Banned in Bikini Bottom

It is with a proud heart that I claim that in this house, we LOVE Spongebob. I know there are others out there who just might disagree with us, but to them I loosely quote Jim Carrey talking about Eminem, "He scares me just a little, but I think if we all spend a little more time with our kids they'll still turn out ok..." I know that the yellow square dude that we all love so much can be a little rough around the edges, but the laughs and joy he brings into our home far outweigh the occasional "kick your butt" episode (if you don't know, don't ask!). That is until today when I had to ban Spongebob from a certain 3-year old's viewing pleasure, for the second time! A couple of months ago I busted Sara calling Kate a weinie. Ban number one. Slowly, Spongebob and his really unitelligent friend Patrick made their way back onto our t.v. until today when she was calling Matt an idiot. Ban number two. So, like a few other of my friends, we are going to take a break from Spongebob around here and we'll be sticking to Blue's Clues and Bubble Guppies (Have you heard Mr. Grouper's "Outside" rap? I love it!) Thank goodness for DVR so Jerry and I can get our fill, ha ha! But I'm sure that slowly our favorite sponge will find his way back into our hearts. If you've never been brave enough to sample his antics, check out this little tune from the episode "Banned in Bikini Bottom", it's one of our favorites, right up there with "Slide Whistle Stooges" and "Ear Worm". Enjoy!



Seriously, how can you not love that!

10 on the 10th

I had this great post planned out in my mind about mine and Jerry's 10 year anniversary, but here it is almost a week later, and it just hasn't worked out that way. Actually, few things over our weekend celebration worked out the way we had planned and it kind of made me think that's actually a pretty fitting description of our marriage! I have never been a huge celebrator of St. Patrick's Day, so it is weird to say that I think it's a bummer our anniversary is the same day. But I still haven't done a fun celebration of that holiday with my kids because I'm thinking about and arranging babysitters. I forgot to even buy a box of Lucky Charms for breakfast. And the green food coloring was empty, as well as the blue (plenty of yellow though), so I couldn't even make green milk or pancakes. And when we went out to dinner that night, I felt like a scrooge wearing a purple jacket instead of green like everyone else. It was still fun though, don't get me wrong!

Friday night, my sister was kind enough to take the kids over night so we started off with a fabulous dinner at Cafe Madrid.

It was so delicious! I told Jerry he can just continue taking me there until we can go to Spain for real! This was definitely the highlight of the evening! But after that we decided to hit a movie downtown and it was a total flop. One of the worst movies I've seen in a while! The next day we wanted to head up for a day of snowboarding. We decided to head down to Sundance for something different and because we used to ski there together a lot, and as were about to head up the canyon, our brakes went out. So instead we spent the afternoon replacing rotors and brake pads.Luckily, our friend just happened to be down in Provo and just happened to have his car jack with him and was nice enough to hang out with us while we changed them. Nothing like changing brakes in ski gear! By the time we were done, it was too late to head up the mountain, but we didn't want to pick the kids up quite yet, so we did some reminiscing around BYU campus. We laughed about how close our paths had come to crossing so many times. We lived a block away from each other, we both dated other people in the same apartment complex, I drove by Out-N-Back once and thought I should really try to get a job there... It was kind of funny.

In the end, it was actually a lot like a marriage. Sometimes, you don't get done exactly what you want to... you have some great moments that you want to repeat, some moments you'd give anything to have back, some quiet times where things are just cruising, some bummer moments that give you something to laugh about... and really we're just glad we have each other to spend it all with! We're looking forward to another 10 years!

Principal's Pride

Twice I have posted about Matt receiving the Principal's Pride award. And I have been so proud of him each time. But this time I got to jump up and down for Kate! Before each class goes off track, the teacher chooses one boy and one girl to receive the award. They can receive it for anything, it's just the teacher's choice. But out of a class with 12 girls there are only 3 chances to be picked so I was so excited that Kate was chosen. It was hard when Matt was chosen last off track time and the possibility came up of Kate getting it. I knew the odds so we talked about not focusing too much on awards. But still, we were both so excited! School has not come as quickly and easily for Kate as it has for Matt, but she has shown her true ability in not giving up. Luckily, I was volunteering in Kate's class the day she received it so I got to watch her. She was so sweet when the principal called her up calling her Katherine. Her teacher had lots of praise for her hard work and sticking with things and also being a nice girl who doesn't cause problems. It was quite possibly one of my greatest mom moments getting to watch her and knowing how excited she felt inside. I'm so proud of my Kate!

In half of a minute

I kept the kites in the garage for the entire winter with their tails untangled and not pulled off.

It took Sara 30 seconds at the park to do this.

Fear Therapy

Sara continually cracks me up. Like this picture of her wearing her snow boots and a leotard. It has no point to the post, but I love it!

What has made me be thinking about her though is this strange fear that she has. She and Kate have some polly pocket dolls that they love playing with. They like to change their clothes all by themselves and so inevitably, they pull the doll's heads off. They're pretty easy to fix so it's not a big deal. Well, Sara, hates it when their heads are off. Really hates it. And she'll tell you twenty times that she hates it until you get the head fixed. I knew she didn't like the heads off, but I didn't realize how bad it was until one day she came to me and wanted me to take off the dress that Snow White was wearing. I told her fine, bring me Snow White and I'll take it off. She said, "I can't. Her head is off. I can't even touch her."

It made me smile, but it also reminded me of myself. Remember this snake Kate brought home from speech therapy? I didn't love it, but I allowed it be in the house to help her learn her "S" sound. Well, after it became old news, I wanted to throw it away, but I didn't. I decided I would keep it in my house as a sort of fear therapy. It's called desensitization. It's pretty self explanatory. You subject yourself to a fear at a level you can handle and then you increase your exposure to the fear until it becomes comfortable.

It's actually on this shelf behind my left shoulder right now. It's not watching me because it's facing the other direction, unless it has come to life and it's slithering toward me right now. AHH! Just kidding. Anyway, I'm trying to desensitize myself to this plastic snake hoping to decrease my irrational snake phobia. It's not going very successfully. Instead of picking up the snake to take the picture, I climbed on a chair and took the picture because like Sara, I couldn't even touch it! Well, here's to good intentions. And guess what, Snow White's head is still off!

Say What??

On Friday, Kate came home from school and said, "Mom, we should start walking to school so our school can have clean air." What? Really? Are you kidding me? Do you not remember the 9 months we just spent without a car and walking everywhere we went? Do you not remember how there was always at least one statement of complaint everytime we had to walk to school to pick up Matt? Do you not remember how when we picked you up, you would ride in the stroller because your legs were tired and Sara would ride her scooter the whole way home? Seriously??


Honestly, it made me laugh. Of course, there was an assembly at school about clean air or something. It gets a little irritating. How did the assembly presenters get to the school? Oh, they drove? Oh, that's surprising.


Honestly, living with only one car was not the worst thing to live through. In fact, as far as challenges go, there were a lot of days I liked it. We live really close to most things we need. And I really liked walking and riding bikes with my kids. I got really good at planning ahead and Jerry was really good about always letting me have the car on our agreed upon days so I could schedule things. It did get harder as the weather got colder. That was when I was starting to really really want a second car, but we were still surviving. In fact, the hardest thing about not having two cars was that NO OTHER FAMILY HAS ONLY ONE CAR!! So it just makes me irritated to have all these people saying we should drive less or ride our bikes to school or whatever, but no one else does it.


There, I feel better. Just out of curiousity I asked Matt what he thought about the assembly. His answer really surprised me. He said he was ready to start walking home from school again some days and that it was fun when we did it. I kept my mouth shut and just smiled thinking that he will remember it as a positive experience!


All that being said, I am so grateful to be a happy two car family again! We added the green monster to our garage in December and I love it! While having one car was not the worst, it is definitely much easier to have two and I'm grateful for it.


This was our awesome bumper sticker on it. Jerry was able to remove it, but I'm glad I got a picture of it before he did!

Cinderella's magic glass slippers

For Christmas 2009, Kate got a new Cinderella doll that came with these glass slippers. They are just clear plastic but she was so excited about them. As we opened the package we talked about how hard it would be to not lose these slippers. They're tiny, they're clear, etc. I told her not to be disappointed if they got lost soon but that we could have fun playing with them for now.

These slippers crack me up. Over a year later, we still have both of them! I have found them in various places all over the house, but they keep showing back up. I know the vacuum cleaner has sucked them up from one place and spit them out in another. I've found them on the stairs and tucked in the carpet next to the wall. Somehow though, they always end up back together in her doll house. Most of the time we only have one, but soon enough the other one will show back up. It always makes us laugh when we find both of them. I guess there really is some magic in glass slippers!