frazzled & frumpy

The kids are home and in between web-surfing and trying to watch Law and Order reruns, I have conversations with them. Taz- "Mom can I have a marker. Cuz this girl in my class has a marker. And I don't want to use just a pencil on my skeleton notebook." (Me) "How about a pen?" "No, a marker." He points at the mug which I keep on a shelf high in my room for obvious reasons. (You should see my walls! Too bad magic erasers don't remove sharpie!) (Me) "No way, you cannot have a sharpie. How about a red pen?" "No, I need a marker." I get the mug and find a neon green Crayon eraseable marker. "Will this work?" "YES! Can I use it to color my skateboard?" Right now he's coloring the wheels green. I hate it when I'm not here when they get home. I feel like I miss something very important. But, with kids in high school, jr. high and elementary, sometimes the schedule requires me to be gone at that magical ti...

With 7 kids, laundry, housework, church callings, being a loving wife, writing a book and blogs, exercising, and making (ahem) nutritious meals, I clearly don't have enough to do. Or maybe it's just desperation. Whatever, here's my newest creation- Battle of the Bulge.

I try not to complain. Well, that's not true. I think I probably complain alot. I don't notice, my family does, I'm sure. But, sometimes, you have good reason. Like last Friday. I went to get some new glasses. I've wanted new ones for a while, but couldn't justify buying new ones when I had a perfectly good, alt hough out-of-style, pair. Then, fate stepped in and as I took my unfashionable glasses off one morning, they broke. Just like that. Honestly, I didn't do anything . I'm thinking that all the times my little one took them and tried to put them on stressed them to the point that they couldn't take it anymore, and they gave up. Whatever the reason, I didn't care. I now had an exuse to get some cute new glasses. :) I had to wait a couple weeks, during which time I wore my taped, well, band-aided, glasses. (We were out of duct tape and plain scotch tape didn't hold.) Then, on Friday we went to America's Best. Big Hunk went with me, since h...

In the Wal-Mart parking lot today I happened to see a bumper sticker. They had switched the first letters of two words. That way, they didn't actually swear, but you knew very well what they were meaning. I did not appreciate that. I was just minding my own business, going to buy bread and Whoppers and now I had a disgusting phrase in my head. What is it with this world that others have to share their low standards with the rest of us? On a bumper sticker, no less. We need to go back a few decades to where being clean and moral was the popular thing to do. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go downtown for auxiliary training with the General Young Women's Presidency. Sis. Dalton (YW President) spoke about a 'return to virtue ' .( If you want to see her talk on the subject, go here- youth.lds.org and click on Mormon Messages for Youth.) I was considering her use of the word 'return'. I thought this was interesting. It implies that we were virtuous ...

Whew! Big sigh of relief, I remembered my password. I tried logging on yesterday and couldn't get my password right. ( Too many pregnancies + old age = memory lapses.) So, for a long time, I just had one password that I used for everything . Then, I heard that that's not a good idea, so I started using a different one. BUT, with both of them, I ended it with my age. Great idea, since that changes occasionally. Thankfully, today I got it right. I survived spring break- can I get a "Hallelujah"? I know a lot of moms like the break and do fun stuff with their kids. I just grit my teeth and try to get through the 7 days of torture. It would have helped immensely if we would've had spring-like weather. Instead, we get a HUGE snowstorm which covered our tramp and the entire backyard. (And, all of the parks in our town, which cancelled out the one activity I had planned.) The only good thing about it is that I didn't have to ask my teenagers about their...