If you can't tell, my kids are all in bed and I'm blog-stalking.

Is this me?

I'm not sure I actually aspire to be a public health employee....

Someone Else's Blog

Ummm, never been a fan of looking at random people's blogs, 'til I found this one. She's freakin' hilarious! I especially like the post about what not to buy, because I've thought about buying at least one of those products (I'm not telling which one), and I laughed so hard when I read what she wrote about it.


Okay, I like this one too.

Scripture Power

In my quest to gain a brain I have decided to re-enroll myself in seminary. Why? you may ask. Well, I'll tell you: when I was a teen we had seminary in the basement of this old couples house at 6:00 in the morning. There was no release time seminary, and there was no CES teacher, and there was no grading. Mostly you passed because you attended about 50% of the time. Maybe there were more stringent guidelines, but I doubt it. So my seminary experience is not what it could have been. In addition to this is the fact that I was NOT (nor am I currently) a morning person - so I didn't really apply myself - or care at that hour of the day.

Anyway, I bought the seminary manual for the student and the one for the teacher and have been reading them and came across the following:

"The real value of knowledge you gain from the scriptures comes when you live what you learn. Greater closeness to the Lord and feeling the peace He gives are just some of the blessings that come to those who live the gospel. In addition, the Lord said that those who live what they learn will be given more, while those who will not live what they learn will lose the knowledge they have."

Huh. Maybe that's my problem.

But probably (hopefully) not.

FYI: I'm studying the Book of Mormon this year - just barely started if you want to jump on my bandwagon. I know there are adult programs out there - but, eh?!

End of the School Year

Caden has officially passed Kindergarten. We were never really in any doubt but still, nice to have it down on paper.

On Friday Caden's school had a last-day-of-the-school-year picnic at Pavilion Park in Liberty Lake. There was food, and a water park, playground equipment, and lots and lots of people. This is the kind of thing that I normally avoid if the parent to child ratio is not 1:1, but we went anyway, mostly because Caden's best friend Trevor (and his mom, my friend Leslie) came with us. It was a lot of fun at the picnic, and then we all came back to our house afterwards and played for a few more hours. It was fun for the boys to get together, and Lincoln and Megan (Trevor's little sister) also had a good time (they're about the same age), and I GOT TO TALK TO A GROWN UP FOR SIX HOURS STRAIGHT! It was the most fun and relaxing day that I've had since Ryan left. Thank you Leslie! Of course, I neglected to take the camera so there will be no pictures of the event, but I couldn't post them now if I had anyway...disposable camera and all. Oh well. Sigh.

In looking over the calendar for next school year I noticed that Caden's school starts August 12th this year (we have him enrolled in a basically year round program within our district) so we (probably) won't be able to go to Stephanie's wedding the following weekend, which means we'll also miss Andy and Kendra when they come, which I'm so bummed out about! Unless we keep him out for the whole first week of school, but I don't know...it seems like a lot to miss...I guess Ryan and I have some discussions to hold when he gets back.

Two weeks down, two to go.

Disclaimer

I have always preferred the phone to the written word, because I find it difficult to bring my particular form of sarcasm to the written word. I may be having the same problem with blogging....if you read something here and it sounds depressing, like I'm on the edge of a great abyss looking down, then I'm not doing it right. Take everything I write with a grain of salt and remember that I LOVE SARCASM and that my own personal philosophy is this: if the choices are to laugh or cry, I will usually choose to laugh.

Jumbled Thoughts

I'm thinking about running away. For a month. I'll bring the baby 'cause I still like her, but Ryan's gonna have to keep the boys. For a month. I think it's only fair to play with his sanity since we're playing with mine first.

I've been thinking in all my spare time about all the things that I need to be doing, and then I stupidly compared that list to all the things I am doing and realized that there is quite a defecit between the two.

I am having a crisis of confidence in my mental abilities. Lately I feel SO STUPID...it's pregnancy stupid without the pregnancy. I am stupid to the point that I don't remember how long it took after the other kids to start feeling smart again. Do you think this means that I never got smart again? that I'm in a perpetual mental free-fall? This is brought on in part by these two wonderful young (twenty-nothings) ladies in our ward who are just on fire spiritually, and I can't remember things that I know that I already knew! Like the difference between immortality and eternal life. I used to know the difference, and I do know the difference, but I recently forgot the difference in RS on Sunday and made a STUPID comment, which just goes on to prove my point. Wait, did I have one?

On the whole boring/vanilla thing (read Raelene's blog if you're lost), the more I look at my life objectively, the more boring I seem. I really don't do anything that very many people would find interesting. I have all these aspirations and good intentions (we know what road those will pave) but I just don't know...I feel very Jack-of-all-trades-but-a-master-of-none. I try to rationalize that I have a lot of different interests, but if I can't commit to becoming highly skilled at any one thing, then what does that really say about me?

I think that my self-esteem may have fallen into the toilet with my sunglasses. :)

I'm looking for some input....who are your favorite LDS singers? I want to expand my horizons beyond Michael McLean. If you've got favorite albums or songs then list those too... and if you can tell me what kind of catagory they would fall into style-wise that would also be helpful. Thanks!

Thursday

Let me tell you a little bit about Thursday...I woke up at 7:15 and thought, "I don't have to be up for 15 more minutes"...so I went back to sleep. I was in and out of sleep and I kept hearing this noise, a high pitched squealing, like a car was running outside with a belt that needed to be replaced. At 8:00 (whoops, overslept) I got up and went out into the living room and realized that the squealing is not a car outside, it is coming from down in the basement. Oh, crap. The only thing that could be making that noise is the flood alarm. Sure enough, I go downstairs and the laundry room has flooded out onto the carpet (this is like 8th time or so since we've moved here). So I go up and call the landlord (remember Ryan is gone), then I go see if the breaker is tripped (nope), then back downstairs to shake the pipe on the pump to see if that helps. Nothing works so I finally just unplug the pump and plug it back in - the pump kicks on and the water starts draining down. Great. Now I've gotta get all the kids up, fed, dressed and ready to take Caden to school (his school runs until the end of next week). So since Lincoln is potty trained I send him in to go while I'm changing Aile. All of a sudden he starts crying: this in and of itself is nothing new. So I ask him what's wrong as I lean back and look into the bathroom. He's standing at the toilet with his "hose" pointing at his feet and I realize that he has accidentally peed on the floor. Super. So into the bathroom I go to help him take off the wet pajamas, etc. I get the pajamas off and glance around and realize there is pee on the side of the cabinet, all over the toilet paper, on the front of the cabinet and on the counter top. It's like somebody turned on a firehose and didn't control it. I unroll the toilet paper that's been sprayed and use it to sop up what's on the floor, toss it into the toilet and flush. And now the toilet's clogged. By the time I got everything cleaned up, unclogged, and disinfected, I was feeling pretty close to the edge. It's 8:20 now and I can't believe this day, so I called my mom and related our morning. She just laughed and it made me feel better. I would prefer not to repeat this morning EVER.

Pampered Chef

I'm having a Pampered Chef party and thought I'd give a heads-up to those of you too far away to attend. If you're interested you can go online here and browse through the catalog. Anything you decide to buy can be shipped directly to you. If you decide to look, after clicking on the link follow these steps:

1. click on the "order products" button on the bottom left of the screen - this will take you to the catalog.
2. clik on option 1 (to order off my party)
3. type in val, or carter, or val carter
4. go thru the process of browsing and purchasing (if you so choose)
5. choose to ship directly to you.

Many of you may know that I LOVE PAMPERED CHEF, but I realize not everyone feels the same way. So if you need something, order, if you don't, don't.

So, Ryan took the camera on his "adventure" and left us with a disposable one, which is fine, we can get everything on a disc and put them on the computer later, yadda, yadda, yadda, we just don't have any pictures to post until the dang thing gets filled up and I take it in to be developed, yadda, yadda, yadda...HOLY RUN-ON SENTENCE BATMAN!!! Anyway, even though there are no pictures yet of the big event, thought I'd share that Aile got her ears pierced! We'd been talking about doing it and then yesterday at the Dr.'s office an old lady saw all of us in the waiting room and said, "oh, how cute! three boys!". That was the clincher. Now she looks super-duper lady-like and there is no mistaking her for a boy no matter what color she wears...

p.s. for all of you who think that I'm mean, she cried for like 2 seconds until they put the antiseptic on and they pierced them at the same time for minimal pain, and who ever had a daughter who's mother had their ears pierced where the daughter didn't want them pierced too? So there.

It's not bad enough that all my friends are leaving, but my husband has to join in the "Abandonment of Val Campaign". Ryan leaves early tomorrow morning for field camp in Montana for a month. At least he's not going to Alaska this summer - when he comes back then he's back for good. I'm sorely tempted to double up on my happy pills.....

In the Army Now

All of my kids have hit the physical milestones early - they all rolled over at 2 months the first time and consistently by 3 months. The boys both crawled at 6 months. Caden walked at 9 months (fully) and Lincoln at 11. But there is something bizarre about this girl of mine - she will be 4 months tomorrow and she is doing the army crawl! How is this even possible?! She's my last baby and she seems determined not to be any more of a baby than she has to be. Why, oh why can't they just stay little? Sigh.

(Mostly) Potty-Trained!

We went to Chuck E. Cheese's to celebrate Lincoln being potty-trained! We are so excited not to have to change two sets of diapers all day long - just for #2 (if you know what I mean). He is such an amazing kid - he hasn't had any accidents since the first time he actually went in the toilet. Caden was a great supporter of the potty-training effort because he knew that he got to participate in the celebration too. He kept repeating every encouragement that we ever gave to him when he was potty-training.....just goes to show he was listening even if he didn't act on it.

More PhotoScape

I'm just having fun playing around with Photoscape. These are just a few more pictures that I messed with. I've gotta get on the ball and take some more pictures - these aren't all that recent...

Baby Feet

So after getting a FABULOUS tip from Heidi I downloaded PhotoScape and played around a little. These are Aile's feet at 3 months - this picture is waaaay cuter than the original. Now I can have cute pictures like Kendra!

Post-less Bloggers

Okay people, for those of you who have blogs but don't have blogs (you know who you are....Carleen, Kerianne) it is time to bite the bullet and POST SOMETHING! It's not fair that you get to blog-stalk everyone while we don't get to return the favor. Everybody: Post, Post, Post, Post.....

Stupid Higher Education and Job Transfers

Be prepared to feel sorry for me! I have not made as many friends (that weren't family) since I have since we moved to Spokane (are you with me so far?). And they have all or will have all moved away by the end of July. THIS SUCKS!!!! Needless to say, I am feeling a little sorry for myself. Here they are in order of leaving:

1. Di - so attuned to her inner teenager, she makes me feel young.
2. Leah - so practical and high energy, she makes me feel like I can do anything - we don't keep in touch as much as I'd like.
3. Bethany - so spiritual, so fun, so funny, so adventerous.....so this sucks. I have spent more time with her than anyone else over the past 3 years - we don't always agree but we have complete honesty between us. I think I'll miss you most of all scarecrow (or was it tin-man or the lion???)
4. Melanie - so outgoing, there is never a dull moment or an awkward pause in conversation. We can talk about anything. I wish I was more like her.
5. Sharla - If I had a twin it would be her. Except where I fail, she often succeeds. She amazes me - I don't know a stronger woman.

Bethany and Sharla will be the worst - we have been the 3 musketeers for almost 4 years and they are leaving within 1 1/2 months of each other (sniff, sniff). There have been others who have left as well, but they didn't leave as big a hole as these 5 have and will. Okay, so technically I'll still see Melanie who just moved to the South Hill (a different part of Spokane), but still! I'm beginning to feel like it's me....of course we'll be moving on by the end of next school year/summer but it's so much easier to leave than to be left. Now tell me, if you had friends like these, wouldn't you also be singing the blues when they deserted you? Sigh.

A little help.....?

Does anyone have a blog address for Mike & Katie Dean or Joe & Kathy Gent? Ryan wants to know.....