Pity Party!

Just having one of those days...
  

You know...where you wake up in the morning, grudgingly trying to pull yourself out of bed when all you really want to do is pull the covers over your head and lay there wallowing in your suckiness. That is me today.

Last night, I went to a Relief Society Stake Conference thing, and met up with some of the sisters from our new ward. (nothing against the sisters in our new ward, cuz they are AMAZING, but I miss my friends from Yakima 2nd, and I feel I can be myself around them, and I don't have to watch what I say, because, I know (at least I hope) they won't judge me, if I say something totally stupid. And I hate making new friends because beleive it or not I have a hard time doing it ) As I was sitting there watching the re-enactment of the parable of the 10 Virgins to music, I had this over whelming feeling of inadequacy.  Usually I leave those kinds of things uplifted and full of the spirit, but sad to say last night was not one of them.

I felt inadequate in every way... I was having a pity party.  And it has spilled over on to today.

I feel that I'm not doing everything spiritually to grow my testimony.  I have kind of slacked off when it comes to spiritual stuff.  Saying prayers, scripture study, yada, yada, yada, etc...

And this morning as I was blog stalking some of the sisters in our new ward, I felt even crappier. 

So, as I'm sitting here crying, trying not to do it out loud ( cuz then I would have to come up with a lie for Emily as to why I'm crying.)  And thinking of all the ways I'm not smart enough,
 skinny enough,
 creative,
 spiritual,
 determined,
 pretty,
 clever,
 funny,
 musicaly inclined,
 sporty,
 geeky,
disciplined,
a chef ,
crafty,
and witty enough.  I'm sure there is a lot more that I'm not good enough at..I just can't think of any right now.   Just keeping it real. This is how I feel today.  Tomorrow will probably be different, but today sucks!  And to top it off, it's Kaden's 10th Birthday.  Usually I go all out with amazing parties, that his friends talk about for days, but today party preparations are slow to nonexistant.  I feel like a big crap hole! and I'm having my bi-monthly pity party.  No one will probably comment on this post.  So I guess I'll go eat worms!

Sophie Sophie Sophie

We were having a roundtable discussion at dinner yesterday when Brianna started talking about being four. She thought for a second and said,"I don't remember being 4". Kaden chimed in by also noting that he had no recollection of being four. Right after that, Sophie said, "I don't remember being 4 either". As you all know, Sophie is four. We all fell out of our chairs laughing.

Tonight, Brianna got after Sophie for messing with Kaden's Pokeman Cards. Two strange things about that one, Sophie being interested in Pokeman Cards and Brianna caring about anyone doing anything to Kaden's stuff in general.. but I digress.. Anyway, Brianna sent Sophie up to her room and she went wailing all the way. About 10 minutes later, she walks up beside me whilst I'm working on the computer and get's my attention (no small task while I'm on the computer). She says, "Daddy, I just wanna go be with Jesus". This definately piqued my interest and I asked why she would want to do that. She said, "I just want to be with Jesus because everyone's mean to me and wants to send me to my room". There are equal measures of cute, funny and sad all mixed in there. She was soo pathetic when she said it, I still chuckled just a little bit.

A couple of other funny Sophieisms:

It's not spaghetti, it's sgabetti (pretty normal for lil'kids)

It's not trampoline, it's jumpoline

It's not sprinklers, it's squirters (my favorite)

It's not copy, it's coffee (not sure where that one came from)

Also, her pre-school teacher told Susi the other day that she was concerned that Sophie wasn't learning her letters as well as she could. Susi asked Sophie why she hadn't learned her letters, Sophie informed Susi that she wasn't old enough to learn her letters and wanted to wait till she was older to learn them... She's such a smart little stink that she ought to be able to learn them in a day, she's just decided she doesn't want to yet.

She also loves to ride her bike and play out side as long as we'll let her.

We love our Sophie, don't know what we'd do without her.....

Fun Evening

I got home from work today and really wanted to shoot some hoops with the kids. So I make the proper preparations by blowing up the ball and then ask Kaden if he wants to go. "No thanks dad, I'm playing marbles with my friends". I very politely explained to Kaden that asking him to come was only a courtesy and that attendance was not optional. So he begrudgingly climbed into the car and we headed over to shoot some hoops. We went to a Park about a block away from where we going to build the new house where they have a couple of hoops. We shot around together for a while then a group of kids asked if they could play bump (lighting for us older folks) with us. That was pretty fun, Kaden one once and I won a couple of times.

We came home to a rattled Susi. When I left, I TOLD her I was taking Kaden. Apparently she mis-remembered the heads up and was ready to call in the cavalry to find the boy. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't convince her I had told her I was taking him... and admitted that 'OF COURSE" I was wrong.... and not told her... Ya gotta pick your battles baby.

During dinner, I noticed that Kaden was chewing with some difficulty using my keen powers of observation. (In actuallity, I was totally clueless. Susi asked why it hurt while he was chewing. A few minutes later it dawned on me he may have a tooth coming out. I can be a bit slow at times). Anyway, I talked him in to letting me yank it. It's been a while, so I must admit I was a bit nervous. Despite the butter flies, I popped the sucker out the first try. Now, Kaden could be officially classified as a chinuelo (toothless in Spanish). He has the four fronts on top and bottom. Then after the tooth pulling, he has three emptty spots between the fronts and the back molar. That should make for some interesting meat chewing till the permanents come in...

About 15 minutes before this, the girls had vanished upstairs and it was eerily quiet. A little too quiet if ya know what I mean. So we got the video camera running and quietly tiptoed up to our bedroom. We ran into them leaving the bedroom as we got there. The excitedly told Susi they wanted to show her a surprise. So she obliged by closing her eyes as they led her to the closet. She opened her eyes to a completely cleaned and organized closet. Sophie and Emily exclaimed that they had cleaned her closet for valentines day. Very cute..

Anyway, that's the report for today, the 15th of February 2010.

First Kiss Redux

As is the case in all stories, there are two sides to this one. Your about to hear about our first kiss from a wee different perspective.... (Camera fades off into the sky and slowly focus on Spencer sitting at his very spartan cubicle at Bechtel on the morn of the 3rd of Febuary, 2010). So I'm sitting there thinking about how long Susi and I have been married, almost 15 years. Then I tried to remember the first day we met, first date, first kiss and all that stuff. As I was looking at my calendar (also thinking that I'm on company time day dreaming about my first kiss, money well spent. Thanks Bechtel), I realized that the 3rd was the 15th anniversary of our first kiss. At least it was really close to the first anniversary of our first kiss... I remember when it was you see, because I had a plan for that first kiss. In case you don't know me very well, I'm a serious plotter. Not one to fly by the seat of my pants. And as such, homie had a plan laying the first kiss on his woman! The plan was (emphasis on WAS) to kiss her on Valentines day. Susi always seems to manage hosing my plans for her, finding her Christmas presents EVERY YEAR, never letting me name our kids.. but I digress.

So here I am circa 3-Feb-1995 on a date with Susi. We had a scavenger hunt around the campus of Rick's college and ended up at Susi's appartment with all her room mates to watch a movie. The evening was drawing to a close and I was ready to make my escape. Should be a pretty simple move right? "Hey Susi, I've gotta get, got church". "Been loads of fun, see ya tomorrow...k.. bye". At least that's what I had planned. So I get up to make my exit, head for the door, step out side thinking I'm gonna get a quick hug and be off. Then... I hear ... the door shut behind me ... with Susi unexpectedly being on my side.

Heart begins to race, face goes somewhat numb, knees get just a bit weak. "This is ok, I can handle this, I've got a plan!" Think, come on you fool!! Think!! Ok Ok... this is gonna work and I can still say our real first kiss was on Valentines day. Dang she's cute, just a little kiss wouldn't hurt.. NO NO, be strong, it's just one more week. OK, here it goes, I'm mov'n in. Small hug, lips on check, perfect. SCORE!!
Then she said something, but it wasn't what I thought she said... No no no, she "Your Great", because no one EVER says "That's It" when a guy tries to be romantic. That just doesn't happen.... or...maybe ....it does.
Well, at that point, I just didn't have a choice. It's not that I didn't want to, you need to appreciate how unbeleivably gorgeous she was to grasp the kind of will


power required to just kiss her on the check the first time. But she just called me out, so it was game on now. Nobody calls homie out on the first kiss.
So I laid one on her like I meant it. At that point, I really did loose all feeling in my legs.
I'm surprised I made it home. As Susi said, when I got there I poured a bowl of cereal and put the milk in the cupboard and the cereal back in the fridge...
She blew my doors off.
So yesterday, I wanted her to know that I remembered that day. I'll never forget it.

First Kiss

Aaahhh!...The first kiss. I'm sure if you ask any of your friends, they could tell you about their first kiss. Where they were at, what they were wearing, (hopefully)
who they were kissing.

I remember my first kiss. And I'm sure everyone is dying to know all the details. But, what I want to talk about is my first kiss with Spencer.

We had only known each other for 2 weeks. And I believe we had only had one real date. ( which by the way is another story) He had come over to my apartment to visit me. And I remember very clearly, when it was time for him to leave, because I followed him to the door, walked out with him and closed the door behind me. Now thinking back, I realize I was possessed with some kind of alien life form. Usually I would have said goodbye in the apartment, and watch them walk out the door. But for some unexplained reason, I decided to do something different.

I was standing on the first step of our little porch, and he was standing in front of me. We talked for a while, and then he said he had to get back home. There was this little moment of awkward silence, where neither one of us didn't know what to do. Then it happened. He kissed me....on the CHEEK! What?! Are your freakin kidding me? On the CHEEK?! He pulled back and was looking all proud of himself(probably saying to himself " I'm the Man baby... booya!")

The next thing I remember, is looking at him with this perplexed look on my face and blurting out " That's it?"

Remember, you have to believe me when I say, that my body was possessed by an alien, because I would have never said anything close to that to someone I hardly knew.

But, then it happened...again. He kissed me. Only this time it wasn't on the cheek. This is where it gets blurry. I really don't remember anything after that. Somehow I made it back into my apartment. Whether I told my roommates what happened or I went to bed. I can't remember. I guess it had the same effect on Spencer. When he got home, he made himself some cereal, put the milk in the pantry and the cereal in the fridge. And walked around in a daze. So I was told by his roommates.

Needless, to say, our first kiss was memorable. And one of my kids favorite stories.

So the reason I recounted our first kiss, is because, yesterday I heard my doorbell ring. I opened the door, and found Spencer standing there with a dozen red roses. "Happy 15 Year Anniversay of our First Kiss" is what he said to me right before he planted a juicy one on my cheek.

And I'll give you one guess of what I said.....