Tales of a Shoebox Princess

Paul leaves Peru this evening! Wish him luck on his 24-hour trip back home! Tomorrow we will see him!!! Sneezing: Matt went to scout camp yesterday. Jim drove him and a couple other boys up to wherever it is and stayed for a little bit, mostly because Matt got light-headed during the swim test (yes folks, we have another fainter in the family! The count is at 4!) and so Jim stayed for an extra hour to make sure Matt was ok (and he was). Late at night, Jim got a text from Matt asking for more allergy meds because being outdoors constantly is making him sneeze constantly. Yes, the kid is allergic to being outside. Sheesh. I did know about it (because every time he mows the lawn, he comes in the house and sneezes for the next four hours and his eyes are all puffy), but I failed to mother him enough to make him remember to take the nasal spray and the Benadryl. He did take the 24-hour Zyrtec generic. (Personally, I think he needs to be more on top of his meds himself. He is 16 after all)...

Paul has one full day (today) left, he leaves Peru tomorrow evening. I'm started drumming my fingers to pass the time. I might switch to thumb twiddling later on. I went on a walk this morning and saw 6 bunnies. Saturday night I saw so many bunnies I didn't even bother counting. The rabbits must be breeding like....uh....rabbits. The urge to pet them is so great that I go chasing after every bunny I see. I haven't caught one yet, nor do I expect to, but still I try (is this stupidity? I like to think it's simply bunny love). I keep telling them, "I don't want to hurt you, I just want to scritch-scratch you behind your big ears! I promise you'll enjoy it!" Even with those big ears, the bunnies don't listen.

I'm about to write my last missionary email for a while. For 3 1/2 years, I have written weekly emails to my missionary sons. Sometimes I have written it late at night after a busy day. Sometimes it has taken precedence over dinner. My elders deserved an email from home every week even if they didn't get time to write--very few times did they fail to write. I wonder if I will miss writing the weekly email? I know I will miss getting them. OJ doesn't ever write emails to us anymore. We keep in touch by text message, facebook, and snapchat. Sometimes he calls. But I definitely heard from him more often when he was on his mission. I have a feeling Paul will be the same way. Speaking of OJ, he got a job at the BYU I Health Center. I don't know what he will be doing, but whatever it will be, it requires 30 hours of training. He's looking forward to getting career experience since he is majoring in health care administration. It's thundering outside. We lost our...

Katie has a bucket list for this year since she turned 25. One of the items was "run a 5K" and today she can check that off! She and Christian brought Jackson over this morning and Jim dropped them off at the start line. Then the two of us walked over to the finish line with Jackson in the stroller. We watched most of the runners finish. I'm always impressed with the little kids who run the race. When I was that age (and pretty much any other age) running was PUNISHMENT. I didn't ever do it just to do it. There were several 8-10 year old boys who ran and, like expert distance runners, they kicked it into high gear at the end of the race. I wanted to tell them all to keep running every day! Join the CC team in high school! I clapped for everyone because they all did it--they braved exhaustion, heat (yes it was nice and sunny), thirst, hurt, and knowing they weren't going to WIN (except that one guy), and I'm totally jealous. It seems too hard. I could walk ...

ONE HAND. I didn't walk before work this morning, which means I felt kind of off and not quite awake all morning. And I'm still in my pajamas. I'm going to take a walk as soon as I'm done blogging though, so at least I'll have done something for myself. A year ago, I could barely walk two blocks without crippling back pain. When I went on the occasional walk, I planned out my route so that I had a couple places where I could sit down and rest my back along the route. It made for a very limited choice of routes. I also worried about going places that might involve a lot of walking. Jim and I went to a Twins game one evening last year and I was mad that he always wanted to park at the meters half a mile away because that meant I had to walk and walking was pain. I whined and moaned the whole walk back to the car, wishing Jim would give in and say "Wait here, I'll get the car and come get you and next time we go to a game, I'll drop you off at the fron...

6 days and we have to start cleaning up the boys' room. Matt thinks it is clean, mostly because you can see the floor in places, and you can pick out the dressers without having to use a map. I wonder if Paul's idea of clean will be any different after living in Peru for 2 years? He used to be quite a neatnik. So egg rolls. For Hayley's grad party. 18 doz of them are now in my freezer. It's hard not to eat a few now and then because I love egg rolls, but I console myself with the knowledge that if there are leftovers after July 10, I can eat all I want (as long as I share with Hayley). Katie was a big help with egg-roll making yesterday. She was in charge of chopping things with one of those handy food choppers--it took seconds to finely dice up the mushrooms, and a minute or two to chop up 2 onions. Now that Katie has turned into a helpful person, making food with her around is easy. Jackson wasn't much help at all. In fact he was NONE help. He made up for his ...

One week until Paul arrives at the MSP airport and we bring him home! 6 days til he leaves the mission home on a plane bound for Lima, Peru. He has 24 hours of traveling between leaving the mission home and arriving at his family home. Today Hayley and I went to an Asian foods supermarket. I have been to this place before (I'm making egg rolls for Hayley's graduation party and some of the ingredients--like bean thread vermicelli and spring roll wrappers and powdered MSG--can only be purchased at an Asian foods market). She loved it. She is leaning towards majoring in Korean with a career path of teaching ESL students or teaching English in South Korea (she has mentioned she wants to take a tour of North Korea, the more "official," the better) because she is fascinated with Korean culture. I have always said she looks like she's part Asian. The Asian foods market has some very interesting foods in it. When I walk up and down the aisles, I realize that I have a ...

I went for a walk this morning before work, and when I got back to the house, I saw a beautiful white moth right at eye level on the door frame. When Katie came over this morning, she walked in with Jackson and said, "Mom there's a pure white moth on your door!" And when Katie and I got back from an unsuccessful trip to the fountain park in Burnsville (Jackson didn't like the water at all), Hayley, who was sweeping the entry way, said, "Mom there's a really white moth that looks like Servo's white spot." If I had the privilege of naming this specimen, that's what I would have named it: Servo's White Spot. (Servo is a gray kitty, but he has a small, very white patch of fur on his chest between his front paws that we like to look at occasionally. Servo doesn't like us to look at it though, because he is a selfish boob) Virginian Tiger moth I wanted to pet it, but then it would fly away. So I took a picture. I didn't know what ki...

Jackson and Katie came over for most of the day (in fact they are still here). Jackson decided not to take a nap, but he hasn't been too fussy for lack of sleep. He has spent his time chewing on a rubber duckie, his mother's belt, a booster seat strap, a ball, various stuffed snakes, perl bead magnets, empty water bottles, empty milk jugs, and even some actual food. Katie keeps a food grinder at our house and ground up some turkey macaroni chili that I made for dinner and Jackson ate all of it. That kid. I could spend hours watching him crawl around the room and play with stuff. He likes to chase the cats, who watch him with wary eyes, and then they trot off to another place away from the mobile potato (I like to think the cats consider him "that crawling potato"). I'm brain dead from work, but that little grandbaby perks me up. He's got big brown eyes and naturally styled dark brown hair. He's charming and very smiley. I love to have him over!

I can count the number of days left of Paul's mission on my hands! I will attempt to countdown-blog daily, but I make no promises. It's also Father's day today. In honor of my dad, I will thank him for making colored pancakes for us on Saturday mornings while we were at his house and letting us watch Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas, and Saturday morning cartoons--Bugs Bunny especially. In honor of my husband, I will thank him for making dinner today. He wanted to use his Father's day present--a new grill. So he cooked. And he's now doing what he likes best: the dishes. And here are a couple of pictures: This little munchkin makes all holidays 1000% better Another nice pic of the baby, but in the background is the real gem.

I can't get the TV to work. Scratch that. I can get the TV to work, but it's not the TV that I want to use. OK, I do want to the use the TV but not for watching a program on any network or cable channel or anything on my DVR list. I want to watch a DVD while I putter on Shutterfly (proofing Paul's Year 1 mission book or perhaps starting Hayley's photo book). But I can't get it to play. Supposedly we should be able to insert the disc into the mouth of the Blueray player and it will start it up automatically. But it's not doing that. It did turn the TV on, but it's stuck on the Netflix start screen. I can get it to the TV setting, but I don't want the TV setting! I've tried the remotes, including the Wii ones. The kids are both working and showing no signs of wanting to come home, so I can't watch what I wanted to unless I went up to the bedroom, where sits the TV with the built in DVD player that works whenever I want it to. Stupid entertai...

Movie name, anyone? I just popped in here to say TWO WEEKS UNTIL ELDER PAUL ARRIVES HOME! I saved the posters from Jimmy's return home, although one of them says "JIMMY" in big letters so we probably won't use that one, unless we feel super lazy that day and resort to just crossing it out and writing "PAUL." I have other big things to plan for or worry about but somehow it all gets forgotten because there are few things that compare to welcoming a returned missionary home. I'm going to welcome him home with some homemade macaroni and cheese! We have the luxury (or not) of having a full day before he gets released from his mission (all three of the stake presidency members will be at scout camp that night--oh yeah, Matt will be at scout camp too so he won't be there to welcome Paulie home. SAD) so we don't have to go RIGHT to the stake center. Paul can come home and relax and enjoy the air conditioning, the carpeting, the hot water that come...

OK not really beyond our control, because with a little thinking ahead, all the tears could have been avoided. A lesson to all of you: BE PREPARED and ASK. Our little story starts out with Hayley, a girl who is getting ready to graduate high school. I sent her off to the commencement practice Friday morning with her main objective to find out what time she had to be at school for the real commencement that night. One thing to remember to find out. ONE THING. When it was over, I asked her what time she had to be at the school and she mumbled "Oh, quarter to 7 I think." I scowled inwardly, but thought if she is wrong, then on her head be it. She was supposed to find out, and if she didn't, it wasn't my fault. So 6:15 rolls around, Jim had already taken Matt to school since he was in the band playing for the ceremony. I had sent Hayley off for a shower at 5:45 and I was ironing her gown, because she didn't do it earlier. It was a bear to iron too. I had to spra...

This is Hayley's yearbook picture (except I had our photographer photoshop out the chunk of hair across her cheek and the strands poking up on the right side of her head). Hayley and I tend to view traditions like yearbook pictures as something to have fun with. Besides, Hayley was uncomfortable with any photo of her looking posed, or what she considered unnatural-looking. She was not a fan of getting her pictures taken in the first place, so we did allow her to make faces for some of the pictures. I have a very lovely collage of "Hayley faces" which is probably her favorite arrangement of photos of herself. Anyway, she had several people in school tell her that they liked her picture and thought it was very "her." Hayley didn't get a yearbook. She didn't want to part with $85 of her own dollars for it and she says she hates high school. For such a negative attitude, she actually has a happy face most of the time. I don't have more to post; ...