…then I feel bad that you have to deal with so much traffic. Seriously. It’s bad.

However, also…

The Old Globe Theater in San Diego is doing a contest called “Santa For A Day”. Winners get a free 4 pack of tickets to the show, and then assist the Grinch in the tree lighting ceremony. It’s pretty cool. Basically your kid just has to draw a picture. Your kid can DRAW, right? Even if they can’t, it’s probably better. Cuter, you know. (in actuality, I have no idea how they pick the winner).

Info can be found here.

http://www.theoldglobe.org/tickets/production.aspx?performanceNumber=10363

(I would link in the post,on the word here, like a normal blogger, but every since I got a new computer, this old version of Wordpress is unhappy with me and does not give me the options it used to.)

You only have until 11/14, so get to it!

Pretend there’s a picture of the Grinch here. I have one. See above about old Wordpress not liking new computer.

And feel free to post about it on your California blog, to get the word out. You know, if you want more competition.

Something happens when your last child goes to Kindergarten. Something sad and scary. Something hormonal and crazy. Something deep.

And when you are experiencing that deep whatever, know this. During this time, you should never, ever, walk into a petstore where they have puppies for sale. (more…)

Behold and bask in the awesomeness that is this photo.

If you don’t recognize what this is about, you are officially too young to be reading this blog.

Being 5 is tough. (more…)

Our ward’s trunk or treat is tonight, so I went to Target to get some candy.

I think shopping for Halloween candy is stressful. (more…)

Over at Segullah.

I stumbled across this post today, and I laughed and laughed. Because basically, most of our problems? They are Lame. It’s all about perspective, ladies.

Still, I thought it would be fun to discuss our own first world problems. Because with the right perspective, they are really funny. I’ll go first. Please chime in, because it’s good to laugh at ourselves, and also fun to think that we are all in this together.

My dishwasher is clogged and isn’t cleaning my dishes well enough, so now we have to clean them by hand until we can call a plumber.

Our lawn just got re-seeded because we wanted a lawn without weeds. We have no sprinklers, so we have to water our lawn manually, which means setting up a sprinkler that I have to move every half an hour.

Every time I go grocery shopping I have to rearrange my pantry so I can fit all the food in it, and often have to clean out decaying leftovers in the fridge to make room for the new produce I just bought.

My daughter’s room is too small for all her furniture.

My new conditioner doesn’t make my hair slick enough to comb with my fingers in the shower, so I have to actually brush it when I get out.

I missed a spot when shaving my legs, so I have a small line of hair going up my leg that is itchy.

When my husband updated my iphone, I lost all my cool ringtones, and now have to settle for the default ones that come with the phone.

And my favorite from the other post, not one I can call my own but still made me laugh:

I bought some new toilet paper, and it’s just not that soft.

Please, share with me YOUR first world problems, and let’s laugh together.

If the unthinkable happened, and your husband died, and you received life insurance money (you DO have life insurance right??), would you pay tithing on it?

Keep in mind that life insurance money is not taxed, so you would not lose a large chunk of it that way.

This came up recently, and it was really interesting to hear what people had to say.

Me, I think I would pay tithing on it. You, it’s your call, between you and the Lord. I know I would discuss it with my bishop. But then, I hope none of us ever have to deal with it.

(On a completely lighter, totally shameless promotional thought, my friend wrote this app called Solar Warfare that is totally cool. You should buy it. But maybe not with life insurance money.)

I’m over at my other blog today.

I’ve started and restarted this post, trying to figure out what I want to say. I’ve tried humorous, roundabout I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, straightforward, rude-in-yo-FACE, but none of it is coming out quite right. So I guess I’m just going to say it. (Which means it might come out as straightforward AND rude-in-yo-FACE, so be prepared.)

Women in the church are awful. (more…)

The blog was broken, which is why nobody has been blogging lately. Not that we’re super duper active bloggers lately anyways, but this time, there was a reason. Really.

And the thing is, many times I had things to blog about, and I’d come over here and want to talk about them, and the blog would be broken and I’d think, “Dang, where am I going to dump this?” and I either put something abbreviated on facebook, try to forget my stewing by watching a show, or stew some more and eat some chocolate for comfort. So when I found out the blog was fixed by our best guys (and again, “our best guys” means “The Wiz’s husband when he gets around to it after he finally has nothing else on his plate”), I got excited because I thought it meant I could finally get all my thoughts out of my head and we could have some awesome, cool discussions that have nothing to do with the presidential campaign because I live in a battleground state and I say FOR THE LOVE OF BETSY ROSS enough already. (more…)

This summer, my children have traveled across the country twice. From Virginia to Seattle and back again, and then from Virginia to Salt Lake, Salt Lake to Provo, Provo to Salt Lake, Salt Lake to McCall Idaho, McCall Idaho to Boise, Boise back to Virginia.

And with a few exceptions, they were troopers. Truly, they did great. We’ve come a long way, baby.

My sister-in-law and I swapped travel horror stories, like the one where she tried to breastfeed her twins in the car while her other two small children wrapped themselves around her legs, and she found herself spread eagle between the front and back seat with pretty much every limb encrusted with children. I recalled the time when Little Sister screamed the entire way home from Florida to Virginia because unbeknownst to me, she had a double ear infection. We didn’t make many friends on that flight. (more…)

We’re talking ’bout faith and country music, y’all. Come join us at Segullah.

1.  Gum, like toothpaste, should only be MINT flavored.  All things berry, watermelon, “changing flavors”, cheesecake?, are an abomination and should be destroyed.  I will make the occasional exception for cinnamon, ony because my mother likes it.  MINT, with the occasional cinnamon.  The end.  This is non-negotiable.

2. 5 a.m. is not a time of day that anyone should be awake doing anything.  Unless you have to work, (and I feel your pain) you should be asleep. This is also non-negotiable, and applies to anyone of any age, from newborn to elderly. (more…)

The Segullah retreat was this weekend. Oh my, I don’t think there is another gathering quite like this in the universe, and I’m pretty sure that there is no cooler group of women on the planet. We talked too much, ate too much, and slept too little, and I for one am all the better for it.

But a friend asked me, “What’s going on with Mormon Mommy Wars?”

What indeed. (more…)

We talk about Belief Windows sometimes in my family, mostly because my dad wrote a book with that title in it somewhere a zillion years ago. I’d like to say I read the book, but I didn’t. I’m a bad daughter.

But, as I understand it, it’s just a way of defining how we view the world. We put on our lenses of our own beliefs, and look at the world through the lenses. It’s the idea that we all define our own reality, because we bring to our own reality our own sets of beliefs and experiences. The idea is that we can change our belief windows, and thus change our realities, our attitudes, our actions, our life path, whatever.

Basically, I think it’s just a nice way of saying that we are all kidding ourselves. And nobody kids herself more than a mother about her own children. (more…)

So DH is being treated for Lyme Disease. I mean, I guess it had to happen eventually. He has been grading papers in fields and doing long trail runs at the height of tick season, and I’ve been pulling ticks off his body in staggering numbers. 3 weeks of antibiotics. Poor guy. He bought some probiotic stuff to counteract the shearing of his digestive system.

Truly, nature is gross. (more…)

I got pregnant for the second time when my son was just 15 months old. My second child was due around my son’s second birthday. And when I say “around”, I mean the same week, possibly even the same day. It made me kind of dizzy to think of having two birthdays in one week, and if they actually shared the same day, what would I do then? Between trips to the toilet to puke my guts out all day, I thought about the birthday conundrum quite a bit.

I miscarried that baby around 14 weeks. I used to know exactly—was it 13 and a half, 14, or 14 and a half? I forget. Never thought I would, but there you go. (more…)

I should probably write this post when I have time to be introspective, and funny, or poignant, or both. And since I don’t have time or the patience to really think everything out, and I’m not really sure what I want to say about Mother’s Day anyways, I thought maybe pushing myself to do a post in the 15 minutes I have before I take Little Sister to her swimming lesson would force me to pull it altogether in one big…something. Something big and cohesive. Like, a big, um, stone, um, whatever.

Basically, what I want to say is that Mother’s Day is a hard and complicated and potentially painful holiday, and I want to explore why. (more…)

Yesterday was one of those days.

It started out okay, and I was determined to make it a good day. I got up early-ish, and spent the morning snuggling with my son before he bounced off to school.

Then I spent the morning with Little Sister, and I got her all ready for preschool and me ready for a run. I’m making slow progress with my foot and leg, and managed to push myself to 3 miles yesterday. They were slow miles, interspersed with walking and some skipping (I’m trying to strengthen a leg that has some serious atrophy issues, and plus, it’s kinda fun. Don’t judge me.). By the time I got home, sweating and feeling triumphant at the distance I managed, I felt like the day was going great.

And then came the voles. (more…)