Dream Thing

I'm not really a person that puts much stock in dream analysis. Mostly because I realize the majority of my dreams tend to revolve around something I saw online or watched on tv before I went to bed. But last night I had one too weird not to share.

I was at a party for Jesus. He was in town visiting for some reason and of course there were lots of people following him around all trying to talk to him. I was my usual party wall flower and just stood to the side taking in the scene.

Everyone had lots of questions that they wanted to ask Jesus but he just went on telling stories like he couldn't hear them. No one seemed bothered by this and everyone was very interested in his stories, but I remember a lot of chatter around of people just shouting out questions.

One of the weird things (besides being at a party with Jesus) was that there were a couple of girls that kept following him around trying to hit on him. And I remember just feeling sorry for them because they were trying so hard and he obviously wasn't interested at all.

Towards the end of the dream Jesus somehow morphed (people morph a lot in my dreams) into Barack Obama. Now although I was very proud to vote for him, I by no means think that he is a savior. Maybe my sub conscious does though :) Although I'm guessing it has more to do with the fact that I saw a story about him online right before I went to bed.

I wonder what I'll dream about tonight?

Making up for this morning

Eating dessert at my parents after Monday night family dinner.

Lucia: Kari, did you want a boy or a girl?

Me: Growing up I always wanted a boy.

Lucia: How come?

Me: Cause I hate pink.

Will: And that's why you picked me!?! Thanks mom!! (wraps his little arms tightly around my neck)

Will: When I was a tiny little baby (hold his fingers about an inch apart) I couldn't find a mommy. And then I picked you! (wraps his arms around my neck again with the most adorable, loving grin on his face.)

Monday, Monday

I've never been big on locking doors. Not sure why, just seems lame. Pat always locked his car and it still got stolen. Twice. Well, it took them two tries, but still, it was locked both times. I didn't start locking my car till the whole peeping tom thing a few years ago. And even then not until the morning when I swear he or maybe someone else, was in my car.

For most of the year I go out and start my car when getting ready for work. I now make sure to lock it while it's started. I'm also convinced that I've seen enough cops on the news telling people not to leave their cars running in the winter, that I'm just setting myself up. Same goes for the house. I probably shouldn't be admitting some of this to internet world, but we went over three years with the lock to our front door broken. It wasn't till we were going to be gone for a week last summer that I decided we should probably get that fixed.

Back to this morning. Monday. Ughhh. Look outside, it snowed. Again. Ughhh. So I put on my heavy coat and go out to start the car. Come back in, finish getting ready. Look up the weather online and see that it's not supposed to snow anymore today so I figure I won't take my heavy coat with me and will just take a sweater. Get ready to leave, lock the front door, take about four steps and realize my keys are in my coat pocket. Inside. The locked house. My other key is inside the started car. The locked car. Awesome.

Luckily I did have my cell phone. I knew Pat still has a key to the apartment so I called and asked if he would come help me out. Next call to my luckily very understanding boss. Nothing better than being 20 minutes late to work on Monday when you are the person that opens the office.

There I am standing in the cold. Waiting. Wishing I had brought my coat for more reasons than the keys. Waiting. Now because this is internet world I have to be a little vauge. But I started thinking about a way that I might be able to get back in the house. Try it. It works. Not sure why I couldn't have had that thought 20 minutes earlier. Oh well.

Mondays and snow just keeping climbing up that ladder of love for me. Moral of the story, it's lame to lock your doors.

No. It's not that hard

Someone's dad needs to learn how to say no.

A weekend of Will's

(I feel like I need to make a clarification again for the ease of reading. For today, Will refers to my son and Willie is my brother-in-law)

I just got back from spending the weekend in Kanab. Myself, Will, my mom, sister Maiken and her daughter Lucia, all went down to stay will my sisters Alex and Keeley and her husband Willie. Willie's birthday is next week so we went down to have a small party and help start a garden for them.

I wasn't told before hand about the gardening part, which was fine, I just would have prepared a little better. My mom and sister drove down on Thursday and Will and I went down on Friday. It's pretty exciting to make a four hour drive with just you and a 3 year old. It was better in some ways then last fall's visit that consisted of telling Will and Lucia to quit fighting every five minutes, but I knew I was in trouble when I stopped at the bank three blocks away from our house and Will asked if we were in Kanab yet. Nope, not quite.

It was thankfully an event-less trip down and beautiful weather when we arrived. The gardening work was just beginning so I went and changed so I could help. Then pretty much stood around feeling pretty useless. Keeley and Willie found a house to rent on three acres. The landlords basically told them they could do whatever they wanted in the "yard". Really just three acres of sagebrush and sand, but plenty of room to put in a garden. And Will's dream place, lots and lots of dirt to play in. He never even asked once to watch tv, which was surprising, just kept asking who was gonna go play in the dirt with him.

The size of the garden needed to be somewhat limited because they would need to put up some type of fencing to keep out animals if they want any chance of it surviving. Willie had read a book about gardening in small spaces and my mom is sort of an expert gardener, so I think they had some good plans. We measured out two beds 4'x30' and then the digging began. There is room for two more beds that they can put in later. The method Willie had read about calls for double digging. I won't bore you, but it means a lot of digging. Twice even.

Willie dug the first row completely by himself the first night. The second row had Keeley, myself and my mom digging on it and was finished the next day by Willie. The digging was nothing like it would have been around here, the dirt is mostly just sand. But for some reason as soon as I took my turn I hit an underground river of rocks. And not just little rocks that are annoying, no cantaloupe size rocks that mean you have to completely stop digging, get out the pitch fork and loosen a large area around, finally get out the rock, pick up the shovel, and clank, another rock.

That night Will and I slept on an air mattress in the basement. My mom was by us on another air mattress and Maiken and Lucia were upstairs on a fold out couch. Will spent at least 30 minutes telling us why the downstairs was not a good place to sleep and why you can't sleep in the dark. I knew if he would just lay down and stop talking he would crash. And when he finally got frustrated enough with me telling him we were going to sleep in the dark, he laid down and was snoring five seconds later.

Not so easy for me. I'm not sure how many trips I will go on before I learn I need to take my fan. I cannot sleep well without it. Not sure what I'm gonna do this summer when I have to go on a plane trip, I need a small portable fan. The wind howled around their house at night, fan would have helped block that out. Both neighbors have chickens. Did you know rosters don't only crow in the morning? No that's only on tv. The second night two of the cats, Grumbly and Go both decided to walk across my face. And then Go started playing with some toy at the end of the beds. Sweet. Also helpful is the fact that air mattresses are the complete opposite of those mattresses that don't move at all when you do. I'm excited to be back in my bed tonight. Not that it wasn't worth it.

I did miss out on the fun from the night before. Alex has two cats, Grumbly and Beatrice. They don't really like strangers. Willie also has a kitten Go. My mom brought down their dog Zen. Keeley has a dog and the cats aren't bothered at all by her, but I guess Zen was a little different. My family all went out to eat and when they came back Zen had blood all over his face. The first thought was that the dogs had gotten into a fight. Turns out Zen had gotten a little too interested in the cats and Grumbly got him in the nose. Grumbly was quite scared by Zen and sorry, there just isn't a better way to say it, he literally had the shit scared out of him. Very sad I missed that.

Saturday morning we got up and went down to Linda Lea's coffee shop where Willie and Alex work. Willie does the baking and had made us custom ordered bagels. They were the best bagels I've ever had, and I'm not just saying that cause we are related. Afterwards we took the kids to the city park for a break to get some energy out. There is a Stamp It Up stamp factory near by and the mulch in the playground is shredding stamps. It's pretty cool and much nicer to walk or fall on then bark.

We made a quick stop at the fire station where they had been having an open house earlier in the day. Keeley just finished her EMT certification and she carried Will around the station showing him the rigs.

Then back to the house for some more gardening. With two beds done, we began work on the fence. Luckily there were several metal poles around the yard with cider blocks attached. Remnants of an old volleyball set. So we buried those plus ten other poles to make a fence border. We hung up fabric deer fence, but they will probably have to add chicken wire to the bottom to keep the rabbits out. We saw one curious little bugger while we were digging, so they definitely are around.

That night we had a wonderful dinner of my mom's chimichangas and yummy berry pie and pumpkin pie for dessert. We were joined for dinner by their new friend Derek. It seems wherever Keeley and Willie live, there must be a Derek there for them to hang out with.

Alex got Willie a "machine gun" and cross bow arrow guns from the local store. Who knew they would be the highlight of the night. Willie barely got to try them out before the kiddies wanted to take over. Will was obsessed! I wish I would have been able to capture on video the look on face when he went after someone. It was a little too intense. He would chase Willie down, get about a foot away say "I got you" and then wait another three minutes before actually firing. He was a very good dueling partner and always made sure to bring Willie his arrows back and waited till Willie was properly loaded before chasing him down again.

The other excitement of the night came earlier when Will woke up after we had finished dinner. He had not gotten a nap and was at the screaming phase when dinner was being cooked. Alex did a great job of distracting him, but he was hungry and dinner was going to still be awhile. I made him some popcorn and he sat down on the couch. Just a few minutes later I looked over and saw him sitting up still chewing, but his eyes were closed. By the time I grabbed the camera he had fallen over, but was still chewing his popcorn.

He woke up about an hour later and was complaining that his foot hurt. The yard is full of those pricker plants that get stuck in your shoes. Even though we tried to make checks, several got carried into the house. I had pulled one out of his foot earlier, but he said it still hurt. Under closer observation, there was a piece still stuck in his foot. And it wasn't right on the surface anymore. New EMT Keeley to the rescue. She went and grabbed her kit and pulled out her "foreign object extraction kit". Luckily she only needed to use the fancy tweezers, the other things were kind of disturbing.

It took Maiken and I pinning Will down and a little digging, but Keeley had her first rescue. And even though Will was pretty upset for awhile, I don't think his idol status of Keeley has been compromised.

This morning we got up and had a wonderful breakfast of wheat vegan pancakes, tofu scramble and homemade hash browns. After some lounging we hit the road again. This time not as much napping in the car and more crying that this was boring mom. But besides driving through some snow, nothing too bad. Overall a fun weekend away from home.

(the Wills)

(Lots more pictures on flickr for Britta and anyone else interested.)

Fake Nails Protect You

Just in case you all thought that cars were the only thing Will played with, this is what he picked out at the dollar store today with his dad.

In case you can't tell, that's a cosmetic set. I'm not gonna comment. I will say that every time he sees a commercial for a doll that you apply makeup on or do her hair, he always says he wants that for his birthday. I just say, well that's still a long time away.

Just now Will wheeled his bin of cars into the living room and I said he needed to pick up the other toys before he got those out. He asked what toys and I said he needed to pick up his makeup set. He turned to me and said, it's not a makeup set mom, it's a first aid kit. Oh.

Me: How is that a first aid set, what do you use that stuff for?
Will: See, these are for first aid (pointing to the rings)
M: How do they help you
W: You put them on your finger (slides it on) and it protects your owie that is right there
M: What about the other stuff
W: These things..
M: barrettes, they go in your hair
W: Yeah, cause if your hair goes flat, it help them
W: And these (sliding on the fake nails) they protect your fingers
M: How does the fake lipstick help you
W: It helps your lips be protected
W: How come you keep saying about the fake stuff? You can say a lot

Disaster Area Contained...for today

It must be the spring in the air. And seeing all the fun projects my sister Britta has done in her home, even though she was 9 months pregnant, I guess Tom was a little bit of help on that. I decided to try and tackle the mess called Will's room.

When Will was born I had all of these fun ideas of what to do in his room, had a whole theme picked out and everything. Yet the only thing that got finished was his curtains, crib and bumper pads. And he slept in that crib it took me 3 months, 2 coats of primer and 5, yes 5 coats of red paint to finish, for only 6 months. So maybe that is why I haven't been more motivated. He doesn't actually "sleep" in his room.

The other un-motivating thing is that since we live in an apartment storage is at a bare minimum. So Will shares his room with my sewing stuff and anything else that I don't want to keep in the storage unit. But, I was tired of walking into this:

Now I did debated about humiliating myself by posting the before pictures, but you just can't get the effect of the after pictures without them. And I'm hoping that any parent with a kid over 2 has had these times. And if you haven't...suck it. (sorry mom)

Dramatic pause to the reveal:

Normally I'm not a fan of the line all the walls with furniture, but like I said, we are dealing with limited space and LOTS of toys, so this was the best I could come up with.

Before:

After:

Featuring my new shelves from Costco which I'm very excited about.

Before:

Yes is does help clear up clutter if you get the Christmas decorations back to the storage unit before March.

After:



For staging purposes only, the quilt top I finish 4 YEARS AGO, but never made into a quilt. And Will was very upset that I took off his truck blanket for the pictures so I have a feeling that even if some miracle occurred resulting in the quilt being finished, that it would never end up back on this bed.

Now if I could just get Will to sleep in his newly organized room...

Lunch Spot

Will decided this was where he wanted to finish his lunch. I guess it's good for containing the mess. I know, he has clothes on, I'm as surprised as you.

Shelves

My quest has been completed. I have finally found a set of shelves to go in Will's room that will allow him to put away his big vehicles in something other than a bin that gets dumped out anytime he wants to play with one of the toys in it.

Costco.com came though with these:


The best part, less than 10 minutes to assemble. The only thing I wish was different is that they were about a foot longer. And they were just a little too expensive for me to want to buy two sets. But I just couldn't find shelves that were wider that met all my other requirements, so they will do. They would have gone perfect with Will's red crib. Hopefully the project of rearranging his room will be done this weekend and I will post pictures of the newly organized area.

Funny Bunny

I recently realized that I have been drifting through life. Just blindly floating through years and years of holidays and holiday mascots. Readily accepting gifts from these mystical creatures without ever asking questions. It's not till you have an inquisitive 3 yr old that you realize how easily you accept how things are. I wonder, was I like my son when I was 3? Did I have all these questions and concerns and just grew out of it? Did my parents give me the answers to such questions, or did I ever ask them? Lately when we go to bed and I tell Will we need to lay down and be quite, I get the following statement. "But mom, I need to tell you a few questions."

I think someone needs to create a Holidays for Dummies book. This book would include all of those background stories that just never seem to be told about our holidays and traditions. Sure some things vary from family to family and kid to kid, but someone needs to help me out. I think Christmas is taken care of. I can give the explanation on Santa. You’re good you get toys. Santa lives in the North Pole, somewhere you will never go so I don’t need to worry about you ever seeing him except at the mall. And Will is too shy to ever go near Santa, so I don't really need to go to deep on that one. The rest of the year he is busy making toys with the elves. Magic reindeer, loves cookies and milk, got it.

What I need to know is what the hell is up with the Easter Bunny? Will and I were in the car and he asked what the next holiday was. He was asking because he wanted to know the next time he was going to get a present, cause I bought him one for Valentines Day. I decided to skip the holiday of his Irish heritage and move onto Easter. Yeah, you will get a present on Easter. From who? The Easter Bunny. Who’s the Easter Bunny? Ummm…a bunny that comes and gives us presents. How come? Cause it’s Easter. What kind of presents? Well, eggs, candy, stuff like that. Eggs? Why does the bunny bring me eggs? Anyone? Where does the bunny live? Ummm…in the mountains. Where is he right now? Hibernating? What’s hibernating? How does he get in our house to leave us presents? He is magic like Santa.

And you can’t ever go into the religious significance, cause that really doesn’t help explain the bunny. I think I’ve heard the egg part has something to do with birth and rebirth, so I get the Easter connection. Just not sure how it ended up being a large fuzzy bunny that delivers those eggs to us. Even if there was a Charlie Brown Easter Special it might be helpful. Is there a Charlie Brown Easter Special that I missed?

My father-in-law used to go make white flour bunny footprints on the lawn Easter morning so the kids could see that the Easter Bunny had been there. I hear stories like that and see all the fun things people did for their kids just for Valentines Day and think, wow, I really am lazy. I love the idea of really getting involved in holidays and enjoying this time when Will is little and still believes what ever I tell him. (unless I tell him it's bedtime) But when it comes down to getting up 30 minutes early to get something ready before he gets up, or sleeping for another 30 minutes, my pillow usually wins. I guess that's another benefit to those people that have bedtimes for their kids.

I am going to publicly (to the 10 people that read my blog) commit to making the rest of this year a holiday palooza! I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I figure it gives me a little wiggle room. So here's to a year full of fun and exciting times that Will will probably never remember. Maybe I should hold off a few more years to get creative.

And because a blog is always more exciting with pictures, here is a picture of the Easter Bunny from Provo's Easter Egg Hunt last year.

The girl in the black coat doesn't seem that excited. Now compare that picture with Zippy (our departments mascot) who also made an appearance.

Can you feel the love? This year Zippy is going to be the main attraction decked out with custom made bunny ears.

And here is a picture of Will's first Easter. The only time that kid ever had a fat roll. I remember this photo session with Will and Lucia. Will just sat there smiling right at the camera the whole time. Long gone are those days.