I told you so...

I warned you in my last post that it would probably be two months until my next post. Well, I almost made it. But SOMEBODY (Hi Kyla!) likes to harass me about not updating my blog. So here you go.

Alrightie now. Let's see what we can talk about. Well, we had Christmas. Yessirree we sure did. It was a wonderful day of relaxing, picking up scraps of wrapping paper, eating, picking up scraps of wrapping paper, napping, picking up scraps of wrapping paper, staying in our pajamas all day and picking up scraps of wrapping paper. Overall, it was a wonderful day. Before Christmas, Chris went AWOL for a day and snuck in to Best Buy and bought me something he shouldn't have. (A camera) and now I feel like a stupidhead because I don't know how to use it. But I'm having fun learning and I'll probably torture you with my attempts at photography. That is, IF I ever update my blog again.

Take this, for instance. Last night was a skate night for the kids' elementary school. (A fundraiser. Yippee! I just LOVE fundraisers!) I don't know how this picture happened and I know that there's no skill displayed in this picture, but I think it's cool. There were kids skating all around, but for some reason the only kids that really showed up were Carson and his friend Ryan. Everyone else looks like one of those ghosts in the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, only blurry.

Here's Jantzen and her friend Morgan taking a breather. It was their first time skating and they did a great job. They reminded me of Bambi trying to walk for the first time, with their legs going in all different directions but there were no tears. Even after numerous collisions between the floor and their rear ends, they still had smiles from ear to ear. The skating rink is right around the corner from our house, so I think there may be more trips there in our future. It was fun for all of us.

And here's my double experiment. I was trying out the KitchenAid I got for Christmas AND messing with the aperture on my camera. How's that for some serious excitement? I know, I know. You may just have to walk away from my blog for a few minutes and calm yourself down. It's okay. Go ahead. I'll be here waiting when you're ready to come back.

More double experiments going on! I probably should have warned you. Homemade pasta with bad aperture experiments. A bit much? Probably.

Okay. I gotta get to bed now. Sorry for the lame post. I promise to update again soon with some real substance. Oh, who am I kidding. I'll see you in a couple of months.

Trips to Santa's lap

That's right, folks. Twice in one day.

Uh huh.

Noddin' my head like, "YEAH."

Movin' my hips like, "YEAH."

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Oh wait, where was I?

I think I got carried away with my celebration.

I'm such an awesome blogger.

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Now don't be surprised if it's another TWO months before I post again.

But.....

I almost forgot to mention our ward Christmas party that was last Friday night.

First on the agenda was the FOOD!

We have two bona fide CHEFS in our ward (mother and daughter) so any ward function is

a)guaranteed to have good food

b) guaranteed to draw a crowd because of the food

c)guaranteed to TOTALLY ROCK because I love food!

Second on the agenda was the visit from Santa. It's traditional for Santa to come at the end of the evening, sit on the stage and listen to all the kids' wishes for Christmas. He then gives them a bag of goodies and sends them on their way.

Apparently, Keaton doesn't feel like he's too old for this tradition because he gladly stood in line to sit on Santa's lap.

But when he sat on Santa's lap, he did the most believable imitation of a toddler who's scared of Santa and is trying not to cry. I was laughing my head off, but Santa totally bought in to it and was really worried!

So funny.

It kinda reminds me of the time about three years ago when he laid down on the floor and did "the worm" over to Santa.

Thanks, Keaton. You were the highlight of my evening. You were even better than the food.

Hellooooooooooooooo everybody! I'm baaaaaack.

Finally!

Ummmm, yeah. I just realized that it's been over a month since I last blogged.

And it's been almost two months since this happened. So here's the report on my half marathon. Heather and I went to Vancouver the day before the race and took some classes to learn about chi running and about stretching and strengthening exercises for runners. That was very informative and fun. It was raining really hard that day and we, being desert dwellers, were kind of freaking out about running in that type of weather. But the next day was dry and a perfect temperature for running.

The race didn't go so well for us, neither of us were feeling too stellar, but we muddled through it and we survived. I have no plans of running another half marathon, but would love to do some shorter races. We applied to run in the Hood to Coast, but that race is so popular, that it's very hard to get in. We didn't. We have hopes of running it in 2011, though. We'll see what happens.

In November Chris got to go on a "guys trip" to Playa del Carmen, Mexico with his dad, brothers (Spencer and Robbie) and his brother-in-law (Brian). They had a lot of fun hanging out without any women telling them what to do. Chris tells me that he would have preferred to stay home and rake leaves with me, but I'm pretty sure that's just my consolation prize to make me feel better about not getting to go.

Actually, I'm positive about that.

You can't look at this picture and believe that he'd rather rake leaves!

Dear Chris,

If you're going to lie to me, please try to make it believable. Maybe tell me that you rode to the moon with Elvis or something. That's something I can believe!

Love,

Jodi
P.S. I'm sorry that your baby brothers can grow more facial hair than you.

P.P.S. Please tell me that you don't wear a speedo like they do.

Shine like the top of the Chrysler Building!

I'm feeling like orphan Annie today. Why? Let me explain. The last two months have been crazy, frantic, knock your socks off busy. Now all of that is over. Woot! Woot! I'm finding myself with a little bit of time on my hands, and I'm faced with a decision of what to do with it. So as I was pondering this dilemma this morning I had a nice conversation with myself. It went something like this:

Me: "What should I do this week? I don't have any Scentsy parties until Saturday. I don't have to clean anyone else's houses this week. Chris is out of town. I don't have to do sharing time next Sunday. I should definitely do something productive with my time."

Me: "Well, it's time to get back in to running. You've given yourself two weeks off, you know."

Me: "I know. I will definitely run this week. But that's not going to take all of my time."

Me: "Soooo, what else ya gonna do?"

Me: "First the windows, then the floors. That way if I drip..."

So there you have it, folks. The exciting life of a mom/wife. I find myself in an exciting situation and I choose to clean. I will do some deep cleaning, some leaf raking, some running and some reading. Because, um yeah, I totally treated myself to a trip to the library. Easily pleased? I think so.

Family pictures, baby!

We had these pictures taken a couple of weeks ago by our friend Shara, and I think she did a great job! It was fun to capture some candid shots of the kids goofing off and showing their normal everyday turkey liver goof ball behavior. We were terrible subjects and if I had it to do over again I would definitely change some things like:

1. Making sure the kids don't have gum in their mouths

2. Making sure my boys don't wear the same color (I realized one of them had grabbed the wrong shirt when we were in the car on the way there!)

3. Making sure the kids don't have writing on their hands

4. Making sure the kids don't have stamps on their hands

5. Losing 10 pounds

6. Leaving my sweet little poochy woochy at home

Despite all of these mistakes we made, Shara managed to pull off some great pictures.

Amazing!

Thanks Shara!

Today's post is brought to you by the number 6, the number 13, the number 14 and the letter z.

6 days until my half marathon.
13 days until the last football game and the last soccer game
14 days until the Primary program is over

ZZZZ Is what I'm going to do after that.

Well, one can hope.

Summer Fling

Dear summer,
Where have you gone? You left in such a hurry. I thought we had something really special, butI guess I was wrong. You snuck out this morning before I woke up. I thought maybe you had gone out to get some donuts, but you still haven't returned. I should have known, what with your warm, beautiful sunsets and the way you made my garden grow. You were too good to be true. You were just a fling.
But we were so good together! The warmth, the brightness, the flip flops! Well, fine. I don't need you anyways. I've got jackets, you know. And blankets and hot cocoa. I even have a snuggy. That's right. A SNUGGY! Those are my true friends. They're always there for me.
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But if you ever decide to come back, I'll be here.