Help!

Help... just three more days to prepare for our two week road trip...

I'm trying to organize entertainment...

You know...

movies for the car,

books to read,

toys to bring along for the younger ones,

you get the idea!

But, I need two weeks of entertainment for myself too...

I've picked up our current Book Club selection to read while in the car, but seriously, I could finish it in one day (as long as I don't get car sick). It's "The Hunger Games" in case you're dying to know...

What else to bring along?

How will I keep myself entertained when I can't fall asleep for a while because I'm not in my own bed?

When I'm on vacation I enjoy light, entertaining novels. Not deep, dark or disturbing novels. It is vacation after all.

Any suggestions before I go to the library tomorrow?

Road Trip

In just seven days from now we will be embarking on a very new type of adventure!

We'll travel through four states: Arizona, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming and likely drive over 2500 miles...

We'll be spending 14 nights on the road and only one of them will be in a hotel (and that's a maybe)...

We'll sleep on spare beds, air mattresses and RV pull-outs...

We'll very likely not have any privacy for 14 days either, except trips to the potty...

We'll play with 2 sets of grandparents, one great grandma, two great aunts/uncles and countless other aunts, uncles and cousins...

Including second cousins, third cousins, second cousins twice removed and all that...

We'll visit 6 temples... Rexburg, Timpanogos, Provo, Oquirrh Mountain, Salt Lake and Manti. Four of these temples I've never been to! I will need no less than three sets of church clothes!

We'll do lots of hiking... including a trip to the top of Mt. Timpanogos (I hope bad weather doesn't cancel our plans!)

We'll take our kids to Ricks College (now known as BYU-I) and reminisce about the good ol' days when Walmart was still under construction and all we had for shopping was Broulim's and Maverick...

We'll marvel at the beauty of Old Faithful and other wonderful sights at Yellowstone National Park...

And we'll shop and eat... lots of eating I hope! I don't want to visit places like McD's or Applebee's... I want to eat at places we can't get anywhere else. My favorite places to eat when I lived in Orem were RD's Drive-In (which was gone last time we visited) and Sensuous Sandwich. We've also discovered The Mayan and Tucano's on more recent trips back to Utah. My kids love the Mayan, but the grown ups love Tucano's.... ah the Brazilian BBQ can't be beat!

Here's where you come in... please leave me with a comment telling me your favorite place to eat in the following areas: Rexburg/Idaho Falls, Salt Lake, Provo/Orem, Manti and Richfield.

Also, I'd love any shopping tips, too. We are hoping the Artco stationary outlet is still around in Rexburg and I vaguely remember someone telling me that Provo/Orem has a scrapbooking outlet that's pretty amazing... but I don't know the name of it, so if you know, please share the love!

Teenagers

An exchange I just had with my 14 year old son... after he walked down the stairs into the family room:

Me: Is that shirt clean?

T: yeah....

Me: that's funny, becuase I saw that shirt lying on the bathroom floor just yesterday. So, is that shirt clean???

T: Well... I don't have to go anywhere....

Me: yeah, well I still have to smell you... so you could at least put on a clean shirt.

T goes sullenly back upstairs and comes down with a clean shirt and a scowl on his face.

A mother's work is never finished...

Who Knew?

A few weeks ago I was visiting a friend who moved to the next town over. We talked books, landscaping, decorating and of all things, laundry.

I was complaining to her that my teenage boy's clothes don't smell any cleaner when they come out of the dryer than they do when they get put in the washer. They seem to be permanently laced with what we affectionately call "teeange boy smell" (or TBS for short).

She has raised a few teenage boys herself and gave me some great advice.

Put pine-sol in the laundry.

So, I bought a small bottle to try it out at Walmart and couldn't believe the results. The clothes actually smelled clean!!! I'm not really sure how much to use, so I use the little cup dispenser for the laundry soap and measure the same amount of pine-sol as I do laundry soap. It seems to work just right.

Think of the applications... smelly gym towels, teenage gym clothes, baby clothes and burp rags, sheets that have been peed in... and heaven forbid... cloth baby diapers!

I just bought 175 ounces of Lemon scented Pine-sol at Sam's Club last week. I think it may have been the best $8.52 I've ever spent.

Speaking of gym clothes, Taylor brought home his PE uniform from Junior High last week. I'm not sure it ever got washed during the entire school year. I kept telling him to bring it home and he kept forgetting. I was tempted to ceremoniously burn them, but refrained and promptly rushed them to the outside garbage can instead... although I think they could have walked their on their own. No wonder he never picked up a "girlfriend" in gym class...

Reason #27 why we need to do geneology...

Taken from Yahoo! News: It has the makings of a Hollywood script: A young rancher struggling to eke out a living in one of the poorest corners of the nation claims one of the biggest undivided jackpots in U.S. lottery history — $232 million — after buying the ticket in a town called Winner.

Maybe he's a 4th cousin twice removed on our grandfather's side... the saddest part? He'll only take home 88.5 million after Uncle Sam takes his share. I wonder how many undeserving companies will be bailed out with that $144 windfall in tax revenue.

Book Review...

I got a request to post a review of the Inkheart Series by Cornelia Funke. (Thanks Lexie for your confidence in my book opinions!)

They recently made Inkheart into a movie starring Brendan Fraser, which I haven't had a chance to see yet. I missed it through the movie theater and now I anxiously await it to come out on DVD, later this month. But, just from seeing the trailer it appears to be well done and well casted. I can easily spot some plot alterations just from the trailer, but I think they are good changes that will help push the story along, so I'm not going to nit pick them at this point. Of course, all this is based just on the 90 second trailer... but I have to say that Helen Mirren and Andy Serkis were brilliantly chosen for their roles. I have a hard time envisioning Brendan Fraser as Mo, just because that's not how I saw him from the beginning (I started the books before the movie was announced publicly). And Meggie was never blond in my mind. She was probably described as a blond way back in the beginning of the first book, but I just don't remember that detail. One thing that I could imaging bugging me about the movie is Brendan Fraser's voice. The books are very specific about Mo's voice and I don't see Brendan pulling that off. But, ironically enough, I later found out that the author always saw Brendan Fraser as Mo. So, once I've gotten my hands on the DVD, I'll let you know what I think.

Okay, back to the books! But first, one more detour. As you must know by now, I'm an audiobook junkie. I listened to all three books on audio. They were well done with one exception that really bugged me. The first and second book are read by the same person, but the third book is read by someone new. Once you get to know the character's "voices", it's hard to follow when someone else is suddenly doing the voice for that character totally different than how it had been done previously. I don't know why they didn't have the original reader do the third book, and possibly it was unavoidable to do it this way, but I was completely distracted during the first half of the third book by the inconsistencies in the character's voices. But, I will still recommend the audio because so much feeling and emotion is spoken through the voices that can't always be conveyed through the text.

Okay, on to the books. If you don't know what they are about, here's a quote from Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke:

"Taste every word, Meggie, whispered Mo's voice inside her, savor it on your tongue. Do you taste the colors? Do you taste the wind and the night? The fear and the joy? And the love. Taste them, Meggie, and everything will come to life." (Inkheart)

It's really hard to describe each book separately. Inkheart can stand alone in it's own story, but Inkspell and Inkdeath are basically one continuous story. I really liked the books. Inkheart was my favorite by far. I decided to cut and paste summaries from this website instead of writing my own... I tried to write my own and they were just lame.

"Imagine it were possible to bring the characters from a book to life. Not like when someone reads a book with such enchantment that the characters seem to jump off the pages and into your bedroom...but for real. Imagine they could actually climb out of the pages and into our world.
Now imagine if those characters brought their world into ours.
One cruel night, young Meggie's father, Mo, reads aloud from Inkheart and an evil ruler named Capricorn escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie is smack in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books.
Somehow, Meggie and Mo must learn to harness the magic that conjured this nightmare. Somehow they must change the course of the story that has changed their lives forever.
This is Inkheart, a timeless tale about books, about imagination, about life."

"Although a year has passed, not a day goes by without Meggie thinking of INKHEART, the book whose characters became real. But for Dustfinger, the fire-eater brought into being from words, the need to return to the tale has become desperate. When he finds a crooked storyteller with the ability to read him back, Dustfinger leaves behind his young apprentice Farid and plunges into the medieval world of his past. Distraught, Farid goes in search of Meggie, and before long, both are caught inside the book, too. But the story is threatening to evolve in ways neither of them could ever have imagined."

I loved it when we finally got to travel to the Inkworld that we'd been teased with so much in Inkheart. The inkworld was so well described that you really started to think it's a real place. My biggest complaint about Inkspell is that it's clearly the "filler" book. Not meant to be read independently of the others. Another difficult thing to manage is keeping track of all the characters. In one online review I read, they counted 114 characters over the 3 books that are mentioned and developed (some more than others, of course.)

"The Adderhead--his immortality bound in a book by Meggie's father, Mo--has ordered his henchmen to plunder the villages. The peasants' only defense is a band of outlaws led by the Bluejay--Mo's fictitious double, whose identity he has reluctantly adopted. But the Book of Immortality is unraveling, and the Adderhead again fears the White Women of Death. To bring the renegade Bluejay back to repair the book, the Adderhead kidnaps all the children in the kingdom, dooming them to slavery in his silver mines unless Mo surrends. First Dustfinger, now Mo: Can anyone save this cursed story?"

There are numerous subplots to follow and lots of characters to keep track of, but a good read, none the less. My most favorite chapter of the whole book was the last one. It was somewhat similar to HP#7's epilogue where we find out what is happening with Harry and company many years after Voldemort was defeated, but it was better. I absolutely LOVE how the Inkdeath epilogue is written and it left me teary and happy and completely satisfied.

If I were to give the books a grade, I would give the following:

Inkheart: A

Inkspell: B

Inkdeath: B- (with the epilogue getting an A+)

Overall, the books were very creative, imaginative and worth reading. As one online reviewer said, "don't even think about reading them out of order." I would definitely recommend them, especially to teens who need a good series to keep them busy over the summer and anyone who loves a good fantasy YA story.

Space Case of the Year Award

Last night was a great night. Sort of...

Brayden fell asleep on the couch at 7 p.m. and let us carry him up to his bed at 7:30.

Ian was away at Cub Scout Day Camp (which should really be called Cub Scout Night Camp) because they are gone from 2 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Megan got a call to go babysit for the Bishop and his wife so they could run some last minute errands before company comes into town today.

Eric was away at Scout Roundtable.

Taylor and I were all alone watching old Bones episodes trying to clean out the DVR space a little.

Eric came home and the guys turned on Valkyrie around 9 p.m.

Within 15 minutes, I knew this wasn't my type of movie, so I decided to go upstairs to my room and watch the chick flick I'd Redboxed, Bride Wars, instead. I also rounded up all the supplies to give myself a much needed pedicure during the movie.

At 10:30, Ian came into my room to tell me he was home and say good-night.

By 11:00, I paused the movie and went downstairs to ask the guys if Megan ever came home.

"NO"... they both shouted.

Hmmm.... I knew the errands Tammy was running wouldn't keep her out this late.

So I sent Megan a text message, checking in.

No response.

At 11:15, movies are both over and we are wondering where Megan is.

I decide to call her phone.

No answer.

Then I wonder if she accidentally left her phone at home when she went to babysit.

I go into her room, and find her phone plugged in on top of her desk, charging.

Perplexed, and I'll admit it, I was a bit panicked at this point... I look around the dark room and see toes sticking out from the bottom of the bed.

HUH?

She was in bed... sound asleep.

What the heck?

I go back to our room to question my husband, who was in bed and trying to go to sleep.

"Megan's here... in bed... how did you miss her coming inside?"

"I don't know... I did fall asleep through part of the movie, but the door was locked, so Taylor would have had to have let her in, I guess."

I marched to Taylor's room and barge right in. He was doing push-ups and a little irked that I didn't knock first.

"When did Megan get home?" I asked, very annoyed.

"She's not home yet..." he stammered.

"Yes, she is. She's sound asleep in her bed."

Then that "OH", look came on in his face. You know, the look when it all comes flooding back.

"Oops... mom, I'm sorry. I remember now, she did come home. I just forgot that I opened the door and let her in."

I (playfully) smacked him over the head and walked out.

And then this morning, I lectured Megan about making sure she tells a parent when she comes home from a babysitting job late at night and not to trust Taylor to do it for her. Even if that means she has to wake one of us up.

And we awarded Taylor the Space Case of the Year Award.

Well deserved, don't you think?

My Worst Nightmare... Well... One of Them...

Many many years ago, my sister-in-law Molly told me a tale I will NEVER forget. (And since it was many, many years ago, the tale may be embellished a bit by me, but this is how I remember it going:)

One year their family went up to their cabin up in the mountains after the winter to open it up, air it out and prepare for summer. When they got there, they found that mice had invaded the cabin and nested in all the mattresses in the beds of the cabin.

I don't remember what they had to do to get rid of the mice... all I can picture is finding mice inside a mattress where you sleep. Everytime I think about it, it makes my skin crawl. Every time... without fail.

For at least a week now, I've been painfully aware that the guinea pig's cage needs a bedding change. After my problem with flies hatching in the bedding a couple months ago, I'm being more careful to make sure the bedding doesn't sit in the cage too long.

Again yesterday, doing that job was on my list. Again, it didn't get done.

Last night I had a dream.

I dreamed that I came downstairs this morning to find flies everywhere, but even worse, that baby field mice had invaded his cage and multiplied times a couple hundred times over night. Of course, not possible in reality, but it was a dream remember? So, I'm walking down the stairs and I almost step on a mice that's scurring on my staircase. And then I find hundreds of tiny mice running around my house...

If you get scared badly enough in a dream, can it kill you in real life? Because that dream about pushed me to my limits.

Thank heavens it was just a dream.

Needless to say, changing the guinea pig's bedding was first on my agenda today.

Maybe tonight I will dream about all the garbage/toys/clutter under my couches coming to life and taking my children hostage...

Naw... but I better clean that up tonight before I go to bed... don't want to risk it.

Birthday Bash

Since poor Brayden hasn't had a decent birthday party in his whole life, I felt like I needed to make up for it this year with something big...

And then this friend of mine (who's blog is private now, so I can't link you to her) had her son's party at our local "train" park...

And our two boys are both NUTS over Thomas and trains in general...

So, I decided I had to copy her party idea! Although I was a bit nervous about it, given that the last week of May usually boasts 100+ temperatures, but we brought lots of shade and the park had a splash pad, so we all survived!

We played in the water...

We rode the train...

We had cake and ice cream...

We opened presents...

We passed out goodie bags...

And in the end, the best part of the day for Brayden was finally getting a ring pop which he stole from somebody's goodie bag.

All in all, a very successful day and great birthday for Brayden.

Now I just have to help him understand that his next birthday isn't for another 11.75 months. That's going to be the tough one!