perfect metaphor.

In other news, this week I wrote about how to get over the Romney Lost Bummers. You should read it. Is anyone else having a severe case of the bummers since Election Day?

Like sands through an hour glass...

Hey guys.

Another week has passed. How does that happen so quickly?! It was the usual grind - homework, Halloween, carpool, cleaning, ballet, Wal-mart - you know. It is a grind, but it is my grind and I love it. Usually.

Halloween is the best. No, that is not sarcasm. See if you can tell what we are:

Olivia was Frankie Stein from Monster High. I was Rapunzel. Tess was Rapunzel. Chancho was Ironman. Macey was a witch. And DJ was a Dad Who is Too Embarrassed to Dress Up But If He Wasn't He Would've Been Flynn Ryder.

Now we are amidst the post-Halloween sugar crash. My kids need to clean their rooms. They are cranky. I am too tired to boss them around. Halloween is the worst.

So I wrote this thing about the younger missionary age. You should take a look. I am excited for sister missionaries to be able to leave earlier, aren't you? Say yes.

Over and out.

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.

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.

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.