I'm not the only one...

I just watched this video and cried like a baby.
Sometimes it's good to remember that you're not alone.


This is one girl's summary of what life is like as a type I diabetic:

The case of the lost keys.

Okay, this is totally crazy.

Background: Ethan loves to ride his bike out in front of our apartment (which is like a town home with a mini fenced backyard) and we have a whole routine down. I give him my keys and he can go unlock the back gate, get his bike, ride it out the back, lock the gate, ride it around to the front, and hand me my keys. I have trained him to walk up to me and say, "here's your keys, mom."
On the return end, I give him my keys and he can ride his bike around back while I get Jake inside, unlock the back gate, get his bike in, lock the gate, come inside, hand me my keys, and say, "here's your keys, mom." He loves doing it and I am impressed with his independence, and it's convenient for me to not lug his bike around. So it works really well.


Until yesterday.

Ethan rode his bike around to the back to put it away, and I got Jake inside and saw Ethan come in the back. A minute or two later he came inside and said,
"I was just throwing your keys up high in the air and they got stuck on the roof."

"You were doing WHAT with my keys?!?!?!?!?"

"I was just throwing them up in the air to see how high I could throw them. The first time they only went up to the white part that goes over to Tasha's house (the siding above the brick) but then the next time they went up and got stuck on the roof."

"You threw my keys more than ONCE?!?!?!! Ethan what in the world are you thinking?!?!"

Anyway, we had a crazy discussion and I was asking him where he was standing and why in the world he would even do such a ridiculous thing, and I was trying to figure out a fitting consequence for chucking my keys into the air. All the while, I am looking up at the roof, which is like 50 feet high, and doubting very much that he really could have gotten them up there.

So, Kyle gets home, and we all comb through the backyard digging through grass, digging through our little garden, thinking that they went up and came down without Ethan knowing it. We go through the back gate and as far back as we can and look up at the roof. No keys in sight. Kyle gets out some binoculars and looks at the roof from far away. No keys. He goes into the boys room on the second floor, takes the screen out, and tries to climb up to the roof. Way too high. There's no way.
After sunset, Kyle takes a flashlight out back to see if the keys will sort of gleam back at him.
No keys.
We conclude that it's WAAAAY too high for Ethan to have been able to throw them up there and that they are in a neighbor's yard or buried in our lawn somewhere. Maybe we'll find them once we mow.

I am completely bewildered about 1. where my keys are and 2. why in the heck Ethan felt the need to chuck them into the air as high as he could.

So, today, after a few more attempts to find them, and an agreement that there will be no bike riding until I find my keys or get new ones made, we called maintenance.

"Uh hi, I'm in 4820 and well, I think my keys might be in the rain gutter and I was wondering if you could send someone with a ladder to check. I know it's a little crazy but I think they might be there."

"Your keys, in the rain gutter?"

"Yeah, my 4-year-old threw them and he thinks they landed there, uh.. er.. "

"Okay.... well, we'll uh, send someone out there, then."

A little while later a maintenance guy knocks on the door, looking up at the front rain gutter, which is about 30 feet lower than the back one: "Uh, so which gutter do you think your keys are in, ma'am?"

I explain the whole story. He goes to get a huge ladder and comes back.

He climbs up, up, up, up, up. Reaches in the rain gutter, and pulls out my keys. I don't know if I was happier to have my keys back or to have the assurance that he didn't think I was totally delusional since they actually ended up being up there.


Frisbees are for throwing. Keys are for, well, apparently not for 4 year olds. But man, that kid has an ARM!!

My Little Kitchen Helpers...

My boys love to help me with all manner of kitchen chores.

This is the somewhat precarious "helping with dishes arrangement." I prefer one helper at a time but that's really only possible when Jake is asleep, so we take turns the best we can.

This is "Operation: Clean out the ENTIRE refrigerator." They got a big kick out of taking everything out and putting it on the table.






And, this is the incredible duo emptying the utensils in the dishwasher. Jake loves for whoever he hands the utensils to to say "Thank You!" for every single one. You can hear him say it as he hands each one.



This is their reward for the help: They get to drive cars in the empty utensil bin.



Pretty impressive if I do say so myself. Another year or two and my kids will be doing all the housework, right? Ha ha.


But really, it's good that I have so much help in the kitchen because lately I need all the help I can get.
We'll call this little story "Burnt smell overlaod."

A few days ago for dinner, we were having taco salad, which the boys don't always love, so I decided to throw in some chicken nuggets to supplement their olives and cheese. We ate dinner, cleaned it up, and then I remembered about the sweet potatoes that I had kept forgetting to steam. So I peeled them, cut them up, and put them on the stove, thinking the boys could eat them for lunch the next day. And then, since we had already cleaned up dinner, I turned off my kitchen brain and went and played outside with the boys. Ooops. I came back inside to a horrible burning smell and found THIS:

No water left in it at all, and the pan and steamer completely scorched. So much for feeding the boys sweet potatoes for lunch. Nothing sweet about them. Just burnt. Shoot.

So, I got the boys all ready for bed, and was amazed at how the whole house was still just filled with the aroma of burnt pan. I opened a few windows, turned on the air freshener, and sat down at the piano to get engrossed in songwriting.

At about 10:00, Kyle came home and wrinkled his nose: "what's burning?" I explained the whole thing about the potatoes and apologized for the smell.

He shook his head, walked into the kitchen, opened the oven,and found....

Those CHICKEN NUGGETS!!!

Burnt to an absoulte crisp. 4 stinkin' hours at 400 degrees. No smoke, no flame, just a really really strong burnt smell.

Can you believe I was sitting in the next room the whole time?

We weighed one from the freezer and found that the burnt ones were over two thirds lighter. They felt sort of like pumice stones and looked like charcoal briquets.

Cool science experiment, right?

Well, what can I say? Maybe my kids should be doing more than just dishes around my kitchen...

Happy Birthday, Grandpa Ricks!

We wish we could be with THIS magnificent bunch as many of them gather in love around your grave this weekend. Hopefully it will be warmer there than it was the last time we saw it...

We miss you.

But we will remember you like this:

like this:

like this:

and look forward to the day when we can meet up with you again and we'll all feel something like this:

We are so glad you were born. We love you!

Priceless.

This is what Ethan said this morning, while looking at a picture of "Aunt Lindsay." (She is wearing a formal dress with tennis shoes on the day of state cross country, and it's snowing outside.)

"What I would do, when she gets back to living and not died ever again...I would just hug her or something."

me: "I'm going to hug her too, Ethan. :)


Since Kyle's Dad passed away, we have had lots of opportunites to talk with Ethan about the reality of the resurrection. I love the way he words things like "when we get done being died we will get our bodies back" and one time he even asked me, "how did Aunt Lindsay get her body off?" It has been so comforting to hear him talk about our loved ones like it will be just a short time until we see them again. Even ones he has never actually met. Faith like a child...


He also said this morning:
"I love Aunt Lindsay. And I wish everyone that was died could just come back alive right now."

me: "Me too, buddy. Me too."

My 75 point turn. And no, I don't think I'm exaggerating.

Well, we all have our comfort zones. I'd like to think mine is fairly large...

You want me to sing in front of a thousand people?
Sounds fun.

How about emceeing a large event?
Cool, I'm in.

Open up to people I may not know super well?
Yeah, I can handle that.

Give myself injections?
Bring it on.

Come in and teach class at the last second with no preparation?
Sure.



And yet, there are a few things, that, of course, fall OUTSIDE the line of my comfort zone.

Do any kind of maneuvering in a car that involves driving in reverse?
Um, I think I'd rather...well, I'd rather do just about ANYTHING.


I have struggled with driving backwards from day 1. I have backed into a friend's car in my cul-de-sac, I have backed into my OWN car while driving the Yukon of the family I nannied for (Yeah, THAT was the best day of my life), and I have backed into my neighbor's car just a few days after having my second baby. (At least I SORT OF have an excuse for that one.)
My husband, (who grew up driving potato trucks on the farm and could probably drive backwards on a freeway with his eyes closed) has tried to coach me. We've done obstacle courses in parking lots, we've had practice sessions backing out, and verbal explanations. I once thought I was a relatively intelligent person, but I think if my life depended on being able to parallel park I would literally DIE.

So today I went to a doctor's appointment and headed into the parking garage. "8 dollars? For the first HOUR? Are you kidding me? My info sheet said there was a place to park for 2 bucks." SO I rolled down the window and asked the lady in the booth if there was another place to park to go to the hospital. She explained where.

"Can I just do a U-turn here and exit, then?
"Yeah, sure, go ahead."

And then, I proceeded to make a complete fool out of myself and try the patience of at least10 other drivers. It was a really really tight squeeze to flip from the entrance around to the exit and I was embarassed that the lady in the car behind me would have to wait while I made my 5+ point turn. And then it turned into 10 point, and then 15, and then 20. Seriously, the lady got out of the booth and was trying to help me back up and then go forward and then back up and then go forward and pretty soon there were 5 cars behind me trying to get out and 5 cars waiting to get in, and I was blocking every single one of them. I was sandwiched between a yellow pole in the back and the curb on the other side and I could only move in one inch increments or I would have hit something. I was about ready to get out of the car and hold my keys up and just scream, "CAN ONE OF YOU WHO HATES ME RIGHT NOW PLEASE JUST COME DO THIS FOR ME???????"

Ugh.

So that's that.


But, once inside the hospital, I got hooked up to a Continuous Glucose Monitoring system that I get to wear for a week. My insulin pump gets injected right under my skin, and this sensor does the same thing, in addition to the pump. The sensor is basically a wire, painted with an enzyme that reacts with the glucose in my blood. From this reaction, it records my blood sugar every 5 minutes--and after a week, I will go back to the Diabetes center and they will download the results, match them with the record I've kept of everything I eat and when, and hopefully we will end up with some helpful information on how to get things under better control. So that's worth total embarassment in a parking garage, right?

But in a week when I go back, that valet parking is looking pretty tempting.... :)

Do Not Bleach

Okay, so the other day in the shower I looked at my completely white washcloth and read the tag--"No usar cloro." What? Do not bleach? I must have read that wrong. In English: Do not bleach. Seriously? If I can't bleach a white washcloth, what CAN I bleach? Isn't that the point of buying white washcloths--so you can bleach them and get them clean?

Whatever.


Okay, here are some of Ethan's greatest quotes lately:

[playing with a friend outside, and the friend suggested that he buy a new truck since the battery on his is dead. ]"I dont WANT to buy that because we don't have any money. I have to wait until my daddy gets a job."

[Randomly, in the middle of dinner, he gets up out of his chair and lies down on the ground, not moving.] "Daddy, stagnant means this."

We have, as my mom did, a "Mad Bag." If toys don't get picked up, they get put into this garbage bag with a grouchy face on it. Today, after several toys were placed in there, Ethan said, "Turn the Mad Bag upside-down so it won't have a sad face. Then we can get the toys out."

We asked spiderman to tell Ethan to come for Family Home Evening. When he came back (without the mask and cape) he said, "I put on my Ethan stuff."

Me: Ethan, when we get home, we need to do our Monday chores! I need someone who can help me empty the garbage and fold lots of laundry!
Ethan: "Oh! I know how to do that! But first, I will need to put on my Dash costume so we can really work."

Oh, and just for the record, he can now differentiate between daydreams, dreams, and memories. That's complicated stuff for a 4-year old, huh?

Well, if you're reading this then I think you're great! Have a swell day.

Howdy Partner

I love my cowboys. :) This one is a little wobbly, but it's a little tough to walk with a hat covering your face.

The truth about a rainy Monday

I wonder why, as I drove home from Target, yesterday, there were voices in my head saying, "you didn't do anything today. You just cleaned, folded a bunch of laundry, and took care of kids. Your day was pretty much worthless. And hard."
Where does that garbage even come from?

Here's what I say to those voices in my head. Today was an AMAZING day.


I woke up, and stuck some little things in my ears attached to a machine the size of a cracker that let me listen to anything I wanted to, while my kids were asleep.
I dumped all my dirty clothes and some soap in this awesome contraption that swishes them around and washes them for you.
I have two really cool devices where you deposit all your human waste and then you just push down a lever and all the yucky stuff gets magically taken off to a sewage plant, and you don't ever have to deal with it again. After I cleaned those, I turned a knob and stood under clean, hot water, for about 10 minutes.
I transferred my clothes into another machine that dries them. Yeah, I know. 5 minutes of effort and you get clean clothes! All I had to do was fold them and put them away.
I used a machine that sucked up all the dirt and hair and gucky stuff from my floor. I hooked it up to a hole in the wall, turned on a switch, and basically stood there while it cleaned off my carpet.
I unloaded my dishes from the large box that washed them for me the night before.

I carried on conversations with a living, breathing, running, laughing boy who, 5 years ago was inside my uterus, the size of a pickle.
I danced with said 4 year-old, in his cowboy hat and winter boots, after we "gallopped on off too the ball."
There was a lot of laundry at the ball that needed to be folded, so we took dance breaks to do that too.
I watched my other living, breathing, wobbling, laughing boy learn how to make a fish face.

Outside, it rained and rained. And I, completely insulated in my little apartment, stayed 100% dry and warm.

I pressed a button and carried on a conversation with my mom. She lives several hundred miles away.

I went outside and got in a transport pod that can make a trip that used to take days take minutes. I have no idea how it works. I just stick my key in a push a pedal down with my foot and I can go just about anywhere I want to.

I went into a building that has furniture, home decorations, clothes, office supplies, hardware, and fresh food right there on the shelves for the taking. I swiped a little card through a machine and wrote my name and then took home everything that was in my cart.

On the way home, my boys and I listened to cowboy songs that someone sang into a microphone and then converted onto a disc a few millimeters thick. I push a button and I can hear the exact performance they gave in that little room where it was recorded. (okay, the enhanced, produced, version).

I got home and ate lettuce, avocado, tomato, chicken, olives, cheese and sour cream. I did not plant one seed, harvest one plant, raise/kill/skin/prepare any animal, or millk one cow. I just cut up the ingredients and had a feast.

I got to hug a little boy after he said, "I'm sorry, mommy," and see the light in his eyes when I said, "I forgive you."

And right now, I am moving my fingers around on a strip with letters on it, and looking up at a screen that turns it into words, and in a second I am going to push a button that will make those words available for anyone who wants to, to read them.


And, that's the truth about my rainy Monday.
Miracles have not ceased... but so many days I am blind...

Ethan's Slide Show

Hey guys, this is Ethan. Mom missed posting some pretty important stuff--like my spiderman birthday party, for example. So, this is me and one of my friends shooting our wrist webs.

Jake really liked our red cupcakes with blue frosting. We got to put on our own

spiderweb with white frosting and stick a spider on them!





Spiderman spun a web the night before my birthday party. It was pretty sticky!

It was a fun day!

On my actual birthday, I got to go on a treasure hunt for clues that led me to...

... my awesome new bike. I ride so fast now on a two-wheeler that mom can barely keep up with me even if she's on rollerblades. I am faster than a speeding bullet. That's why my bike has flames on it.

This is just a fun day we had in preschool where we talked about keeping our teeth healthy.

We even got to touch a model of some teeth. It's cool when you're Dad is in Dental School.

We also talked about how P is for preschool, pajamas, and PANCAKES!!!

I am becoming a pretty good picture taker, too. Mom says I need to learn how to not cut the tops of people's heads off, but I think she's too picky.

One more cool thing we did was to go see the REAL Super Why when he came to the zoo! It was awesome.

And, I was a pretty mischievous little leprechaun on St. Patrick's Day...

And Jake was too...

Alright, everybody, I've got lots of work to help Dad with, so I better go, but I just thought I would fill you in on some of the highlights of what we've been up to lately. Oh, and we don't have pictures of this, but I gave my first talk in primary and I also bore my testimony in sacrament meeting. It was fun!

Well, see you later!

Letters to Heaven #4: Kite Flying

Dear God,

I loved taking Ethan and Jake to fly a kite yesterday. I was thinking of You as we just soaked in the fresh air and the open space and the green grass and the dirt. (Jake, especially, was appreciating the dirt.) My two boys running, and smiling, and the wind in my face...and I felt joy. So thanks for that.

What made me think of You the most, though, was what I learned from teaching Ethan how to fly a kite.

[Ethan holding the string, me holding the airplaine kite, ready to launch]
"Okay, Ethan! Now face the wind! Yep, you gotta go right into the wind, okay?"

Alright...ready, set, RUN!!!! RUN!!!!!!"

As I watched him run right into the wind, and watched the kite launch into the air, (and clapped and screamed 'good job!' ) I smiled and thought about some of the biggest winds I've had, and how I've felt when You've told me to face them head on and run forward. It was neat to watch Ethan learn how to let the string out, and see that as he learned how to fly the kite, he could make the string longer and longer and fly higher and higher. I thought about only really having one more year before he goes to school and felt the bittersweet tug that Ethan's emotional string to me is getting longer as he learns to do so many things on his own, and that from here on out, we will just keep letting out more and more string, and watch him fly...


Thanks for teaching me to trust, face the wind, listen, and fly. Thanks for picking up my kite when it comes crashing down and throwing it back up into the sky and telling me to run. And yes, thanks even for the big winds...

Love Em

I used to hate cleaning bathrooms.

And then, I got an ipod. My life is changed forever. And my bathrooms, too. :)


Remeber the days of loathing my bathrooms?



Well, after some research, interviewing, brainstorming, and experimenting, I would like to announce that on Sunday night, as I planned and thought about cleaning my bathrooms, I got excited. Yep, it happened.

So here are a few of the problems that my ipod as indirectly helped me find partial solutions to.


The problems:
1. Housework nags at me. When I walk around the house, the floors say, "I'm gross! Vacuum me!' And the dirty clothes say, "I'm dirty! Wash me!" And the clutter says, "Organize me! What's your problem, lady?!"
I feel guilty if everything isn't clean, yet I also feel guilty for whatever I put off (like my kids!) in order to clean everything. Yeah, I know. I have issues.
2. Not only do I not like to ignore my kids while I clean, I also don't like to mop the floor and then 2 seconds later have 2o little toys strewn all over it. Is it really worth cleaning your house if it's going to make you frustrated at all the little hands that sabotage your work?
3. I overanalyze just about everything to the point of complete dizziness, and I constantly wonder if the who's how's what's and when's I chose during my day were the best or if I could have chosen better. My (unrealistic) expecation is that I will somehow magically accomplish everything, and when I don't, I look at whatever I didn't do and let it tell me that what I DID wasn't enough.
4. When I listen to music, I get involved. Words or not, I can't do music as background because I am anazlying the chords and the structure of the song and anticipating what will come next. I find myself rarely putting music on, because the unwelcome interruptions of 2 charming boys make me so frustrated that it's not really worth it.
Okay, enough psychoananlysis.

Here's the point:
I have decided to do all my major housework on one day, Monday. That's right. Laundry, bathrooms, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, dusting, garbage, cleaning out the frigde, grocery store, everything. I've been doing this for 3 weeks, and already I feel such a liberation from guilt. On Monday, I don't have to feel guilty for putting housework first, because all the other days it will be at the bottom of the totem pole. And on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I don't have to feel guilty for not doing laundry, because it will get taken care of on Monday. It's great. So, I have convinced my nocturnal self that it is worth getting up super early one day a week to get a head start on cleaning, so that what I do won't instantly be undone--and, now that I have an ipod, I can crank up the music and enjoy it, uninterrupted! The other day I downloaded some scripture discussions from BYU religion professors and I listened to one of those while cleaning as well. Totally awesome. So, we'll see how this goes. So far so good, though I was totally exhausted by the end of the day yesterday.

Okay, this post is getting long, but here are 3 little practical bathroom cleaning gems that I wanted to share.
1--Rubber gloves. Duh, right? Where was I all these years?
2--Magic Eraser Bathroom Cleaners with Febreeze. Get 'em wet, and they squeeze out soap and you can scrub them all over the whole bathroom. Worth a dollar to me.
3--This handy trick is from my husband. Don't try to clean hair off the floor with a wet cloth--it will cause misery and grossness. Instead, wipe the whole floor down with a DRY paper towel and then throw it away. THEN you can sweep and then mop the floor.


Okay, I'm putting this on my list of great life accomplishments. In one year, I learned how to enjoy cleaning my bathrooms. :)

Blogging is like...

...keeping in touch with a great friend. You know how it is when you haven't chatted with someone in a long time? Every time you think to call them you go,

"Oh, I would love to catch up...but I don't have 3 hours right now and that's how long it would take to get up to date on each other...I'll see if I can drum up a huge block of time someday to re-connect."

And then the time between calls gets longer and longer...

On the other hand, if you are already relatively up to date with someone you can call them in the car when you have 3 minutes and just say, "hey I saw the funniest thing that made me think of you today. K, bye!"

So, my great friend Mr. Blog, I have thought of you a few times during February and March but just never made that call--and now there is way too much to ever catch up on. And life goes on. So, over the next little while, I will give some quick updates and from now on I'll make a few quick calls just to check in. Sound good? Good.

My Friend Ethan.

Well, today was one of those days where you just kind of gut it out and nothing is really so horrible but you're just kind of in survival mode to make it through. I had a particular case of the grouchies at lunch today and Ethan said,

"Mommy, why are you making that grouchy face?"

"Well, because my body hurts right now (menstrual cramps), and I'm just really tired and I get frustrated that I spend so much time cleaning things in our house and I look around and I can never really tell that I did anything."

"Why do you get frustrated?"

Man, I don't think he really knew the profundity of THAT question...
Anyway, at some point he said,

"Well, you can have one of my woobies! Here, you can have O.T. He makes people feel really happy."

(O.T. is an orange teddy bear that we got at walmart while we were pretend playing the arcade games and a well-groomed hispanic teenager walked up, played the crane stuffed animal game, won a teddy bear, handed it to Ethan, and then walked away before I could more than blubber a bewildered thank you...I felt guilty for wondering if he had ulterior motives of some kind because in the end I really think he was just being a nice person--and you know, being nice to a stranger is practically a crime these days and makes you suspicious. Random Tangent.)

So I held O.T. while I made lunch. When we sat down to eat, Ethan said:

"Mommy, do you feel better?"

"Um... yeah. A little bit."

"Then, you can have Bo, too. He helps people feel really really happy. If you have TWO friends then you will feel better."

"Thanks Ethan. And you know what I really really need? I need an Ethan hug, because you are my best friend EVER."

Man, I love that kid.

PS--just as a footnote, I have a friend whose daughter has a "woobie." It's a small little blanket with some different textures sewed onto it and little loopies to play with and stroke and hold. When she and Ethan play together, her "woobie" is one thing she is not expected to share, and Ethan doesn't have to share his dog Bo. So, at our house, "woobie" has come to mean a stuffed animal that is VERY special to you. K, the end.