Questions Without an Answer.

Last night's conversation:

Maggie was sitting in the floor, eating a bowl of chili. Ivy crashed through the room, as she always does.

Mom: Ivy, don't step in the chili!

Ivy: Why?

I mean, come on, why wouldn't you want to step in chili?

What's In a Name?

We're not seriously looking for names yet, being the procrastinating types. I was just thinking about my criteria for a good McDonald baby name this morning, though.

Unusual.
Okay, so my name is Jill. I feel that it is a fairly white bread name, while I don't mind it. I had a crazy Norwegian last name, Sandtorf, until I married. There weren't tons of other ladies out there with the same name.

With a last name like McDonald, I want the kids to have a semi-memorable first name. There is a scale of weirdness here, where one must walk the fine line between a quirky name and one that will get a child severely beaten every school day for twelve years. We've all heard them, haven't we? My current favorite of this ilk has to be Syphilis. (!)

It used to be a slight bit cool to give a kid a last name for a first name, but now every redneck does it. Kennedy would be popular with the Republicans, don't you think? What about Reagan? Don't give in to peer pressure! Also, DON'T name your baby Nevaeh. It's heaven spelled backwards. So, like anti-heaven. I think you just named your baby hell, in hilbilly code.

How many Twi-fans are naming kids Bella and Edward and Alice? Years ago, I liked the name Jasper, but now it's a Twilight name, so no deal. Or, perish the thought, Renesmee. That may have been what finally broke me in the last Twilight book. DO NOT even get me started about combining existing names, or giving a baby a name that is traditional, but spelled without phonics. Krystyl, for example. Do you really want your child to have to spell their name every single time, for everyone they meet?

Traditional.
I love old people names, and family names. We've used several: Margaret, Garland, Kenneth, Mabel, and Irene are all names from our grandparents. However, I probably won't be using Okla, Bloomer Rae, or Coonrod any time soon. See drawbacks in the "Unusual" category.

A great resource for old names is actually on the Social Security Website, where you can look up the 200 most popular names for boys and girls in each decade from 1880 to 2000. Now that is informative and interesting. Notice how Adolf drops off the charts in the 1940's. I wonder why? You can also see what the most popular names are now, and avoid them like the plague. It's what I always do.

Nicknames.
We've turned out to be a nickname family:

Olivia is Livvie, Livver, Liviline, or Livva-B.

Hollis is The Boy, Hollis P, Hollis P-Jiggly-Dragon (from Liv when she was three), and Buttery (also coined by tiny Livvie).

Margaret is Maggie, Magna-Doodle, Magador, Maggie-Moo, and Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret.

Ivy is Ivy-Smacks, Ivaline, Poison Ivy, and Squeaker.

Lochlan is Loch (Lock), Tiny Boy, The Other Boy, or Boykin. When we're trying to work and he screams all day, we call him other things.

Now, about Margaret/Maggie. My grandma was Margaret. She DID NOT like to be called Maggie. All my family is sort of loyal to this, and calls our daughter Margaret. I don't. To me, Margaret is Grandma, and Maggie is my little girl, and that's okay with me. Don't haunt me for this, Grandma.

Inside Joke or Reference.
Sadly, I have done this to my child. Ivy is our fourth, and the Roman numeral for "four" is IV. So, Ivy. It's only a small joke and it's a real name, and it fits her perfectly, so I hope she won't hold that against us someday. I nearly named her Azalea instead.

As a hardcore nerd, I've also toyed with the idea of some obscure sci-fi name, or honoring a deceased scientist. I'm pretty sure some of our friends named their little boy Malcolm after the Captain Reynolds of Serenity on Firefly. And that's actually cool. I'd love to have an Albert(Einstein), a Herschel (astronomer), a Neils (physicist), Pascal, or a Darwin. No, Mom, I promise I won't name a kid Darwin.

Or Literary names. Sherlock, Mycroft, Fitzwilliam, Roland, Eleanor, Jane, Aragorn, Albus, Sirius, Bram, Arwen.

What about a name from a Beatles song? Julia, Eleanor, Sadie, Rita, Michelle, Lucy. I already know lots of ladies with those names, though.

Approved by Both Parents.
Let's just say that if I ever produce twin boys, they WILL be named Fred and George, no matter what Toby has to say about it. I'll be all, I CARRIED AND BIRTHED THEM AND THEY WILL BE NAMED WHAT I WANT. I will put my foot firmly down on that one. Besides, these are both family names, so there.

I have always loved Calvin and Hobbes, and our kids always look just like Calvin. You know, short little legs, crazy hair, and giant heads. Calvin is bright and busy boy who gets into a lot of trouble with his imagination. What could be a better name for a little boy? Unless, like Toby, you have a troubled uncle named Calvin, who everyone already thinks of when they hear the name. Let us not mention the pink-shorts-birthday-cake-picture that's burned onto everyone's brain. Oh, I did.

Other Considerations.
Have you ever noticed that some people ruin a name for you forever? I, for one, will never like the name Casey, or Mindy. However, I adore the names Louise and Nan and Wilma. Hmmm, I think there's a lesson there for us all. I wonder if anyone out there can't stand Jill because of me?

Obviously, Ronald is right out.

There are no words for this.

If you're friends with my mom on Facebook, you already know.

We're having McDonald #6 at the end of May.

It was SO not in my plans right now. I had successfully lost weight, to only two pounds more than what I weighed before I started having kids. I was over my bout of postpartum depression. Loch is in a trying and sickly phase. We now have three kids in school, and they have to be there EVERY DAY, preferably on time and dressed and prepared.

Our business is...busy-ness defined. Also, May? Along with October, it is the very craziest month for a Renaissance costumer. As in, I just shot my whole month of working a Renaissance festival with Michelle in the foot.

I've been pretty adamant with everyone that asks when we're planning for another one. NOT ANYTIME SOON. I delayed the announcement for two reasons: One, so as not to feel like such a dope that I was saying that so recently. Two, in hopes that I will be in less denial later. Not so much.

Seriously?

Anyway.

This past month has been horrible. Halloween customers wait for no sickness or fatigue. I have been one miffed zombie seamstress. Not sick enough to throw up, just ICKY all the time. This is definitely the worst pregnancy nausea I've experienced.

List of things that smell bad:

Kids
Perfume
Deodorant
Tide
Fabric Softener
Lotion
Shampoo
Ketchup
School Cafeteria
Cooking Chicken
Preheating the Oven (okay, we might need to clean it)
Farm debris
Our Van (a veritable encyclopedia of smells)
The Whole House
My Pillowcase
Dogs

The only thing that sounds good to me is comforting carb-based foods. Macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, bagels.... Heaven forbid we make something that has any sort of lingering funk to it. I actually tried to do a search on the internet for "foods that don't smell bad." Unsuccessfully, I might add.

Anyway, I don't want to spend the next several months feeling sorry for myself. So there's the whining portion finished.

Next week, we go to listen to the little interloper's heartbeat. He/She already has a nickname: Ender.

I know it's October when....

Toby and I brush the debris out of our bed at night before sleeping, since we haven't changed them in WAY too long.

There are piles of dirty dishes and laundry everywhere.

The kids watch too much TV.

We eat fast food. A lot.

I spend two hours lying in bed awake in the middle of the night, panicked that we didn't put the shoulder grommets in a pirate coat we shipped that day. (I asked Toby first thing this morning, we did put the grommets in, HURRAY!)

I close my eyes, and I see fabric going through my sewing machine.

The kids STILL don't remember that we NEVER bug mom when she's printing postage
labels. They have to learn the hard way.

I realize I haven't done more appearance-wise than brush my hair and teeth. Lucky to have done that, actually.

I find myself planning what I'm going to do in November, when I'll have a life again.

I will go into a thirty minute rant about how people should just PAY for things when they commit to buy, so we don't have to check it every day. Or they wait a week to pay for it, and can't understand why they don't have the item when they wanted it. It's because we don't ship until the item is paid. EASY!

Also, customers. We spend four hours a day answering your questions about when you'll get your items. That is four hours a day that could be spent getting them to you on time. You do the math.

We take piles of boxes taller than the kids to the post office.

I lust after having a secretary. I just need to sew, not know all the gory details. It's much less stressful that way.

I just ate two chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, with milk, so it's okay. Toby just informed me that he ate barbecue beef that sat out all night. MMMMMmmmm.... We are fancy this month.

In case you think I exaggerate, I assure you, my readers, that we are in fact more gross than this.

To October:

Warning: there are some scantily-clad military women gyrating at the end. But kudos for the Dr. Strangelove inspiration.




You will be the death of me.
Time is running out.
You will suck the life out of me.

That's how October feels to a professional costumer.


Muse: It's not just for baseball-playing vampires.

I Think That's a Good Thing....

On Sunday afternoon, I left Toby and the kids at his parents' house so I could spend the evening with my cousin Shannon and her new baby.

As I walked to the car, I noticed Ivy playing outside with the other kids. She was wearing only a very baggy pair of training pants, inside out, of course. What was that on her shoulder? Oh, a toad. On her shoulder, like a parrot. As I watched with horrified fascination, she plucked the amphibian from her shoulder, gazed lovingly into its beady little eyes, and KISSED IT.

It DID NOT turn into a prince. Before we could get to her and have a little talk about hygiene, she also attempted to breastfeed it.

Yes, we did have that talk, and we did wash her hands and face. That was one very well-loved baby toad.

Ivy has become obsessed with little stuffed animals. She calls them her babies and carries them around everywhere with her. The animals are always odd choices, though. Her favorites: two stuffed ostriches, a kiwi bird, and a very ugly lizard. She calls all the birds "my baby ducks." The lizard is "my baby yizzard." Oh, and she also has a plastic snake that is her baby snake.

Maybe she wants to make sure the ugly babies get love, too?

Brimstone and Derivatives

For some reason, fall always makes me feel like a bit of a loser. It's back to school time, and I miss going to school. I would have been a fairly happy lifetime student. I love books with a passion that should make Toby nervous.

Let's put it this way: when I have dreams at night about living in a big city, I dream of three things in particular: a huge library, many food wagons with street food, and junk stores full of low-priced awesome clothes and shoes in my size. Is that too much to ask? It's kind of my holy trinity of material wants.

On the flip side, I was a fairly lazy and procrastination-prone student, even in the subjects I loved most. I also have dreams that it's halfway through the semester, and I panic, realizing that there is a class that I haven't attended even one time. It's usually a math class.

Now, I was a physics major, with emphasis in Astronomy. I dearly love astrophysics, plus telling someone you're a physics student is a surefire way to intimidate them. The problem is, with professional physics comes insane math. I always loved science as a kid, but somehow managed to not pay much attention in math until high school. Not that I was a bad student, but I don't think that I had a rock-solid foundation of instinctual mathematics at my disposal.

If you ever want to meet some interesting people, hang out with physics or math professors. I had a Calculus teacher in Springfield who was also a preacher. The funny thing was, his lecture style was much like his sermon style must have been, just with different information being imparted to the listener. Have you ever imagined a sort of hellfire and damnation description of taking a derivative? I think I got saved during that class.

One physics professor had his office deep in the recesses of the science building, near his materials science laboratory. To get help with my classwork one day, I walked past about fifteen "NO SMOKING" signs and knocked on his door. As he was chainsmoking, and helping me with a velocity problem, I noticed a stack of about fifteen laptops in the corner. According to physics-student lounge legend, he just bought a new one each time his cigarette smoke clogged the old to death. We also speculated about how many gray pullover sweater vests he might own, since he wore one every single day. We always hoped it was more than one...

Another favorite calculus professor was of latin descent. Have you ever seen the Muppet movies? You know the shrimp who refers to himself as a king prawn? That is the exact same accent this math professor had. Now, complicated math has a whole language of its own, with terms like integration, sigma, derivative, tangent, asymptote, upper limit, and infinity. Many times, I glanced at another student and saw the expression that was surely on my own face: "What did he just say?" It was like hearing a text translated into French, and then into Hebrew.

Maybe I'll wait a few years before I think about going back. I bet I could borrow Livvie's notes.

How NOT to go camping with the McDonalds.

Pack four hours for a 24 hour getaway.
Wash and dry all your sleeping bags.
Discover that the cooler wasn't washed properly last time we used it.
Wash the death-smell out of the cooler.
Set tent up in yard, to see if it is still in one piece.  It is.
Realize an hour later that the wind blew said tent over and broke one of the fiberglass poles.
Toby fixes tent pole with a layer of duct tape, a layer of cable ties, and another layer of duct tape.
Leave three hours later than expected.
Realize the car is nearly out of gas, so stop to fill up, making everyone even later, if possible.
Drive for one hour, with kids asking when we'll be there.  How is this still annoying, having been asked so many times?
Try to find a cool spot in the nearly-empty campground.
Park in one, and realize that it's right next to a tiny cemetery.  Awesome!  No really, goth camping!
Realize that the super-cool goth spot is reserved.
Find another two campsites adjacent to one another.
Set up tent in the dark.
Make hamburgers.  With no salt.  Because we forgot that, too.
Enjoy salt-free hamburgers, because food always tastes better outdoors.
Walk a half-mile to the bathroom, where a giant hairy spider awaits.
Realize that we forgot the bag with sunblock, toothbrushes, and toiletries.
Figure out where kids all want to sleep.  Change arrangements a billion times.
Give up and go to bed at about ten thirty(crappy air mattress).
Enter possibly gay rednecks from nearby campsite.  With ZZ Top's Greatest (and Most Obnoxious) Hits.
Listen to them repeat the CD of the Apocalypse infinitely, while popping open many beers.
For about THREE HOURS.
Wish for death.
And again.
Cheer inwardly when Lynn finally asks them to turn down their music.
Sleep for fifteen minutes.
Thunderstorm.  No, really.
Get soaked when the rain cover blows off the tent.
Feed Loch in the car while Toby fixes it.
Wait to be struck by lightning.
Decide to die with the rest of the family,
Try to find one scrap of blanket to cover up with that isn't sopping wet.  There are none.
Feed Loch, try to sleep.  Try to lay him down.  Fail.  Repeat until sunrise.
Pass out for two hours, while everyone else makes/eats breakfast.
Bacon and sausage and pancakes do make the whole thing seem worth it.
Let kids play in the lake, about forty feet from our campsite.
Count to five, to make sure they haven't drowned.  Repeat every two minutes for the rest of the day.
Eat way too much food.  Jello salad:  not a salad.  But good, anyway.
Get into bathing suit.  Play in water with kids for a couple of hours.
Have legs nibbled painfully by stupid fish.
Try not to think about how many corpses have been dumped in lakes, historically.
Put sunblock on, trying to counteract farmer tan.  (Bad idea.  Now instead of brown and white, I'm brown and red).
Walk a half mile to the bathroom.
Drink a bee out of a can of Coke.
Play tag with campfire smoke and chair placement.
Walk a half mile to the bathroom.
Pack everything up again, discovering bag with sunblock and toothbrushes.  It took longer than that, but I'm tired of typing.
Go home, ignore the fact that I need to wash and dry the sleeping bags again.
Fall asleep at eight.
Promise with self never to go camping again.

You Win, Dad.

The Importance of Being Late.

Lately, I've been "discovering" things in the most tardy of fashions.  We don't have the TV hooked up to the antenna, or cable.  We mostly entertain ourselves with the wonders of the internet.  Netflix's "Watch Instantly" feature is a definite friend of mine.

We've spent many a happy hour working while watching "Sherlock Holmes" with Jeremy Brett, who I have an inexplicable old-man crush on.  If you haven't seen any of these, go out and find them immediately.  They are old-school PBS stuff in the best way possible.  I defy any Robert Downey Junior supporters.  Jeremy Brett is Sherlock all the way.

We also finally got around to watching "Firefly."  I'd seen the movie "Serenity" a few years ago, and liked it all right, but the show was great.  Now I want to see the movie again, except they kill off a main character that I didn't know I liked until seeing the show....It's a total shame that this series ran for only one season, and I know that all the rest of geekdom already got over it years ago.  It's still fresh for me, though.

It's kind of the same with music.  I have been so spoiled by MP3 players that listening to the radio is a real chore.  While working, we visit Pandora, Last FM, and Slacker a lot.  I also found Grooveshark recently, and it is awesome.

I'm discovering all these bands that have been around a few years, maybe even since I was in high school, and I completely missed them.  Coldplay and Radiohead fall into this category.  I'm also listening to the Killers a lot these days.

Sometimes, I love something for convoluted reasons.  I now adore the song "Total Eclipse of the Heart," after watching the masterfully done literal video version of it a dozen times.  I jumped on that bandwagon about twenty years late, because someone was making fun of the randomness of the video.

I always liked the fifties-ballad sounding dance song at the end of the movie "Twilight."  It seemed sweet and soft and delicate and I always wondered what the words were.  Go look them up for yourself.  It's awesome to me that what sounds like a cute little romantic dance song at the end of a girly movie has such dark, creepy words.  Now, guess how much more I love it?

One of my favorite bands to listen to these days:  OK GO.  It all started with this music video, which, considering my track record, you have all seen years ago.






Oh, heck.  That was done in all one continuous shot.  It took lots of engineers (the ones cheering at the end), and lots of takes.

But wait, there's more:  This is a different version of the same song, done marching band style.  Soo awesome.  For a former band geek, anyway.




How could I in good conscience not love this band?  I even like the music.

Spectacles.

They've got my astigmatism.

But aren't they cute in glasses?

 (My apologies for the flash-glare.  We were in a hurry to post pictures...)

A Day in the Life.

Being self-employed from home allows for moments like these.  I have a whole file full of kids with the mannequin.

Ivy likes helping Dad make sure the sleeves look all right in the pictures.

One Last Fling

Bass Pro:  where it's free to straddle and otherwise mildly abuse all manner of expensive outdoor equipment.  At least, no one told us to leave.

Two parents, five kids, and two strollers can have a pretty decent time.

Mustache!

This word always makes me laugh.  It's probably some kind of character deficit.

Now go check out the Library of Congress Photostream on Flickr .  One of the tags is "Mustache." Another one is "Moustache."  They have great vintage pictures of random old men with both mustaches and moustaches.  So awesome.

Oh, historical mustache pictures, how I love thee!

Different Worlds

There was a bit of an altercation today in the sewing room.  I was working and talking to Toby, and Olivia was coating the ends of the boning for me.  She calmly said to me:

"Mom, did you know you have a spider on your back?"

People who have no phobias don't understand that it doesn't give you enough time for rational thought, or a decision-making process.  I didn't say to myself, hey, let's ride this one out and see how HUGE that spider on my back might be.   No.  HECK NO!

I brushed my back frantically, then whipped my shirt off.  Sweet, huh?  Very cool.  Then Toby said I should have stood still and let him get it off me.  The problem is, I have no idea if we were talking about a little harmless spider or one like in this post.

Let's just say my knee-jerk reaction wasn't going to let me stick around to find out.  Huzzah for an impromptu strip-tease to break up the monotony of the workday, though.

Total Eclipse.

No, not Twilight or Bonnie Tyler related.  I was reading a kids' book called "The Moon Book" at bedtime the other night.  It has facts like how big our Moon is, how it might have formed, how far from Earth it is, and so on.

When we got to the section on Solar and Lunar eclipses, I told them when the next solar eclipse would be visible from our area (I was wrong, by the way.  I thought it was 2027, but there are solar eclipses expected in 2017, then 2024 and 2045).  See this NASA map for details. 

Anyway, we were thinking it was in seventeen years, not seven.  Then we started wondering how old we'd all be by then:

Toby and I will be 48.
Olivia will be 27.
Hollis,  24, the age I was when he was born.
Maggie will be 22, Ivy will be 20, and even Lochlan will be 18.

I spend a lot of time wishing the kids were more independent, and able to do things for themselves.  I wish Loch would not need to be carried all the time to be happy.  I get so tired of the constant cleaning and tending and wiping and fixing that five kids require.

Oh, what a difference seventeen years would make.  Will they all be gone from us by then?  I am not ready for that.

It's so hard to enjoy some aspects of parenting in the moment, because there is always so much to be done, and it's overwhelming most of the time.   Here's to having fun with the kids a little every day, not just waiting for when I have time.  Because I never will have time, if I do it that way.

On the other hand, children are a huge compensation for the dreaded march of time.   If we didn't get older, I'd never get to see what kind of people these kids will be.  Maybe it's crazy or egotistical, but I think they will be interesting adults, and I hope that we all still want to hang out with each other as much as possible.  

Tonight, we're taking them fishing.  Because childhood is short, but parenting is forever.

I Write Like....

Depends on the post, it seems.

Country Road, Take Me Home
According to the site I Write Like, this entry most resembles the fine works of Stephanie Meyer.  I'm a bit miffed.  There is only one hot guy, and no whiny girl.  Oh, wait.   Crap!


Let's try another, shall we?
 Not For Arachnophobes
James Joyce



 Playing In The Creek
 Cory Doctorow


Family Time
Stephen King

What the.....?  Apparently, not only do I have blogger multiple personalities, but when I set out to write a nice little story about my family singing gospel songs, I sound like the King of Horror himself!

Don't hate me, English Majors, but I'm off to refresh myself on James Joyce, because I'm a bit fuzzy, and to check out that Doctorow person.

Curious about which writer your work most resembles?

Check it out!   Link above, I'm lazy!  Be sure to read the description of how it works.

Country Road, Take Me Home.

Tonight, I was driving the back roads, picking Liv up from a girls' fishing activity for church.  I passed a little red-dirt road named Raven, and was lost in memory.

Senior year, my Chemistry teacher nominated me for some science-y award at the local junior college.  I don't remember why I was driving myself, as I rarely did so, but I was in my Grandpa's car.  I have pictures somewhere of that evening, smiling next to Mrs. Gillispie, me with crazy hair and a tie-dyed button-up shirt that was about six sizes too big.

When the ceremonies were over, I drove home.   I'd always loved knowing my way around the back roads of the area, having been driven over them most of my life.  If I didn't know where a road came out, I'd give it a try and then drive until I knew where I was again.  So, I didn't take the main highway home, but instead chose take a shortcut that was more scenic.

Oh, Raven!  What a cool name for a road.  I wondered where it came out at the other end.   I'd headed home sooner than I'd expected, it wasn't dark yet, and I thought I'd check it out.

The road started fairly respectably, but soon narrowed to two graveled ruts with thick grass growing between them.  Even worse, we'd had rain recently, and the road was increasingly sloppy and muddy.

You know that feeling, when you start to realize you've made a terrible mistake?  And then you think you'll just keep going, because it'll probably get better in just a bit?  Yeah.

Soon, the mud gave way to monstrous puddles, and the car was stuck.  I'm talking REALLY stuck, in water that was coming into the floorboards a little.  Pa-Pa always took good care of his car, he even kept it in a garage with a cover on it.  Now I'd gone and mired it in the middle of nowhere, and I was starting to panic.  No one knew where I was, and would think to look for me in this place.  I was all alone, and not many people had cell phones at the time.  Oh, crap.

So I did what I could.  I carried my shoes and waded to the edge of the puddle.  I didn't remember any friendly seeming houses for a good while back the way I'd come in, so I kept going the way I was headed.  The strappy sandals I'd bought for Prom were not built for walking and I ended up carrying them.

Finally, an intersection.  I knew where I was!  I made it to my friend Ann's house, and shyly knocked on the door.  I will never forget how nice they all were to me, and be grateful all the rest of my days.  But wait, there's more.

Ann's Dad took us back with his tractor, to pull the car free.  Apparently, the desolate-looking road had been noticed by other dumb teenagers, and deemed the perfect drunken-fighting-fornicating party location.  We had to cross through all of them to get the car out.  The atmosphere was just, for lack of a better term, evil.

At last, we were free!  I thanked my rescuers profusely, and headed home.  I'd neglected to call my family because I was distracted about getting the car, and probably delaying the retribution as long as possible.  And, oh, there was retribution!  Mom was starting to worry that I'd eloped with Toby.  It was not a happy evening at home that night.  And Pa-Pa's car always smelled a little bit funny after that night, too.

For a Nerd....

...there's nothing out there cooler than this video.  He looks like an 80's steampunk Alton Brown.

Enjoy!



She Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby

Not for Arachnophobes.

This was in my bedroom.  IN. MY. BEDROOM.

Please don't hold me responsible for jitters, heeby-jeebies, freak-outs, strong men weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, incontinence, girly screaming, etc....

I warned you.

A Whole Lotta Crap in One Post.

We're still recovering from our trip to Utah.  It's strange that even if it's somewhere you want to go, with people you want to see, trips are stressful and exhausting.  Especially with five kids in tow.

On the way there, we were stuck in a huge traffic jam for three hours in Denver, Colorado.  Toby had been asleep next to Ivy, until she peed on him, which is why he isn't wearing a shirt.  I don't know why he's showing off his biceps, but it seems like he does it a lot.

Maybe he's shaking his fist at the cars blocking our way to Utah.  I don't remember.  I DO remember that Olivia stayed awake and talked the whole night.  We are both masochists and cheap, so we try to drive straight through.  I've personally been training for the last eleven years to handle sleeplessness.

The kids were all mostly happy to see each other.  Maggie and Brynn are the best of little girly-princess friends about 95 percent of the time.  Ivy and Todd, are best of hooligan-mayhem friends 50 percent of the time.  Hollis and Olivia did a lot of packing Lochlan around while Toby and I tried to work. 

We haven't seen Dana and Josh and Corinne for WAAAY too long.  Late one night, we ran out to an all-night grocery store and giggled like teenagers while we all bought snacks.  Back at Michelle's, we watched a Rifftrax short called "Shake Hands With Danger."  Oh, good times.  Corinne, I'll be your kitchen wing-man any day.

Ivy modeled the latest in fashionable shark headwear.

We made a required trip to IKEA.   I had to get a picture of the fake buttocks assaulting a chair repeatedly to prove how durable it is.  The chair, I mean.

 
We visited Temple Square with Michelle and Tyler and all our collective kids.  I tried hard to feel the spirit and not just to notice the mullets and stonewashed jeans in the old-school church videos.  All joking aside, it is a beautiful place.

 We even managed to make it home with our little camera, in spite of the fact that Todd found it and used it.

And, shortly following our return, this little guy turned one.  Happy Birthday to Loch.

Not sparkly.

I found some old photos at my mom's house recently and just had to overshare.  The first two are from October 1996, I think.  Toby and I had been dating about six months.  I had latent goth/hippie/punk tendencies.  He had definite surfer/hippie leanings. Don't we look cool?  I'm talking as cool as two senior band students can get.


And this was October a year later.  We'd both graduated and were engaged to be married in January.  I was going to college in Springfield, and Toby was probably still living at home.  You can see that my goth tendencies came to a head at this time.  I inflicted white makeup and my polyester polka dotted shirt onto my betrothed.

You're welcome. 

This is how Edward should have looked, if he'd had a sense of humor.  

Playing in the Creek.

It's been a wet, rainy spring, so our "Sometimes Creek" has been running a lot lately.  We've all had a good time trekking down the hill and around the "Usually Not Pond" to get there.  In the above pics, you can see from one end of where the creek hits our property to another.  It's got steep tree-lined banks, so great for my pale family to avoid sunblock.




 Maggie and Ivy can play in the parts where the water is shallow and fast.

Livvie and Hollis love the place next to the big sycamore tree, where it's about three feet deep so they can paddle about a bit.  You can see the sycamore tree in the top picture.  It sticks out into the water more than any other tree out there, and has a great gnarly root system.

Hollis and Ivy claimed to have spotted a snake last time.  How big was it?  And why are we so happy about it?

Those who know Lochlan know that he's a clingy little guy who mostly loves to be held at all times.  I kid not when I say that he will sit for an HOUR and toss rocks into the creek.  BY HIMSELF.  He'll pick up a rock and make a questioning "Hmmmm?"  Then he'll toss it in with a decisive "Hmmmmm!"



Toby and I were actually there, too.

Okay, Toby started goofing off when I shot these...I call these poses, from left to right, "The Gun Show," "The Underwear Model," and "Napoleon."  Fun, right?