Runaway

So for my friends that are familiar with Friends, you know "Smelly Cat". I'm taking the liberty to change a few words to describe our current situation:

Skanky Cat, Skanky Cat,
What are they feeding you?
Skanky Cat, Skanky Cat
It's not your fault

So, Puma (Jake's cat) didn't come home last night. She's been in a little bit of 'a way' lately and I even looked into the costs of getting her fixed yesterday. I mentioned to Puma that, "There's a place in Orem that we'll be visiting for $35 as soon as the Book Fair is over." Well, she took off in a huff after that and she never came home. I think she's just trying me. But, we have rules and a curfew here. (Rules : I'm the boss. Curfew: when it gets dark.) Jared thinks she went out to get kittens; if she openly defies me like that there will be some BIG punishments!

She better be back here before school gets out today. I have two boys crying over her and her silly antics this morning and I told them she'd come back home today. Just in case, does anyone have a black at I can use as a backup?

Success Story

Sam went in for his one year check up today. We are so proud of his diligence which has paid off in his efforts to lose weight. He, literally, has worked his little tushie off!

Remember with us for a second :

• He entered the world at a whopping 9 pounds. He proudly wore his piggie blanket made by Aunt Manda.
• At his six month, he was in the 65th percentile for weight. Still on the chubby side. If he had a Wii Fit, it would have plumped his Mii up a little.
• For the last six months, he has been ridiculed by his doublemint ad cousins for actually wearing the clothing size that coincided with his age

No more for Sammers! He only tipped the scales at 19lbs 13 oz today. That is in the 10th percentile! Way to go Sam! When we asked him what helped him drop the weight, he testified of SlimFast in a sippy, the benefits of a supportive family, and his newfound love of walking EVERYWHERE! Congrats on reaching your goals, Sam ! We are so proud of you!

Love,
Your Family

Draper Temple Open House

© 2008, David C. Moore. All rights reserved.

We went to the Draper Temple Open House yesterday. I couldn't believe all of the people! (although it was a Saturday). We went to a church building in Draper first and sat in the gym, then in the RS room to watch a movie and then to the 'staging area' to wait for the buses. I don't think the staging area is part of it, normally, but a couple of the buses had an accident so they were running a little behind. As I played I spy with the boys, and watched other parents try to pacify their children, I couldn't help but wonder if this is what it will be like when we're all in the hereafter waiting for our 'kingdom assignments'.

Once we made it to the Temple, the boys were so excited, but surprisingly reverent. They looked through the brochures we were handed and chose which rooms would be their favorites before they even entered the temple. The first area we saw was the baptistry and they were all blown away. We've always told the boys that they would be able to go to the temple when they turned 19, to prepare for their missions. When I mentioned to Jake that he could do baptisms in the temple when he turned 12, he couldn't stop grinning. "So, every time you and dad go to the temple, I can go to and do baptisms?" Yep. I literally had to drag him away from the glass surrounding the font.

I asked everyone what their favorite parts were once we left the temple.
Jake - looking in the mirrors in one of the sealing rooms (Cam later commented that 'those mirrors were insane!')
Cam - the Celestial Room, because of the chandelier
Josh - seeing the rainbows that were made by the crystals on the chandeliers - he was looking forward to these because of his cousin's Temple Review the previous day
Sam - he really like the mirrors, too
Abby (my sister) - the cookies afterwards (her words) and I think she liked the Bride's Waiting Room. We wanted to try it out, ya know, waiting there to be a bride, but there were a lot of people behind us and we didn't wait to hold up traffic
Me - I really liked the murals painted on the walls, it added so much life to the rooms
Jared - the really high ceilings in the Celestial Room - he's guessing they were about 60 ft based on his calculations of the door height and then stacking it on top of itself ( what an engineer!)

The tour guide on our bus said we could come back as many times as we wanted between now and March. I'd really like to go again. If you're thinking about going and are worried about tickets, there are plenty. When I went online on Friday to look for ours, they still had tickets available every day from now until mid-March. It was a great opportunity to take our boys and share the experience with them.

Conversation overheard in my kitchen yesterday:

Jake: so, you should ask your mom and if you can blah, blah, blah...
Friend : she's at work. I'll call her. Where's the phone?
Jake: Your mom works a lot!

PAUSE for my explanation :
We've had this conversation before and Jake has asked me why I don't have a job.I asked if he would like me to be gone when he gets home from school and he answered inthe negative, but he would like me to work so he can have more stuff!

So back to their conversation:
He's going to tell Friend how happy he is that his mom is home. She makes cookies and picks him up from school and takes him to karate and helps with his homework... Waaaiit for it...

Friend : Yeah, my mom likes to work so we can have stuff at our house
Jake : Oh
Friend : She like to help bring money to our house that way we can go to Hawaii this summer

Me : here's the phone! Hush your mouth and call your stupid mom! (stalk out of kitchen)

Some of my favorite pictures of Sam

Look! I did it! I finally got it! I'm not an idiot anymore! Thanks, Lib, for the tutorials!

Ode to Sam - by his incompetent mommy

So, I can't get the pictures to post. I'm slowly losing the steam of the "Proud Mommy makes a birthday slide show" train. So, I'm going to cheat and put the URL for YouTube on here and hopefully you can click here and then hit the play button to see a few of my favorite Sam pictures.

Sam's Birthday Cake

so gentle, at first...

yummm, chocolate!

Sammers likes chocolate!

Sammers likes chocolate alot!


P.S. I made a cute slide show of Sam, but I can't get it to post. It's supposed to be for his birthday, but what do you do when your mom is a goof? Lib, some help please? It's on YouTube, but I can't get that embedding thing to copy and paste like last time...

Sam' video (thanx 2 Lib)

I'm at the end!

So, I'm taking an online survey like I like to do, and this question comes up:

What age group do you belong to?

	Under 18
	18-24
	25-34
	35-44
	45-54
	55-64
	65 or over I'm at the edge of that bracket now. I don't feel 'old', but I've been in that bracket for a long time and I just realized that I'll be moving on next year. That next bracket goes all the way to..., lemme see, 44! Holy Crap! Can 44 year olds even see well enough anymore to take online surveys???

Sam can Walk!!!

He's been walking since Monday night. I got a great video on my camera of him doing the length of the hall, but I don't know how to load it on here! Someone help me!

My Birthweek Celebration

Remember when you were a kid and you had your birthday and it lasted all week because you had the actual day, your party day, the day family came over, etc? Well, that's what I've had this year and it's been awesome! Here's a run-down of my celebrations so far:

Party 1 (thurs) : Jared needed to drop off a machine in Murray so we went to meet him up there for dinner. Manda and Alex joined us (sorry Alex). While someone 2 tables away was getting the birthday song, my boys chimed in with "cha cha cha" after every line. The other table's waitress came and 'borrowed' the boys later for another birthday song somewhere else in the restaurant. We finally showed proof that my bday was within 7 days so they sang to us and brought out cake for our table.

Party 2 (fri.) : Jared took the whole day off work to do whatever I wanted to do! (This was the best of all the birthday celebrations; he;s never taken work off for my bday before). I sorted my coupons and we hit Smith's for 18 bars of free soap, Albertson's for 6 packs of Pampers for $6.50 and Walgreen's for 6 bottles of Theraflu and Triaminic for $15. Then, we took the boys to Grandma's to spend the night. Jared and I had dinner at Tucano;s with Libby and Rich and then we went to the Anniversary Inn where we watched movies about dead people (Always and Just Like Heaven)

Party 3 (sat) : My rockin' sister party. see post below.

Party 4 (sun) : Jared's sister Lorna threw a huge lunch for me. OK, not really. It was our nephew, Mitchell's missionary farewell. But, it was still nice that I didn't have to prepare lunch. And, Jared was able to sit with me through Sacrament meeting because we were in a different ward! Jared made dinner for us and we celebrated with some neighbors and brownies last night.

This has seriously been the best birthday ever!
thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you

My Sister Party

My sisters and I always go out together to celebrate each other's "Special Day". There's a dinner and activity and sometimes a dictated dress code by the "Special "person.

Backstory : for all this to make sense, you must know about Pancho's. Pancho's is a mexican buffet back home that we used to go to as kids for our birthdays. They sang a fun birthday song and you always got to choose a free birthday pinata on your way out. They also had flags on every table so you could raise it and summon your server to bring more tamales, tacos, etc.

Back Backstory: Also, when I was little, I loved Mexican food. I loved it enough to declare to people that when I grew up, I wanted to be a Mexican!

Since I didn't dictate a dress code, they came up with this themselves.

Ab, Manda, & Lib in their Pancho's garb. They sang me the Pancho's birthday song while Lib danced the flamenco in her boots.

Libby made an awesome cup cake cake with the little guy from the Pancho's logo on it. She sent a picture in to Cake Wrecks so hopefully we'll see it there some day!

We also went to Cafe Rio for dinner. One of the guys behind the counter finally asked what we were celebrating. I don't know if it was the gold sombrero I was wearing, the red sashes, the pinata, or Manda's poncho that gave us away. When we told him it was my bday, he gave me a free dessert! We tried the Tres Leche which was to die for! You have to get it next time you go to Cafe Rio!

We finishe dup by going to Color Me Mine (thanx Kathryn). Ab and Manda made plate, I made a mug with flowers so no one in my house would mistake it for their own, and Lib made a box for hairbows (whatever those are!) We spent the evening talking about social work, Gary Coleman, and I don't remember what else!

I'm cheap and you can be, too!

A few of my friends have asked (and because I like to think I'm pretty good at this coupon thing), here are some of the sites I use most often to print grocery coupons. Remeber, Associated Food Stores (Macey's, Kohler's, Dan's, &Winegar's) will no longer take printables because people cheated and made too many or made copies. Don't get greedy and mess it up for the rest of us! That said, Loves to you all!

smartsource.com
malt-o-meal.com
boodle.com
coupons.com
boxtops4education.com
pillsbury.com
verybestbaking.com
eatbetteramerica.com


Here a the two comparison sites I like to use. They take the ads and match the sale items to your coupons. It gives you the % you save with the sale price and the % you save using a coupon on top of the sale price.

grocerysmarts.com
savvyshopperdeal.com ( click on shopping wizard link)

Getting the most I can for the least amount is my favorite game. It's like Ultimate Challenge everytime I go to the store. I love it! If you really want to try couponing and this doesn't make sense, call or email me and we'll talk. If you already know what you're doing, call me ,too, maybe you know something I don't!!

Happy Birthday!

So, this morning, I was looking for some breakfast. Since we're outta milk due to bad mom-age, I had to forgo my usual cheerios. Anyhow, my eyes darted around landing on peanut butter and bread. OOOh - and we have bananas. I can't tell you how long it's been since I've had (or craved) a peanut butter & banana sandwich, but today was the day!

As I slathered the peanut butter on the bread, it hit me

It's Elvis' birthday and I'm eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich!

Did you just get chills, too? Actually, I don't know why I know it's Elvis' birthday - I'm not a huge fan, just a weirdo that can remember weird dates when I can't even remember my own kids' names! I'm going to go finish my sandwich now and maybe I'll do a few pelvic swings in the King's honor when I'm done...

Put it Back!

Sam had his first haircut today. He's about a week shy of his first birthday (19th) which is usually when the boys get their first cut. He wasn't too excited to sit in Wendi's chair, so I held him while she cut. Silly mom forgot the token first haircut sucker, but at least I remembered the camera! And, yes, it's a bowl cut. Would he be a Meiners' boy if it wasn't?

In the Process; Sam really looks nothing like this, I don't even recognize this square-faced, side-parted child. But, he's cute so maybe we can work with him!

This is my Sammers, at home whre he rules and is happy.

He looks so grown up. I really hate first haircuts - they add about six months to your age!

After looking at the pictures, I think I change my mind. I want his long shag back. It was so cute and babyish. Can we just put it back?

My roots are showing...

We had the yummiest dinner of red beans and rice. We even smothered our french bread with real butter just like Paula Deen would! It was just like being in New Orleans, except there was no jazz music. OK. It wasn't like New Orleans at all but the beans were good. And the pee-can pie should be out of the oven in about 10 minutes. Who wants a piece?

Coolest Grossest toy ever!

Jake got a JAKKS Pacific EyeClops for Christmas. This thing is soooo nasty! Which means it's perfect for us! It can magnify things 100x, 200x, and 400x. So, while pretending to enjoying watching the Utah game tonight with Jared, I was really taking some sick pictures!
Before you look at them, three things:
1. We are letting you get very close to us through these pictures, so don't judge us by our appearances!
2. If you have/haven't eaten in the last 10 minutes, you may want to come back later!
3. I am no longer me, I am the mother of 4 boys and this is the wicked sick stuff that makes me cool now!

This is my wrist at 100x

Jared's sick leprecy thingy on his arm at 100x

a piece of popcorn I found on our couch - no kidding! there's popcorn on the Meiners' couch!

Sammer's toenail and toe tip (is that a word?) at 100x

Dude, if you need to take some disgusting pictures of your own, let us know. We might be willing to loan this bad boy out - for a price, of course!