It's beginning to look a lot like.....a prozac commercial.

I had this hair-brained idea this year to use the family advent calendar for December as an Activity! Calendar! instead of the usual pick a treat out of the pocket and then fight about it amongst yourselves thus causing the "Spirit of the Christmas Season" to fly out of the windows along with the super expensive (yet worth it) furnace heat.

And THAT was the longest run-on sentence ever.

Back to the plethora of family activities.
We have stuffed the pockets of the calendar with everything from "Make Cookies together"(big mess in the kitchen, one wooden spoon caught fire) to "Go to Temple Square to see the lights.(beautiful but freezing cold)



And we are still going at it.

This past week, for instance, we drove to "See Christmas lights in our Pajamas".
Thanksgiving Point, not far from our house has a pretty good drive through light display. Not having to walk around in frigid temperatures is a huge bonus to me.
We had the van doors open, the Christmas tunes cranked, the windows rolled down, and we were all wrapped up in blankets.
Oh, and the heater on full bore.
We are doing our part for that global warming thing.
At the end of the light display, they had real reindeer to see.
Not drive through reindeer.
You had to actually get out.
The kids all wanted to go pet their frozen carcasses.
Sam had to take them, because, well...these are my pajamas:

I didn't really want to walk around.
Not because I didn't look smoking hot in them,(cause I am pretty sure that I did) but because I might get the feet wet, and really, what good are footed PJ's if the feet get wet?
Here is the picture he got with the kids and the reindeer:

Go ahead and click on that bad boy to make it bigger.
The quality is awesome!

Beggars can't be choosers.
And footie-wearers can't be photographers.

So this is the reason I haven't been around the Internets much.

Been having too farking much fun hangin' with the fam.(Some sarcasm may apply.)
Christmas shopping.
Baking stuff up for parties.
Shoveling snow.
Killing at Pictionary!
Mopping up after soggy snow boots.
and finding lost gloves.
Along with my regular chores of:
Cooking
Cleaning
Laundry
and generally being the token trophy wife.

I think this picture sums it up:

So if I am not back here again before the big day-

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Be very jealous.

Last Sunday night I started getting sick.

Come to find out, I was lucky enough to land myself a portion of the good old H1N1 that is making the rounds.
I have been completely wiped out for a week.

I missed two weddings.
A field trip.
The gym.

But I have been "Keeping up with the Kardashians."

My house has fallen apart.
Finally, on Thursday since I was out of PJ pants with which to lounge in, and my ten year old son opted to wear his sisters stretchy pants to school out of necessity, laundry duty was imminent.

And this is what met me, by smell from the kitchen, and by sight from the bottom of the stairs:

And I now know why they call it the "Swine Flu."

Cause when mama gets it, no one picks up the slack, and the whole house turns into a pig-sty.

Don't even get me started on the kitchen...

Oh....Hello!

It has been so long since I blogged that I forgot my password to get into Blogger.
I had to do the password recovery thingie.
But here I am!

I just wanted to pop in and post a quickie to show all five of you that I am still alive.

Ten Things I Suck AT:
1- Consistent Blogging. You can't argue with that one.

2- Consistent anything...Sometimes there is dinner, other times you are fending for yourself here.

3- Clothing repairs. I have a laundry basket full of shirts that need buttons sewn back on, or jackets that need a small tear sewn up. I don't think the original owners of said clothing even fit those particular items any longer. Let's not even talk about the time I STAPLED on the Scout shirt patches. And I was the Cub Master at the time.

4- Sleep schedules. If I have a good book, I am reading til 3:00am. If not, I might zonk out during the 10:00 news.

5- Removing unwanted hair. My eyebrows look like Sasquatch. Always. And in the winter, my razor gets a break. Tights come in handy for church. And long boots.

6- Resisting Junk. And to CLEARLY specify...by "junk" I mean "junk food"--not the more popular reference to male genitalia. Which, for the record, I have a long-standing reputation of resistance.
JUNK food. If there is an open box, bag or package of cookies, chips, or candy, it will soon be an empty bag. Willpower. Wish I had some.

7- Sudoku. There are just too many NUMBERS.

8- Praying in public. Like for Sunday School opening prayer, or a family dinner. I always pray myself into a corner. "We are grateful for the beautiful weather...and for weather that is....um, uhhhh...(crickets)...pleasing unto thee??!!
(Fail.)

9- Finding an address. Unless the address can be found using landmarks, like "the pink house right behind Target." Truthfully, I am not even sure of where my Norths and Wests are at any given time. Pizza delivery will never be in my future.

Well folks, I am just getting warmed up here, but this is a list of only ten, which brings me to number ten. This is a recently acquired "sucking" and will probably warrant it's own blog post:

10- Zumba.

This is why women burn candles.

The past week I have had a mystery smell in my house.
A bad mystery smell.

It seemed to be stronger in the kitchen area.
I was hoping for a rotten potato.
That is the quickest fix to the "What the (gag) heck is that (gag) smell?!"
Not a potato.
Still really rank in the kitchen.

This led me down my well-worn trail of mental darkness...
What if it was a dead customer??!!

Let me backtrack for those of you new to the blog.

Me=Deathly afraid of rodents.

My husband and my sons try to keep me out of the loop when it comes down to the mouse population in the house.
When they set traps now, they talk in code.
"Hey, did you check the *mailbox* for *customers*?
(wink, wink)
I know deep down what they are referring to, but I choose to take the conversation at face value.

Lalalalala...fluffy white clouds in my world....

So back to my mystery smell.
I was almost thinking it was a customer somewhere, rotting away, and was slightly afraid to find it, and yet really, really anxious to GET RID OF THE PUTRID SMELL emulating from the center of the house.

I mean, what if someone dropped in?

What would they think?
Admit it.
We all know someone that has a weird smelling house.
And it leaves you to wonder if they can't smell it?
How can they stand it?
Is it Pets? Garlic? Socks?
What?
And really, it is asking a lot out of that tiny bowl of decorative potpourri...

What if someone thought my house smelled like this all the time?

I did what any self-respecting homemaker would do in such a grim state of smell-searching panic.

I lit a scented candle.

I was reminded of the Week of the Bad Mystery Smell by my husband.

It was when the twins were potty training.
The house perpetually smelled like a stinky diaper.

I swear, I was anal about taking those things out to the trash, and yet the smell still seemed to linger.

It was a few days later when we discovered one of the twins had done their business, taken the offending diaper off, and promptly stuffed the package down the heater vent.

The combined force of the air, and the heat redistributed that lovely aroma allllll over the house.

For a week.

No candle can compete with that.

I knew we were past the diaper days.
Still this horrid smell remained.

It doesn't help that I have an acute sense of smell.
This was the only skill I retained from all of my pregnancies.
Gone is the voluptuous chest!
Gone is the aversion to carbs!
But my sniffer!
Yep. Still highly sensitive.

I can smell a fart behind a closed door and down two flights of stairs.
Once I was in the kitchen, and could smell the "fruits" from one of the boys from the family room.
"Who WAS IT!!!!" I snarled.
"No way!" the offender replied in awe and disbelief.
And I swear, bet money was exchanged between the boy and his dad.
Yep.
I have skeelz.

This smell.
It was making me crazy!

Finally, I found it.

A package of frozen vegetables that got put away in the pantry instead of the freezer. Yesssss!

I was one happy...um, customer.

Down for the Count

It started with Brendan.
He went on a scout camp-out and was up the next night puking.
I slept through it all.

Hooray for having kids that can hit the toilet on their own!
I figured that he just ate a lot of junk on the camp-out.

Then the next day was fast Sunday.
We all fasted, and Jayden excused himself from the dinner table to go retch.
Again, I figured he was just overly hungry from fasting.

The next day, Shianne started ralphing.

It was only then that I figured it out.
"Hey, we have the flu, here."

I got it yesterday.
It was rotten.
I finally needed to eat something, and the only thing that sounded good was a banana shake.
I hate bananas.
Maybe I just needed the potassium?
It tasted pretty dang good.

And today, Jayden is fevered up again.

I want to clear the house out, and have it quarantined.
Lysol everything.
Sigh.

I guess it is going around.
Several schools in Utah have completely closed.

Other news:

Shayne came home last week and informed me that he wanted to work on a project for the reflections contest.
He wanted to enter in the Photography category.
He asked to borrow my point and shoot camera.
The theme for this years' reflections contest is "Beauty is..."
I forgot about him for a while, and he came back into the house, partly frozen, holding the camera.
"I think I got some good ones." he said, "Can we go look?"

So we go upstairs to upload the photos he took.
I was curious, because it was pitch-black outside, and I had no idea where he was going with this.
Here is what he got:


I was floored!
He took the pictures through his telescope!
And I was even more floored to learn he shot them on manual.
I DON'T EVEN SHOOT ON MANUAL.
He said, "I just kept trying all the buttons, and the one that worked the best was the "M" button, on 4.5 and 1/1000."

Huh.

He picked his favorite pictures and mounted them on black poster board and put:
"Beauty is...something you can't touch, only see."

I am not sure how two morons like Sam and I have managed to raise this kid.

Random Ponderings

1- Why does gravy never re-heat in the microwave?
2- Why do gray hairs always stand straight up on your head like little bug antennas?
3- Why can I never find any of the 151 pairs of nail clippers in this house when I need them?
4- Why are nail clippers referred to as a "pair" of nail clippers?
5- Why do none of the pens in this house work? I have to resort to jotting down important information in crayons. It makes me feel super professional.
6- Why is it that anything with scrambled eggs on it (plate, cup, pan) never come clean in my dishwasher? Eggs? What the crap?
7- How is it that extra-super super glue has a questionable bond, yet cocoa pebbles can form a permanent molecular attachment to the grout in my floor tile?
8- How does my kitchen faucet get so gunky? What is that gunk? (probably salmonella)
9- Why can't I get off my butt and get my house clean? :)

Silence.

For the past couple of days I have had no voice.
I am not sick. (Unless someone wants to bring me sympathy dinner. Or cookies.)
I have no other symptoms of being sick.
Just no voice.

I honestly think that this is something my children have been praying for, and clear evidence that they have more clout than I with The Big Guy upstairs.

You see...I can't holler at them for anything.
I have to try to get their attention by snapping my fingers.
I am not a good snapper.
I have never been able to whistle either.
I have resorted to flapping my arms in front of them as they watch TV.
Sadly, I barely register a response.
They are used to the crazy, and think that the flapping is a new stage in that rodeo.

I could call them, I suppose, using my cell phone to call the home phone, but
A- they would never answer it, and
B- if they did answer (by some small miracle), they would be met with silence on the other end of the line--from their mute mother.

They seem to find the dinner table okay when the food is ready, without me calling for them.

I am worried that I won't get my voice back.
Sam said it is that time of year...
The time of year when he has maybe or maybe not seen mice in the general vicinity.
He has to tread very carefully around this subject, since I am not hormonally stable enough to survive a possible rodent sighting.
And imagine!
Imagine if I saw one...
and I
Couldn't.
Even.
SCREAM??