thoughts on a sunday

Us at the concert.  I have decided not to smile anymore for pictures.  

This is in an effort to not look as fat in the face.  My poor face.  Who is that girl?  

• We've had a busy week this week.  Lots of playing with friends and playing outside.  The weather has been in the high 70's for most of the week so it's been quite pleasant to be outdoors.    

• Brian usually gets new clothes for his birthday.  This year he didn't, but was in need of some anyway.  You really would never guess, but he is a snob when it comes to clothes.  We have quite different philosophies when it comes to buying clothes.  He is loyal to certain brands and will pay quite a bit more for his brand-name clothes because, he says, they last longer and are better quality.  I, on the other hand, would rather buy cheap inexpensive clothes and get way more for my money.  Except for jeans.  Our philosophies flip when it comes to jeans.

• The other day we were driving by the temple, which you can see from the freeway, and Ellery said, "I see the temple where you get married!"  I asked the kids if they wanted to get married in the Portland temple.  McKay's reply: "No.  I want to get married in the cougar temple."

• Today in relief society we talked about service and patience.  I was really struck by a discussion about how we receive promptings from the Spirit and how we may dismiss those simple thoughts that come to us, which may really be the potential answer to someone's prayer.  How often does that happen to me?  Where I have a thought to do something for someone else, or call someone, or whatever, and I let it go because I don't have time or don't think it's important.  I think it probably happens to me a lot.  Made me want to be more in tune and pay more attention to those seemingly insignificant thoughts.  

• Shaving my legs is getting difficult and I constantly am cutting myself, which I usually never do.  My ankles might never be the same.

• Brian was working on a group project at our house on Saturday so I took the kids to the play area at the mall.  It's pretty fun for them, as far as mall play areas go, and they loved jumping and sliding and running around.  I sat there watching them and found myself thinking way too much about how disgusting play areas are.  I watched all the strange little bare feet running around and then hands touching everything and then hands in mouths and, well, you know, it's a cycle.  When I start thinking like that I have to first, remind myself that we practically bathe in hand sanitizer after we're done, and two, germs aren't necessarily going to hurt my kids.  Worse case- they get a bug.  It's easy to be a germ-a-phob and quite harder to not let it bother you, I think.  But I'm trying to let my kids experience being kids and playing on those nasty play areas is part of that.  Am I right?

• On Thursday we went to the library.  All was going well until Ellery came up to me in a panic and said, "I need to go potty!  I need to go potty!". . .pause. . ."I'm going!"  This is a brand new library.  It's small.  It's inexperienced.  It didn't know what to do about pee on the floor.  I asked for something to clean it up with and all they had were paper towels.  I'm glad it was my child that broke in the library carpet.  It's was super fun for me, and reminded me that when someone is distracted someone will still have accidents.   

• We went to the junior high this week for lunch.  The school district here has a program where they give out free school lunches to all children.  Any children.  So we went and McKay felt like a 7th grader eating lunch in the big cafeteria and running around with his friends after.  It's nice to get out and not have to fix lunch myself.  We might just become regulars!
  
• We also went swimming with McKay's friend David and his family on Monday.  It was where McKay had his swimming lessons, so he was thrilled to get to swim all over the pool and use the water slide instead of sitting on the steps waiting for his turn to be taught.  Ellery was perhaps more excited to be in the pool as she has only ever been able to watch McKay in it.  I have another philosophy:  if I can't get a tan while swimming, I'm not interested.  This was an indoor pool.  They had fun and I sacrificed by getting in the water and getting all the way wet. 

• I had a dentist appointment this week.  I am grateful to have dental insurance while I'm pregnant and so I went in for a cleaning.  I went to one of the only dentist that my coverage allows and had perhaps the most traumatic dental experience of my life.  The office was tiny and old.  The dentist was hard to understand.  The dentist did the whole cleaning.  The dentist didn't notice the gallons of water continuously dripping out of my mouth and pooling in my neck from her little water tool.  The dentist was rough.  The dentist was quick.  The dentist scared me.

• Brian is busy again.  This week, even when he had a day off, he still had to do papers and paperwork the whole time.  He is front-loading his clinicals so that he can be done in mid-August so that they won't get in the way of the baby coming.  This will be really nice in August, but for now it's creating quite a busy, stressful environment for him.  Also, you can call him the spinal-master because he's continuously rocking those spinals.  No big deal.

• Brian and I went to see The Avett Brothers last night at the Edgefield in Troutdale.  We enjoyed getting out , enjoyed the music, enjoyed the beautiful venue, enjoyed the bountiful people watching and I enjoyed getting a few peaks of the boys singing. . .but just a few because I was too short to see above the crowd most of the time.  We didn't enjoy the gross $10 pizza, most of the set-list, and waiting in the parking lot for over an hour to get out.  

• Going to this concert caused us to get our second ever "babysitter".  The kids were SO excited.  Minutes before she arrived they were running around the family room jumping and falling on each other from pure joy.  Then she came in.  McKay immediately whispered to Brian, "I know her!  I stare at her in church all the time!"  The three of them hit it off and the kids even went to bed good for her.  It was a long time to leave them, but we were all relieved that they did great.  And our darling babysitter was great too.  Brian was super impressed that she had put all the pizza away in a tupperware with wax paper between each slice.  That sealed the deal right there for him.        

• Before we left for the concert I decided to type up a few simple instructions for Mallory, the babysitter.  I know that telling someone everything at once can get overwhelming, so I thought having it written down would be helpful.  I wrote about Ellery's rice milk, about their bedtime routine, about Ellery's potty-assistance needs, our phone number and where we'd be and what things they could do.  Brian later declared it "the manifesto" and teased me the whole time we were gone about it.  Hey, we all know I am a long-winded writer, and this is my second time ever leaving my babies with a teenage girl. And, it was for a long time.  I stand by my manifesto.  

Happy Sunday!