Poor Wachel

Let me give you a little background here. A couple months ago I hadn't run in like 7 years. Then I came to visit my parents, and all 4 of my siblings & father ran races (some a marathon, others a 3 mile) that weekend. So I decided I should take up running again.

I got into a really good routine in Utah. MWF I would run with Molly while pushing my jogging stroller with Katy in it while David & Ryan rode their bikes. We started out going about 1.5 miles total (I walk the first & last 1/4 mile), and increased gradually to almost 2 miles total. Then TThS we would walk 3 miles with my friend Gayelinn. I was totally comfortable running around the neighborhood with the whole gang because we had sidewalks everywhere and big straight places where I could see the kids when they went ahead.

We've been staying with my parents for 3 weeks now, and I'm still trying to find my groove. The kids don't have their bikes & I only have a regular stroller (not my jogger), and I wouldn't know where to go with them anyways. So I've been running on the treadmill, which has gone pretty well. I like knowing how fast I'm going, and letting the kids just play next to me. The only problem - and it's a pretty big one - is that Molly doesn't get exercised. And that big black dog has so much energy, she can't afford to not get some of that energy out! My mom has taken both Molly & Sadie a couple times, but it's pretty hard to do.

I've also been concerned about knowing my distance, which is a part of the reason I hadn't gone for a non-treadmill run yet. My mom recommended running by time rather than distance, and I decided that that'll be a good solution. That way I can just increase a minute or two every week or so.

So today I left the kids with my mom & drove to the Soos Creek Trail to run on with Molly. So I warmed up by walking for 5 minutes, then started jogging. My plan was to jog for 5 minutes, then turn around and jog back for 5 minutes, then walk the rest of the way to the car. But only a minute or two after I started jogging I saw a .5 mile marker. So I thought I'd probably make it to the 1.0 mile marker around 5 or 6 minutes, then I'd turn around there instead.

It got to be 6 minutes and I was looking for the mile marker. And suddenly, I was on the ground! My big black pup had run right in front of me with no warning, and I tripped over her! And somehow, I managed to simultaneously scrape up my shoulder, elbow (how do you do both of those?), both knees, and the palm of my hand. And my cell phone. Rude Molly! I was doing this run for her, and she got me lots of owies!

It's hard to take a picture of your elbow.
This doesn't look too bad, but it was stinging so bad! I like having my skin, and now it's missing!
This is my knee, in case you can't tell. The scrape stings, the bruise hurts. Ow.

Poor, poor Wachel.

Twilight!

(no spoilers, don't worry!)

First of all I have to say that I love love love love LOVE the Twilight books.  I read the first 3 last October in about a week.  Then I bought them for myself for Christmas, and read them again a short while later.  Then I reread those three in preparation for Breaking Dawn coming out.  And I read Twilight for the fourth time in preparation for the moving coming out.  And every time I read them again, I keep thinking that since I already know the story I'll be able to casually read them in my spare time.  Wrong!  Every time I read them, I get sucked in, unable to do anything else besides the bare minimum to keep myself & my children alive.  And I am not unique in my love & obsession for these books!  When Breaking Dawn came out, pretty much every woman in my neighborhood was reading it & talking about it for quite a while following the release!

So I went to the movie with high hopes.  I went to the midnight showing, for crying out loud!  I don't think I've stayed up that late other than a handful of times in my brief unmarried college student life, >7 years ago!  I was very, very, very excited!  I get in trouble with Dan for expecting a movie-based-on-a-book to be too exactly like the book.  His explanation is that "they are different tellings of the same story."  I tried to go to Twilight with an open mind about it.  But I know the book so well, and remember so many details about it, so every time the movie wasn't quite on, it jumped out at me!  So as I noticed so many differences between the book & the movie, I tried to look at the reason for the difference.

Some differences I totally understand.  You just can't fit every detail in a movie & still keep it a reasonable length.  Things that were omitted or altered for that reason I grudgingly allowed.

Some things are changed to make more exciting for a movie.  I'm not sure how I feel about those.  I don't want to put any details at all in my post, so I'll have to just be vague about it.  But there are defintely some things that were altered just for entertainment factor.  I guess I can see why they might do those.  But come on, the book has clearly done well without them!  And your biggest audience is going to be people that love the book, so why change it from what they know the story to be?

The smallest differences were the most irritating to me.  When Stephenie Meyer describes what they're wearing, for example, THEY SHOULD BE WEARING IT IN THE MOVIE!  When she describes the color of walls, THEY SHOULD BE THAT COLOR!  The reason those things were SO SO SO irritating to me is that they're pointless!  They need to wear clothes, why can't they wear what the author said they're wearing?  I don't get it.  Either the costume person didn't know what the book has them wearing, and is stupid & ignorant (read the book, duh!).  Or the costume person knew what they were wearing in the book and thought that he/she could choose better, and is incredibly self centered.  Either way, it's really irritating that they couldn't follow the book on those small little details!

I guess the differences are my main complaint about the movie, becuase the book was so good that the movie should be just exactly like it!  My other complaint is the acting.  There were a lot of times that lines weren't delivered very well (and not just because it wasn't how I imagined!).  And there were lots of times that the characters' behavior wasn't as subtle as it should have been.  Maybe they thought we're all stupid and couldn't understand things unless it was overacted.  Or maybe they're just bad actors.

Overall, I just don't think they did a good job capturing the feel of Twilight.  They had the story line (sometimes mixed up), but Twilight is so much more than that.  Something about it makes grown women neglect their home & family to lose themselves in the world of Forks.  They didn't make that happen for me. I'm disappointed, because it's not like they can just try again to make it better. It just didn't turn out that great, too bad. Hopefully they'll do a better job on New Moon.

I will go see it again with my mom & sisters, though, and I'll try to have lower expectations this time.

proof that girls are different than boys

You know how they say that boys will turn anything into a gun (or sword), even if you don't allow them in your house? I have certainly seen that, even though the boys mostly play with blocks & watch PBS or Playhouse Disney (so they aren't exposed to that kind of thing). Well, apparently the same is true for girls & girly things. This morning Katy found this slightly damp rag on the floor of the hallway (Why was it there? Mom? Do you know?). And immediately picked it up, found her baby, and tried to wrap the baby up in the dirty rag! I asked her if it was the baby's blanky, and she said "yes!" I don't think she's ever had a blanky for her doll, what made her think of it? She just knows that babies like blankies I guess!

I took the dirty rag from her & put it on the washing machine, then went and found a fairly small blanky in the toy closet. I swaddled her baby up in it, which made her very happy! She lovingly cradled it in her arms, then resumed playing with her baby in tow. We girls just love babies!

See Honey, when I feel the illogical urge to have another baby even with 3 naughty kids, it isn't my fault! It's in my DNA! Oh, and maybe it would help if we didn't make such adorable offspring!

Mean Molars!

Poor Katy is having a hard time getting her molars through. As a result she (and therefore, I also) have not slept well lately. Right now she has one about 1/2 way broken through the surface, one about 3/4 of the way, one that feels right about to break through, and one that still just feels like a bulge that'll come through eventually. I don't know which one bothers her the most, but the poor thing is definitely in pain! I was just feeling around in her little mouth, and I had my finger on the side with neither tooth actually through the surface. She started biting down a little bit, and I guess she decided that it felt good, and bit down really hard! I was trying to get her to sleep, but I said "Ow!" a bit too loud when she did that! Poor little Goo still hasn't fallen asleep (about an hour after putting her down). And if the past couple nights are any indication, it may be a while...

what's going on in that cute little head?

I love it when my little ones do things that give me a glimpse into their minds. In this case, Katy is showing me that she is not yet confined by ideas of how things "should" be. She still gets to think of things all on her own. Maybe that's more insight than is deserved, maybe she's just a silly baby!

Here Katy is, playing with her toy kitchen. To the left of it you can see a big container of toy food & dishes. If I was playing with it, I would choose THOSE things to put in it...

...not Katy! In the dishwasher basket she has a daisy from the backyard, a duplo car, and some foam that somebody (most likely Katy or Molly) pulled out of a chair. Silly girl!

Blog Catch-up: Cornbelly's!

Here's another blog catch-up. This one is from 2 weeks ago, October 28th. I had gone to Cornbelly's once already, and had such a great time, we decided to go again! This time we went with my friend Gayelinn & her kids. In fact, we did activities together pretty much every day during our last two weeks in Utah, so a lot of these blog catch-ups will include them!
Here's David & Britner driving the little pedal cars. So fun!

Ring around the Rosies with Rachel, Katy, and Kyson on the jumping pillow. If you look hard you can see Katy's big smile!

The Mechams are much better than I am about remembering to bring a water bottle everywhere they go. And Katy always wants a drink. It's really, really amazing that we didn't all get sick a few days after this outing, since everybody shared germs! Kyson & Katy sometimes had a hard time sharing, but here he was just being super nice, giving Katy a drink!

Then Kyson joined Katy in the wagon. Good friends!

Here we are on the hay ride. Gayelinn, Kyson, and Mistelle are on this side...

...and David, Britner, Ryan, Katy, and me are on the other side. I couldn't figure out how to remove red eyes on my parents' computer, sorry!

This was a really, really fun day. We left straight from school, and didn't make it home until really, really late (I think it was after 10!). I'm so glad we went!

Brotherly Love

This is the sight I saw when I went to check on David getting dressed. Both boys always make their beds with their Lovey on their pillow, like this. However, the pillows & Loveys are usually in separate beds! I asked why Ryan's pillow was in his bed, and he said Ryan had slept with him. I think I forgot to check on them before going to bed last night, so I have no idea when that happened! Here is the information I've gathered from talking to them:

Ryan got in bed with David sometime after David was asleep. I asked Ryan if it was in the morning or the middle of the night, and he said the side of the night. Who knows what that means? David said that he didn't wake up when Ryan came to his bed, he was just surprised when he woke up in the morning.

Ryan actually slept in David's bed. Or at least he said so.

They are both happy about it, for the time being! If David hadn't liked Ryan in his bed, he would have moved his pillow back when he was making his bed. And I asked Ryan why he had done that, and he said "Because I love him!" So cute!

These 2 boys fight a lot, but sometimes I get a glimpse of how much they really care about each other. It sure warms my heart!

Blog Catch-up: Happy Halloween!

I haven't uploaded pictures in a while, so I'm quite behind on blogging. I'm going to try and spread it out so as not to overwhelm anyone who reads our blog (does anybody?). And I'm doing it backwards, starting with the most recent thing I need to blog about. That way I'm not trying to do a whole bunch to get up to date, I'll just put them there when I get a chance!

Wouldn't it have been cute if I'd posted these on Halloween? No such luck. But here they are now! Here are our cute jack-o-lanterns. The one on the left is Ryan's - he wanted big oval eyes & lots of teeth. I told him I wouldn't do lots of teeth, but I'd do a few. I did 3 on the bottom & 2 on top. Then the 5 days between carving & Halloween made the top two go away somehow. Go figure. David's is the middle pumpkin. He wanted square eyes, and he drew this cute mouth. The right one is Katy's, I designed it after a cute "squinty eyes" face she does! See, you can see her 8 front teeth!



Once again I was able to convince my boys to be what I wanted them to be for Halloween. I couldn't find any boy costumes that I liked, so I made the Peter Pan & Captain Hook costumes. I bought the Tinker Bell though, I wasn't that ambitious!

Say "CHEESE!"

Katy loves flowers. Whenever we went outside at our house, she immediately ran for the flower bed, and started filling her little fists with flower petals. Tonight we were outside playing fetch with the dogs (well, fetch with Molly, Sadie ran around barking at her), and Katy loaded her arms with leaves! I thought it was cute that she found something else to "collect" now that flowers aren't as available! So I went and got the camera. I told her to say "cheese," and she actually did! So I switched it to movie, and she did it again! Cute!

The things that are stressing me

This post is going to be a big ol' get stuff off my chest post, way more for my benefit than anybody else. Please indulge me in my ranting.

As pretty much anybody I've had any contact with in the last month knows, we are in a limbo period right now with Dan working at a new job in Portland, the kids & me living with my parents in Washington, and our house sitting around Utah, trying to get sold. In typical Rachel fashion, the more stress I feel, the more likely I am to sit around doing nothing productive & eating lots of junk. Not a good state to be in less than a week after Halloween! I'm hoping that putting my thoughts into words will maybe help me deal with it in a more productive manner, helping save me from eating myself to obesity!

To start with, I really miss my Danny Love. He started his trip to Portland 19 days ago, and I've only seen him 2 days since then. And it was over last weekend as we were working frantically to pack & clean, so we haven't had any quality, leisure time in 3 weeks. I miss it! Even if we spend too much of our time together just sitting together in front of the boob tube, at least we are together! I'm glad we get to see each other for weekends, but I don't know how long I can last with just that much!

Then there are the dogs. Our 7 month old Lab puppy & my parents 4 year old Sheltie are having a hard time getting along. And I have to say, it's about 90% Sadie. Molly occasionally barks back at her when Sadie gets mad that Molly has food, but Sadie growls and shows her teeth to Molly pretty much every time she comes near her! And she tries to take any food Molly has. Oh, tonight I gave each dog a pork flavored pressed rawhide bone, and Sadie just left hers sitting there while Molly chewed on hers a whole bunch. Now Sadie's is still just sitting there, and Sadie is chewing on Molly's! I suppose there's a chance that it's easier to chew on now that Molly has done part of it, but I think it's more of a show of dominance! Look at me, I'm chewing on your bone! Rude! I really love both dogs, and I really want them to be buddies. And I don't want my dog's presence to make our stay here harder on my parents. Just be nice doggies!

And the kids. Well, specifically the boys. I don't know if they're showing their stress about the whole relocation situation or what, but they have been so naughty lately! It's been a little while since I've done a reward system, and I get so sick of putting them on time outs. So it seems like I'm constantly just talking at them, reminding them that their behavior isn't appropriate, and they don't even seem to notice. I guess I need to figure out a new reward system, but just the thought of working on something like that wears me out. Anyone with something that's worked for them is welcome to share!

It makes me sad that Katy cries when Grandpa comes in the room. But tonight she actually gave him a goodbye hug, so maybe she's warming up to him. That would sure be nice!

I still haven't cleaned out the car since our road trip because it's been really rainy. It's really bad.

I'm so worn out from the month of packing & cleaning that I just want to sit around. And being back at my parents' house probably makes me feel like I should just let my mommy take care of me. I don't consciously think that, but maybe that's part of it. So I haven't done laundry yet, and my kids have left messes in pretty much every room of the house. Katy is particularly bad, especially with all the things that are at her level here that wouldn't be at my house. I don't know how much to Katy proof, how much to try and teach her not to touch (she is 17 months old, not very obedient yet!), and how much to just resign myself to cleaning up 10 times a day. I want to help with cooking & cleaning & whatnot, but just not yet. I think that makes my parents nervous though! I know I'm slacking, I just need a bit of a break! Then I'll help more!

Oh, and I try not to think about it, but a major stressor is selling our house! I'm not very impressed with our agent. He was the first one to call me after I put my house up FSBO, and he had a great sales pitch. Apparently that's what he spends his time on instead of selling the house! Our contract with him is up January 11th, I will get a new agent that very day if he hasn't sold it yet!

That's all for now. Thanks.

Altoids

It occured to me recently that I miss Altoids. None of you knew me when I was a teenager, but I used to power down on these badboys like candy. I had the best breath ever...and you could tell from ten feet away. So, the nice thing about my new job is that I am downtown and near...everything actually. 25 seconds away is a freaking convenince store for crying out loud. Anyways...since we are back in the pacific time zone I will go back to being awesome and eating unreasonable amounts of the curiously strong mints. Its gonna be sweet. This post is moslty just a warning to Rachel that I may start brushing my teeth less as there is no need...right?

First Day of School, Take Two!

Well, since we have no idea if we will be here for a short or long stay here in Washington, I enrolled David at Meridian Elementary! I went there for 5th & 6th grades, and all 4 of my siblings have been there as well. In fact, Hannah was there only 2.5 years ago! We missed the bus on our first day (I was planning on driving him, then changed my mind at the last second, apparently a bit too late!), so I got to drive him and wait with him for class to start. I asked what he was nervous about, and he said "nothing!" I asked what he was excited about, and he said "the whole school!" So hopefully he's having a great day!

"Hey, he's not in our class!"

"I'm the new kid!"

There are only 12 kids in his class, can you believe it? His class in Utah was about twice that, and it was quite a bit smaller than the morning classes!

David's first day of school at Meridian!

David's first day of school at Meridian!

Still Alive!

After a couple weeks of trying to pack all our earthly belongings (some for an indefinite stay in WA, the rest to put in the garage until the house sells), trying to get my house perfectly beautifully clean, and trying to enjoy our last bit of time in UT doing all our favorite activities one last time, we have finally made it to WA! If I ever get around to it, I have lots of things to blog about - we went to the Planetarium, Dinosaur Museum, Farm Country, Cornbellys (twice!), Kangaroo Zoo, and Discovery Park. Then we had the most exciting adventure of all - a nice long car ride (15.5 hours from driveway to driveway, including stops), complete with dog & cat! I can't complain about anything but my lack of preparation - the kids were pretty close to perfect, the animals were really good (except for Molly occasionally thinking she should sit on my lap...), it was just a really loooong day, which would've been easier to handle if we had left earlier & gotten a better night's sleep the night before. But we made it! Yay!

Farwell to Keaghan

Today my good friend Joey and his soon to be wife came over to bid us adieu. This picture is David and Ryan with joeys oldest kid, Keaghan. They have been friends since they turned 4...so David is pretty sad about the whole thing.

I'm glad they got to see each one last time

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