A Game of Tag

I was tagged by Jill !

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4 Jobs I've had:

Newspaper carrier: It was back in the days of after school routes, not an early morning route. My first paper route was in a residential area, covering a couple of streets. My second route was inside 2 neighboring apartment buildings, so I just had to leave the stack of papers outside the elevator on each floor, and walk down the hallways dropping papers outside the apartment doors.

Cleaner: I cleaned the public areas of one of the apartement buildings where I delivered newspapers. Laundry rooms, rec-rooms, hallways, exterior glass doors, and one bathroom (ick).

Receptionist: At my dad's office during the summer. Whenever a secretary went on holidays, the receptionist would take her position and I'd work in reception. This was a major upgrade from cleaner.

Dental Hygienist: I'm back to being a cleaner again. I work 1 day per week, and I enjoy it, although I did have the most discusting patient of my 16 year career just last week (ick).



4 Places I've lived: Ha! I've only lived in 3 cities!


Edmonton, Alberta: I was born here, stayed till I was 2 1/2.

Calgary, Alberta: I spent my preschool years here.

Lethbridge, Alberta: Kindergarten through 12th grade.

Edmonton, Alberta: For college. Met my husband there.

Calgary, Alberta: My home for the last 15 years.



4 Favorite TV shows: Very difficult to answer during the off season. Hmmmm . . .


The Office

House

Heros

30 Rock, maybe



4 Favorite foods:


Fish Tacos: Amy's recipe from the bloggers summer cookbook.

Granola with yogurt and berries

Milano cookies: I have to import these - not sold in Canada.

Sugar snap peas



4 Websites I frequent: (besides all your blogs)


lds.org

shutterfly.com

The Weather Network

Buy/Sell Classifieds



4 Places I'd rather be right now:


Heading to Utah: in time for the blogger's reunion.

In a clean house: so where I actually am, only better.

Down in Fish Creek Park: It's cooler than my street even though it's only a few blocks away.

Writing-on-stone: if I'm gonna be hot, might as well be having fun.



4 Movies I love: I do like movies, but I dont' dwell on them. Another tough one for me.


Emma

Cast Away

Phantom of the Opera

Tuck Everlasting



4 Bloggers I tag next:


Kelly

RGLHM

Marie

Mandy

Invention has a sister

Necessity is the mother of Invention . . . and Creativity. Somehow all three of them are related to Desperation, whom I've met more than once.

At the end of June, right in the thick of everything going on with the end of school, Carmen was invited to a birthday party for twin girls in her grade. I bought the webkinz gifts in advance, but they didn't get wrapped until 5 minutes before it was time to go out the door to pick up Carmen from school and take her straight to the party. I opened my under bed storage box where I keep wrapping supplies, stuffed the gift bags, grabbed a pen, but no! Not a gift tag left in the wrapping supplies, and no time to make up any tags. I just about ran out the door with the gifts unlabeled, ready to tell Carmen that she'd just have to identify which gifts were from her verbally, when I spotted some stray birthday balloons in the wrapping supplies. I wrote the to and from on the backs of the balloons and attached them to the gift bags and invented my favorite new gift wrapping accessory: Balloon gift tags.

The balloons may get tossed with all the other wrappings, but maybe there is some nice mom out there who doesn't throw things away and would let these balloons be blown up. The hand written message fades when the balloon expands, but it's still legible.

Saskatoon Berry Pie

We had a cool night last night, and when I woke up today and went down to the kitchen the tile floor was actually cold from the windows being open all night. To celebrate the cool kitchen I baked Saskatoon Berry Pie early this morning. We went over to a friend's house for lunch and took the pie with us, which in hindsight was risky considering I've never eaten let alone made a Saskatoon Berry Pie before. Even worse, when I brought it in with me to my friend's house she said, "Yumm, we love Saskatoon Berry Pie!"

Well, the pie was delicious, and very unique. The berries stayed firm and held their shape in the pie, and there was a distinct taste of almond flavoring, which, since the filling was just berries, flour, sugar, cornstarch, and butter, must have come from the berries! Interesting, because I didn't pick up any almond extract flavor in the raw berries at all.

I'm going to have to head back to the Saskatoon farm and load up on my new favorite fruit. Lucy commented in my Divide and Conquer post that Saskatoons might make a good syrop, and I'm going to follow through on that idea. I'm going to need buckets and buckets.

Divide and Conquer

Yesterday Jaclyn got a job babysitting one of Chloe's friends for the day, so she brought Chloe along - fun for Chloe, easier for Jaclyn. That left me with just 2 kids at home, which felt like a real opportunity for me to parent on a smaller scale. I spent a little bit of time with both Carmen and Steven going through their Faith in God booklets. Carmen set a goal in Living and Learning the Gospel to read the entire August issue of the Friend Magazine. Steven is done working on all the goals he can until after he turns 11 and can begin the last goal section of the booklet so he and I worked on memorizing The Articles of Faith. I showed Steven the scripture memorization tool on Jill's blog, and I think it will be a good help to finish off the memorizing requirement for the Faith in God Award.

Later in the afternoon the three of us headed out to The Saskatoon Farm. I've always been curious to check it out, and then I missed out on a chance to go there with some ladies in June which made me want to see it all the more.

I cracked up when I saw the sign at the entrance to the farm. Why would they want a berry farm to look like it's in the badlands?

We grabbed our buckets and started picking. Carmen gave a running monologue of her observations on the berries as she picked them.

Steven was a very picky picker. He wanted only the best, most juicy, and perfectly ripe berries possible.

Have you ever tasted a Saskatoon berry? They're just a little smaller and firmer than a blueberry and not quite as sweet.

But they turn your hands purple just like blueberries!

I now know that my arms aren't long enough for a 3 person self portrait. I kind of wish I'd caught Carmen's full facial expression on this one, though. The sunlight was distressingly bright.

Carmen and I did another SPT for just the 2 of us.

The kids were DONE at just a half a bucket, but luckily the farm only charged us half instead of making us pay for a full bucket. I think this is enough berries for a pie.

We headed in to the Saskatoon Saloon to find something to cool us off.

We totally scored with the Saskatoon ripple ice cream - it was as good as Carmen was trying to make it look.

SPT Computer Geek

I've been a very content computer geek with my blog, but the SPT Challenge this week motivated me to learn something new. I decided to try out a mini website that I could embed into my blog by Leafletter.

So check out the family reunion pictures organized by Leafletter in my post below, and then come back here to comment. If you double click on one of the small squares in the first page it will take you to a new page of pictures except for the last square which will only take you to an empty grid. I tried a couple of times to fix that last page, but I couldn't get it.

Guess I'm not enough of a computer geek yet.

Leafletter Attempt

Sunday Best

In the summertime I am struck by difference between the way the young men in my ward (congregation) and the young women in my ward dress. The young men are administering the sacrament so they have on dress pants, a white shirt, and a tie. On any given Sunday there will be a young woman there in a denim skirt, a t-shirt and flip flops. I don't like to talk about the casual dress of some of the young women in our meetings on Sunday, because I don't want to embarrass anyone. Even when I do say something it doesn't seem to have an impact the next week in how the young women are dressed. Just to be clear: I am not talking about young women who have no other clothing option or who's 'Sunday best' really is a graphic T.

This Tuesday we went to a lake for our mutual activity, so I took the opportunity to talk to the young women about their footwear at church. I asked them what they would do if they were going on a date and had dressed casually, but the boy came to pick them up and he was all dressed up. They agreed that they would ask him to wait while they changed into something more dressy. I then pointed out how the young men are totally out dressing the young women at our Sunday meetings. I think they got the connection. Then I told them that the flip flops they were wearing to go the lake were great for going to the lake, but not for going to church.

I handed out flip flop keychains with a quote from the November 2005 general conference:

"We used to speak of 'best dress' or 'Sunday dress,' and maybe we should do so again. In any case, from ancient times to modern we have always been invited to present our best selves inside and out when entering the house of the Lord—and a dedicated LDS chapel is a “house of the Lord.” Our clothing or footwear need never be expensive, indeed should not be expensive, but neither should it appear that we are on our way to the beach."

Jeffrey R. Holland

I'm waiting to see if I made an impact at all when I go to church this afternoon!

Six for Saturday

I will online photo book most of what's gone on with me over the past 2 weeks with our family vacation and YW's camp and everything, but I want to make sure that I journal about a few specific events:

1. I couldn't stay for the entire family week at the cabin because I had to come home for YW's camp, so I left Carmen and Chloe with RGLHM and it sounds like I missed the funniest part of the week in Montana. On the 4th of July everyone who was still at the cabin went down to the lake to watch the fireworks. There was a band that Chloe particularly enjoyed - keep in mind that School of Rock (edited version) is her favorite movie. Actually, RGLHM tells it better since she was there:

We arrived at the fireworks and the band was just finishing up a set. Chloe was a little disappointed. When they started again 1/2 hour later, she begged me to go right up front and dance with the other kids. So we did. We watched the band for two very long songs and then forced her to come sit down in time for the fireworks. After the fireworks were done and we started to leave, we walked by the band. She slowed down and paused and being a music junky myself, I knew what she wanted to do. I asked her if she would like to meet the band members. Yes she did. I told her to go right ahead. I was TOTALLY surprised when she went straight for them, no fear in her heart, walked up to the lead singer and had a chat (RGLHM took video I didn't upload for your viewing, but the lead singer put his hand over his heart at one point when he was telling Chloe how much it meant to him that she liked their music) He really was touched. The other band members thought it was so great that they asked her if she wanted a picture with all of them and that is how we got the picture. I should have taken Chloe with me all those years ago when I wanted to meet the Osmond boys:-)

2. I have a tan. It was 100 degrees at YW's camp and despite my efforts to sunscreen and stay in the shade I managed to get more tan in 4 days than I have had in years. People are noticing and commenting and complimenting me on my tan. I'm starting to feel a little self conscious about it, but mixed in with a little bit of enjoyment. Will I stay the sun-safety girl after this or will I get a case of vanity sun-stroke?

3. Ken and Steven participated in the 24hours of Adrenaline race in Canmore on July 7th. It turned out the kids' race was all on pavement, which was disappointing for Steven. We thought his race would be cross country like the adult race, but no. Steven still had a good time with his dad.

4. On Wednesday my friend Mary (on my sidebar) hosted a favorite things lunch at her mom's house since she was in town visiting from B.C. That girl has a serious talent for bringing people together. While I was there it came out that another of Mary's friends at the lunch is a serious Everything is Pink lurker!

5. Wednesday night was a hot one. We don't have air conditioning - it seems pretty extravagant to get it for just a few weeks per year. I'm not saying we'll never get it, just filling you in that at this point we suffer on hot evenings. So, Ken had gone for an evening bike ride, taking advantage of our sunlight, and when he got home I asked him to leave the front door open to let some cool air in. While he was in the shower a moth flew in our front door with a bat chasing it. I flipped out, but there was no one to deal with it but me. Our house has a staircase right in the centre of it, and it is possible to walk (or fly) circles around our main floor. I could not believe how fast that tiny little bat could fly. It was like a rocket zooming laps around our main floor. I got a hoody and held it over my head to try and block the bat as it came around so that it would veer away from me and fly back out the front door. Eventually it did, but just tonight when I went outside to photograph my foot tan as I walked out the front door I scared the bat that had been hanging just under our covered porch. I think he thinks he lives here - how do I go about evicting a bat?

6. For the last 2 nights the kids have all slept downstairs in our unfinished basement to beat the heat. I'm not so sure that the sleep lost over trying to all settle down together is equal to the sleep gained by not being too hot. And it doesn't help when dad decides to go in the back yard and scare the kids by banging on the basement window.

Chloe's Stampede Birthday Party

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Chloe had an obvious birthday party this year: Calgary dollar stores are more than ready to support a cowboy birthday party during Stampede week. I always choose a theme (in consultation with the birthday child) when I'm planning a birthday party. It helps me to decorate, plan games and crafts, and of course do the cake.

I generated the WANTED sign here , secured it on wooden skewers and stabbed it into a small bale of hay. I'm always looking for new uses for wooden skewers: Jane knows why (scroll down to March 19th to read about it). My brother-in-law, Craig, made the horseshoe cowboy.

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We made western vests with paper grocery bags by cutting up the middle, creating a v-neck and then cutting a neck hole and arm holes. The kids fringed the bottoms of the vests with scissors and decorated the vests with glitter glue. Every party I do starts with a craft because it gives the kids who come early something to do while we wait for the kids who come late.

Now, during the Stampede, Calgarians dress cowboy style for work, but Ken left his boots home on Tuesday so that we could play 'boot toss' with hacky sacks.

Chloe's competitive nature could have been a party-killer during the stick horse races, but Carmen ran the last leg on her team for me and made sure the teams tied every time.

We lassoed our rocking horse with a hula hoop.

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Panning for gold (pennies) in the gravel on the side of the house was the best game ever because it gave me time to make the hot dogs. Local friends and family: the sprinkler ran all day on that side of the house to make sure this game was good clean fun.

Carmen eating her licorice lasso - the activity center to make these was a *bottomless* activity that the kids could wander over to and do any time they wanted during the party. A bottomless activity is essential to a birthday party as far as I'm concerned because there is always someone that doesn't want to do play some game, and this gives the kid who is temporarily opting out of the party something else to do.

The treat bags were bandanas filled with horses, a sheriff's badge, wagon wheel cookies, candy, and cowboy band aids.

Chloe wanted cupcakes rather than the horse cake I offered to make, so I decorated the cupcakes with flags I made myself from cowboy printed paper. I was trying to mirror the stampede flags that are on all the light poles here during Stampede.

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I always scribble all the games and the order I plan on playing them in down on an index card. I didn't write down 'take pictures' to remember to take pictures in general. I took a picture of each guest as they arrived so that I could send them home with their own WANTED poster.

I like a birthday party to end right after the presents are opened because I don't like the gifts to get played with by the guests - this seems to make the birthday kid cry - but just in case I've miscalculated I always have one last game to fill the time at the end of the party if I need it. We didn't have time for Sheriff & Outlaws (Hide & Seek) and Chloe was a little unhappy not to get to play the last game. I shouldn't have told her about that one; she never would have known we'd skipped something on the card. I forgot to hand out the party hats and noise makers when we sang happy birthday, so I'm going to bring them to the Stampede Pancake Breakfast we're hitting tomorrow morning.

In the book by A.A. Milne titled Now We Are Six there is a poem that relates to our SPT challenge this week:

Solitude

I have a house where I go
When there’s too many people,
I have a house where I go
Where no one can be;
I have a house where I go
Where nobody ever says “No”;
Where no one says anything – so
There is no one but me.

A.A. Milne

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Honestly, sleep has been my only chance for solitude and peace lately. In the summer when all the kids are home, that's just the way it goes. So here I am, dreaming of how I'll spend my time in September when all my children will be in school full time. My baby is six now, you know.

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Happy Birthday Chloe!

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Good Mail

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A note from Kelly - the envelope had a coordinating seal that was raised like a bubble sticker. I seriously was not in to stationery before good mail, but now I love it!

And this very large box arrived from Sunkist. Did you order a lemonade stand for the take a stand campaign?

After we have our lemonade sale for charity Sunkist has asked us to write down our story and submit it to the Sunkist Take A Stand website. We've chosen to donate the proceeds from our first lemonade sale day to the Calgary Humane Society - we paid a visit there in back in May.

I have had some lucky wins on eBay: this is one of them. I found a copy of the book Jaclyn's school play was named for (it's out of print) and I was the only bidder!

I'm totally in to scrap booking inside our books now (Kristi-inspired). With the program, ticket, and photo of Jaclyn inside the front cover this book is now a special keepsake. The publisher's choice of color and print for the inside of the front cover is a little strange, not the paper I would have chosen for a scrapbook, but hey, I can live with it. Or maybe I should have consulted with the school before they printed the programs and tickets in blue and told them I needed them done in green or orange. Ha!

And Lelly sent a summery card my way. Thanks! I love the sandbox theme.

Howdy!

It's just about time for the Calgary Stampede and for a pre-stampede event our church held a city wide western party for teenagers ages 14-18 this past Saturday. I was there as a youth leader running the barrel racing event. I brought in 3 barrels and timed the kids who raced piggy back style against the clock. It was a blast! Here I am all duded up for Stampede.

Gimme Five!

I know I said in my 100 list that I wasn't going to return to exercise again till July, but the weather got warmer and I got interested in exercising again at the beginning of June. There aren't many days that I am home without Chloe, so my return to running schedule was irregular at best. I made a few stabs at running earlier this month and it was painful. The best I did was like 1 kilometer, and then walking the other 4K in my 5K route from last spring.

But last week on Wednesday, I gave running another try after taking 2 weeks off. I just set out without a specific goal, taking a route I hadn't run before so that I wouldn't make any comparisons, and I felt great! When I got home I wanted to jump in my car to check how far I'd gone, but Chloe (who was home with Jaclyn who is done school because honors students don't have to write finals, how great is that?) Chloe wanted to go on a run with me as soon as I got in from my solo run, and she just couldn't wait. When we got home from our run Jaclyn snapped this picture of us for Chloe's *news day* at kindergarten. Soooo, later in the afternoon I finally got to drive my new running route, and it was 5.3K! I was so excited to have ran so far - with no walking.

The next day I was pretty worn out and didn't think I could repeat my running success of Wednesday, so instead I went on a bike ride of about 15K. I figured a change was as good as a rest.

Today I set out on my new running route once more: 5.3K with the last kilometer being all uphill and I ran the whole thing again, which means Wednesday wasn't a fluke. I have no idea of how I've jumped back in to running like this. Last spring when I first took up running it took me a month of running 3x per week to get up to 5K without walking. I'm going to call my experiences earlier in June interval training, I guess, because I'm back up to my best running.

It looks like I need to challenge myself further. Maybe at the end of the summer I'll ask you to gimme 10?

Rest in Peace, War and Peace

When I took on Amy's challenge to 'Read a Russian' I didn't know that I was signing myself up for a 4 month project. "Sure, it's a thick book, but I'm a fast reader," I thought to myself. Ha!

I had a hard time getting into it, as you can see from the lack of dog ears in the first several hundred pages. I spent three months on the first 500 pages and one month on the last 900 pages. Part of my problem at the beginning was just keeping the characters straight! The book is a bit of a soap opera with parties and travel and relationships being made and broken. Originally War and Peace was written in both French and Russian, and when it was translated into English the names were left as originally written. So for instance Marie is also called Marya and Masha. Anna is also called Annette, at least one of the Anna's is. After I conquered the more than one name for a single character issue, I then spent quite a lot of my reading waiting to figure out which characters were the main characters. Eventually I decided this was an ensemble cast with no main characters - but I was wrong on that one. At the very end the story the cast narrows down to four main characters, which almost makes me want to go back and read it again to relearn what these four characters were like at the beginning of the book. I mean, if I weren't so exhausted from reading in general right now. (See the new read on my sidebar?)

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Now for a few quotes:

The war Princess Marya looked on as women do look on war. She was apprehensive for her brother who was at the front, and was horrified, without understanding it, at the cruelty of men, that led them to kill one another.

I didn't like Tolstoy's generalization about women in the first sentence, but actually, he pretty much summed up my feelings towards war in general with the last part there.

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"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Pierre. And he talked aloud to himself. "The soldier did not let me pass. They have taken me - shut me up. They keep me prisoner. Who is 'me'? Me? Me - my immortal soul! ha, ha, ha! . . . Ha, ha, ha! . . . And all this they caught and shut up in a shed closed in with boards!"

O.K. so Pierre is having a bit of an existential moment or a break down, but it does seem absurd that we can contain immortal souls with prisons. Actually it seems absurd that we can and do limit other people's as well as our own immortal souls in any way.

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He felt like a man who finds what he has sought at his feet, when he has been straining his eyes to seek it in the distance. All his life he had been looking far away over the heads of all around him, while he need not have strained his eyes, but had only to look in front of him.

This thought is a classic theme in literature, but I don't say that to trivialize it. It seems to be a lesson that isn't quickly learned, and therefore is a lesson worth repeating in book after book.

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So how do I feel now that I'm done? Well, I'm very proud of myself for sticking with it and finishing. I'm also having moments where I feel like I can hear Tolstoy narrating my actions, commenting on my motives, and exposing my thoughts. He has an interesting take on people and why they behave the way they do. I'll look at the world through Tolstoy's lenses for a little longer yet, I think.

Longest day of the year

We love our long summer days here in the GWN (great white north). Today we had dawn at 4:34 am and sunrise at 5:21 am. Our sunset will be at 9:55 pm and dusk not till 10:42 pm!

My kids are asking me if they can stay up till the daylight's gone as a way to celebrate the first day of summer. Ha! I told them sorry, I didn't wake them up at 4:34, and we're still in school, so they can't stay up till 10:42. Popsicles for an after school snack were about as close as we got to a first day of summer celebration around here.