My children are pot heads or Playing with change

Something changed in my little home office and I am typing on a much smaller keypad and looking at a much bigger screen, but the most exciting thing for me is that I downloaded the 750+ photos and videos off my phone (which I really shouldn't call a phone- for me it's more a camera that can communicate with the outside world). Well, they are still on my phone because I was too nervous to say yes to the "remove photos from your mobile devise" question. I will get to that later. (Yes, you may call me a virtual hoarder. And you may not look in my bedroom closet.)

So, I'm playing with my new toy and want to share some of the fun.

This has been some of what we've been up to while not being here with you:

I wish I could figure out how to post the video on here.

It's much more entertaining.

But, 

these will just have to do.

And, 

if you want,

you can imagine them running & spinning around like this in the driveway.

See- way more entertaining. 

(Even if the pictures are almost a year old.)

Whoop there it is

Little mr. j's basketball team's really grown a lot this season. They're taller, more coordinated, and a little more mature than last year.
My son, well, he's become versed in the art of drawing fouls.

Last weekend he told me his team lost because he missed two free throws. I told him they probably lost for a lot of other reasons too. I didn't know for sure because I'd only heard the 7 year old's version of the game as I was with miss s in Utah and missed the game. But I was told all about it later-according to my mr. - whom was very fired up about certain aspects of the officiators' using the rules towards the two teams fairly and equally- there were a lot of other reasons they lost the game. Phew. I'm kind of glad I missed it.

So today we went outside to practice shooting (specifically foul shots) and he was having quite a hard time getting the ball into the basket, so I gave him a suggestion.

I told him to hold his breath right before his foul shot.
Guess what- swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.
High fives all around. It was awesome.

Apparently I have some latent basketball coach skills and now you know. Booyah, you've become versed.

We play that team tomorrow at 11am.
I will do best to keep my mouth shut.

Ch - Ch - Ch - Changes 2012

I have been quite absent this past year, but my time's been full of new lessons.

In the next few posts, you get the opportunity to check out some of ways my life has changed over the last 12 months (or 52 weeks or 366 days or 8784 hours or 527,040 minutes or 31,622,400 seconds - because some of these changes I look at in smaller measure to make them seem less big).

First change happened last February.
I started working regularly outside the home.
If you've been a reader for a while, you already know that my mr.'s 'one month non-voluntary vacation' threw me for a loop. I always thought that I would go back to work someday. Someday just came way sooner than expected.

It was a part time job that's turned into a 30 hour a week job this school year.
I'm a tutor that helps out a reading teacher.
I get to play with kids and help them learn.
If I need to be working, I'm blessed to be where I am.

Lessons: children will catch you yawning and don't even try resting your eyes for a bit, first graders pick their noses - a lot and it's a very common trait for the young men of that age to not zip up their trousers, liking your co-workers & what you are doing sure makes work life a lot more enjoyable (I'm really lucky with this one), planning home life (e.g. dinner) is top priority, every little person needs a champion (ok, that lesson is from long ago, but over the last few month's it's become more and more apparent), sometimes you are put in a place to do more than what the job description describes, and you can blow a grade-schooler's mind when you tell them 'See you next year!' right before Christmas break.

And when I say you, I mean me or "I," to be grammatically correct.

It's been a wonderful Christmas break. We all go back to school next Monday. I'm excited to see what this new year in school will bring and who did their reading.

Pictures of the fails

so I can get space back on my phone and they may be documented:

This Year's Christmas Fails

So, I'm just going to do my part to break the cycle of perfection that runs so rampant in the blog world.

Nobody's perfect. We can try to look it. We can try to act it. We can try to post it. But, we're not. It's just how it is.

As my gift to all those women who put too much pressure on themselves trying to keep up with the Mrs. Joneses out there on Pintrest, I give you yesterday and today and one from last year.

Overnight turkey- This one I got from a woman in our ward. It looked good when she talked about it on facebook so I asked her for the recipe and she sent her entire Thanksgiving file over email, which was very awesome and entertaining and I'm very grateful. 

I tried. I really did, but I think my oven's 170 degrees is less than her oven's 170 degrees. (The turkey does take a 300 degree stint at first to kill the bacteria.) And it didn't help when I came home from the grocery store yesterday morning and the oven was off. So I stuck in my thermometer and the temperature was ok, but not close enough to where it should have been at that time, especially since the oven was on when I left for the store.

The temperature did not rise in a timely manner. In fact, that turkey hogged the oven the entire day! Not cool.

We ate some for dinner and nobody got sick, but I'm not sure if I will try that again.

Cinnamon Rolls- This one's not a fail yet, but I'm calling it.I should have listened to my inner voice while at the grocery store and not bought them. They look kind of browned too much and I'm really not sure how good they will be Tuesday morning. The phone call from little mr. b while pulling out of the grocery parking lot doesn't help my confidence. "Mom, did you buy the cinnamon rolls yet because you don't have to. Mrs. L just brought some over for us for Christmas." Mrs. L is perfect.

Nuts- Well, almonds. Thirteen years ago, I made the most wonderful spiced nuts for Christmas and gave them out as little neighbor gifts. Thirteen years I've been trying to do that same thing, but no luck. This year was no different. 

Gingerbread- The boys really want to build a gingerbread house. I have some cute gingerbread house wall/roof/chimney cookie cutters and tried to use them tonight. The only pieces left uncrumbled are the chimney, one long wall, two side walls and part of half a roof. miss h told me that I should just tell them they're making their gingerbread house out of graham crackers. We'll see what tomorrow brings with their construction decisions.

Peppermint Popcorn=Broken Pestle- My mortar is now without it's pestle. Did you know that if you drop a marble pestle on the granite countertop, something will break? I'm just thankful it wasn't the countertop. 

Snap- I was grumpy a little bit. Not all day, but still not good.

Sugar Cookie- Nightmare. I made the dough yesterday so we could just cut them out and cook "later." Later turned out to be this afternoon and apparently this recipe didn't want to wait. I almost gave up and was about to take a nap when miss h said, "Want me to go google what to do with dry weepy sugar cookie dough?" Of course I said yes.

She found a fix and fixed it. Phew.

We only lost one little bag of dough.

The rest of it has now morphed into a large amount of cookies that are sitting on a big pink platter waiting for frosting.

Gifts- I am a horrible sister/daughter/daughter in law. Mom, K & G if you are reading this, I am so sorry. Fail, fail, fail this year. I think that this year I'm not a very good giver of things. I hope you will understand.

little mr. j, I am sorry that Santa has to talk to parents first when it comes to live animal requests. You know what we told him. And the only other thing on your list is something that I know one of your siblings is blessing you with. 

Cards-I love Christmas cards and sending them out before Valentine's day the next year. I love that my miss h totally did them for me this year. Just like I love that miss s totally orchestrated our Christmas Eve dinner last year when I was down, half dead with the flu. I remember her coming into talk to me and asking me what needed to be done- reality hit when I found the notes she took a few weeks later.

That's it for now. At least I think that's it. I probably forgot something big and will feel like a big failure on my fails, but I didn't take that nap and it's way past my bedtime, so ---

I just wanted you to know that I won't fail to fail again and I will always to be grateful to those who help me pull through my failures, except when they try to take my picture.

Turkey Update - Finally

We now officially have three Thanksgiving decorations living (albeit put away now as the holiday seems to have past rather quickly as are all the days of late) under our roof.

Earlier this month, when we only possessed two, little mr. b asked if he could please put them out as he would like some decorations. Of course I said yes you can with the reservation that they would have to be put away sometimes because of some unwritten of stuff that we have going on with the house at this time. He agreed.

So through the month of November, the two decorations would pop out and I would put them away and they would pop out again and I would put them away somewhere different and they would pop out again until I saw them and so on.

Thanks to our school's first grade's create a Thanksgiving turkey program, we now have three decorations to play that game with next year. And I didn't throw up in the crafting process. Thought you might like to know that as well. Oh, and little mr. j did not throw up either.

Can you guess which one is ours?

Hint: It's not the pencil turkey or the Phelps turkey or the soccer turkey (which I got a preview of via a very fun texting session) or the bear turkey or the gymnastic turkey. I wish we had been that brilliant.

Still, it turned out kind of cute and it's done.
And that's good because Christmas will be here in about 15 days and I should probably be blogging about that.
But never mind that - take a gander (hehe) at these turkeys:

You get what you get

and you don't throw a fit.