"Breakdown, takedown, your busted!"

Accompanying F's 12th birthday was a religious milestone. On Sunday he was ordained a deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood (that Mormonspeak meaning essentially he gets to leave Primary, enter the youth program and pass the Sacrament to the congregation after it has been blessed.) Thus, the photo shoot.

(F was not interested in making a funny face!)

We wanted to get a couple good pics and our lawn wasn't mowed, so we went across the street to our neighbor's house whose lawn was nicely mowed. She is the Dean of the Buisness College at RU and thus rarely ever home. Noting her car was gone, we jumped over for our photo shoot. This was our favorite shot. Jack said, "Hold on a car is coming, I am going to let it pass." Except it didn't pass-it was our neighbor! She was nice enough to not pull into her driveway so we could get the shot. Thanks neighbor!!

And yay for F for his ordination!

12 clues we have a 12 year old

1. No matter what the task, if it is in his room, F is rockin' out to his ipod.
2. Anytime we are going somewhere we hear, "But do I have to go?"
3. When F finally brings his laundry down, it forms Mt. McKinley.
4. We are out the door the crack of dawn for zero period (that's 7:15 in case you were wondering) 5. There is a sound nearing death eminating from our house as he practices his sax.
6. You can hear a mother wailing, "Nooooooo!" as she gets beaten by the preteen in one of several different board games. 7. The clocks are never right--for that matter, nothing is ever right unless it comes from his mouth.
8. You can hear a father wailing, "Noooooo!" as he finds out indeed, the preteen was right (thereby making him wrong).
9. We hear a constant chorus of "Why won't F play with us?"
10. There is now more than one set of gigantic man feet in the house resulting in gigantic man shoes littered across the house. 11. "PE is lame" is now a familiar end of the day assessment.
12. Final clue: He was born on this day in 1998, thus Mr. 12 year old.

First Day Oranges

I am co-opting the color orange. I feel like there should be a color to describe the opposite of having "the blues." I have decided having "the oranges" means exactly the opposite of having "the blues." Enough of the quotation marks; so let it be written, so let it be heard.

Today was one of my favorite first days yet! I picked everyone up at separate times thanks to 3 different pick up times and it was fantastic!! Everyone was able to share their excitement, stories, and triumphs without having to wait for a brother to finish a sentence or fight to get a word in edgewise. It was divine. I highly recommend it to all of you who have picked up everyone in the same van at the same time and have trouble saying "that's awesome!" 42 different times and in 18 directions and not really being able to attend to any of them.

We are still on a high from our first day oranges and hope they last through tomorrow.

(Not convinced this whole "oranges" thing is going to work after re-reading...but we'll give it a go!)

"You're NO Miss America, ya know!"

That was a favorite cut down of my 7th grade posse (and used most often by Ashley ? who later moved, which was good because I think she would have jumped me into a girl gang).

To me, middle school meant:

-Todd Penington teasing me for not shaving my legs. (Um, Todd, you might have a heart attack to see the hair on my legs now, so maybe avoid me at the--wait, I imagine I will never see you again.) (and isn't it random his is the only last name I remember?)

-Getting pink loafers with a huge bow on the them for my birthday, loving them, and then never wearing them after Jackie ? said they were ugly. Repeat for pink peasant shirt with matching bag.

-Killing it as the starting setter on the volleyball team, only to later drop out because I was more into the hippie scene than the athlete scene (which was the beginning of a 4 year long deliberation about which "scene" I was into, and finally deciding I was into none of them).

-Crying in Mrs Huffman's Latin class after school one day to have her change my 6 weeks grade of a D to a C so I wouldn't get beheaded upon returning home.

-Deciding math was not cool and pretending to hate it which eventually lead to me actually hating it which led me to regretting wanting to be cool.

-Taking choir with Mrs Tatum because everyone said the class was super easy and chill instead of taking band which is what I wanted to take.

-Oh F!! I went to his middle school open house and watched as he fiddled with his locker, worried about dressing out in gym class, wondered if he will make it from class to class in only 5 minutes, and laughed as he reunited with friends who were all similarly consumed. May middle school be for you even marginally better than it was for me. Here's to high school, eh?

There are no photos, as F would have KILLED me if I'd brought a camera (even though I did toss it around in my mind).

Why finish one project when you can just start another?

I had planned to take the boys to the pool today but by the time I was ready to go, they decided they would rather play with their bow and arrows from Steppin' Out and engage in all out war. So. I decided it was the perfect afternoon for a project.

I have been on a quest to find oilcloth (and by "quest", truthfully I have only been to one store that did not carry it and looked at a couple online fabric stores) because I want to make reusable snack bags for the boys' lunch boxes.

Turns out it is a good thing I couldn't find it because apparently oilcloth contains a chemical potentially harmful to children and pregnant women (amy-stay CLEAR of the oilcloth!).

I decided to check out our local sewing store, SewBiz (which is great but quite overpriced), to see what they had. She didn't carry nylon by the yard (my new substitute) but she did carry a nonabsorbent raincoat material. At $22/yard, I bought 13 inches for $8.

And viola! The first three had some kinks, but with all the snags now under control, I am going to make 9 more. The 13 inches cut enough for 12 bags. LOVE them!! I am so happy because I was feeling lame that we have reusable lunch boxes, water bottles, & sandwich containers, but were still wasting bags for chips, etc. Now--DONE!