Ethan's standup routine

Yesterday was the 5th grade talent show. The top four performers in each of the 4 5th grade classes performed, and Ethan did his standup act. Once again, Mom was a little nervous because he insisted on doing all new material (even though his Teletubbies/Dora the Explorer humor KILLED last time!). So that morning at 7:20, still in our pajamas, Ethan and I went over ideas for his new routine. But the kid pulled it off! I missed videoing the first 20 seconds or so of the routine (dumb camera problems), much to Ethan's dismay. I was so proud of how well he did, up there in front of the whole fifth grade PLUS parents. So here he is, Ethan Hallstrom, comedian extraordinaire. (Oh, and you can't tell but his shirt says "It's My Brother's Fault". This will factor in to one of the jokes at the end.)



Pretty good delivery and sense of comic timing for a 10 year old, don't you think!?

Sciatica!

Had a little flare-up today with my back. It's such an old-person thing to say: "My back went out!" Makes me feel like I need the clapper. Or that "I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up" device with the poor old lady stranded on the living room floor. Fortunately, my flare-up wasn't tooo bad, but unfortunately it occurred at Ethan's 5th grade play ("Celebrate America!") as I was trying to lug Wyatt out in his car seat with the other masses of 5th grade parents and siblings pressing behind me. Schproooing! There you go. But you're in the flow of traffic and you just can't stop so I hobbled my way to the wall of lockers and leaned there for a minute until the halls cleared out and the kids and I could hobble the rest of the way to the car. (Forrest is in Minnesota, getting pangs of Minnesota-sickness. The heavy air! The green! The water! Such a lovely place. I get pangs just thinking about it.) So not only did I have to lug Wyatt all by myself, crippled, but Dad missed Ethan playing William Bradford, governor of colonial Plymouth--and he did a top notch job, delivering his lines with aplomb and singing robustly throughout except for the lyric in "Yankee Doodle" where one is supposed to sing, "I've got a Yankee Doodle Sweetheart. She's my Yankee Doodle joy." Wonder why? :-)

Here's a picture (and sorry it's grainy, best I could do, dumb cameras that don't know where to focus in low light with lots of people):



I have a few other pictures I've taken lately that I'll share, mostly because they're cute:




A boy and his cat. It was a lovely summer night and Wyatt was enjoying some lawn time. Buttercup thought she'd join him. They were both quite content.



Yo, yo--wasssupp! Wyatt is turning into a little man all of a sudden. I've been tweaking his sleep routine--no more swaddling, and I'm trying to put him down awake. Worked last night, but not so much tonight. After crying for 15 minutes, I couldn't take it anymore and went in and rocked him and he zonked out in my arms almost immediately. There's a part of me that wants to just keep rocking him. I do love rocking babies. Espeically right after a bath. Oh, their little heads just smell so good!



Introducing . . . my feet! Wyatt his discovered that there are fun little appendages on the end of his legs. It's nice because it gives him something to play with that he can't drop or use to bonk himself in the head.



And this is a picture of Joe, mostly so he can prove that he, too, has stunning blue eyes. Wyatt has been stealing some of his thunder.

Tomorrow is field day--three more days of school. I can hardly believe that next year I'll have a first grader, fourth grader, and SIXTH grader. (Don't we all remember sixth grade so well? At least those of us who are female and haven't had our memories wiped clean by testosterone? Miss Anderson, my sixth grade teacher, was young and beautiful and had a poster of Michael Jackson on the wall--he was wearing a yellow sweater vest--and taught us how to dance cool and told us helpful hints such as: "When borrowing a friend's shirt, always weare deoderant." As well as, "Don't wear knee socks with shorts. Dorky." Funny the things you remember.)

So I'll have to post some field day pictures soon. Note to self: don't forget the camera.

Blogreality

Sometimes I click on the links on friends' blogs to read the inner thoughts and blogworthy accomplishments of strangers (what could be more fun?) and I've come to the conclusion that we are all infinitely more fascinating/accomplished/beautiful when viewed through a blog-lens than in real life. It's an interesting new method of communication, this "christmas card letter to the world"--especially when the blogger is essentially a stranger we've never met in person, and what we see is only what the blogger wants us to see. Who is this "Omaha Mama" with the beautiful blonde children and the beadworking business and the husband who flies her to San Fransisco for her birthday? What about "Crazy Jane" the writer who opines on New York Times articles about global warming and lovlingly crochets multi-colored scarves for all her friends at Christmastime?

I betcha Omaha Mama sometimes forgets when it's her turn to help out in her son's kindergarten class. (I just did that). I bet Crazy Jane watches reality television. (Seriously, have any of you been watching "So You Think You Can Dance?" My favorite show. Sometimes makes me teary-eyed. I am not ashamed that I love watching reality tv shows where people who are really talented and passionate compete, a la "Project Runway" and good seasons of "American Ido"--although last season was kind of a stinker, IMO).

It's especially interesting reading blogs done by good photographers. Sunkissed children frolicking on the lawn; kindly bemused-looking husbands shot in black and white, sitting in Adirondack chairs on the patio; stunning sunsets captured from the back porch of the family cabin. It's easy enough to be bamboozled by one's OWN photography (flipping through the photo album, looking at the sweet cherub faces of our then-two-year old children, sighing that those were they days while conveniently forgetting that we never took any pictures of the time said cherub filled the toilet with magazines and flushed, etc etc). But the bloggers who take lovely pictures but don't write much live a particularly idealized life.

So for any of you who are reading this blog and think that I live some kind of blessed existence, here is the truth. Although I DO have lots of blessings, lots to be grateful for, lots that makes me very happy, I also have plenty to worry about. Having four kids pretty much ensures that. I'm lazier than I should be. (It's 9:06 and I'm still in my pajamas, having put Wyatt down for a quick nap in his swing. The dishwasher is not loaded and I haven't even showered, Elise's bedroom is a nightmare mess, and I'm sitting in front of my computer.) I'm not as spiritual as I should be. (Need to read scriptures more. Need to pray better. Need to be more focused on the important things in life and less on "So You Think You Can Dance." But I said I wasn't ashamed. Maybe I am a little.) I don't eat as healthily as I should and neither do my kids. (A friend of mine said here kids were eating sushi. SUSHI! Mine won't eat salad yet, not even Ethan.) I was mean to the volunteer lady from the Professional Firefighters of Utah who called for the FIFTH TIME IN TWO DAYS asking for money. (I wasn't mean the first four times. But this is an excuse.) Sometimes I listen to music by Nine Inch Nails and the Beastie Boys and turn it up loud and like it. Sometimes my kids fight. Sometimes I yell. When I was up in the middle of the night last week and had barely gotten Wyatt to sleep, Buttercup started yowling at the door to be let in and wouldn't stop, so I crept over to let her in, still holding Wyatt, and the sound of the door opening woke him up and it made me so mad I kicked the cat as she scuttled inside. But not very hard. More like scooted her across the hardwood floor with my foot. But still. Oh. And I have strech marks. Lots.

So there's the truth--and only a part of the truth. The truth is it's hard for anyone to know us really, even our own families. Isn't that a little scary? Scary but wonderful?

And now Wyatt's awake. And the dishes aren't done and I haven't showered and he'll probably cry the whole time I attempt to accomplish these tasks I should have been doing while he was sleeping. See?

p.s.--Ethan Update: He won 1st place in his class talent show doing his stand up routine, based on in-class voting. Seriously. He came home from school that day just about bursting out of his skin, he was so excited and proud. So that's a good thing--a true good thing, just like all the other true good things I write about on this blog that balance out the fact that I have one more week to go before payday and I'm already in my overdraft. Sigh.

Women in Art

A friend of mine emailed me this link to a video on YouTube. Just thought it was cool and that I'd share:



Enjoy!

Everything I Forgot To Tell You Last Week

I've been meaning to update regular life all week long and haven't gotten around to it yet, so here's the latest rundown.

First, Elise pictures. This pictures are from last week. First there's a shot of Elise and two of her friends at our ward picnic. We met at a fun little park with water fountains and the kids had a great time jumping around and getting wet, the dads enjoyed some horseshoes, and the moms pretty much stayed inside the pavilion, drank Diet Cokes and talked. (That's my idea of a good time). When I went to go get Elise to tell her it was time to come home, she was kicking the soccer ball around with her friends on the top of this hill. With the mountain behind them, they looked like Queens of the World, and I just happened to have my camera in the diaper bag. Cute girls.



And this is an action shot of Elise playing soccer. She's come a long way this year, considering she'd never played soccer before. I felt for her yesterday, though, playing soccer in 100 degree heat. That's just cruel and unusual, if you ask me.



Other things . . . hmmmm . . . Oh! Ethan has his school talent show today and he's doing stand up. No kidding. We worked on his routine a bit last night and he has some good material, mostly making fun of little kids shows ("Now Teletubbies, THAT's a freaky show. Especially that baby sun. Imagine if that was real. You walk outside one morning, happy, whistling a tune, then you look up into the sky . . . BABY SUN! Giant, freaky baby glaring down at you, laughing, gurgling" and so on.) Imagine that with an Ethan-style delivery. He'll have to fill us in on how it went this afternoon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for him because stand up is HARD, but he did have a guy in his class whose Mom came and he pointed at Ethan and said, "That's the really funny guy I keep talking about." Takes after his dad.

And speaking of Dads, yesterday was Father's Day! Hooray for Fathers! Forrest got a nice French toast breakfast, some hand made presents from the kids, some new bbq utensils from Mom (to go with his new barbeque that he bought himself a few weeks ago--I simply resort to token gifts because anything he wants for himself he buys before I can buy it :-). We had just enough time for a nice dinner as a family after church before he had to take off for the airport to head to Vegas. He has some client sponsored golf tournament today. It should be fun . . . but it will be 107 degrees. Yikes!

Which reminds me of my final bit of inconsequential news. (See how I'm working all these transitions between paragraphs?) Saturday was the hottest day of the year so far in Utah, and Rocky Mountain Power decided to pick that day to do a planned power outage from 7 am to 5 pm. All sorts of people had to cancel get-togethers and lots of folks were up in arms. Well apparently somebody tipped off Channel 2 news, because as I was walking home from the pool on Friday, I saw them parked in front of my house doing interviews. They asked me a few questions . . . and my slightly giggly, slightly double-chinny self ended up on the 6:00 broadcast. (I think I said something profound about how we couldn't even use the pool because the filters wouldn't work. It was mesmerizing!)

So that's it for now . . . more updates later . . . .

Great News

It looks like my novel, True and Faithful, is going to be published! After many stops and starts, I was beginning to lose hope that this book would ever exist outside my computer hard drive. But a new LDS publisher called Parables has offered me a contract. Although it's a small publisher and doesn't have the kind of muscle that a publisher like Deseret Book might have, Parables is willing to take a risk with a literary novel-in-stories aimed at an LDS audience. I am thrilled and will do all that I can to get the book in stores. (It will be available on Amazon, but getting distribution in bookstores like DB and Seagull and Barnes and Noble is another story). I still can't quite believe it. The publisher is tentatively hoping to have the book out by Christmas, which is a pretty quick production schedule. Aack!

Now that I'm faced with the prospect of having the book out there in the world, I'm surprised at my range of emotions. Although I'm incredibly excited, I'm a little scared, too. What will people think? From my literary friends to my visiting teachers to my family to some guy in Nebraska--they could all be reading this window into my psyche and coming to conclusions over which I have no control. Scary! SCARY!

But awesome. I'm thrilled.

Stay tuned . . .

Doing the Derby

Last night was the Pinewood Derby . . . and it just hit me today that it's probably Ethan's LAST! Hard to believe, but next year he'll be an 11-year Scout and out of the Cub program. "The years they pass like summer dew upon the grass." (Quick! What's the reference?!). Anyway, Ethan and his Dad spent a lot of time the last few days working on his car. It was black and shaped like a piece of marshal arts weaponry and had a symbol on it from the Anime style cartoon he's become recently fixated on called "Naruto." (I think that's how it's spelled. I'm not googling it, since I'm guessing most of my readers don't know how to spell it either). He was quite pleased with the result, and Dad was quite pleased with all the little Pinewood Derby tricks he employed to make the car run faster. (At our very first Pinewood Derby in MN, we simply built a car and got completely skunked, thereby reinforcing the need to learn the Pinewood Derby tricks of the trade, if only to spare Dad the humiliation :-).

But upon arriving at the Derby, it came to our attention that (dun, dun, duuuun) there was a ringer in the house! Turns out the Colletti boys' Grandpa was the Austrailian National Pinewood Derby Champion (honest!), and the minute we saw the Collettis' cars run the track we knew the best we could hope for was third. Those cars were smokin. Really, though, Ethan was just hoping to make the finals, because there were plenty of Dads around that were reaaaaaallly into graphiting wheels before the race began and pacing around, full of competitive anxiety. As Forrest put it to a friend of ours that night, he's a solid B+ kind of guy in most respects, Pinewood Derby races included. Here's a shot of Ethan and three other cute blonde boys waiting for their cars to come down the track. (The dreaded Coletti is sitting next to Ethan, second from the left. He's really a very nice kid, as is his brother and his parents and their Austrailan champion Grandpa :-):



The race was run by a guy who, I'm assuming, does PInewood Derbies as a job or something, since he informed us that we were the 60th race he'd done so far this year. He had a metal track that he also informed us cost $1,500 and that if anyone stepped over it, he would fine him $5. If he stepped over it again, he would be disqualified and asked to leave. And if stepping over the track became a REAL problem, Mr. Pinewood Derby would dismantle the track and go home. No kidding. I bet I heard a panicky adult say, "Don't Step Over the Track!" to an eight year old crazed with derby fever and not thinking straight at least a dozen times. Luckily, we got through the race without any track related tragedies. But even though this Derby guy was more than a little over the top, he did a great job running things and the kids had a lot of fun. Ethan did end up in the final eight--his goal--but didn't make the top four. (Dad encouraged him to run the car backwards during one heat because Mr. Derby had said some cars run faster this way and he was running against a Coletti, so he might as well try it out. But that slowed him waaay down and he took 4th in that heat. I was very impressed with the way he took it, though. A little disappointed at first, a little bit of a "Daaaad!" look of exasperation shot across the not-to-be-stepped-over track, and then he got over it.) Here's a shot of Ethan and his friend Alec at the end of the race:



So a good time was had by all. And before you know it, Joe will be in a Derby. And then Wyatt! A lifetime of Derbies are ahead of us. Can't wait.

Mr. Rollerbaby

I forgot to add on my last post that Wyatt started rolling from back to front on Saturday. (Forrest actually saw the first one--of course!). He'd been trying for days and finally figured it out. Now he's rolling like a champ. Here's video proof:

Scorchy

It's been downright HOT in Utah these days. I have sunburned shoulders to prove it. Although it did allow is to have our inaugural boating day on Friday--we took the kids out of school early and headed to Yuba with Forrest's family. A grand time was had by all, even Wyatt, who enjoyed riding in the boat but did NOT enjoy wearing the life jacket. The kids did a great job kneeboarding, mom got up on skis for the first time in over a year, and dad added a wicked new trick to his wakeboarding repertoire: an airborne 180. It was very cool. I keep reminding Forrest that he's on the downhill side to 40 and at some point all these tricks are going to catch up with him, but so far he hasn't broken or irreparably maimed anything. And it makes him happy to look so studly.

Sorry I don't have any pictures of Yuba. Forgot the camera! But I do have some pictures of the boys playing soccer on Saturday that I'll share, just so there's something to look at:




Alright, so Jonas isn't exactly playing. I had to feed Wyatt and got there late and he'd already done his playing and was sitting out for the last bit of the game. But doesn't he look cute on the sidelines? I also haven't taken any pictures of Elise playing soccer yet, but will. She wasn't very happy about going on Saturday because we'd spent all day at the lake on Friday then she slept over at a friend's house and stayed up till 2 in the morning and was exhausted--and Saturday afternoon it was over 90 degrees outside. But we gave her the ol' "you gott a support your team, if you sign up for something you've gotta see it through" lecture. I did feel for her. (I certainly wouldn't have wanted to play soccer either) but it is our job as parents to make our children do things they don't want to, so they become accustomed to doing things they don't want to for the rest of their lives. Right? :-)

Let's see. Anything else? Oh, I'm going to put in a link that 90% of you will have no interest in, but it's an interview with Mitt Romney that I found fascinating. http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=148

The Pew Forum has a biannual conference on religion, politics and public life and a lot of well known journalists attend. They invited Richard Bushman, author of Rough Stone Rolling and a professor at Columbia, to attend and talk about the political history of Mormonism, how Mitt Romney might govern in light of his Mormonism, and to answer any questions that the journalists might have. I thought Bushman did a fabulous job (taught me a thing or two) and it was very interesting to see the questions and perceptions about Mormonism that came through from the journalists. Check it out.