Santa Pics
It was time for the ward Christmas party and Rebecca asked me to take the pictures again this year.
Rebecca
Hottest Tickets in Town
This is the story of how two of the most undeserving people scored some of the hottest tickets in town three times…mostly through sheer dumb luck.
Act I
Have you ever heard of the TV show Psych? Dallas and I used to love that show years ago. At the time, we never knew of anyone else who watched it. I got out of the habit of seeing it, but Dallas still kept up with it, and I’d catch him watching episodes here and there.
Fast forward to the end of last year. My friend posted on Facebook that Psych: The Movie was about to be released and there was to be a movie tour with a stop in Salt Lake. Also, tickets were free. I had no idea that a movie was even in the works, but I thought, “Huh. Dallas loves that show. I should try to get tickets and surprise him.” I hopped online and nabbed a couple of tickets without any trouble.
What I didn’t realize at the time was Psych had gained a very devoted cult following in the years since it first aired. In fact, this movie tour was part of a fan contest. I can’t remember all the details, but it was something like the city with the most social media engagement would be selected as one of the cities where the movie tour would stop. Salt Lake fans (through no help from me, obviously) had blown the competition out of the water, thus giving us one of the coveted tour stops. This meant that I had gotten tickets that probably should have gone to someone who, you know, actually participated in the contest and helped Salt Lake win.
I didn’t really realize any of this at the time. I just knew we were going to see the movie, and it would be a fun date night. And I was right about that!
On the appointed day Dallas and I joined many other Psych-Os and took our seats…but not before we took a picture with the pineapple glasses they gave everyone:
(For those not in the know, they hide pineapples in all the episodes of Psych, so pineapples have become a symbol of the show.)
I was already suffering a bit from impostor syndrome as I found myself amongst some of the biggest Psych-Os in the country knowing that I hadn’t even been bothered to keep up with all the seasons of the show. That feeling was made worse when they began the evening with a trivia game. They asked what I thought seemed like very obscure questions about the show, and people knew not only the answers, but there was one girl who could answer the question AND state the episode name and number in which the answer could be found.
After the trivia game they showed the movie. We enjoyed our complimentary popcorn and drinks as we watched the show. The movie was fun to watch, but the best part was seeing how much everyone around me was loving every second of the film. The audience laughed, cheered, and clapped throughout the show. It was so fun to watch the movie with people who you knew were appreciating every minute of it.
After the screening they had a couple of the actors and a writer or producer come out, and they chatted about the film and answered questions.
All in all it was a really fun night for the die-hards and even the fair-weather fans in attendance.
Act II
Our next story starts much like the previous one. I was on social media again (Instagram this time) and saw that a friend had posted that Hamilton tickets were going on sale that morning. She had several computers already booted up and on the website waiting for 10:00 when the tickets would be available. “Huh,” I thought. “I’ve been wanting to see that play. Maybe I should try to get tickets.”
I hadn’t even heard that Hamilton was coming to town. I assumed I was too late and wouldn’t have a chance to get tickets, but I realized I could log on right then and still have a shot, so I decided to just try. Before I knew it my computer alerted me that I was in and could buy tickets. Yay! I was excited for my good fortune, but again felt a bit undeserving that I got the tickets…especially when I learned that my friend whose Instagram post was the catalyst to my getting tickets didn’t get tickets herself. Bummer!
Nonetheless, Dallas and I had a great time at the show. Much like our Psych experience, everyone around us was so excited to be in the crowd. We were sitting by a teenager who knew every word to every song and was on the edge of his seat the entire time. The enthusiasm of the crowd added to the whole experience.
The play was energetic and impressive. The cast did a great job and Dallas and I were amazed with the insanely clever rhymes and word play in the songs.
Act III
In those previous two performances, we were the oblivious idiots who had no idea what was in store. We were the ones who felt slightly out of place amongst the zealous fans we found ourselves rubbing elbows with. However, for the third show, the tables had turned. I was the extreme fanatic.
I caught wind that the Hale Centre Theatre was doing The Scarlet Pimpernel. I grew up watching the Jane Seymour movie. In college I committed the words of the music to heart and saw the play a couple of times. This may be my favorite musical of all time. I knew this would be a show I couldn’t miss.
I bought tickets a year in advance. I marked the day on our calendar. As each month passed I did a happy dance and told Dallas how much time we had until the big day. Finally, the time came to head over to the Hale Centre Theatre’s beautiful new facility. We took our seats and this time I was the crazy person on the edge of my seat with unbridled excitement causing leg twitches and bursts of loud, happy sighs as I took in the stage and the scenery. No, I would not play the role of impostor this time.
In fact, I realized I might be in the running for the biggest fan in attendance as I leaned over to Dallas and said, “Do you think I’m the only person in this theater who has a Scarlet Pimpernel song as her ring tone?”
The Scarlet Pimpernel was amazing. The Hale Centre Theatre always does a fantastic job with every production they do and this was no exception.
We loved our theater experiences this past year! I’m definitely going to have to work on sliming my way into some more performances this year!
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Silly People
One application that doesn’t get enough use in our house is Photo Booth. Whenever it’s used raucous laughter reigns. I’ve included both the original picture and the Photo Boothed one. It’s up to you to figure out which one is real life…
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Potpourri
Let’s start off this round of pictures with one of Dallas and his man-crush Scott Kelby:
On Mother’s Day Brooke made me this:
It’s not everyday you get an airplane banner message, so I felt pretty special.
Spencer was cute eating a Fun Dip:
He got a little crazy with sidewalk chalk:
I have a friend on Instagram who is always posting the cutest pictures of her child sleeping. That has led me to do some serious reflection on my life and I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to take more sleeping-child pictures. So I have:
There. I already feel like I’m leading a more fulfilling life now.
Let’s move on to another picture of Caroline with her beloved pig hat:
Caroline wore that silly hat EVERYWHERE, for better or for worse.
Madison tried it out as well:
You may be relieved to know that the pig hat is no longer. At my Mom’s and sister’s and husband’s insistence I threw the pig hat away. Don’t tell Caroline.
We went on a fun hike. The trail started off looking a little spooky:
Caroline used my phone to see all the dirt on her face. She couldn’t believe her eyes, apparently:
Caroline loves Jell-o. She saved up enough money to buy her own package of Jell-o so she didn’t have to share with anyone:
My bearded brother:
We had a flat tire. Dallas hurriedly put the spare on before leaving for work. Spencer saw the jack still out and used it to do some repairs on his jeep:
Madison has a thing for shoes:
Poor baby fell off her trike and skinned her elbow. The actual wound wasn’t too bad. Until she started picking at it. So we put band-aids on it. Which apparently she had an allergic reaction to. So her arm looked like this:
You’ll be happy to know we found non-latex wraps and after a few days of TLC her arm is now looking much better.
At the same time her arm skin was bubbling up and falling off her body, her face looked like this:
That was a rough time in baby’s life.
Flashback to February when I had a birthday! Happy birthday to me!
Brooke made our family out of Legos:
This scene is one of my favorite Lego things she’s done. You can’t tell from the picture, but the thing on the right is a snack machine. There was a slot to put Lego money in and a way to make an actual snack fall from the machine. The thing on the left is a soft drink machine:
Spencer was proud of his Lego car:
And whatever this was:
This is the creepiest thing my kids have done. Our neighbors were moving. The kids wanted to see the action but got bored watching, so they set up video cameras to record the whole thing:
I love to imagine what the neighbors would have thought had they known their every move was being filmed. Probably that they were getting out of the neighborhood in the nick of time.
Brooke used paper to weave a checkers board and she and Caroline played some game they made up:
Flossing is hard:
Brooke and Caroline were having a paper airplane contest. Brooke named her plane “The Black Star.” She recruited Spencer to be her cheering section and gave him a flag to wave and a hat to wear, complete with the Black Star logo:
Spencer has added a new machine to his drawing repertoire. Here we have a digger:
Spencer used Perler beads to make a sunrise:
We got a hummingbird feeder. I have never seen hummingbirds just out in nature around here so I was skeptical that we would attract any…but we did! We have several that come and go every day:
This picture is hard to see, but Spencer was recreating the crash scene in one of his books with his cars:
This little girl loves to climb the bunk bed ladder and sit at the top giving me a panic attack every time I catch her up there:
When Madison is surprised she makes a perfect O with her mouth:
Believe it or not, this post gets us up to date on the blog. We thought this day would never come!
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You Probably Shouldn’t Read This
Sometimes your day does not go as expected. You might have to run to the store to pick up a forgotten ingredient or have to reschedule visiting teaching because of a sick child or, in my case yesterday, have to go to the doctor because your son accidentally kicked your toenail off.
If just hearing the phrase “kicked your toenail off” makes you feel queasy and light-headed, you may want to stop reading right now.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Let’s start with diapers. I read a blog of a mother who always seems to be running out of diapers which I find slightly baffling. I mean, is it really so hard to remember to pick up diapers every couple of weeks? I don’t think I’ve ever come even remotely close to running out of diapers. Until this week. I opened up Madison’s diaper drawer and bam – a taste of humble pie. One diaper left. I had just been to the store, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to the store that day. After scrounging every diaper from the car and various diaper bags, I was able to make it through knowing I could get to the store the next day (yesterday).
We also needed to go to the library. We had books on hold that were about to expire and I need them because we’re getting ready for a car trip and those books are crucial to our road trip success.
So there we were, Spencer and I happily gathering books and getting ready for our morning of errands. Spencer stooped down to help me pick up a stack of books and as he did so his foot bumped the top of my foot right were my toenail is.
Was.
Maybe I should back up and talk about my toenail now. For ten years I’ve had a disgusting-looking toenail. I can’t exactly remember what I did to injure it in the first place, but I ended up needing to have it removed when I was pregnant with Brooke. It didn’t grow back normally. Three years ago Caroline kicked it loose during church. Restraining myself from screaming at the top of my lungs during sacrament meeting demonstrated self-control I didn’t know I had. I had it removed for the second time the next day. I was prepared to have the podiatrist kill my nail bed at that time so I wouldn’t again have another fungusy nail grow in. I told my doctor my plan. He looked at my toenail and was CONVINCED that with a little work (and a lot of money!) we could get my nail back in beautiful shape. I foolishly trusted him and babied my stupid toenail more than any toenail deserves to be babied. I put special medicine on it to kill any fungus that may try to grow. I went in for laser treatments to keep it sterile and fungus-free. One year and over a thousand dollars later and what did I have to show for it? A yellowish, thick toenail that my sister likened to looking like a turtle shell on my toe. I assured myself that with a little toenail polish, no one else would be the wiser and I could wear sandals without shame. Never mind that every baby or toddler who saw my foot was immediately drawn to that toenail and they tried mercilessly to pull it off at every opportunity and I’d occasionally see people’s eyes casually drift to my feet and stare a bit longer than was necessary at that toe. (Is this where I admit I wasn’t fooling anyone but myself?)
For the past several months I could tell my toenail was getting worse. I knew the time was coming for me to get it removed again. However, it was summer and I didn’t want to have a gaping toenail wound when we were swimming all the time. Plus, we have that trip coming up so I thought I’d just wait until after my trip and then face the unpleasantness that is a nail avulsion.
So back to the story at hand. I have a gross toenail. That Spencer just ripped off. I knew the second I felt his shoe hit my nail what had happened. I closed my eyes and screeeeeeeeeeamed. Spencer immediately took cover in his room. Madison hilariously brought me my phone for comfort. It’s because of her that we have this:
Probably the only thing worse than getting your toenail ripped off by accident is getting it partially ripped off. I now found myself in the unfortunate position of having to finish the job Spencer started. Spencer had inched his way back to me to see what exactly he had done. When he laid eyes on my dangling toenail, he ran for the hills again. He made it back to me just as I was about to pull the nail out. I told him what I was going to do and he said, “Okay, but let me go back to my room first.”
I did the job with minimal screaming mostly because my throat was hoarse from my first outburst. I hobbled over to the Band-Aids as my nail bed pooled with blood and spurted everywhere with each step.
I called the doctor and they said they could get me in later that day.
Life goes on, and we still needed diapers and library books so I sucked it up and told Spencer we were going to do our errands. We were able to do them without incident other than having to park super far away, forgetting to pay for two things, and going back into the store to pay and avoid being a shoplifter. No big deal – it’s not like my toe was throbbing with each step I took.
I made it to my appointment. I was really hoping since my nail was already out that the doctor wouldn’t have to numb my toe. That’s the worst part. No such luck. He proceeded to give me the most painful shots I have ever had. Then he said, “Now I’m just going to dig around in your nail bed to make sure there aren’t any pieces of nail still in there.”
Dry heave.
(You’re not eating, are you?)
I told him I was pretty sure Spencer had made a clean break, and I had even brought the nail in case he needed to inspect it. He seemed to be amused that I had done that. Is that a weird thing to do? I don’t know the proper etiquette for situations like this. The doctor assured me he didn’t need to see the nail.
I feel like I’ve already gone off on too many tangents while relating this story, but here’s one more. When I was getting braces in middle school, I had to wear a bite plate. At one appointment the orthodontist told me I no longer needed it. I asked him what I should do with it and he said something like, “Whatever you want. Keep it. Throw it away. Turn it into a Christmas ornament.” The absurdity of something like that hanging on a Christmas tree has always stuck with me which I guess explains why I then said, “Okay. I’ll just keep the nail and turn it into a Christmas ornament.”
The doctor only acknowledged my ludicrous comment with a slight pause in his procedure and an almost imperceptible eyebrow twitch. Did he not get that it was just a joke? I’m not really going to turn my toenail into a Christmas ornament! Doctor, really! I’m not THAT weird!
I’m only planning to post it on my blog.
Totally normal.
