Women's Conference

Since I quit my job in December, life has been moving fast. (Have I mentioned here that quitting my job was one of the best decisions I've ever made? It was.) Every month of 2011 has been full of so much life and activity that I feel like I've hardly been able to catch my breath. As soon as one project stops, another presents itself and I'm happy for the opportunities I've had in the last little bit.

In March I got a letter from the BYU Women's Conference asking me to be a contributor for the conference Sharing Stations. It just so happened that my mother-in-law was also involved and she volunteered me to prepare and present a booth on an assigned topic. I had to pick assistants (my sister Haley and adopted sister Emily) and off we were on yet another adventure. Our topic was Social Technology. We prepared materials on the Good, Better, and Best ways to use social technology, media, and the Internet in our busy lives as women and mothers. Putting our ideas together into a presentation format was really quite easy and things came together well during the two months we were preparing our station.

This past Thursday was the big day. I'll save my rants about how dumb Provo is for another day, but minus a little bit of traffic on the way down the day went off without a hitch and the three of us really had a good time.

We presented our materials and message over two three hour blocks. I had used the company vista print (www.vistaprint.com) to print up some business cards (of which I only had to pay for the shipping) and we made sure to give a card to every single woman that talked to us, looked at us, or just stepped into our booth and took a couple butter mints. In six hours we were able to talk to, we estimate, about 350 women. Isn't that crazy?

I talked to a great lady from Georgia, some neat people from Texas and British Columbia.  I ran into a few women from my ward and neighborhood, from my moms ward, and a friend from high school who I played volleyball and basketball with and haven't seen since high school graduation day.  I gave my e-mail address to women who couldn't figure out how to use their blog and to some women who wondered if I'd come and do one of their ward enrichment nights for Relief Society. I gave my e-mail address to a woman who just seemed to think that I was really nice and wondered if I'd tutor her and teach her how to make a photo book. My sister and I both talked to two beautiful old women. The taller of the two, will silver hair, impeccable clothing and sharp as a tack reminded me so much of my Grandma Huber that I almost started to cry and nearly asked her for a hug.

(A total side note:  I aspire to one day be a classy old braud. Is that crazy? When I'm 70, if I make it to 70, I want to be one of those old grandmas with the softest hands around who wears my shirts with the collar up and a single strand of pearls whether I'm going to the symphony, the grocery store, or the zoo with my grand children.)

Overall, it was a really great experience. I loved being able to hang out with Haley and Emily for the day. I was proud that my mom came down to see us in action and was able to tell the women that we were talking to that we were her daughters. I am grateful that my mother in law felt inspired to invite me to participate in such a wonderful event and act of service.

Happy Easter!

Our Easter was spiffy. How was yours?







We went to church, I taught Relief Society, we made croissants and fancy french dinner and ate divine chocolate cake - maybe my best yet.

a royal wedding

(Photo courtesy of BockoPix on flickr)

It's a week away. The Royal wedding. Are you going to stay up and watch it? I'm undecided but it might just be a good night to have insomnia.

What is it about the Royal Family that gets to us Americans? Is it that we don't have one? Is it that we all secretly wish to be royalty? Is it that we wish we were English and had a pish-posh accent and played with Yorkie dogs all day long?

I don't think so, but I was only a baby when Diana got married and I think the Royal watcher gene was passed down from my mom. I watched Diana's funeral, I love English films, and today I bought myself a replica of the sapphire and diamond engagement ring because I just couldn't stand not having one anymore.

I think Harry is much cuter though.

A full serving of sympathy, please.

On Sunday night, the oldest boy was up all night screaming and crying and gagging and rolling his eyes into the back of his head. Ear infection. We spent all of Monday morning with me holding his hot, feverish little body in the chair while he tried to sleep and the Chick ran around like a caged tiger. We spent the rest of the morning at the doctor, getting prescriptions, sleeping, crying, calling dad to rescue us. It was an exhausting day.

On Tuesday, it was the chick's one year follow up at the allergy doctor. That giant splotch on his back? Peanuts. Something we suspected and were so glad had him tested for.

The good news? Dairy allergy seems to be gone so he can start tasting milk and ice cream. Egg allergy may be deteriorating which is also good.

The bad news? Peanut allergies last for life. Also allergic to cats, dogs, and moderately to grasses. It could be a lot worse, that's for sure.

Yesterday afternoon at 1pm I had two wisdom teeth pulled out of my head. I got the gas, but not enough of it. I can tell the second they lessen the gas and up the oxygen at the dentist, can you? The gas got turned off just before the dentist started yanking at my teeth. I could feel a lot of pulling and his hand on my forehead for leverage. I also felt my poor mouth pool with blood before it got wiped out.

I looked like one thousand shades of crap last night before I went to bed. It was a necessary procedure yesterday. Thank heavens I only had two wisdom teeth. It totally sucked by the way. I cannot believe how miserable I feel and how pathetic I'm being.

It's almost the weekend though. Everyone in the family has had a trial this week except our dad. Cross your fingers he makes it through the weekend unscathed. I've got a long list of things for him to do.

Eight

Eight years ago today, that boy and I got married. I think I've said it every single year since then, but there is no way I would have known then how lucky I would be now by saying yes when he asked me to marry him.  It was definitely one of the best decisions of my life.

We've got some big life changes and challenges approaching us in the ninth year - most of which I'm looking forward to, especially because I know I'll be doing it with him  - and those crazy monkeys of mine.

A few weeks ago he gave me a new CD by the Avett Brothers. Said he thought I'd like the band because they were sleepy background music - the soundtrack to my life. One song in particular has stood out to me and I've listened to it dozens of times.

There are two parts of the song that I find beautiful beyond words.

She's talkin' to me with her voice
Down so low I barely hear her
But I know what she's sayin'
I understand because my heart and hers are the same
...
True love is not the kind of thing you should turn down
Don't ever turn it down



Happy Anniversary

I love you!

In a nutshell...

My Internet has been craptastic this week.  Seriously.  It hasn't worked a lick, unless I want to wait a really long time and then throw something.  Even then it still doesn't work.  I guess because our internet didn't work we had to try harder to entertain ourselves.  When there is no pbskids.org to play, things have to get creative.  Here's a sampling of the week.

My little boy thinks he's a dog.  The older brother says, "Wyatt, fetch" and said little boy chases after the thrown item panting and retrieves it like a good little puppy.



Life is better now and I'm on the mend, but I was really sick (sinus infection, allergies, cold) for two freaking weeks.  That's a lot of bright green and brown snot rocketing in case you were concerned. Because I didn't feel good I copped out on fixing lunch this week and went the easy route - thank you in-and-out and chick-fil-a. We did eat strawberries with our burgers so that makes it healthy I think.

We played outside even though it was kind of cold and even though playing outside really means that bikes were crashed, screams were let loose, and moms called time-out. Also, my bulbs are starting to bloom and they are so pretty.

We watched the gas company tear up the yard between two houses right next to us.  Those homes were evacuated.  We were not.  There were 6 trucks and a bulldozer working into the night to fix a gas leak...maybe that explains my headaches.

We got a table centerpiece and I braved IKEA (ALONE) with two munchkins who fight to scan everything. I don't know why I'm dumb enough to go there alone all the time. Dumb.

We went shopping for Easter clothes. Next year I better remember that if I want to have a good selection of khakis, shirts and sweater vests that I'd better Easter shop in February, not April because all the stuff is gone. While shopping I had to get the older boy some new shoes - he'd worn holes through the toes of his old ones. The younger boy, as part of a silent and not so silent protest, has been wearing the new shoes non stop. Me thinks I'll be heading back to the store for a pair in size Chick.

What else did we do?

We sat on the floor and watched lunch cook. Those mini pizzas just weren't fast enough.

One of us watched "Dino Dan" and "Wild Kratts" from his cage. Believe it or not, this is one of his favorite places to hang out....with about 12 blankets.

And, just because you wanted to know, today I got paid to make cupcakes. I love it when that happens. They were pink lemonade, came with an accompanying cute little pink cake, and I hope that the party people like them. I love it when I get paid to bake.

How was your week?

The Squirt: 23 Months

Hi Crazy.

It's only one month until your birthday.

You've decided to act like a two year old a little bit early.

You are still full of wonder and amazement at the world around you but you are also full of yourself. It seems you've been possessed by a little teeny tiny demonic sprite whose only goals in life is to scream really loud in the ears of everyone present, fight and hit, and say No! Mine!  But you do it with a smile on your face.

Ah, such is life.

I've been having major flashbacks to when your brother was this age. He was this age when I was pregnant with you and we had a battle about kicking mom in the stomach. Thank heavens I'm only protecting myself from the kicks, not another little person, this time around because those kicks are vicious.

Sid Vicious.

Anyway - in the last month you survived your first trip to Disneyland while sick. I'm sure there are more "sick trips" to come for you but we all survived. You have become a TALKING MACHINE which is so totally awesome. We can understand about 80% of what you are saying and you are taking to words like a duck to water. It's so amazing that I really don't know how to describe it. You've gone from a few grumbled up words to complete sentences with 4 or 5 words strung together. It's pretty cool.  And today, on your own you decided to say, "Bye - Bye Ikea".  That cinnamon roll must have been really good.

You are a fighter and a lover. You fight with your brother and you love all your stuffed puppies. And your blankets. It seems that you'll drag about 7 blankets around the house all day long. You totally remind me of Linus from the Peanut cartoons. One day too, you will be able to open a mail box with that trusty blanket of yours.

You love Uncle Willie. You love telling stories. You love airplanes and green trucks and giraffes and tic tacs. In fact as I type this right now you are flying a pack of orange tic tacs around the kitchen like an airplane while shoving them into your mouth as quickly as possible.

I love that last week, before you went crazy at Target, you actually sat in the cart like a civilized little boy singing, "baby, baby, baby oh!"  at the top of your lungs for all to hear.  You brought more smiles to the faces of Bieber fans than the little Bieb ever could.

Oh my boy I love you. I love you when you sit on my lap, when you say, "Sa-ee mama" after you hit me on the head with an old ipod and the way you yell Elliott down the hall when you can't find your brother.

The two of you really are pretty good friends right now and I hope it always stays that way. You give hugs and play with him just like I'd always hoped. You guys fight too, but we're working on that.

In one month we'll be celebrating your two year old birthday. I'm just totally in awe of that fact and am not sure what I'll do with a 4 year old and a 2 year old. This is uncharted territory my boy. You will officially no longer be the baby.  I don't think that I can call you "my baby" any more.

I'd better start getting used to that.

oh, P to the S - You have finally started sleeping through the night.

I'm not sure who we have to thank for that, maybe Grandma Huber in heaven, but whomever we thank or whatever we thank....

your dad is very grateful.

In case you were wondering....

Today, I am going to wallow in booger-land.

It's not quite the same as wasting away in margarita-ville but it's close.

If you hear a gross out scream and then a declaration of awesome from my house today its because

1) I literally blew part of my brain out of my right nostril

and

2) My children thought it was awesome

When technology fails...

At the end of the month I'm doing a booth presentation at the BYU Women's Conference with my sister Haley and our adopted sister Emily.  Our topic is this:

Social Technology: Good, Better, Best

We're creating a booth for the sharing stations about how to make the best use of time, talents, and spirituality using all these social networking tools available on the Internet and elsewhere.  I think that it's going to be a neat experience and one that I can put on my resume.  Oh wait.  I don't have a resume anymore.

That however isn't the point of this post.  Just a plug.  Really, just a good segway, if you will, into what I really wanted to blog about.

My stupid iPhone.

You see, I got an iPhone two years ago for my birthday.  It was a lovely surprise.  I was a little sad and overwhelmed because the Chick was itty bitty and life felt to hard.  I spent the weekend of my birthday with a malfunctioning blackberry and I was freaking out because my communication device wasn't communicating.

Then I opened my birthday present and it was a spanking new phone and my husband was sneaky, sneaky slowly turning off the service of my old phone and messing with my head.

Fast forward nearly two years.  I wanted an upgrade.  In a huff because I was probably ticked off I went to the closest AT&T store over a month ago to get a new phone.  I had cash.  I thought I had an upgrade available to me.

I had an upgrade.  My husband had used it to get HIS phone.  Something that didn't register with me at the time and I wasn't even listed on my cell phone account so I couldn't do anything anyway.

Grrrrr....

In the end, Ross came through and got me my new phone.  But then I didn't activate it for almost a month.  At Disneyland, I carried around two phones.  The one I used to call and text and check e-mails and the one I was taking pictures with.

Super dork.

A week and a half ago I had Ross activate the phone for me.  It was a hassle because he'd bought it through work - technically for his phone number and he had to have a discussion with the tech folks.

I finally had my new phone, sans a good case, and was ready for action.  What did I do?  I started obsessively planning angry birds and fighting Elliott for bird time on the phone.  Seriously.  I'm that big of a loser.  Together we were conquering the evil pig empire and loving it.  He'd sit on my lap and we'd take turns.  We'd even let our little brother have a chance to shoot birds the wrong direction and into rocks.

But, I digress.  After only about 10 days of using the new phone I was on a call with Ross last Thursday when out of nowhere the call dropped.  Not only did the call drop, but I got the ugly "no service" message where I should have seen bars.

I turned the phone off and on and tried to reset it about 6 times.  Nothing was working.  I was frantic and panicked.  I sent e-mails.

I HAD NO PHONE!  Even worse - NO TEXT.

It dawned on me to plug the phone into a computer.  I got a nasty message telling me that the apple network whatever wasn't installed and working.

Oh no.  How did that happen?

On Friday morning Ross called AT&T and after a good 30 minutes or so on the phone realized that they couldn't help him.  I took the phone to the closest store Friday morning.  The girl helping me put in a new sim card.  Nothing.  She looked at me and said,
"I'm sorry.  I cannot help you.  This isn't an AT&T issue.  Your going to have to take the phone to the Apple store.  I'm really sorry.  I can help you schedule an appointment."

Dun, dun, dun.......

Take it to the apple store?  Schedule an appointment?

WHAT?

You see, the apple store is so busy that you have to make an appointment to get help.  Even if you just walk into the store to purchase something, they won't help you without an appointment.  It's that busy.  It's that crazy.

I made my appointment for 6:40 Saturday night.  I got a dinner date out of the deal, so it worked out nicely I suppose.

How does this long store end?  Like this.
1) I had to wait 20 minutes past my appointment time to get help.  During that time my husband was grumpy and grumbly and ready to yell at someone.
2) The guy that helped me at the apple store was awesome.  Tall, cute, nice.  He gave me a new phone and didn't really ask me too many questions.
3) Annie has a phone that works.  Yeah.  Even though the back up we did right before taking it to the store didn't seem to stick and now I have a new phone and no apps.

What does that mean?

You guessed it.

The boys and I have to start over on angry birds.

Living in the land of boys....

Sometimes being the mother of two young monsters is more than I can handle.  Yesterday was rough because, well you know, anyone who tries to take a 2 year old to target is out of her mind.

He already calls the little seat in the cart a baby seat.

How do I put him in the baby seat when he obviously isn't a baby.

He does after all, know his own name. He is apparently very self aware.

The other boy? My first born? He tries so hard to be good that he is a little stressed out all the time. And I'm a bad mom for him and drive him crazy because he doesn't color in the lines. He is a boy though, and he's pretty funny. He really liked playing soccer and being able to build a camaraderie with some of the boys on his team.

And yesterday - it was the best.

Dad was home helping me with my dead phone. He decided to help Elliott get dressed for school. Elliott decided that he didn't need help and that was that.

He went to preschool. We picked him up from school, got some lunch and came home. We ate our lunch. I sent some e-mails on the laptop because my phone is dead.

The boys ran upstairs screaming and playing.

The kitchen was quiet.

A few minutes later, my oldest born came down to find me. He was laughing a bit uncontrollably.

He said, "Mom, guess what!"

I said, "what?"

He said, "Look," and pulled down the waistband of his track pants "Dad forgot to put underwear on me this morning and I went to school without underpants!".

At first I didn't believe him. I emailed his dad. I laughed out loud.

Funny that my kid blamed his dad for something he forgot to do.

Happy Birthday to my Sister

Today, dear sister, you are 31 years old.

Yikes. That means I'm going to be 33 years old.

We've been friends for like, forever...

Thanks for being my sister and my friend and for liking my kids and hanging out with me.

Thanks for letting me tend Miss Molly every once in a while. She's starting to like me.

Thanks for being smart and good at math.

Thanks for always being generous and willing to help me out, even if I live far away in "north provo".

Have a good day.

I got you a present.

Ho hum, ho hum...dum dum dum dum dum

The last few days, four to be exact, I've been living in sinus infection/new medication land.

It's nothing like Disneyland I tell you. I don't recommend it.

On Sunday, my husband made me go to General Conference....in the flesh. It's not my thing but he says we have to go every three or four years, like paying our dues. I slept through most of the first hour (see: sinus infection and sudafed overdose) and had ants in my pants for the second hour. Let me just tell you Internet a couple of things. One - when they say, "no flash photography" that means that you need to not only put your cell phone camera away but if your cell phone camera has a flash you need to be smarter than the phone camera and turn it off when you are breaking the rules. Twice. And second, not that there is an official "dress code" for being a Latter Day Saint, but if you are going to go to all the trouble to go to conference, bring your journal and sit and take notes, then maybe wearing a skirt that actually covers your butt, instead of just legging/butt/chair touching then that would be a good idea. And third...I may be the only girl in Utah that doesn't own or wear go-go boots.

Wake me up before you go-go!

But, my husband did stop at a gas station and buy me a diet coke for the trip home ON A SUNDAY! With my money.

He rules!

My sinus issues are making life difficult. It sucks to not feel good. I've been sleeping with ice packs on my head, had almost no appetite, haven't been walking my 10,000 steps a day and I've let my kids watch too much TV this week. To make it worse, we've played Angry Birds more than any group of people should be allowed. It's making us, well, angry.

We did go outside....

But it was butt cold and all I did was attack the weeds in my lawn while my boys threw rocks...at each other...even though they were pretending really hard that they weren't throwing them at each other.

I also planted flowers over the weekend. It took me all day to plant three flats of pansies because life interrupts me....taking my car back to the dealership because it was leaking oil because the dealership cracked the oil cap but didn't tell us and weren't they nice not to charge us for the "repair". And then I mowed the dead lawn. And made pink lemonade cupcakes. And then my 4 year old helper just started yelling at me because all he wanted to do was use the miracle grow. And other stuff but I cannot remember.

And then, just because it's how we roll, today we busted out the birthday party hats. Elliott asked me if I had made them. I said no. He was disappointed.

And, if you want to watch a little of the crazies....here you go.
I tell ya, I live in a zoo

For your weekend...

This morning we had orange julius and bacon.

Perfect.

The weather is sunny and high sixties.

Perfecto.

We went and bought a butt load of pansies to plant all over the yard today and tomorrow.

Perfectomundo.

Both boys fell asleep on the way home from purchasing pansies and hare having naps.  The house is quiet.

Perfect bliss.

The Chick is feeling better and he sends his love.



Happy Weekend!