Those Lazy Crazy Halloweens

I grew up with a kid who dressed as a ghost every Halloween. You must know the costume I'm talking about---white bed sheet, with holes hacked out for the eyes. I finally got the courage to ask him about his repetitive costume choice and it turned out his mom was simply too lazy to buy him a real costume.

I am absolutely, positively, 100 percent certain that I'm going to end up as that particular brand of Halloween mom.

I very nearly did not buy Riley a costume this Halloween. Last year, I found him an Old Navy purple dinosaur costume on Halloween day that was marked 80 percent off. As respectable parents had already purchased their offspring's costumes weeks ago, it was pretty slim pickins. Riley ended up with a costume two sizes two big.

So this year, my plan was to have him re-wear last year's ensemble and change said costume's name from "dinosaur" to "dragon," just to mix things up a bit.

That plan held up until two weeks ago, when I was perusing the merchandise at Goodwill and saw a blinding light and heard an angelic chorus. I had seen it....The Chosen Costume. It was a black leather biker jacket, size 2T. It could be mine for only $4.99.
From there, the biker costume came together easily--I borrowed a do-rag, purchased a baby-sized wife beater, and found a horrendous, "BLING" chain necklace at the dollar store.

Despite the utter perfection of such a costume, my laziness still found a way to come back and bite me. I found a skull patch at Super Walmart to attach to Riley's jacket and decided to rubber cement the thing on, since sewing was so obviously too much work and therefore out of the question. In case you're wondering how well rubber cement works on leather, let me fill you in. It doesn't.

The patch disappeared forever on a pre-emptive trick-or-treating night Saturday. So yesterday, I drove the 15 miles through traffic back to Walmart and bought another one. Again instead of taking five minutes to sew it on (well okay, at least five minutes to thread the needle, five minutes to curse my utter lack of sewing skills and five minutes more for the actual sewing process) I opted for the rubber cement again and watched the thing fall off a mere two hours later. Tonight my plan is to carry the rubber cement in my purse and keep my eyes carefully trained on Riley's coat at all times, re-gluing every 15 minutes or so as needed.

Oh laziness, sometimes you can be such a curse.


Notice how the patch has miraculously re-appeared, after I whipped out my rubber cement.

Hay maze at HallowZOOween.

P-A-R-T-Why?

Seeing as how I am now a medical school widow, my mom and sister took pity on me last week and decided to come and visit. It was great fun!
Just as they were heading out the door to leave for the airport, I decided to protest their departure by contracting the stomach flu. On the down side, I didn't eat for three days. On the up side, I lost three pounds. On the down side, I am now so ravenous from not eating in three days that I am currently eating everything in sight and am well on my way to gaining back at least six pounds.
Anyhoo, we had a wonderful week together. It feels mighty lonesome now. Here's my list of the top ten things I learned during our adventures last week.
1. It does not matter how old you are or whether or not you are safely "established" with your own house, husband, and baby. You still want your mom to come visit because you know she is going to take you shopping.
2. There are a million and a half germs crawling all over every surface of the zoo, children's amusement park, and Chuck E. Cheese video games.
3. Zoo monkeys do not like fruit snacks.
4. If a zoo volunteer happens to nearly catch you in the act of trying to feed a monkey a fruit snack, he will get mighty suspicious and follow you for the next ten minutes, under the guise of his burning need to cite a million useless facts.
5. Zoo monkeys can catch a disease from eating off a person's hand. Or so says the zoo volunteer.
6. Zoo volunteers really,really, really do not like it when you try to feed the monkeys.
6. The Cheesecake Factory is seriously overpriced. In the case of great cheesecake though, sometimes paying too much is so worth it. Especially if your mom is the one who is treating.
7. Skeet ball at Chuck E Cheese's is still fun.
8. It still takes a million of the reward tickets to buy one eraser.
9. My mom and sister are the greatest.
10. It's harder to come up with a list of ten things than you might think.

What the??? $1 Make-up?

So as I was making my blog-stalking rounds, I found a blog that talked about this site, www.eyeslipsface.com where they sell make-up for $1. Have any of the rest of you heard of it?
I went and checked it out and everything looked really good. So I bought stuff. I hope that it won't end up being a scam, or really really crappy make-up. But the site was featured by both Oprah and People magazine, so that has to give it some credibilty, right?
The way I see it, I'm only out $10 bucks if it ends up being lousy. And since Riley either flushes my make-up down the toilet or smashes it all over the floor, I'm all about the hunt for cheap stuff. You guy should all go check it out and let me know what you think.

In other news.....I was playing in the front yard today with Riley and some lady rolled by on her wheelchair and asked me how long I was babysitting for. Grrrrrrrrr.......

Spencer Who?

I've only ever watched one episode of The Hills. Not because I think I'm too good for it, but because we only get five channels on our $12 a month basic cable plan. Sigh. I just can't help but feel my life is woefully incomplete.

Anyway, I've been hearing the buzz about this Spencer Pratt guy and what a jerk he is. Now, I too, have a reason to loathe him. Check out this article from people.com, with a little bit of commentary from me inserted here and there. And yes, you caught me. I occasionally read people magazine online, while taking brief breaks from devouring acclaimed literary masterpieces (Translation=I check it faithfully every day for updates. You can judge me if you want.)

Spencer Pratt's Goals: Billionaire By 30, on TV Forever

TUESDAY OCTOBER 16, 2007 02:40 PM EDT

By Kristin Boehm

Spencer Pratt Photo by: Fitzroy Barrett / Landov

Spencer Pratt wants to be a billionaire by the time he turns 30, but is also quite content entertaining Hills viewers as reality TV's most hated villain.

"The bottom line is I'm making people react and ultimately not think about that we are in a war in Iraq and are trying to pick leaders," he tells the November issue of Radar magazine. "The Hills is good breath for people. I do not take it a little bit seriously. I'm an entertainer."
(Yes, more reality television is just what we apathetic Americans need to take our minds off the burden of correct sentence construction, "picking our leaders," and the war in Iraq.)

What he does take seriously is his future. "I'm trying to be a billionaire before 30. Once you find an open market, that's where you can make billions to trillions of dollars," he says. (Sounds like a pretty solid plan there, Spence. Find an open market and cash in. Wish I would have thought of that.)

The 24-year-old, most famous for being Hills costar Heidi Montag's hateable fiancé, also admits to political aspirations and tells the magazine that his antics are for show, but his love for Montag is the real deal.

"She is an angel, and I'm honored to be with her. People don't even know!" he says of the 21-year-old singer. "I'm the new villain, and that's hilarious! It's so cool to be alive ... I would be on reality TV until I am 100. It's the coolest thing in town." (The coolest thing in town? The coolest thing in town? Did he seriously use that phrase?)

Pratt added: "It's so much cooler to have people come up to me and be like, 'Spencer Pratt!' and know my name, than to be Orlando Bloom, who's famous for being some pirate." (Hmm... You just keep telling yourself that.)

Who knows, maybe this whole thing was a publicity stunt. But if not--his comments really annoyed me. I'm not sure why I was itching to pick on him so much, nor am I sure why I decided to write about it. But it's my blog. And I can do whatever I want. So take that.

The Vermin Wars

Two weeks ago, I was sitting in the office working on an article when I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye. A Big. Fat. Freakin'. Beady-eyed. mouse was four inches from my foot, staring at my toe like it wanted to take a bite out of it. Maybe because I had on orange socks with cheese-like holes all over them.
Anway, I screamed so loud I scorched my throat and nearly gave Riley a heart attack. The terrified mouse ran away, probably to tell all its friends the red brick home was inhabited by some crazy lady wearing cheese socks.
Since then, I've been engaging in some diligent psychoanalysis, trying to figure out why it is that women are so bugged by the fact there may be a mouse or two running around in their house (It's not just me, is it?). Any ideas? Anyone? The best theory I came up with is related to some painful, mice-related suppressed memories, which I will be happy to share if anyone is interested.
The news of the mouse sighting didn't seem to bother hubby. When I told him, he said, "Come on. This is OKLAHOMA. Every house here has mice AND roaches in it." Gee, that information would have been more useful BEFORE we moved here.
Sam did consent to set a few mouse traps for my sake, all of which had unfortunate victims in them before the night was over. That was enough to turn our house into a war zone. And, as we know, all's fair in love and war.
My first trick was to lure the buggers away by constructing an intricate cheese and peanut butter trail leading to my neighbor's door, on which I had posted a sign that read: "Attention, mice. Please help yourself to our plentiful supply of easily-accessible food." (Okay, so I only played out this scenario in my head. You caught me--I've been watching far too many reruns of Scrubs).
To win this war, I've done things I never imagined I would do. I bought a caulking gun and some steel wool. I crawled around in gross, confining crawl spaces looking for holes that needed to be plugged up. I went to Home Depot approximately a thousand times, where I asked questions that clearly exposed my stupidity. (Example: I don't really want to buy any new tools. Do you think I could fix a hole under a sink with my glue gun?)
I had an extremely uncomfortable conversation with an oldie who shall remain unnamed which went a little something like this:
Me: What do you think is the best type of mouse poison?
Oldie: Oh, there's this brand that I started using in December of 1990. That's when it first came out. It works great. I don't remember the name, but it comes in a green package. You can buy twelve of them in one bunch. It used to come in a red package, and you could only buy six at one time. I think it was a few years ago when they changed it. I remember because I was at the store and it took me 30 minutes to find what I was looking for. This conversation lasted for another 15 minutes.
My mouse battle has taught me a couple of very important lessons. 1-I have zero home-fix-it-up skills. Actually, scratch that. I have negative skills. 2. Necessity is the mother of invention, and even sucky inventions can serve their purpose.
For example, I noticed our outside dryer vent was just loose enough that flexible little mice could easily squeeze their way in. After painstakingly constructing several different elaborate prototypes, I came up with this solution:

Sheer genuis. A spool of chicken wire securely fastened with some handy-dandy bricks.

Even though I have negative skills, it appears that I have won the war. Our house has been mouse-free this entire week. And the best part of this whole thing is that because 99.9 percent of Sam's time is occupied in learning about crista terminalis and septomarginal trebecula and other interesting medical tidbits, I can completely claim this victory for myself.

At least until Christmas break, when Sam actually has time to scrape off the caulking that I leaked all over our brick walls, sand down my bumpy drywall patch, and fix the dryer vent for real.

But for now, victory is mine, and mine alone.

The 'Ol Yummy Eye

Overheard, on one of my many trips to Target, out of the mouth of a 4-year-old: "Dad, did you know your eye tastes like a potato chip?"

All these years, I've been sitting right on top of a non-caloric gold mine and I never even knew it.

Oops, You Better Not Go There

Bad, bad things are going to happen if I hear one more news anchor introduce a segment on Britney Spears' latest exploits with the phrase, "Oops, she did it again!" I'm pretty sure that lead-in stopped being witty and creative after the millionth time it was used.
Has anyone else been bothered by this, or is it just me? Maybe there aren't enough things in my life to be annoyed with right now, what with the fact that I never have a husband around to fight with, so I'm casting stones at poor helpless newscasters.

All Aboard the Rip-off Train!!

Over the past six months, I have become an expert on all things related to Thomas the Tank engine. I can identify any one of the dozens of trains on the wonderful Island of Sodor by sight and number and give a brief biography of each train's life and major accomplishments. Awesome, right?
In the hundreds of hours that I have spent trying to NOT listen to Thomas the Tank Engine while Riley watches completely captivated, I have learned that every single episode can be easily condensed into a thirty-second summary, which I will consent to share with you now.
Narrator: Thomas is a cheeky engine. He's been asked by sir Topham Hat to shunt a dirty, heavy load of train-like cargo to some undesirable destination.
Thomas: I really don't want to complete this unpleasant task. I'll pull some sort of crazy shenanigan to try and get out of my work. But in the end, I always do what I'm asked because if I'm really, really lucky, Sir Topham Hatt will tell me I'm a really useful engine, and hearing that particular phrase seems to be the sole purpose of my existance.
Those of you who have never seen Thomas the Tank Engine, so sorry if I ruined the ending for you.
Thomas came to a nearby city last week, and I decided to take Riley, even though I knew it would be a highly-overpriced event. We went with my friend Lacey (yep--we have the same name--) and her little boy Chase. In the end, it was probably worth it. Riley had the time of his life, and I got to show off my newly acquired knowledge when I ripped it up in the Thomas Trivia portion of the day.


For once, Riley was completely rooted to the spot when he saw Thomas come rolling around the bend.


Thomas and his great big, fat plastic head. The kids whose mothers weren't cheapskates got to have their pictures taken on the other side of the ugly orange fence for the mere cost of $15 smackaroos.





The two Laceys unable to contain their excitement.

Just Call Me Baby(face)

I've always had the unfortunate luck to look much, much younger than I really am. Growing up, people assumed my sister Audra (who is three years younger than me) was the older sister. And I know what you're all thinking--of COURSE it had nothing whatsoever to do with our maturity.
The baby-face problem was only compounded when I turned 21 and married my husband, who unfortunately also looks much younger than his actual age. On the plane trip to our exotic honeymoon destination, people kept scrutinizing our faces, trying to match them to a poster of runaway teens.

Case in point below.



Turns out though, that I not only look half my age, I also sound half my age. That's been pointed out to me time and time again during my work as a freelance reporter.

Me: Hi there. I'm a reporter with the Uintah Basin Standard and am working on an article about such-and-such. I'd really like an opportunity to visit with you sometime about yahdeedahdeedah.
Potential Interviewee: Oh, ok. Is this for some sort of high school journalism class or something?
Me: Ummm, No. You see, I actually have a college degree in journalism and nearly a decade of experience writing for newspapers.
Potential Interviewee: Are you one of those kids who went to college when they were 14 or something like that?

But my conversation yesterday with a customer service representative from Best Buy really takes the cake. I was trying to help my younger cousin Taylor figure out his MP3 player. The Best Buy idiots were being the furthest thing from helpful possible, transferring me from one person to another. After an hour of this, I told the representative that I had to go pick up my husband.

"Girl, you're old enough to have yourself a husband?" she said. "I thought you were twelve."

Don't worry though, I told her off. Stupid Best Buy and their piece-of-junk MP3 players.

Me:Lady, I'm pretty sure Customer Appreciation 101 doesn't teach you to tell your customers they sound immature and then add further insult to injury by guessing their age to be half of what it actually is. Let me talk to your supervisor.

Or, at least that's how it sounded in my head.

She probably heard something a little more like this: "Yeah, I get that a lot."

To end my baby-faced woes, I wikipediad the topic of "How to Look Older" and came up with these little golden nuggets of wisdom.

1. Take care of yourself by washing regularly, using deodorant. Check.
2. Fix your eyebrows. Some surveys say that when your eyebrows are done and put together, you can look more mature and therefore, look older.
Not much I can do here. My eyebrows have never been the same since the great tweezing disater of '03.
3. Consult with a hair stylist. Give a brief summary of your situation or just simply ask for a "mature cut".
What exactly, pray tell, is a mature cut? And how would a stylist react if you asked for this so-called mature cut? I imagine the end result would be something like this.

Wikipedia, I knew you wouldn't let me down!

Indoor Shots

When Sam and I first got married, we had way, way, way too much junk to nicely fit into our one bedroom Provo apartment. The junk followed us from apartment to apartment, refusing to stay contained in the few inches of closet space we had to spare.
Fast forward four years. All of a sudden, I find myself thinking we're having a massive shortage of junk to fill our three bedroom house.
We love pretty much everything about our new house, minus the fact that it has only one, pepto-Bismol colored bathroom. I'd still like to get around to painting one of these days. The master bedroom is a nice green color and the breakfast nook is a cheerful yellow color. Everything else is a boringish tan, but it will do for now.!
We're excited to have a spare bedroom/office. If any of you have a burning desire to visit our city's hotspot tourist destinations (ha ha) , give us a call!

Brand new hardwood floors. They're great, but a beast to keep clean when you have a little boy who drops a million and a half crumbs a day.
The kitchen looking into the breakfast nook. As stated before, I love the yellow walls.

Home sweet home

I'm finally posting some long-awaited house pictures. I'll post some of the interior here shortly as well. As you can tell from the pictures, our cute little house comes with a gorgeous lawn. That was one of the first things that attracted me to it, and I've always thought some flowers here and there make all the difference in the world between an average-looking house and a homey, , friendly house.
The man who sold us our house was retired and spent hours on end out in his yard planting flowers, landscaping, and weeding. He must have sunk hundred, if not thousands, of dollars into buying plants and paving bricks. Me, well my only goal so far is not to kill anything. So far, I'm pretty much succeeding. It's a little easier now that it's raining more often and not a scorching hot 105 degrees every day.
It's been fun trying to get my gardening sea legs under me, so to speak. I'll keep hoping that if my thumb doesn't turn green, it will at least be a nice shade of chartruese.

Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question

You have probably all seen this, but on the off chance that someone hasn't, I decided to post it anyway. It's just that good. Incidentally, AC Slater is my new hero for his control over his facial muscles. I always knew back in the day when I was rushing home to catch Saved BY the Bell reruns after school that there was so much more to him than bulging biceps and gigantic dimples.

Bye, Bye Hubby

Last Saturday was Sam's white coat ceremony. It was a pretty big deal, and it was fun to see him start medical school. Plus, now he can just tell people he's a doctor and look official enough to get away with it. Now that he has a white coat, I think he can legitimately start charging for medical advice, don't you?
After the cloaking ceremony, the university president stood up and gave some cheery spiel about how over the next four years, medical school students wouldn't even have a time for a relationship with themselves, much less their loved ones, and the sooner we got used to that, the better things would be. You may think I am exagerrating, but no. Those were his exact words. Can you blame a girl for wanting her hard facts softened up with a little bit of sugarcoating?
Obviously, I've known all along that Sam isn't going to be around much over the next half dozen years. But even though I always knew that, I don't think I really understood exactly how it would impact me until school started. The first week of classes has just ended, and last week Sam's schedule was as follows: Leave for school by 5:30 a.m. Come home for dinner at 7 p.m. and play with Riley for an hour or so. Go back to school to study some more then come home at midnight.
The good news is that we seem to have a great ward with lots of people our age and in our same situation, so that should really help. Actually, for all you Rooseveltians out there, Beau and Christy Hancock (Gilbert) are actually in our ward. Random, huh? It was great to go to church that first day and see a familiar face.
Anyway, to wrap up this little ramble, I have no doubt that Sam is going to succeed at this medical school business. I'm so proud of him! And yes, you should all pity him for his mountain of a workload and crazy stress. But people, I'm going to have to insist on just a little bit of pity for me too! And if that pity happens to include a box of some chocolate chip cookies, so much the better.

Here's Sam walking down the stairs to the stage. He didn't even trip. If that's not the sign of a future great doctor, I don't know what is.

Sam and Becca after the ceremony. Gmom and Pop, Mom and Dad and Becca and Tyler all drove up from Allen for the day just to come to this. You guys are the greatest!
Just in case you're forgetting with this post about Sam who the primary focus of this blog really should be, here's a picture to jog your memory. (Hint: It's not Becca).

Feelin' the love.

Riley and his cousin, baby Zach

The big move

Pardon the lack of recent posts, but life has been pretty crazy lately. We are now officially Texans no more. Our new house is officially fantastic, and I'll try to get some pics up in the next week or so.
Meanwhile, here are some pics of the day we got all of our junk out of Sarah and Shane's garage (where they have been awesome enough to let us store it all for the past year). Gmom and Pop, Matthew, Grandma and Shane and Sarah were all there to help. It was, of course, 100 million degrees outside that day (typical texas), but Riley and Kathryn still managed to find the energy to run up and down the moving truck ramp an infinite amount of times. How I envy their metabolism.




Eventually, after they had lost half their body weight each in sweat, Sarah pulled out this little sprinkler toy, which the kiddies weren't too fond of running through but loved trying to drink from.

My sweaty husband man.

Gmom, Grandma and Hannah.

Riley was a little peeved when he saw all of his toys being stacked in a big truck, so he decided to take matters into his own hands.