Tales of a Shoebox Princess

I'm in danger of turning my own personal Valentine's day into Christmas-like intensity. It's been that way for a few years. I don't know why I like to have so much personal satisfaction sunk into Feb 14. And it's not about what's in it for me as much as what's in it for me when I watch the kids do their treasure hunt and what's in it for me when I sit down to a heart-shapes-and-shades-of-red-infested table at dinner time. I guess I do it for love. And if that isn't a bad pun, I don't know what is. I just love to do it. I love making up puzzles. Thankfully the kids are receptive to the idea of brain teasers and tests of random knowledge based on family favorite TV shows, movies, and silliness mixed in with general knowledge. A small sampling of the puzzle clues from this year's treasure hunts for Matt and Hayley: Where souffle girl crash landed The poltergiest who fears only the Bloody Baron The message John thought he got from the f...

I get to talk to my out-of-the-country boys this week! Elder Paul on Tuesday, and Elder Jimmy on Wednesday. We are so excited! Katie and Christian (and possibly Morgan) will be on facetime with us for Paul's call. If you have any questions for either Paul or Jimmy, post them in the comments and I will copy them down and pose them to my sons. I will probably forget the answers, but if I don't, I can relay them to you or post answers here. In other Christmas news, I took the photo for this year's picture ornament of my children. The picture is of whoever is home at Christmas time, and we're down to two kids in the picture this year. It's been nearly 20 years since I had only two kids in the picture. I didn't get happy cooperation from the participants this year, well at least from one. The other one was happy to oblige with picture-taking. Time to print the picture out and stick it in the photo frame and put it on the tree.

When asked if they would like to dye eggs this year, the three remaining at-home children all expressed very little enthusiasm. But I bought egg dye anyway. Good thing I did because at 10:30 p.m. Saturday night, all three kids wanted to dye eggs. See, this just adds to the hoarder impulses I have. "You need to buy that just in case," my brain tells me, because heaven forbid we disappoint the 18-, 16- and 14 year olds by not having colorful hard boiled eggs on Easter Sunday. For $2, I couldn't argue very much, although I don't mind disappointing the teenagers once in a while. Dyeing eggs with teenagers means that we aren't making them look pretty with cute little Easter bunnies or chicks. Hayley's theme this year was Pokemon creatures and a TARDIS . Paul chose his two eggs to be checkerboard, one of which involved several steps including tape, and Matt just did random scribbles, one that was nearly completely black (colored by crayon) and a Pokeball.  Jim...

Some of you might know about my traditional Valentine's day treasure hunts for my kids. This is definitely not that. This is for people who kiss each other a lot, for example, married people. I do not want my children (except the one who is married) playing this game. This is an idea I have had in my head for a few days, one that I shared with someone recently. I told this someone that first you get 3 dice. They don't have to be matching. Heck, you can even use those ridiculous 20-sided ones if you choose, although I would recommend that two of the three be the regular 6-sided ones. Steal them from the Yahtzee game you have lying around. Don't have a Yahtzee game???? What? Every household needs a Yahtzee game! Go get one! One of the dice will remain as it is (if you have a 20 sided one, that will be the one that will remain untouched). Get a pen and some paper. I'm using pink and purple cardstock just because it was the first paper I found. Cut out 12 squ...

So I'll have to encapsulate in a Ten Things format. It's the only way I can organize my thoughts. Ten Things that threatened to blow up my brain while also making me happy: 1. I turned 45. Mind blowing, but happy too. I lived to see another year and what a year it was. And barring any major changes (such as my demise), I will live to see another year. 2. Paul came home from college. He is applying for jobs and a mission. Dental exam yielded a few cavities that need repair, and Uncle Dentist has a few buildings that need repair so a trade might be enacted between the two needy people. 3. Christmas. Little tiny Legos, regular-sized Legos, headphones, photo books, a suit, a wool coat, chocolate, books, gift cards, and other goodies made their way into the house and into the possession of three good little children in our household. 4. THE PHONE CALL, or should I say the Skype call? We got to chat with our Elder Evans for a 1 1/2 hours. He showed off his Spanish skill (girls ...

To everything there is a season. I have had a good long season of fun family holiday traditions with little children. Today, some of the traditions were laid to rest. We did not color eggs this year, and we did not participate in hiding eggs and finding them. We did not have Easter baskets (although there was candy and plenty of it). Now is the season of rest from the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus; the season of rest from little children. I have got my children, and now it is time to "lose" them to adulthood and self-reliance. I don't mind. We have had fun the last 20 years of keeping up these particular holiday traditions, but it wears thin after a while, and we are getting to be too busy to keep some of them up. I am glad that we have had those times, but I am also glad that when I said, "no baskets this year" no one complained. They were happy that there was candy and that there will be ham and potatoes and pineapple for Easter...

I know Valentine's day has come and gone ages ago, but I have to post something or my posting skills get rusty after a week of no use. I spend so much time waiting for letters and emails from the missionary that I don't get my blogging done like I used to. Around Feb 1st every year, I start wondering why I put myself through this stupid Valentine tradition. But then the morning of the 14th, as Hayley and I headed out to seminary, she said, "treasure hunt?" and I thought, "OK, I'm glad I did it."  When the kids came home from school, they found this: Three of the balloons had little pieces of paper with letters on them. Matt tried this method of determining the letters in his balloon.  Hayley and Paul both popped their balloons. Unfortunately, that tended to send the little pieces of paper in all directions. Here is Hayley unscrambling her letters so they read "Fork knife spoon." Matt's unpopped balloon led him to t...

I'm up again at an unholy hour of the morning, although sleeping until 5:19 was technically sleeping in. Thank you, seminary, for skewing my perception of time.  If I had told my college age self there would come a time in my life when sleeping until 6 a.m. would be enjoyed and even considered heavenly, I probably would have shot myself for thinking future me was an alien in disguise. As a teen, I never could understand how in the world my mother could get up at these weird morning hours (when technically it wasn't even MORNING yet because, hello, there was no SUN peeping over the horizon) and do housework (and really all I can see now is getting up early isn't so bad; the actual doing of housework I still don't understand. How can I do housework when I have to catch up on emails, cute kittens, and people of walmart? I'd be willing to bet if facebook existed when my mother was in her 40s, she'd have been parked in front of her Apple 2e instead of downstairs grin...

Ten things I am grateful for (and I'm gonna try to be honest and serious, instead of being silly, like being thankful for children who misbehave because then I can meet the recommended daily allowance of yelling for 10 minutes at 110 decibels, which allows a parent to operate under the illusion that they are really in charge) 1.  ........... It's hard to be serious. Really. Everything I come up with devolves into some sort of joke. Either that or what I'm thankful for sounds trite. Of course I'm thankful for my family. Most everybody is. They bring happiness and joy and (and here I start to think "and blah blah blah, it's all been said before, even though it's true")... I'm grateful that the big boys got up and went to play football. Why? Because they are doing something they will remember as "having had a good time" for the rest of their lives. They are practicing being adults, living without their parents. And I am practicing ...

...and counting. It's almost anniversary time here in the shoebox castle. On this Saturday, Jim and I will have been married 23 years. In 23 years, we've: Lived in 5 states Lived at 13 different addresses Had almost as many landline phone numbers Raised 5 children Bought three mattresses Had 4 dining room tables (all used, by the way. We don't go buying new dining room tables left and right) Owned 8 vehicles (all used. All of them. Two we drove to death. One almost to death. Another back on to the lot for a trade-in and got $200. Three are still with us and one is with Kate. Kate's and one of ours are nigh unto sleeping in the vehicle junkyard) Bought 3 new couches (and had 4 used ones). We're tough on furniture. Owned three electric skillets (I still miss the first one) Repainted the bathroom of our current living space once Taken many many road trips together. Cleaned up 12 feet of vomit at 2 a.m. on New Years Day once (thank you EJ for giving us t...

April Fool's Day. It's not usually celebrated around here (except on my blog. Yeah, no tattoo for me). However, I thought it would be fun to do dinner different tonight in honor of the day of pranks. I printed up a menu of items (food, utensils, drinks, plates, etc) in different languages. Here is the table I set for the kids. All they got to start with was the menu and a marker to circle which items they wanted to order. They got to order 5 things at a time. Paul knew what "huevo" was, but not "cuchara grande." According to babelfish dot com, cuchara grande means big spoon. So he had something to eat his gravy with. He got a plate, a fork too. Matt wasn't so lucky. He got food, but no utensils. He was indignant about the carrots, but he was happy about getting pudding. And a dishtowel bib. He had to eat his carrots using his bib because he hadn't ordered a fork. All three of the kids got lucky in that they happened to order plates during the ...

The St. Patrick's Day dinner was successful. Successful in that I got everything made in time, in spite of teaching seminary this morning and working seven hours today (finished at 6 p.m.). Even the rainbow jello. It took three days, but I did it. This is the table before we began dinner. This is the rainbow jello. I love rainbow jello. I was supposed to work 9 hours today, but was able to pare off 2 hours. With that extra two hours at home, I made a grasshopper fudge cake. I've never made it before, but I saw it on a recipe calendar and thought it looked good. And here is a series of pictures from dinner featuring Hayley and Matt (Paul was working). Dinner with these two is never quiet. Or boring. Hayley says the above picture is Matt's future facebook profile picture (he's not on facebook yet). In the last few days, I've noticed Matt is turning into a teenager. He may still be behind size-wise, but I've noticed a little shadow on his upper lip and his face i...