Such a great Sabbath

Phew, I really needed a recharge today. And that's just what I go. Love it when church is just exactly what you need.

(Just to be clear, the gospel is ALWAYS just exactly what everyone needs, but you gotta admit, there are days at church where for one reason or another, it just doesn't do it for you. Either the kid is crazy wiggly or I am, or Mike and I are at cross swords, or the talks just don't jibe with me. Anyway....this was NOT one of those days.)

We had a great lesson in Relief Society (thank you, Syd!!) and I have a new entry for my Favorite General Authorities list: Elder Kearon. (And he's a Brit -- woot!) You should check out his talk, so great!

“Come unto Me with Full Purpose of Heart, and I Shall Heal You”

This MIGHT be the link....but not sure.

http://lds.org/ensign/2010/11/come-unto-me-with-full-purpose-of-heart-and-i-shall-heal-you?lang=eng&query=Elder+Kearon

The Ninja Army Descends.....

Jack's 8th birthday (how did THAT happen) is in a few days, and with his baptism this coming weekend, that meant Saturday was D-Day.....or rather, BP-Day (birthday party day.) For some unknown reason (temporary insanity, probably), I had decided inviting nine boys over to the house for three hours of ninja activities was a good idea. Well, come on now, it's a GREAT idea....if you're the kid. If you are the mom who is still somewhat interested in returning said children to their parents with all their original bits, it's a bit of a nightmare.

At any rate, four pm rolled around and this gang of hooligans began arriving. Mike took their pictures as they came in so that he could work a little photoshop magic for their goodie bags later.

(That's a picture of Dominic as a ninja on his goodie bag. Awesome!)

Then wonderful selfless Bro. Hall came over to teach them some taekwondo. He was all ready to be amazing (he's a black belt) but the little fighters were way more interested in getting on with beating on each other than learning the tricks of the trade, so his potentially awesome display got caught short.

(How could this not have been spell-binding? I don't know, but it sure was entertaining watching them trying to do what Bro Hall was doing!)

Since the first thing we'd learned was the ninjas are stealthy, we played hide and seek. THen everyone piled out of the house (into the mirey muddy yards -- yeah for carpet) for Capture the Flag. Potentially the most violent version of Capture the Flag ever played. I now realize why it is that African warlords use small boys to conduct their wars. Brutal!!

(The Winners! Three times in a row! Although the second time they were disqualified for illegal use of the house as a thru-way)

Eventually it was time to come in and open some presents. Surprisingly, weapons were an extremely popular choice among the 7-9 year old set. They took a teeny tiny braek to inhale a bit of pizza, and then commenced with the Beyblade Battles. Now, I haven't the foggiest idea what a Beyblade is or what constitutes a legendary one -- but apparently some of them ARE legendary, and apparently that is a good thing. The kids gathered round the Beyblade stadium and if you didn't know better, you'da thought they were playing craps. All huddled together and chattering away in increasingly excited tones.




Eventually, the lack of violence became too much for them and it was back outside for a bit more Capture the Flag and then thankfully, it was almost time for the parents to return. That left just enough time for the pinata. Now, I happened to have a pink pinata lying around my garage, and I therefore didn't really want to go spending another twenty bucks on something that was just going to be battered to death. But how on Earth to convince an 8 year old boy that anything pink was acceptable. Aha!! I had a flash of genius. I hoisted the cute little pink donkey into the air and said to the assembled boys,
" What color is that pony??"
"PINK!!!!!!!", they screamed in disgust.
"And what do we do with things?"
"KIIIILLLLLL THEM!!!!!!" came the reply

Then we had a real "Lord of the Flies" moment with all nine sweet little boys chanting in unison, Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!! I feared for my life a little.

And then it was over. Jack was pleased as anything, I felt briefly like I might be an ok parent after all, and then we all collapsed from exhaustion.

Le Anniversary

So, in some way that I TOTALLY don't understand cause I know I'm NOT old enough for this to be happening to me, but February 17th marked 15 years since Mike and I drove ourselves off to the Washington DC Temple and came home as husband and wife for time and all eternity. We figured that entitled us to a little fun time off by ourselves. Back into the car we went and drove a couple hours to a gorgeous little B&B in the town of Zoar. We had intended to get out and do all sorts of outdoorsy things, since Zoar is an old historic town on the Erie Canal AND it was the first warm day of the year. Then we got to the Cider Mill and caught a glimpse of this bed and decided to hold off on the activity for a while. (For those of you with more gumption that we have, what I mean is....we lay our old and weary bones down, read a book, and fell asleep. Whee!)

And here's a picture of the downstairs. The Cider MIll was -- surprise! -- a cider mill built in them mid-1800s.Most of the original woodwork and hardware is still visible, and the rooms are down really nicely. It gave it a really nice mix of comfort and cool feeling of history.


Eventually we did bestir ourselves to take a look around the town. It was founded by a commune of German Lutheran seperatists and has been kept/restored to the way it was in the mid-1800s. In the summer, it functions like a mini-Williamsburg, with people in period costume to show you how people lived on the "fronteir" back then. Alas, it is NOT the winter, and everything is shut down. We still had fun walking through the totally deserted village and checking out all the old buildings. On our walk, we found THIS guy, and who can resist?!?

Later, as we were reading through the book "Ghosts of Zoar" , we found out that -- cue the chills -- just such an Indian man is known to haunt the Cider Mill itself! As we were the only guests for this particular night, I guess he'd felt free to get out and have a night on the town before the real haunting duties kicked in. Actually, the ghost story went on to say that the Indian Man only appears to woodworkers (they hypothesize that he must have been a woodworker himself) and since no one at the Cider Mill is a woodworker, he hasn't been seen in several decades. And actually, further on in the story, it mentions that the most recent woodworker who DID live in the Cider MIll for several decades, never saw the ghost either. Now I think we know why -- he's been hanging out down the block in front of the antiques shop!

And, just to keep up the family name, we got out and did a bit of a walk, finding the perfect place to hide from marauding non-haunting ghosts:
And eventually did get down to the Erie Canal. Maybe. It was sort of unclear. But it was a very long, very straight, very crisply-banked bit of water with a fancy bridge running over it.....in the middle of a cornfield. So we decided, good enough. Mike made one more attempt at cute picture taking....

Mike and Sophie try to git cute

After the long and mostly fruitless search for cutesy couple photos of the two of us, we figured we better take our anniversary jaunt as an opportunity to get some. Photos, that is. (Hush, y'all.) Well, us being us, it took some trying, and in the end, we figured at least we could provide some comic relief to everyone else. Some of us get to be cute, and others get to make the rest of humanity feel a little cuter. :)Considering that Mike is the one taking the picture...why is he looking so surprised??
I hate it when my husband looks down on me.....
Hey, at least we look like we are enjoying ourselves!
For a skinny boy, Mikey sure has a lotta double chins.
Ok, I admit it, I just have no idea how to be sexy, even on a super cool iron and wood spiral staircase.

Anniversary Attempt At Art

Well, at least I can say I can handle alliteration. Artsy craftsy stuff, not so much. But it's the worst part of dreary,grey, cold winter and I need to do something to spruce up the place, AND it was our anniversary and I thought doing a little something to remind ourselves of where we came from and why we got on the Crazy Train in the first place couldn't hurt. So I headed out to Old Time Pottery and got a whole mess o' white frames and a pretty candle thing. (This seems to be my default decorating move: get some candles!!) Here we are at step 1:

Step 2: Find some cute pictures of us being all lovey. This was difficult because, well, first off, we ain't that cute. Second, since Jack was born, it's pretty much either picture of me and Jack or Mike and Jack. Third, because Mike is the primary photo taker, more than any of the previous options, our pictures tend to be cool angles on barns or old cars or trees in the mist. But, I found some, scanned them, and took 'em to Target to get them made into the right sized. Went to Jo Anns for some pretty paper, found a poem and a little quote that had the right vibe, and did 'em up as cute as I could. Here's step 2:

The poem is by Percy Shelley and was on our wedding invitation. It's called "Love's Philosophy." I'm not so happy with how the quote turned out. It was supposed to have a whole lot more of the lighter far background paper showing, to make a bigger contrast, but I messed up the dimensions. And then was just too tired to really care about fixing it. One of these days....

So, then I got 'em all fixed up and wrapped up and gave them to Mike on our anniversary. The finished lot:


He was stricken with the very cute panicked husband expression of "Oh crap, it's our anniversary, I don't have anything, and the next few weeks of my life are going to suuuuuuuck." (For the record, he wasn't supposed to as we were heading out on an anniversary trip, but he was sure for a while that it was one of those famous woman-traps of, "oh honey, you don't have to get me anything" which men think mean "oh honey, you don't have to get me anything" and women all know means, "if you really love me, you will ignore what I am saying now and get me something perfect and extravagant and if you DON'T it will simply be more proof that you are a neanderthal.")

We knew Mike was old, but a heart attack??

Jack and I snuck up to Mike's work on Valentine's Day and plastered his car with hearts as a surprise. We got a lot of amused smiles from people who were leaving work early -- and one very disapproving "Oh my!!" from a woman parked nearby. The man himself liked it so much that when the hearts started to blow off on the way home, he stopped and put most of the hearts on the inside of the car. :) Jack really enjoyed the subterfuge of sneaking in on Daddy's car. He loved climbing all over the roof taping on hearts, and when the got boring, took extended recon trips through the parking lot to make sure Daddy was not on his way out of the building.

On another note, notice the Amazing Healing Properties of the Human Face. Compare teeny little steri strip to just one week's earlier Frankensteinery jagged edge.

Snowy Trip to Yellow Springs

It was really fun being back in the Glen and getting to show Jack the old haunts. Being a good ol' city boy, he steadfastly refused to drink from the Yellow Spring, but Mike and I did. (Yup, still tastes just as irony as it always did.)

We had a devil of a time getting back down the trails as there was a slick layer of ice over the snow. Got in a nice little hike and earned ourselves lunch at Ha Ha's Pizza and dessert at Young's.

My Return to the Web....

My bud Jenn has inspired me -- why am I letting all these days go by without keeping track of what's going on? Life is flying by (hello?! Can you say mid life crisis?) Besides that, my friends and loved ones are fanning out across the country or just into new phases of life, and I want to be able to tell everyone what we're up to. (Hello? Egotistical much?) So, I hope y'all have at least some interest in what I'm doing, cause I know I'll be having a lot of fun typing about it. :)