What Happens in Vegas...

...gets discussed on my blog! 

Earlier this week, I got to have a little break from the kids and spend 1-1/2 days out of town.  Destination?  Vegas, baby!

The whole reason for the trip was for my husband's Eastern Regional Managers Conference for his job.  The managers could bring their spouses.  The trip included free flight, paid for by the company, and a free night's stay in a hotel and lunch and dinner on Tuesday, plus a fun special event Tuesday night.

Our flight left at 7 am and when we arrived, my husband went straight to meetings.  I went straight up to the room and back to bed where I slept until about 11:30 and then I showered and got ready for the 12:45 lunch.  We met for lunch.  After lunch there was a brief awards ceremony, where my husband won an award for having one of the top 50 cleanest stores in the company.  Then we  had free time.  I met up with a friend, who drove me around while we chatted and my husband went up to the room for a nap.  Dinner was at 5 pm.  After dinner, though, is when the fun really began....

This was my first time being around people who were getting totally wasted.  I've been around people having drinks before, but never around them when they are completely drunk.  It was sort of scary, even surreal, like a high school drinking party in a movie. 

I was embarrassed for them all.  These were other managers, same level and higher up, that my husband works with.  It was really embarrassing to see them in such a state, and made me wonder how appropriate is it for people to get so drunk at a work function.  I even heard that the regional manager had to help one of the divisional managers up to the hotel room at the end of the night.

Moral of the story:  I will  never drink.  It holds no appeal to me whatsoever. The smell was horrendous.  And I was blown away at the amount of money being plunked down for it.  Made me feel guilty for yelling at my husband for spending $3 on a candy bar earlier that day.  I guess $3 on a candy bar is better than $100+ on alcohol.

The worst part is that I will be attending many of these functions and dealing with the drunkenness again. 

The husband and I--we did have a blast.  We drank some ice water and did some swing dancing to the live band while everyone else was trying to start some sort of mosh pit.  The other managers are still talking about our awesome swing dance moves.  Note:  Drunk people are easy to impress because we really were stinking up the place!

Good Mom = Messy House?

I saw this little ditty on Totsy, which is a great website for online shopping if you've never heard of it. Go on, check it out, sign up and shop!

No, but seriously, I have seen similar little ditties posted on Facebook and other blogs many times over the past couple of years.

And I'll be honest. I'm really sick of the notion that a messy house is equal to happy kids. I understand that sometimes you don't have time to deep clean something because you have to focus on the kids, believe me, I know that! But whenever I see one of these little ditties, I feel a stab in my stomach that somehow, I'm not a good mom because my house happens to be pretty clean.

In fact, my house is clean because I enlist my kids to help with chores to keep it clean. They work with me to do it, so not only am I spending time with them, teaching them something valuable, but they are developing a work ethic and they get to live in a clean house.

For some reason, I don't see that as a bad thing.

Now I'm not saying my house is spotless, because it's not, but my house isn't the messy that's always described in these little ditties.

So I will NOT be purchasing this little ditty from Totsy. You won't ever see such a thing hanging in my house.

Safety in Numbers, for those of you who run

A couple weeks ago, my sister-in-law went out for a run and she wrote about what happened to her:

Today at 10am I went for a long distance run by my house. During the run a white van with three men pulling a trailer slowed down to wave at me and then sped off. About five minutes later I saw them again where the running trail intersected the road. This time they pulled in front of me, rolled down their window and said 'hi' and I felt very uncomfortable. Had I not seen the men, I would have turned around and headed home like a normal run, but I didn't feel comfortable doing that because no one was around in the opposite direction, so I kept going forward (further away from my home) where the van couldn't follow me and where there was another runner ahead. The van pulled into a tennis parking lot and stopped. At this point I was very frightened, I didn't have a phone and knew I needed to get home. I took a different route along some well traveled roads. There was only one road that connected the previous neighborhood to the new neighborhood I was in (and it is confusing to navigate). Anyways, I told myself that if I saw the van again I would run for help at a house. Twenty minutes later I passed the road that connects the neighborhoods and started to feel at ease....that's when I saw the van pulling up a road parallel to the previous. They saw me and I starting sprinting to a house. I saw a man outside throwing something away and I starting screaming 'HELP ME!! THIS VAN IS FOLLOWING ME!! PLEASE HELP ME!!' The van FLOORED it to where I was, slowed down in front of me, and when they heard what I was saying, sped off. The man very curtly said he'd call the police. I asked if I could come in his home and he said no, went into his home and bolted the door in my face. At this point I was crying I didn't know where to go and was afraid the men would drive back. I ran into the backyard, and jumped three fences. I looked for a house with a car and some semblance of children. I found one and pounded on their door. The couple was kind and let me in. I was in hysterics and bawling. They kindly drove me the mile and half left to my house where I then called the police and filed a report. Sadly I didn't get the license plat number but I tried to describe everything else.

I said many pleading prayers throughout this incident to be protected and I can attest that I was. For those of you women who go running by yourself, I plead that you get a running partner. These scary incidents can happen at ANY time of the day. I'm so grateful I made it home okay and for the kind family that helped me.

I just wanted to post this for all you runners out there to be cautious and be aware. This happened to her in the middle of the day, so it wasn't dark out. It's a good thing she was alert and aware of her surroundings. I'm just grateful something terrible did not happen.

People *I* Want to Punch in the Throat

Last month, I stumbled onto a great blog called People I Want to Punch in the Throat. The theme of the entry I stumbled upon was about the notorious "Elf on the Shelf" that became so popular this year, which left me laughing so hard I was crying and completely nodding in agreement. Since then, I've read most of her posts. Not too thrilled about some of the swearing, but she sure hits the nail on the head with a lot of what she says.

Today, I decided to do my own "People I Want to Punch in the Throat" post.

Parents who complain about their kids getting up too early when said kids are getting up at 7 am and later times.

Really?

If one more of my friends whines to me that her child woke her up so early at 7 am, boo hoo hoo, I might just rear back and throw that punch. Or the ones who give me all sorts of advice on how to make my baby sleep longer in the mornings.

Like I haven't tried everything out there.

What parent wants to get up at 4:30 a.m. every single day when everyone else in the house gets to sleep until 6 or 6:30?

I have four other children whom I've managed to get to sleep through the night just fine. I know what all the standard advice is already. He wakes up at 4:30 am hungry and sometimes he simply won't go back to sleep.

So it really bugs me in conversations when parents complain about 7 am being SO early. I get up so freakin' early every day that I don't function well and I can't do anything normal at all. Staying up until 9 pm feels like midnight to me. I wanted to go play stake basketball last night, but the game was at 9:15. I really had every intention of going. I even got ready to go. But in having to wait until so late, I fell asleep and when I woke up, it was 9:45.

Please spare me the sobby details of your life if your child wakes you up so early at 7 am. I'd happily pay someone money I don't have to train my baby to sleep until only 6 am. 7 am would be luxuriously sleeping in to me.

Book Review: Gone With the Wind

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I quite enjoyed this book. I have loved reading historical fiction, especially from periods of war, as I find them quite fascinating. I have only ever read books from the point of view of the North during the Civil War so this was the first time reading about it from Southern perspective.



I think Margaret Mitchell's book is very well written and mostly easy to read. The hardest parts were the dialogue of the slaves, most of which I had to read out loud in order to understand what they were saying. I have seen the movie many, many times and feel that 1930's Hollywood did a much better job of putting a book to a movie than Hollywood does to most books-to-movies today.



The more I read, the less I liked Scarlett. I was familiar with her character, having seen the movie so many times, but I feel that much is left out of her character in the movie that is there in the book. I find her to be equitable with other loathsome female characters, like Bella Swann in the Twilight series and Catherine in Wuthering Heights. I think the thing I liked the least, though, was how I could relate to her on some of her lower levels. Makes me want to rethink my life and my priorities in life feeling that I am similar to her in any way.



Overall, I enjoyed the read. Not sure if I would ever read it again, just because it's so long and I'm sure I'd skip a LOT of the war and history if I ever did read it again. I definitely agree that it was Pulitzer Prize-worthy. Would recommend that anyone who has not read it to read this book!



View all my reviews

WAY

I'm WAY tired!

That'll be WAY fun, let's do that!

I really can't stand the local colloquialism of Utah in the form of the word "way". I remember how much it annoyed me in high school. There was less of a problem with it in college because so many of my fellow BYU students were from outside of Utah, and I stopped hearing it. After being gone from Utah since 2000, coming back in 2009, that was one of the first things I noticed. Utahns still use the word "way" all the time.

My kids have started saying it.

I have started saying it. Nothing bothers me more than when that slips out of my mouth. I almost have to slap myself.

I heard the news anchor say it on the news this morning.

My seventh grade grammar teacher would be rolling in her grave (though I'm not sure if she's even passed on yet).

It's WAY annoying!

Moment of Joy

I have decided that I am going to try better and write about the more positive things in my life this year. My problem is that I often have a hard time seeing them. So yesterday, after I told my husband this little story on the phone while he was at work, I thought, I should write that on my blog!

We have been having enormous problems getting our baby to sleep well at night. Saturday night was no exception. He fussed quite a bit a couple hours after going down, but I let him fuss. He woke up around 1 am fussing, but I let him fuss. I normally let him fuss and hope he goes back to sleep (still makes me not sleep though) and only go in there to get him if he's really screaming. At 4:30 am on Sunday morning, he woke up screaming. I finally went in about 5 am and gave him a bottle. He wouldn't go back to sleep. Basically, that's how the whole morning went. I finally managed to coax him into a nap around 10 am but he only slept for one hour. He fell asleep in my arms at church, something that has only happened one other time with this baby (randomly falling asleep that is).

But after church, my husband went to work and I went home with the kids. We had our dinner and then the kids went upstairs to play.

My little boy loves to climb the stairs, and he loves to play with his big siblings, so he followed them up the stairs. I was two steps behind him the whole way to make sure he didn't fall. Once he got up, though, the kids didn't want him in their room since they were playing with Legos, so they shut the door. So I dumped out the bucket of Lego duplos for him to play with in the hallway and sat with him at the top of the stairs.

He picked up a Lego and threw up his arm, letting go so the Lego randomly flew through the air. It made him laugh, so he kept doing it. Then, once, he accidentally threw one down the stairs. That was incredibly funny to him, so he spend the next little while trying to intentionally throw the Legos down the stairs. He'd crawl carefully to the top of the stairs and peek over the edge whenever one disappeared down and then he'd laugh. Then, he'd hold his hand out to me and screech until I held my hand out and he gave me a high five. It was so cute and funny, I wish I could have video recorded it.

That was my moment of joy yesterday.