How the GA's Eat Their Reeses....

This "joke" came through my email inbox last spring and I just died laughing... I wish I could give credit where credit is due, but unfortunately I don't know who the original author is.... if this doesn't get you in the mood to watch General Conference this weekend, nothing will! :)

TOP TEN WAYS GENERAL AUTHORITIES EAT REESE'S PEANUT BUTTER CUPS

10. Paul H. Dunn: "I remember back in WWII that I ate a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Back then, they were big enough to live on for a week. Being the only soldier to have survived the battle in my brigade, I really didn't know if I could eat it or not, but I remember my fallen buddy's words as he died in my arms: 'Paul, if you just take one bite at a time you can tackle anything.' So I took that giant cup and, breaking it with the bat Babe Ruth gave me after I struck him out with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game of the World Series, proceeded to wolf down the tiny morsels."

9. David B. Haight: "Imagine 70 years ago on a rough road between Idaho and Logan. There were no Circle Ks, no 7-11s. You had to bring your Peanut Butter Cups with you. Ruby and I split one for the first time in 1937?"

8. Dallin H. Oaks: "The Reese's Peanut Butter Cup challenges us to consume.
From the beginning there have been three steps in eating a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. First, remove the wrapper. This is best done quickly, by turning the cup over, grasping the outer fold and pulling away from the bottom.
Second...."

7. Joseph B. Wirthlin: "When I was young I would sprint to the cornerstore, buy a Reese's and run my hand through my hair before taking it down in one bite. These days I don't sprint, and I have no hair, but the peanut butter cup remains."

6. Richard G. Scott: "If you have not eaten a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, I plead with you. Eat one now. Enjoy the chocolate, the peanut butter. Do not delay. If you have thought, "That's not for me," I plead with you to reconsider. Of all foods I treasure, this one was the first."

5. M. Russell Ballard: "The time has come when members of the church need to reach out to our friends and share a cup, a peanut butter cup. It is not enough to raise a chocolate bar, it must now have peanut butter."

4. Thomas S. Monson: "I remember I ate my first Reese's Peanut Butter Cup when I was a tender lad of eight. My mother came up to me, and with a loving twinkle in her eye, asked, 'Tommy, are you eating a Reese's?' And I would invariably smile up to her, 'Yes, Yes I am.' 'But Tommy, did you know that Sister Jensen next door hasn't eaten a Reese's Cup in years?' My young mind thought upon the plight of my neighbor. Tears were shed. Hearts were gladdened. A cup was shared."

3. Boyd K. Packer: "In all my years, I have always eaten my Reese's Peanut Butter Cups the same way--the established way we have been instructed to eat them. There is a far greater evil in this world, though--those who believe they can eat their cups in a way unconventional to the time-honored manner. We must be true and faithful and eat our Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in the customary and recognized approach as it has been established."

2. Neal A. Maxwell: "I intentionally initiate the delicious design of deglutition of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup by nibbling a negligible nit of the culinary creamy cavalcade. It is exclusively through small entities that the great things are fabricated."

1. J. Golden Kimball: H@*%ll, Heber, I'll eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup any d%$*&d way I want!

Which one is your favorite?

I think Pres. Monson's is by far the best....

although J. Golden Kimball is pretty good too!

My Baby No More...

We were watching Evan Almighty last night and the kids love to dance to the closing credits. It's the whole reason they watch the movie, because they will rewind and play that part at least 3 times before Eric and I tell them to stop! Brayden just goes nuts when the final song comes on - it's Everybody Dance Now by C and C Music Factory. And last night, watching the 3 younger kids dance to the music, I was struck by something monumental. My baby isn't a baby anymore! He'll be turning 3 in eight weeks, and I can't believe what a cute little boy he's grown into!

He loves to dress up... if it isn't a blue ninja turtle, it's batman, spiderman or a jedi.

He loves purple and will only drink from his purple sippy cups right now.

He loves Diego and Backyardigans and the Wonder Pets!

He loves to jump on the trampoline.

He loves to go the park (any park.....)

He loves to wrestle with his dad and his brothers.

He loves to play stuffed animals with Megan.

He loves to go in Megan's room while she's at school and play with her Polly Pockets and Littlest Pet Shop toys.

He loves to drink orange juice and eat popcorn.

He loves to take baths.

He loves to go to nursery class on Sundays.

I can't wait to see what fun things will come our way when he gets older, but I'm a little sad to say goodbye to my last baby. I've been anxious to get to the stage where we are out of diapers forever and I don't have to have a toddler translator nearby to figure out what he's trying to tell me. That's why it took me by suprise last night that I was sad to see my baby grow up... I didn't think I would get this sentimental about it, but he's been such a fun, cute little boy. Check out this picture of him when he was one week old:

123 Book Tag

Connie tagged me for the 123 Book Tag.

Here are the rules:
*Find the book closest to you with at least 123 pages.

*Turn to page 123.
*Find the fifth sentence.

*Post the next 3 sentences.
*Tag 5 people.

"His digestion was poor, and he had a weeping eye. But as his youth died, his gaiety increased; he replaced he teeth with jests, his hair with joy, his health with irony, and his weeping eye was always laughing. He was dilapidated but bedecked with flowers."

~Les Miserables, Unabridged, Victor Hugo

I tag Maureen, Adrienne, Jill, Amber, and Kristen

Personal Note: I've been trying to focus on reading this book for two years now... I'm on page 420 out of 1463. Maybe someday I'll finish it! This is the only broadway play I've ever seen and I Love it! I have the entire soundtrack memorized... crazy, huh?

Help! I'm going CRAZY!!!

So, I've been trying to learn how to change the backgrounds on my blog, but everytime I do it, I lose all my sidebar stuff. I'm sick of manually retyping it all back in (and even when I thought I'd saved a back up copy of my template with the sidebars intact, I loaded it back up wrong so I got a blog page loaded with html code instead of what you should see.... Can someone please help me figure this out before I lose my mind? I'm not going to add back in my sidebar stuff until I've learned how to successfully change around my background without losing it. Please email me if you can walk me through this... Thanks!

UPDATE!!! So with hubby and oldest son gone for the night on a scout camp-out, I was able to dedicate more than the normal amount of time figuring this out. I'm VERY pleased with the results! You can find fun backgrounds here and here, and you can read about how to change them out without losing your "widgets" (the official html code name for page elements) here. I'd already read one tutorial that had me completely baffled, but this one I was able to get through with only one mistake! I've wasted hours and hours over the last week or so looking for fun and cute background pages for the future. I want to be completely proficient at this so I don't have to follow the instructions verbatim each time, so don't be suprised if you see my background changing often over the next few weeks. This is almost more fun that moving furniture!!!

March Madness

Disclaimer: This post is LONG... I decided to lump one 11 day vacation into one post... mostly because I won't have time over the weekend to deal with doing it in pieces....

Here's a brief rundown of how our trip went (I'll save the pie chart for next year....) :

Friday: drove 800 miles from AZ to Bay Area, left 90 minutes later than planned, so we arrived about 2 hours later than planned due to traffic, etc. that we would have missed had we left earlier in the day. Got to my mom's house, wolfed down some Papa Murphy's pizza (not my favorite, but I was too tired and hungry to care...) and ran the kids across town to my sis-in-law's house for a sleepover.

Saturday: slept late (like 8:30) and enjoyed every minute of it! Went to Kohl's with Eric and my mom and dad (and Brayden) and used my dad's 30% off coupon to buy Eric a new suit and I got this:

Eric and I have been in the market for new wedding bands and this one I just fell in love with. I'd seen one online just like it, but was nervous to buy a diamond online. I've been to dozens of stores and just couldn't find one that matched it until now! And yes, it's a certified diamond and it's being sized right now, so you won't get to see it on my finger for a couple more weeks! We then met over at Jeff's house to grab kids and carpool to Oakland to visit the Chabot Space and Science Center. Very fun place and FREE because I bought a membership at our local Science Museum. Gotta Love FREE anything, right!?! The highlight was staying late at night so we could look through the telescopes. We saw an amazing upclose view of the moon and one of the planets. I think it was Venus, but it might have been Mars. Can't remember. If we could have stayed later, we would have gotten to see Saturn. I was bummed we missed that one. I think Saturn is definately my favorite planet. I was also thrilled to see that the museum hadn't phased out Pluto, since it's technically not a planet anymore. Maybe that stupid decision has been reversed and I just haven't heard about it!

Sunday: went to church in my home ward when I was little with Jeff's family. More on that here. Had a very quiet afternoon at my mom's house and spent some time working on geneology with my mom and dad. Of course, this was about the only time all week that I had to read blogs!

Monday: Christy had a mini-reunion at a park with high school friends (see link from Sunday for more on that) and the guys (Eric, Taylor and Grandpa) went and saw 10,000 BC. Megan and Grandma went and got pedicures and French Toast for lunch at IHOP (this is Megan's new favorite restaurant). I took Brayden and Ian with me and grabbed Wendy's to bring to the park. Then we headed for Dublin to visit dear friends - the Daytons. We have lots of dear friends in Dublin, but over the years, the Dayton kids and our kids have just "clicked"... after not seeing each other for a year or more, they can disappear and play and we have to drag them out when it's time to leave.

Tuesday: went and did a session at the Sacramento Temple with both sets of parents. The murals inside the first room were breathtaking. Every beautiful part of the Sierra foothills was painted into those murals. It absolutely blew me away! Then we had lunch at The Old Spaghetti Factory and I had a fantastic burger. It had swiss cheese, real, thick bacon and pesto mayo. Yummm! I did forget to ask the waitress if the bun was sesame free... thank goodness is was! The thought didn't even occur to me until she set my plate down in front of me! Tuesday evening we had dinner with Amy, Kevin and my nephew Ben. It was a fun night and Amy told us all about getting cheap (but very real) pearls in Qatar (where Kevin is going back to on his next deployment) and she took $20 from us to restock us on Kinder Chocoloate (only available at the Travis AFB Commisary)! Megan and Taylor got to go to Mutual and AD's with Ashlyn and Lyndi, which they LOVED!

Wednesday: We went to the movies - Horton Hears a Who.... It was really cute! Very well done and definately a must buy on DVD. We met Elise, Kate, Matt, Grandma W, Ethan and Dallyn there. The adults definately were outnumbered! The rest of the day on Wednesday we hung out with Elise and Alan, Kate and Matt. We all went for dinner at Red Brick Pizza and Alan and Taylor played lots of Guitar Hero!

Thursday: We hung out at Grandma Wanlass' house in the morning with her, Grandpa and Ethan and Dallyn. Then, we all went to a park and taught them how to geo-cache. We made little bags of candy and Eric went around the parks perimeter, hiding each one. Then each kid in the group got to use the GPS to find their own bag of candy. It was a lot of fun! The younger kids were happy to play on the slides and those little boys kept their grandpa busy chasing after them! Then Thursday night for dinner, we went to Jeff and Molly's house. We made tacos and fajitas for dinner. The kids played and all the adults (and teens) watched I Am Legend. I didn't get to see the whole thing, but it's not the most uplifting movie you've ever seen.

Friday: We met everyone (both sides of the family and friends from Dublin) at the Jelly Belly Factory. We've been there several times over the years and I've never seen it like it was on Friday! We waited in a line that took about 90 minutes to get through just to see the tour. But the tour is awesome and well worth the wait. We love the free packet of Jelly Bellys they give you as you leave and we stocked up on Belly Flops for our friends at home. By the time we were done on Friday afternoon, it was time for my brother to get into town from Eureka. Back at my mom's house, we put the kids in matching white t-shirts and took some pictures of them for my mom to hang on her wall. This by far was the best one:

Saturday: All Rossiter relations nearby gathered at the Rossiter Hotel for an Easter BBQ. We had an egg hunt, a pinata (my mom's favorite new tradition), and WAY TOO MUCH FOOD!

Also on Sat, Eric finally made a decision about his wedding band and ordered it. He ordered his online... there were so many great choices, it took him a really long time to decide. It really helped that he showed the pictures to family and got as many opinions as he could. Here's what he finally decided on:

It's made of Carbide Tungsten, which above all DOESN'T scratch. Anyone who knows my husband really well, knows that scratches (on anything, cars, LCD screens, wood, etc.) are one of his BIGGEST pet peeves! I hope the ring is as nice in person as it is in this picture!

Sunday: We went to Sac Meeting with my parents, Adam and Ben. My mom sang in a group of six women and it was gorgeous. Maybe I'm a bit biased, but I think they sounded better than the ward choir. Then Sunday afternoon, Adam and Ben took off for Eureka, my parents took off to have Easter dinner with more family, and we had the house to ourselves for 1 whole hour! Of course, we spent that time packing up and getting ready to leave the next day. Then we dropped the older kids off at Jeff and Molly's house for one last playdate and headed to Fairfield to help Mom W get Easter dinner in the oven and underway. We all gathered at mom and dad's house later after everyone was done with church and had a fantastic ham, garlic red potatoes, a fabulous green salad, rolls, and 3 kinds of dessert. This didn't include another egg hunt for the kids! Taylor finally broke out his airsoft gun and let Ashyln take it for a spin. Someone needs to give that girl some more instruction - she fired off, never hitting a thing, and no one helped her... they all just watched it! Dallyn (age 2.5) was absolutely obsessed with T's gun... after it was unloaded and safe, he ran around the house with it, shooting everyone and everything he could. He was in heaven! We slept over at mom and dad w's the last night before heading home.

Monday: another 800 miles to get home, but we were so glad to be in our own beds, use our own shower and find everything in top notch shape when we returned after what felt like a decade!

Under the Weather

We are all under the weather today.

Last night I had a sinus headache and a sore throat. This morning all three older kids complained of stuffy noses and sore throats. I medicated them all and shipped them off to school. It's not a nasty cold bug, but it's enough to zap all your willpower to do anything productive! Even Brayden has a scratchy voice and a little bit of a runny nose.

And to top it all off, my computer is sick too! I don't think it has a virus, but something is really "kicking it's butt". It's slower than "Molasses in January" (a quote often used by my mom when I was a kid) and it didn't download all of my trip pics off my camera. I'm quite annoyed because now I'm going to have to go through the camera and see what's been missed and manually download it. I was all set to do that today, but then my camera started flashing the "low battery" warning and my spare battery is dead too.... so no trip pictures will get posted today... maybe tomorrow will be better!

Speaking of computers... I'm in the market for a laptop. Sharing one computer for a six person household is getting challenging, to say the least. Plus, I want to have a laptop so I can keep it in my kitchen for use when I need to stay downstairs. Right now the family computer is in the loft upstairs and it just isn't always a convienent location for me. So, if you have any really great recommendations (or tips on things to stay away from), now is the time to speak up. I'm pretty open to anything and I'm interested in converting over to a Mac, but still don't know enough about them to make the decision on what to get. This will be paid for by the wonderful check the IRS will be sending me in a couple months. Having 4 kids will really pay off... $2400 (tax and tithing free.... wahoo!)

For the Love of Family....

So, we got back last night from our 11 day trip to CA to visit "the fam". This is a loaded statement, since there is so much "fam" to visit. Eric and I love our family dearly, but trying to cram in a "year's worth" of get togethers in one visit just isn't possible... We do our best to make our "visit" time as fair as possible, but someone always gets the short end of the stick. Thanks to everyone for being so understanding about it! Maybe next year we'll make a "pie chart" of our time and show it to everyone so it's fair! Thanks to my mom and dad for once again providing the "Rossiter Hotel". Most days, we get up, shower, eat breakfast, take off for an adventure with someone else, stay out late, come back around ten pm and then crash and sleep just to repeat the cycle all over again the next day! Visiting the family is exhausting to say the least, but always worth it! When it was all said and done, we logged over 2200 miles in 11 days! I have a Suburban and you don't even want to know what my gas bill was for this trip, especially with gas costing $3.50 in Ca right now! More on our travel adventures tomorrow... today is a day for laundry and catching up on life at home.... oh the mail pile I have to sort through!