ian's escapades

ian has been up to his old tricks again--acting like the rambunctious boy that he is. he's had an incident or two here recently, and before i can write about them, he does something else.

the other night in the bathtub he went on a splashfest and had the entire bathroom floor covered in standing water. i knew this was going on, but it was one of those things i wasn't in the mood to stop and wasn't sure i wanted to enforce. so i just let him keep it up. after all, what can you expect when you're using your hands as shovels?

another time he took two of our fancy goblets into the bedroom and climbed up on the bed to "do cheers with them", only to have them shatter all over the covers. all over. that was fun to clean up.

we've had the vaseline out quite a bit recently, with cold weather and colds, for dry hands, chapped cheeks, and irritated noses. ian had other ideas for it. he smeared about a third of a cup all through his hair. what a mess!!!!! you'd be surprised how many washings it takes to get it all out.

he's also done what i consider minor things--like stripping down my freshly made bed to the mattress. i have a foam mattress pad on the bed and he pulled chunks of foam out of it just "bee-tause". he spit a kool-aid drink out all over the deck, so the whole thing was sticky and blue. he tried to be helpful and fix his own supper--by eating half of an uncooked hot dog. he helped me do laundry, by pouring the rest of my fabric softener into the washer. (luckily it was less than a quarter of the bottle. thank goodness for small miracles, right?) and i can't even begin to count the number of shampoos, conditioners, shaving creams and body washes that have become vicitms to ian's bath escapdes.

and these are just the first things that popped into my head. i know if i sat here and thought about it for a moment, 30 others would come to mind. lucky for him he's very cute and hilarious. it helps him out tremendously in times of trouble!

religion and politics

while out running errands yesterday i heard an interesting topic being discussed on talk radio. the topic was, "how does a presidential candidate's religion (or lack thereof) influence your vote?" they brought up the issue of mitt romney's candidacy, and how he was having to address questions about his religion. they also brought up the situation that happened out here with john edwards' campaign. two of his paid employees wrote negative and derogatory statements about religion and specifically catholics on their personal blogs. john edwards refused to fire them, although they later resigned. there were many in this area who felt he should have taken stronger action against them, arguing that he would never have tolerated them making racially derogatory comments, so why did he allow the religiously derogatory ones. with those being their talking points, they opened the phone lines. the calls were pretty much all over the map, however most seemed to feel that it was important for a person to be religious and/or have a strong faith in God. there were also many who felt it was important, yet their main concern was that they had a strong moral code which they lived by. several were disgusted that it was an issue at all. one lady, using romney as the example, said she was frustrated that she knew that mitt romney was a mormon, yet had no idea where any of the main candidates stood on border security, homeland security, social security reform or education, and she felt that the media was largely to blame for the hype of the religion issue. others, as you can imagine, had strong feelings about a person's specific religious affiliation, stating that they would not vote for a candidate belonging to certain religious sects. other points brought up were about the difference between someone who was was truly religious, and someone who did it purely for political gain or just the appearance thereof. another one was the difference between being religious and spiritual. it was a very interesting discussion and debate. so what are your thoughts? where do you come down on the issue?

that's not where i usually keep the sugar

i've been baking tons of brownies the last two days for a ward activity tonight, so i've had flour, sugar, cocoa and the like out over the counters. just now i was doing some laundry, and as i got down to the last items in the basket, i came across the open bag of sugar, sitting there in the bottom. i'm pretty sure while i was baking in the kitchen, ian snuck into the laundry room and helped himself to some sugar. he's a big fan of it when i'm baking. sneaky little rascal. the funny thing is, if he'd just put it back where he'd found it, i probably would never had known what happened. lucky for me, he hasn't figured that out yet.

The Bad Stingray

my kids have a funny game they play. elise & ian pretend that merry grace is "a bad stingray". they will squeal when she gets close to them and take off running. merry grace has no idea what this game is about--just that the big kids want to play with her. so she takes off crawling as fast as she can after them. elise and ian wait until she gets close again and yell, "ahhhhhh! the bad stingray is going to get us!" and run away again. if she loses interest or gets sidetracked, the kids will get down close to her and in a singsong voice say, "bad stingray.....come heeeeeerrrrreeee...." its one of the funniest things and chock full of imagination. i mean, a stingray? where did that come from? a tiger or a bear or a monster i would expect--but a stingray?

as i speak, elise and ian are hiding in the laundry room, peeking out to see if the "bad stingray" is coming to get them. she's not. she was sidetracked by a few snack crackers. give her just a minute....

so much to say...

so much has happened the last couple of weeks that blogging has taken a back burner. actually, its just a little daunting to do justice to all the fun activities in a few short sentences. so here's the long and the short of it...or maybe just the short.

my youngest brother, logan, & i took a trip out to utah to see our other brothers who live out there while they're going to school. we were gone for five days and had so much fun. we didn't do anything particularly spectacular--hung out at the hotel, swam in the pool, worked out in the "fitness center" (otherwise known as a small room with an exercise bike & a treadmill), went out to eat, watched arrested development, and just enjoyed being together. it was the first time that my siblings & i have been together without our parents. it was an interesting experience, but it was fun. we decided we want to have a "siblings weekend" every couple of years. we also got to spend some time with my aunt, uncle & cousins, which was so nice. we don't get to see them as often as we'd like, so we enjoyed hanging out with them. it was hard for me to be away from my family, even for 5 days, but i think it was worth it. "a fun time was had by all."

the week i came home, my baby, merry grace, turned one year old. i can't believe she's that old. not that its "old", but i can't believe its been a whole year since i gave birth to her. its flown by. but she 's cute as a button and as sweet as ever. her personality is growing and developing and we're just loving her more and more each day.

then there have been the usual activities of elise's school, getting ready for the ward activity this weekend, choir, and a million other odds and ends. so its been busy, its been fun and we're ready for more!