Favorite quote of the week.

As my children are known to sometimes do when they are little, Henry followed me into the bathroom.

I have long since let go of any modesty issues I once had with using the bathroom in front of any number of children traipsing through.

So it was just one more time of having Henry talk to me while I *ahem* used the facilities.

But pretty soon he started to wiggle, and move around, kind of like this:





I asked, "Henry what are you doing?"

He answered, completely dead pan,"I'm dancing. Cuz your pee sounds like music!!"

I was still laughing when I went to bed that night. And I still giggle every time I think about it.

Love that kid.

Trying to remember that Easter is about Jesus, when really, everyone just wants to eat candy all day.

After the sugar overload:






After the crash:






How was your Easter?

Habits of Mind

My lovely oldest daughters both received awards yesterday.

Their school honors kids who achieve extraordinary results with their BRAINS.

It's called Habits of Mind and it encourages and rewards developing and using good habits in school, both academically and socially.

I'm a proud mama. Our kids are the best of us combined, and I'm so grateful for all that they do!

I take credit for providing them with a nurturing environment in which to grow. But who they are, I give credit to Heavenly Father. He created them, they came to this earth with their personalities in place, and they are wonderful.

What a gift it is to be entrusted with these precious spirits. Both on good days, and not so good days.

But speaking of good days, Nora is potty training!! And doing extremely well. I'm very happy.

Thanks for all your kind words, too. The sun came out, and the two combined were much appreciated.

Now I'm off to help facilitate tinkling in the toilet, peeing in the potty, and making the pee come out! It's an exciting day around here!

the blaahs

I am finding myself at a point where I need to come to grips with the fact that I live in a place that rains more than anywhere else.

And it's grey most of the time too.

But being a creature of the sun, this means that my moods swing with the weather.

And when the weather refuses to cooperate and be nice and it's been a record number of days of clouds and rain, well, I kind of shut down.

Meaning, I don't want to clean my house, I don't care if my kids wear the same thing two days in a row, and I don't seem to mind if they watch T.V. all day while I play solitaire on the computer.

Translation:Lack of sun depresses me terribly.

I start looking for jobs for Jeff in Utah, New Zealand, North Carolina, California. Anywhere that has more sunny days than cloudy, raining days.

And it doesn't have to be warm all the time, or without snow, but I just need sun.

But it seems we are staying here indefinately. Which is happy for my oldest child who will be starting the 8th grade next year, but is kind of a downer for the girl who feels like the clouds are crushing her will to live! (that's me)

So I haven't felt like posting either, and I'm sorry.

And I've taken vitamin P in the past to help, but the side effects are almost worse than the benefit.

So whaaa!

Thanks for listening to me vent. Now I'm going to soothe myself with the long proven mood lifting method of chocolate and diet coke.

Have a great day.

Normal, or not?

Things I think are normal. Charlie's third grade concert that finishes out their unit on Africa. . Charlie's awesome teacher and the fun hat and tye dyed shirts they made. Getting treats after every function they have. . And then, there is this. An invitation Charlie received. Take a good look folks. That is an invitation to a sleep over. It looks like a lot of fun and that it's been planned out very well. There is just one problem. It's from a girl.

And now...a rant.

Are we seriously in a place as a society that people think this is normal? That boys and girls having co-ed sleepover parties is considered acceptable? I'd heard of this for junior high and high school age, and I thought those parents were off their rocker.

I can see how possibly a parent would think third graders are young and innocent and that there is no harm from this. But my goal as a parent is not to teach them that co-ed sleeping is ok.

You all remember the things you started learning at 9 years old? Well I do, and thank you very much but combining that with sleepovers just isn't on my list of good solid parenting.

Charlie is disappointed that he can't go. He asked if he could at least go and just stay late. But I just can't bring myself to trust the judgement of these parents enough to let my son go over there and stay late with a bunch of other kids.

Maybe it seems too harsh, too prudish. But my job is not to validate other parents. My job is to teach my son. And in our house, you don't have co-ed sleepovers unless you're related to them.

But what I want to know is if this is becoming the new norm? Has anyone else encountered this?

Morning dance routine

Put a little HSM (High school musical for those who don't know) in the 'ol jukebox and watch the moves happen. Nora's still learning her moves. She likes to sway back and forth with the table.

Henry is in full blown robot mode. The kid has moves!

Um...starting to be too cool to disco in the morning.

Of course you will have to come over if you want to see my dance moves. No camera in the world could capture the awesomeness of it!

Watched over

It's kind of hard to tell from the picture, but the front left tire is crooked. And if you're familiar with cars at all, meaning you drive one, then you know that crooked tires are bad.

We didn't know it was crooked. It was all a bizarre sequence of events that led up to probably saving our lives. And no, I'm not exaggerating.

A few weeks ago, Jeff's little commuter car finally had it. The timing chain blah, blah, blah was bad or something, and since the car is a 94 Saturn, we just said, "Forget it, lets find another one."

In the meantime, some awesome friends of ours lent us their car while we looked for one for Jeff. And you'd think that finding a car would not be hard. Granted our budget wasn't huge, but there are alot of cars on Craigslist in our price range. But either our offer was turned down, or no one called us back, or something. And after a week we still didn't have a car.

Well on the way to return our friends' car, I was driving ahead of Jeff in the big van, and he starts honking at me and motioning for me to pull over. When we stop, he tells me that the front wheel is all crooked and he tries tightening the lug nuts thinking that is the problem.

Well, the lug nuts are on tight, which means something else is going on. So we drop off the other car, and then head straight to Les Schwab.

After 3 hours they call and tell us that the arm and ball joint on the front left side are completely shot and that even though they can't fix it until Monday (this was on saturday) that they can't let us drive it because it's so dangerous. And that even if we don't have them fix it, we should have it towed.

What?!

So basically the front left side could have suddenly, without warning, been riding super low, as in scraping the ground. So now we have two cars out of commission. And at first I was bummed because we were supposed to head over the mountains on Monday for spring break.

But then it hits me. We were supposed to head over the mountains for spring break!!!!

Was it possible that our van had another 300 miles in it before it collapsed in a ruined heap? And what if we were driving it at 70 miles an hour with all of our children when it failed? Can you say tragic roll over accident?

So now I realize what a huge blessing all of this is. Jeff's car breaking down led to us borrowing a car, which led to us returning it, which led to Jeff following me and able to see that we had a problem. Cuz when would I have ever noticed it?

And not being able to find a new car for Jeff? Well that made it so that we still had money to pay the rather large cost of fixing the van. And all of a sudden Jeff's little 94 saturn feels worth fixing.

And thanks to both sets of parents, we had a mini van for the family to drive during this time, and a commuter car for Jeff to drive while he fixes the saturn.

So all's well that ends well. And having my family safe is the best ending of all.

Ready for a change

I've been feeling restless with my appearance lately. Not unhappy, just bored.

Should I grow my hair out again? Should I cut it all off again?

Should I go more blonde? Should I go all one color?

Growing it out takes forever, and I hate the medium length stage. Plus, I have mistakenly thought in the past that I had to have long hair to be beautiful. I don't think that anymore.

Then something happened when I saw the pictures of the Mindy Gledhill concert. I realized how boring I looked to myself in those pictures. Not bad,not unattractive, just boring.

And I thought of how most days I either put it in hot rollers and left it down, or the real majority of the time, it ended up in a pony tail. And I need more options than that.

So, risking the assumption by other people that I was copying Mindy (you know who you are) I decided to just go for it. Well, that's not entirely true. I first sent a copy of a picture of Meg Ryan's hair that I like to a few people, asking them what they think. Then I polled my whole family and compiled all the information in order to make a decision.

Hey-cutting all your hair off is a BIG deal folks.

And then after feeling sick to my stomach and almost changing my mind while I was in the hairdresser's chair, I just did it!

It didn't help that the other gal who works there was sitting there watching us. Cuz being a lovely Asian girl with long, lovely hair, she found it painful to watch me cut my hair off. She kept making little exclamations and saying, "Oh, it's short enough now, huh?"

It was unfathomable to her why anyone would cut their hair short. But I ignored her and still did it.

So here is the before: Granted I didn't really do my hair before we left, but you get the point.

I told Julie, the gal who cuts my hair, that I wanted a little more blonde. Well....I got a lot more blonde. But that's ok, I can color that any old way I want. What's important is that she totally nailed the haircut I wanted.

And hooo doggey, do I have options now. Headbands look divine, I can pull my bangs back and leave it all messy, I can curl it a little with a curling iron if I want a more sleek look, I can tuck it behind my ears ( which I always did no matter how long my hair was. And that doesn't look so good with long hair) or I can just leave it. And it take about 10 minutes tops.

And I have let go of the thought that I need long hair to be attractive. The best response to my hair was Jeff, just hugging me so tight when I walked in the door and whispering in my ear what he thought of me and my hair. No I'm not going to tell you what he said, silly.

Anyway, love it or hate it, it's here to stay and it makes me feel all bouncy and light. And happy.

The end.

Mindy has left the building

First of all, thank you for being patient. I was busy today, but admittedly, I didn't want to blog about this.

Part of me wanted to keep the evening all wrapped up inside my own little heart. And part of me felt that if I blogged about it, that would really mean it's over. Hence, my avoidance.

But I have bucked up, and I'm fulfilling my blogging responsibilities. Plus I realized that if I didn't blog about it, you might think I'm a big fat liar.

So instead of hording, I am in fact sharing ALL of my pictures of the night with you. Can you handle it? There are ALOT.

But if you weren't there in person, than it's the least I can do for you. And If you were there in person, then re-live the moment. Go ahead. Enjoy it.

At the end of the pictures I will share my take on what was, besides my wedding and the birth of my children, one of the top 10 moments in my life so far. Yes it was.

Oh, and extra special bonus at the end. Don't give up, keep on scrolling , I promise it will be worth it.



Mindy brought along her own awesome decorations. Debra Fotheringham: amazing singer, funny, quick witted, talented song writer. She opened for Mindy, it was truly a priviledge to meet her. Warm up with Mindy and Ryan Tilby Umm, can anyone else believe this happened? I love little kids because it could be Mindy, me or Cindy Lauper in there and Nora would treat us all the same. Proof that it doesn't matter who you are, I WILL take pictures of you eating. Early birds. Can you blame them? Filling up. Pretty much an amazing feat, the amount of chairs we squashed into my house. People were able to eat and mingle a little before the concert started. Amazingly, we did not have too much food. Everything Mindy did just had such a magical quality to it. Even the tables for merchandise. Quaint touches that change the ordinary into extraordinary. Note to self:small touches matter. Here I am saying something sappy and dribbly about how awesome Mindy is. I know I fooled no one and they all heard the emotion hitching in my voice. I mean come on, when's the last time I ever got to introduce someone famous that I admire so much? That's right. Never. So if I had to take breaths to keep from crying, so what? Ok, this girl was so sweet and quiet before hand. And then she sat down and out came all of these witty, lovely things. And her music could just make you cry. Which it did for me. Hey, it was an emotional night for me, kay? All eyes to the stairs as Mindy descends. That would have been a grand picture. Her opening song was Close to you by the Carpenters. That was the song I sang to kate every night when she was a baby. The water works were well on their way by now people. I'm not sure I think it's fair that she has so much musical talent and is beautiful as well. Can I get an amen on that? This was Mindy's best friend growing up. Yes, famous, talented people have best friends too. A Lovely best friend witha beautiful little girl who was sooo good through the whole concert. She was genuinely happy to see everyone. As were we to see her. I had to rememer to let other people at her. I mean, I didn't want to appear as stalker-ish as I felt. Me and Debra. Did i mention already how much I love this girl? We were fortunate to hear her sing with the Lower Lights. She' really amazing. Check out her website here. I think Kate knows how blessed we all were to have this happen. And even though I look slightly, um weird, exuberant, fanatical? I still wanted to show you all this picture. Why? Just because. Oh and Mindy is tall. I'm 5 '8. And she's taller than me. Lucky. And this was not the outfit I planned on wearing to the concert. This was my meet Mindy outfit. Ok, it wasn't even that planned. But I got too busy and just left it. I think it was ok, as far as outfits go. So I've decided that there is more to this life than most of us think. There is more to life than the everyday.

Don't get me wrong, every day stuff is fantastic and necessary all in it's own right. But there is no reason to not go after the extraordinary.

For some that may mean becoming a recording artist, or climbing mount Everest.

For me, it's not being afraid to try new things and to put myself out there. You have to make yourself available for the fun moments in life.

I'm not sure I would have regretted not emailing Mindy in the first place, because I wouldn't have known what I was missing out on. But since I do know and have experienced the beauty and music, I'm so glad I followed that impulse and put my hat in for hosting a concert.

Being on TLC was nothing compared to this. And I ain't one to fib.


Having Mindy in my home was unlike anything else we've experienced as a family. I am not exaggerating when I say that she was truly down to earth, but poised and confident as well and as I told her, there is just something about her.


I felt at ease instantly with her, and admittedly a little star struck, but I tried not to act too goofy. Not sure I accomplished that.

But she was so gracious and grateful that we opened our home for this event. And seeing everybody arrive and to watch her sign autographs and to hear Anne Marie say to me as Mindy looked at her during one of the songs, "Mom! She winked at me!" made the whole night just amazing.


One of the neatest parts was hearing the inspiration behind her songs. I've tried to imagine how someone pulls such wonderful lyrics and music out of their brains. I still don't know because I don't possess that talent. But at least I can see now where the idea starts to bud.


I could go on and on about her. I didn't get a chance to tell Mindy this, but I told Debra and Ryan-they think they're just people, but the rest of us are in awe of their talents and know that they're more than just ordinary people.


As the night proved.


And because I don't want to be accused of being selfish, I would love to share a video of Mindy singing last night. It's sideways, unfortunately, but it'll have to do.

And one last mention. Anne Marie pretty much summed up the night when she said," Her name is Mindy Gledhill. You have to use two names when you're a rock star."



Well said.

All the details coming soon

Amy is running around getting groceries and taking care of all the things she couldn't take care of the last couple days as she was getting ready for the concert. It was Awesome!!!! She'll fill in with some details later today. ~Jeff