Top Five Friday

You've heard of Thankful Thursday, and really nothing could top Thankful Thursday, but I thought I would try to add to it by introducing TOP FIVE FRIDAY. Every Friday will be a different topic with my five favorite things having to do with it. You (yes you) will then leave your five in the comments. Capishe? (Throwin' in a little Uncle Jesse there for ya, how can you resist now???)

Top Five Good Things about the kids being back in school:

1. we are on a schedule

2. early track, we are up and going

3. nine o'clock bedtime

4. running errands with only one child

5. it means fall is on it's way and it won't be so dastardly hot (remember we were just complaining how it was still too cold in June, whatever!)

Hello Kindergarten!

He was so excited for his first day!

And his Mom didn't even cry, she just got a little teary.

Déjà vu

You can just re-read the post below and substitute the following:

school shopping for baking and decorating a cake for pack meeting

funny shirt for decorating the cake with a skull

the shirt I picked for decorating the cake with Olympic rings made of M&M's

the compromise for..........................

well the compromise didn't work so well this time. I had already bought everything for the Olympic Rings cake while Owen was still at school, hoping he would go along with my idea, since they don't have ready-to-frost frosting in BLACK for his skull idea. When he came home, I pitched my idea. Isn't it great, the Olympics are going on right now, yeah white frosting, even better M&M's. VICTORY!!!!, or so I thought. The only thing he wanted to change, was to make the rings out of FIVE DIFFERENT COLORS OF FROSTING. Sorry charlie, I already bought the pre-colored M&M's (how handy that they are in the colors of the Olympic rings, never mind orange and that you have to pretend that brown is really black) and was not on any terms heading to Wal-mart at 4 in the afternoon to buy more frosting. You know the rest, you never blah blah blah, ever blah blah listen to your kids. I am giving the meanest mom a run for her money this week.

Needless to say, I won. Once it was time to frost he had perked up a bit. And once we were putting the M&M's on the cake, he was all for it. I did have to be a bit of a dictator and make sure we put them on "M" side down. After all, Mars & Co. wasn't shelling out any cash for advertising on our cake.

Owen's 1st & 2nd days of school

Shopping for school clothes this year took a turn in the wrong direction. While Gavin was just happy to be there, Owen had decided that all he wanted were funny shirts. His version of funny, not mine. Any shirt that said something along the lines of "I don't like homework, my sister's crazy, your crazy, just say no to homework, I'd rather be playing video games, blah blah blah homework, did someone say crazy" while accompanied by some wacky cartoon squirrel, monkey, and/or wild kid, suddenly became his idea of high fashion. There was a huge meltdown between us at Kohl's. Me saying something like "these are the ugliest shirts I have ever seen and I will not be using your father's hard earned money to pay for any one of them." (That could be a direct quote, I don't recall.) And him retaliating back with "you never let us (he throws his brother into this mess) pick anything we want, never ever ever ever ever!" As to not draw anymore attention to us than necessary, I decided to become the adult in the conversation, and withdrew to compromise. If he agreed to a shirt I picked out, he could then pick ONE funny shirt that I approved. He agreed.

So Sunday night as we were driving home he states that he can't wait to wear his funny homework shirt to school the next day. Thankfully Josh was right there to back me up as I broke the news to him that that would not be the shirt he would be wearing for his first day. He could pick any other shirt to wear, but that one. Here is his picture right before he walked out the door Monday morning.

A perfectly nice shirt with skulls on it. His dad told him you can never go wrong with skulls. I told him the impression we wanted to give his new teachers on the first day of school is not one of lost homework and a million excuses of where it possibly could have gone to printed right there on his chest. No, no, we will save that impression for the less important second day of school.

Here's a close-up! Crazy monkey.

Last Summer Activity

alternately titled " Why didn't I know about this place at the beginning of summer?"

My cousin Annie invited us to go to the Splash Pad in Herriman on Friday, as a last fun thing to do before school started. And fun it was. Not to mention totally FREE and not one bit crowded. Since it will still be pretty warm for the next few weeks, I would like to think that we will go again, and if we do we'll invite you.

Gavin sporting his new swimsuit. I realized the suit he had been wearing was a size 2T, and we found this one on clearance at Target for $5. It's a size XS and has to be safety pinned.

Owen, Chase & Hunter
Molly was completely happy with the tiny drizzle of water coming out of the rainbow, when the spray started she screamed and cried.

Extra, Extra, Read all about it!!!

Twilight (the movie) is opening 3 weeks earlier!
Read the joyful news here!

Babe I Love You

August 14, 1997

August 14, 2008

Mink Creek, ID

Never heard of it? Me either, until I started dating Josh. It's a teeny tiny farming town about 15 minutes outside of Preston, and it's where Josh's mom grew up. We headed up there last weekend for a Wilde Family Reunion. I just love that Josh has family with the last name Wilde. Even though it's not his last name, it still fits him a bit, wouldn't you agree?!

We wanted to leave early Saturday morning with Josh's sister's family. Please take into account that Melissa and I had been out late retrieving our Breaking Dawn books, and that I had been up early Friday morning to retrieve our wristbands for said book. We left around 8 a.m., not to shabby, and quickly made our way to our first pit stop. Denny's in Draper for breakfast. After that our convoy was off.

Break here for Convoy song:

Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck. You gotta copy on me, Pig Pen, c'mon? Ah, yeah, 10-4, Pig Pen, fer shure, fer shure. By golly, it's clean clear to Flag Town, c'mon. Yeah, that's a big 10-4 there, Pig Pen, yeah, we definitely got the front door, good buddy. Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy...

[Chorus]

'Cause we got a great big convoy

Rockin' through the night.

Yeah, we got a great big convoy,

Ain't she a beautiful sight?

Come on and join our convoy

Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way.

We gonna roll this truckin' convoy

'Cross the U-S-A.

Convoy!

Any one familiar with C.W. McCall? These are the songs on Josh's ipod that he forces us to listen to.

The nice thing about driving to Mink Creek is that it isn't too far away, but still long enough for our kids to fall asleep in the car. Which is exactly what they all did, and after the "Convoy" song was over, I settled down for a nice drive with my book. Ahhhhhh, my book. More on that later. We made it to Preston and half-heartedly looked for the Napoleon Dynamite Festival (the movie was filmed there ya know!), when we didn't see it we continued on to Mink Creek.

We tried to go visit the cemetery first (Josh's grandparents are buried there), but there was a funeral going on (that takes the number of people actually living there down to 20). Just kidding, I don't know how many people live there, but I wouldn't guess too many more than that. We saw the school Grandma McCarrel went to until she went to high school. Kind of reminds me of Cedar Fort, in that way. I can talk about Cedar Fort because that's where my dad grew up.

We finally made it to Grandma Wilde's house (Josh's uncle owns it now) and that's when we realize that we don't come up there often enough. The house isn't spectacular or grand, it's just right. It's the property that it's on that is fantastic. There is a small stream that runs through it, pastures galore, and even mountains. Josh climbed one of the mountains (they call it Peaky) in his younger days and made it onto the front page of the newspaper. Okay maybe not the front page, but we have the newspaper article around here somewhere.

We hit the family reunion (I'll spare you the details), then headed out to the Riverdale Resort to go swimming (I'll spare you pictures of me in a swimsuit) and down the water slides. It was so fun, they have a natural spring pool that is nice and warm. Only one water slide was open and we went down it over and over. There couldn't have been more than 40 people there, so it was not crowded at all. Next time your in Preston, you should stop and swim, you'll thank me.

Nibley, UT- never heard of it? Me either, until my cousin moved there! It's right by Logan, so we headed to The Quiggles house to spend the night. That's right, my cousin married someone with the last name Quiggle. They have procreated and now have Quigglets. They were kind enough to let us crash in their living room for the night and then completely entertained us the next day! If your ever in Nibley, stop by and tell them Kellie sent you for a lawn mower ride. Thanks Kenzie & Aaron, we had lots of fun and wish we had come to play sooner!

{Spoiler Alert} if you have not finished or started to read Breaking Dawn, first of all what's wrong with you, and secondly, go no further!!! I wouldn't want to ruin anything for you.

So I believe there is a bit of controversy over this book. You can't please everyone, but it doesn't take much to please me. I loved this book. From the start to the end. If I didn't know better, I would have thought I was pregnant myself, what with all the times I cried. Holy Moly! It's probably best to leave it at that and now the countdown can begin for the movie and then everyone can start the backlash over what got left out and what was changed in that. Oh well, all's well that ends well, right?

8-09-08
**Found this online, thought you might be interested in it as well.**

Stephenie Meyer interview about Breaking Dawn

It was mine at 12:16 a.m.