"You need to evaluate yourselves carefully. Take a careful inventory of your habits, your speech, your appearance, your weight, and your eccentricities, if you have any. Take each item and analyze it. Can you make some sacrifices to be acceptable? You must be the judge.

"Are you too talkative? Too withdrawn? Too quiet? If so, then school your thoughts and your expressions.

"Are you in the wrong location? Could a move to a new location open up a new world to you? "Is your dress. . . too revealing or too extreme? Are you too demanding? Do you have any eccentricities in speech, in tone, in subject matter? Do you laugh too loudly? Are you too demonstrative? Are you selfish? Are you honorable in all things? . . . Do you feel sorry for [yourself?]

"Have you made yourself attractive physically — well-groomed, well-dressed — and attractive mentally — engaging, interesting? Are you well-read? If not, change yourself."

--Spencer W. Kimball, to young adults

(Borrowed from my padre's blog.)

Where the Wild Things Are

The night Audrey wore her wolf suit and made mischief of one kind

and another

her mother called her "WILD THING!"
and Audrey said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"
so she was sent to bed without eating anything. (But she didn't mind because she knew her mother would get uncomfortable by and by and would have to feed her.)

Valentine's Greetings

It just isn't the holidays without Mikey Baby's annual poem, even if it is a couple months late.
This is the most updated family picture we have, and everybody is looking about like they usually do--except my eyes are not crossed.

We were on our annual sledding outing up in the Umpqua Wilderness out toward Crater Lake. Very fun. Very beautiful.

Hope you all had a wonderful and romantic (or at least chocolate-filled) Valentine's Day!

Bill of Sale

As I sit here composing a bill of sale for our minivan, my mind wanders back to the time we got this old girl. We found her on eBay, and won with a crazy low bid, an obvious answer to our prayers. I was 8 mos. prego with Clara when we went to retrieve her, driving from Iowa City to Denver in the "BLIZZARD 2003!" (which shut down the entire city 45 minutes after we left and splashed through the national news for the next two weeks). These reminiscings led to other memories of our school years, which produced mixed emotions, which made me feel hungry, which made me happy we have snacks in the cupboard that I can fetch for myself, which led me again back to the lean years of school, which eventually brought me to the grateful thoughts that inspired this post.

The greatest blessings we had during those years were our friends. I am grateful to the Lord for providing us with an atmosphere where we could safely learn the difficult lessons that were our privilege to learn, at BYU, in Iowa, and in Texas. I am equally thankful for the long suffering friends that were patient with us (mostly me), and forgiving of our (mostly my) pride and immaturity. (C. T. Warner wrote, "To the immature, other people are not real." I like to knaw on that one.) Not that anybody who knows me now could say with any truthfulness that I've "arrived," but I feel like an old woman sometimes, looking at that little girl and thinking, "Poor clumsy thing. She thinks life is so complicated. She'll make it through okay, though we'll see how many mistakes she makes and how many bridges she'll inadvertently burn getting there. Thank goodness for all the patient angels around her." Yet another proof that God is real, that prayers are always anwered, and that love and forgiveness and faith and hope are steep trails that lead us to the summit so we can at last see where we've been and where we're going.

Aliens In Our Bedroom

I walked in one evening and found this:

I believed it to be the work of an alien. I was right.

This Day

This is a wonderful reminder from President Eyring for people like me who tend to say, I'll get to it tomorrow. I'm too busy just now.

Third Time's a Charm

Conducting the kiddos in writing thank you cards for our Christmas gifts is almost enough to drive me to drinking. If I weren't a teetotaling woman I'd be joining Seamus for the fondue left-overs. This year Jacob and Isaac hatched a plan to print out a "form letter" on the computer in order to streamline things. It would say:

"Dear _______,

Thank you for the ______. I love the way it looks on my _______. All the kids at school will be so jealous I have my very own _______...."

So I battled the form letter and told them it would probably be nicer to send a custom thank you note. Then Clara said, "If all we need to do is say that we got the present, why not just write, 'Dear ______, I got the _________. Love, Clara.'?" I told her that was called a receipt. Not really the spirit of what I was going for. However, this one squeaked by me:

Sassy girl. Needless to say, the process took WAY too long, and all my stores of patience were overdrawn. When the last period was written, I sent them to bed with dirty teeth and a kiss. Then I went over the letters. Alas, I was naive to think the job was over. Isaac, was called back downstairs to redo the note to his Primary teacher.

Try #1.

Recognize this? I realized why he and Jake had been giggling at the other end of the table.

Try #2.

I stopped him mid-sentance because my sense of humor was completely gone.

Try #3.

He was tired by then so he just did it. "Fine. Go to bed." Then so did I.

Trivia

$10,000 to the person who can guess what the world record is for the most push-ups done non-stop. (New fact I learned in my current BYU class.)

I'll give you a hint: It was a man, and it's more than 100. Also, no fair googling the answer. Answer will be posted at the end of the week.

Favorite "Entitlement Commercial"

A woman in a designer suit sits at a desk, looking haggard as she rifles through reams of papers stacked around her. We learn that they are her credit card bills when an aggressive man's voice demands, "Do you have credit card debt?" The woman nods her head and blows air out the side of her mouth. He continues, "You have the right to settle that debt for a fraction of what you owe!" She smiles and nods her head like an idiot. A large 1-800 number is stamped at the bottom of the screen, and all our dreams come true.

For real? It was so asinine I though it was a joke. Nope. Apparently it is obvious that this poor woman is a victim of circumstance who was forced into this predicament and, darn it, these folks are here to bail her out. (We've been hearing that one ad nauseam, have we not?)

My sister Miriam named this post when she saw me go berserk at the commercial and laughingly suggested that this may be her favorite "entitlement commercial" yet. Maybe I'm too touchy, but I am morally opposed to most of the commercials on TV (let alone the shows, but those I can control). I'm offended at the gigantic deficit of common sense and dignity it is assumed I have in order to consider these ads. Equally as alarming is the idea that they wouldn't use the approach if it wasn't effective! Now, the Titan Peeler, I get that. But this?

Like the one for a local attorneys office: A poor crippled toddler confined to a wheel chair is flashed onto the screen (melancholy music playing), in the background healthy children are playing on a swing set. Suddenly a corpulent filcher in pinstripes leans on his walnut desk and says, "Do you have a loved one that was born with cerebral palsy? Get compensation for the mistakes your doctor made which caused this irreversible condition... Call us now at 1-800-U R DUMB IF U FALL FOR THIS AD..." Now I know why my husband's malpractice insurance costs as much as our house. You never know when someone somewhere might lose a tooth...

Whew. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.