The Upside of Travel: A Guest Post

Yes, it is true! The guest post has arrived. I figure once every five years I can talk Forrest into it. And now, without further ado, my adoring (yes! he adores me! he pines for me every day he's away!) husband:

So here is the thing about travel for work.  I actually kind of like it.  I don’t like every little thing about it (like missing my family), and I could pretty easily make a long list of hardships that I am forced to endure while traveling, but that would be disingenuous. For me, and maybe for anyone else who has had moments in their past when they felt trapped by their jobs or other circumstances, the act of heading off to new destinations can be a cathartic experience.

I might have spent one too many eight hour shifts chained to a piece of printing equipment as an 18-year-old temp worker.  Or before that, on any number of summer days, stuck somewhere by myself without means or mobility.  Whatever the ultimate source of that weight is it’s still a tangible part of my soul.  Not in a bad way; it’s not pushing me where I don’t want to go. But the memory of what it feels like to be without options is something I can tap when I need to as a balance.  When I look out a plane window at whatever part of the world I’m traveling over, or when I look out a hotel window at whatever part of the world the sun is rising over on a particular day, I can quickly calibrate around the path I’ve taken.  Locked in place or free as the wind.  I'm grateful for the chance to feel free.

Before this gets too poetic I should remind everyone that I don’t always travel to the most glamorous of places.  Last week I was in a meat packing plant in Petersburg, Virginia.  This week I’ll be in Fort Worth, TX trying to make a better box, and next week I’ll be in Watsonville, CA trying to talk some sense into some berry growers.  The thrill of most of these trips for me comes from the minutiae. 

I landed in Baltimore at 8:00 pm last Monday and drove for 3 hours to get to Richmond.  I listened to some great radio stations coming out of DC, I had an entire 5 Guys place to myself when I stopped along the way for dinner at 9:30, and I talked to Angie on the phone 3 or 4 times along the way to get updates on various topics.  It looks a lot like normal life except someone is paying me to do it somewhere else. 

Once in a while the out of the way places I tend to travel to get more "out of the way" than usual, but my traveling rules for fun still stay the same. Rule # 1 is that food is a comfort.  To misquote Homer Simpson, “Mmmmm, donuts. At least my love for you will never die.”  I’m always up for a donut and, like good Mexican food, the more run down the place looks, the better the donut.  On more than one occasion I have pulled up in front of bakery without being too sure that the building was occupied and open for business, only to be pleasantly surprised by the quality of their wares.  On my recent trip to Luneburg, Germany I was able to find multiple bakeries (“back-a-rye” phonetically in German) and enjoy more that one walnut streusel.  The picture below was the oldest of the bakeries in the city as you can tell by the elaborate and leaning brick work.  It was built like 500 years ago and the woman walking her bicycle in front worked there for most of that time.

We might as well talk about Luneburg while we are on the subject.  The food isn’t anything to get too worked up about, although the breakfast at our hotel was an incredible buffet.  Seven different bowls with seven different types of yogurt each morning?  Enough said.  The façade to our hotel is pictured below. The entire building behind it has been replaced after a fire gutted the old building. I think it was a firehouse first and a warehouse at the time of the fire.  Now it’s a very nice hotel behind a very old façade.  

Luneburg is in Northern Germany and is one of the only cities in the entire region that escaped unscathed from the activities surrounding WW II.  And by activities I mean bombings.  There are three “old” churches in Luneburg and two are pictured below.   

The youngest of the three was completed in the 15^th century.  The youngest!! To be honest I really have a hard time comprehending that.  Most of the city, in fact, is hundreds of years old and is still beautiful and functional. What do you have to say for yourself Kearns, Utah?!

I got home from Germany on Friday night and left Sunday morning for Mexico. The flight to Germany was longer but much more comfortable.  Individual video on demand at each seat; I watched 3 movies on the way there (instead of sleeping) and 4 movies on the way home.  The flight to Mexico wasn’t so cushy.  Mostly work and reading, no movies.  I’ve got a reading goal for 2011, and with all the early travel I am way ahead of schedule.

Food in Mexico was also on the unique side.  When was the last time you had octopus, squid, and raw fish for lunch?  When was the last time it was lunch at two different restaurants with two different groups of people on two consecutive days?  The picture below says it all.  Zoom in on it, I dare you. 

The individual suction cups from the squid and octopus positively glisten.  Surprisingly, the food was very good.  This fish was part of a ceviche: seafood, sometimes raw, in a citrus/acid sauce to ensure food safety.  Goes well with Coke Zero. Oddly enough they didn’t have Diet Coke in either Germany or Mexico, only Coke Lite, but they did have Coke Zero in both locations.

Here is a picture of me after eating the squid on the first day.  The picture of health! It’s hard to look unhappy standing in 80 degree sunshine at the tail end of a Minnesota winter.

Now, Mexico isn’t always the safest spot on the globe, but we weren’t in the bad parts of Mexico. We weren’t in the tourist parts of Mexico either; we were in the farmlands of Mexico. I was never worried for my safety, but that was partially because everywhere you turned there were blue trucks full of Federales displaying their Wyatt-like love of big guns.  The picture below was snapped as we drove through a random road block.  I could have taken 20 of these pictures a day.  

You’ll notice that the blue of the uniform matches the blue from the truck.  These guys were committed to fashion.  Much like the woman pictured below reporting out the local weather on the evening news.  I happened to pass the news on my way to the English speaking channels and I couldn’t resist snapping a photo.  I guess when the weather is dry and warm for nine months of the year you have to take other approaches in order to get ratings.

I’m not sure what the word limit is for blog posts but I’m probably getting close so I’ll wrap this up.  Angie bought me a book for Christmas called The Lost City of Z about a legendary lost city in South America and a British explorer named Fawcett who died looking for it. (Grandpa Hiatt might remember reading about this in the papers back in 1930.) By the time you finish the book you come to the conclusion that this Fawcett guy must not have liked being home.  The Amazon wasn’t a fun place back in the day, and this guy just couldn’t stand to be away from it for very long.  Crazy right? 

Well I’m not crazy, at least not in that way.  The best vacations are ones where you are excited to go and just excited to come home, and that is what these short bursts of travel are to me.  I’m very fortunate to live in a digital age where I can take Angie with me wherever I go.  My Blackberry works internationally and our only real challenge is time zones.  I could wake up in Germany at 5 am and call her before she went to bed.  And then right at 2:30 in my afternoon she would sit down in her office as the two older kids got ready for school and email me about her night. I could snap a picture in Mexico and email it to her from my phone while riding in the back seat of the car to my next appointment.  I can even send her emails while I’m in the air through Delta’s wi-fi service. 

It’s fun to be off on an adventure; it’s fun to stay connected and to share it all in real time; and it’s fun to come home.  Now I need to go pack.  That 7 a.m. flight to Dallas in the morning is going to come awfully early, and good donuts don't find themselves.  

The Promised Miscellania Post

So I've been waiting for Forrest to do a guest post (yes! you heard it here first!) on his two trips to Germany and Mexico, but the guy's been a little busy. So whilst we wait, why don't I hit my mental randomizer and see what pops up.

bee-boop-bee-boop--BIIING! (that's the sound a randomizer makes, obviously):

1. The cat is sitting on my lap while I type this. She's stayed away from me for years, but lately she's been much more affectionate. I think it's because she knows I want to kill her. Why, you ask? Not only does she wake me up at 4:30 a.m. to be let out, and not only does she throw up on carpets and bedspreads and doormats and in the exact spot under the kitchen table that I can't see but can step in . . . but now she's doing this to the bottom step in my entryway:

I know, right? Stupid cat.

And yeah, I had to shoo her off my lap so I could go take a picture of her treachery.

2.  I have been hypnotized by J Lo's beauty this season of American Idol. I'm beginning to wonder if sparkles exude from her pores instead of sweat. (I wonder: what person would I be if I'd grown up answering to the name Angie Sparkles? Think on that.)

I'm kind of liking this Simon-less season of AI. Steven Tyler is wacky, but in a cool-older-uncle-who's-learned-some-hard-lessons kind of way, and the aforementioned J Lo is gorgeous and smart and breaks down in convulsions of sobs when she has to send home mildly talented fiances of wheelchair-bound car accident victims. (Follow that?) Randy is, of course, a waste. But the talent this year is head and shoulders above last year's train wreck. Yay!

3.  Super Target, I bow before you. I am happy (nay, thrilled) to announce that the brand new Super Target a mere seven minutes from my front door has finally opened. I can not adequately describe my pleasure. I can only say that I no longer have to drive 15 minutes to go to our kinda grimy, bag your own groceries, looks like a warehouse but not priced like a warehouse shlump-fest of a supermarket and instead get to go here:

In the words of Charlie Sheen: Super Target? WINNING!

Cub Foods? Built by trolls.

4. The only thing to mar my inaugural trip to Super Target happened when I wandered past the Easter candy aisle. I wasn't really looking for Chicks and Rabbits* so I could buy a bag and put it in my secret candy spot. Oh, no. Just checking to see if they were in, you know? Just for the sake of information gathering. A reconnaissance mission, you might call it. But to my everlasting horror, here is what I found:

Excuse me, but really? JELLY Chicks and Rabbits? Who is responsible for this travesty? Do we not have enough jellied items over the Easter holidays? Do these Brach's people not realize that Chicks and Rabbits in their pure, undefiled, original marshmallow-fied state are one of the best WORST foods ever created?

Don't tell me if the original Chicks and Rabbits are still available in Utah. This winter has been long enough. Don't want to hear it. La la la la la.

5. And speaking of Minnesota, can you believe I moved from Jason Chaffetz's congressional district to Official Tea Party Spokesmodel Michelle Bachman's?  Oh, the irony. We watched her on Meet the Press this Sunday and I swear, you could have asked the woman, "So, where do you live?" and she would have answered, "105 Billion Hidden Obamacare Lane." Drives. Me. Crazy.

6. And to wrap things up, a picture of one of my progeny. Another shot of Ethan standing by the fake-tree-you-stand-in-front-of-when-I-want-to-take-your-picture.  This time the picture was taken at 6:00 in the morning before he headed out the door for another speech meet. He's done a great job, taking a 2nd place in storytelling, a 1st place (!!!!), and last week, 9th place out of 40-something competitors. I talked to his coach a few days ago and she said that he's doing great, so talented (especially at such a young age) and is quite adept at making friends with girls from other schools. Sigh.

Handsome kid though, even at 6:00 a.m.

Oh, and I have to share this!

7. Mindy and Peter, sister-and-brother-in-laws-extraordinaire and parents of three beautiful daughters, just found out that they're having a boy this summer! Happy day. So fun. Now the Hallstrom side can have four boy cousins and four girl cousins, a pleasingly symmetrical outcome. Can't wait to see what a Mindy and Peter boy child looks like. I'm sure he'll be adorable.

Now hopefully I can get Forrest to do his guest post sometime in the next month or two. Encourage him in the comments if you'd like.

*I linked to the blog post from two years ago because it mentions my love of Chicks and Rabbits. I didn't read it until after this post had already been published, but now that I have it's a good reminder to me that although I feel a little adrift and even, frankly, bored lately, at least I'm not reliving that particular week of March 2009. That was a toughie.

Elise's Middle School Stage Debut!

This weekend Elise performed in her middle school's production of "The Mix,"a "salute to Broadway" show that included songs and short scenes from a number of well-known musicals like West Side Story, Wicked, Annie Get Your Gun, Grease, and The Lion King. The students did a great job and I was impressed with all the hard work and energy that all those 6th to 8th grade kids put into pulling off the show.

I was particularly proud of Elise (of course!). Not only did she have the courage to tackle a solo in "Annie Get Your Gun" -- not every kid had a solo, and she did great -- but she even overcame a small snafu on opening night with aplomb. Elise's number, "Anything You Can Do" from Annie Get Your Gun, came right after the big opening number, so Elise and her gang had to make a super-quick costume change involving a plaid shirt. The director had mentioned that the kids might want to button the two bottom buttons of the shirt and then pull it over their heads, but Elise's shirt was pretty tight and it got stuck! So as all the kids for her scene walked out, Elise was still backstage wrestling with her shirt, which would put even a seasoned pro into panic mode.  I admit I was a little nervous for her too as I sat in the audience thinking, "Where's Elise!?!?"  But then she walked in with a smile on her face and picked up with a line that made total sense for the scene; although she missed saying a few lines, nobody in the audience was one bit the wiser. It seemed like it was all meant to be that way.  And even though she was a little out of breath, she found her footing in her song pretty quickly and did a great job.  I was so proud!

Here's a video of Elise's solo performance. The other snafu was mom-related (or technology-related): the minute I started videoing the "memory card full" message started flashing (arrghh!) so I missed the first few lines and the opening of Elise's solo as I switched from the video camera to my cell phone camera. The video and audio quality isn't the greatest, either, since it was filmed on my phone. But I captured enough to at least give you a taste:



I thought I'd let you see one of the big group numbers, too. This is "One Short Day" from Wicked. Elise is the tall one. :-)



And here are some photos taken during "parent photo night"-- a couple of nights before the actual performance, Moms and Dads could come and take all the pictures they wanted while the kids held poses and ran through some of the numbers. A great idea! That way the parents can sit back and enjoy the actual show instead of worrying about taking pictures, and the performers aren't distracted by photography flashes:

Officer Krupke

"Please Officer Krupke!"

Perfecting the look of adolescent angst

Elise as Annie and her Frank Butler

They can shoot a sparrow, with a bow and arrow

The battle of the sexes.

One short day . . . in the emmmerallld city!

The mothers of River City

Elise and the other brainiacs, jocks, and skaters encouraging the students at East High to "Stick to the Status Quo"

And the final group shot!

It was so much fun to see Elise perform and I look forward to lots of musicals in our future. Great job, hon!

Blog Backlog, Chunk #1: The Nerd Herd

So, yes, I know I left the disturbing post up for a little too long (and yes, I also realize that both my hair in the photo and the shirtless hand dancer qualified as disturbing). Lots has been going on at our house and I haven't seemed to find the time to update ye olde blog. So I'm going to break things up into chunks over the next few days.

Chunk 1: The Nerd Herd/Battle of the Books (Jonas)
Chunk 2: Forrest's trips to both Germany and Mexico. Sheesh, that was a long time for me to do the single mom thing. But as least Forrest took some good pictures. And brought home chocolate.
Chunk 3: Elise's musical (first performance tonight--break a leg honey!)
Chunk 4: Miscellania, paraphernalia, juveinila

The Nerd Herd!

So Jonas has been on a "Battle of the Books" team for the past few months. They've read all twelve of the Maud Hart Lovelace nominated novels for 2010 and met every other Wednesday to discuss them, and last night they competed.

Walking into the cafeteria, ready to do battle

Jonas's team competed against 8 other 4th grade teams. They were asked 50 questions related to the twelve books, ranging from "What was the name of so-and-so's uncle" to "why didn't so-and-so want to go to school in the morning?", then they had thirty seconds to whisper possible answers amongst themselves and have the scribe write the answer on a white board.

You'll notice the nice woman sitting holding the green(ish) card in her lap. She's the coach of another team. Coaches went to sit with other teams to serve as a judge. If they got the answer right, the judge would hold up a green card. Wrong? Red. Not sure (e.g. if the wording the boys wrote down didn't exactly match the wording in the official answer)? Yellow. Our judge held up a lot of yellow cards, which necessitated a head judge coming to the table and making the final call. Nine times out of ten the head judge called it in our favor. So while our table judge was a bit of a stickler, it did make things more exciting.

The Nerd Herd was leading up until question 30. In fact, at one point we were up by four and seemed untouchable! But then we had a few missed questions and a couple of close calls (the boys knew the answer but didn't write it down completely) and suddenly, an all girl team to our right surged and before we knew it, the lead had slipped out of our hands!

We ended the night two questions behind the eventual winners, who get to have a pizza party at school (luckies!). But the boys were good sports and had a lot of fun and are going to have their OWN pizza party.

All the kids who read each of the 12 books (not a requirement) got a special ribbon.

I think the best part of this whole thing for Jonas was meeting a group of really nice kids. Two of them live quite close to our house, so hopefully once it warms up they'll be going outside to play sometime soon. (Hooray for going outside to play!).

On other good Jonas news, we just had parent teacher conferences last week, and not only did his teacher say, "Jonas is the type of kid that I would love to get to know as a grown up. He's such a nice person, and he just gets it!", but his grades are excellent and his test scores have improved quite markedly since the beginning of the year. He went from the 86-88th percentile in reading and math on his standardized tests (they tested him when we first moved for placement purposes) to 96-98th percentile when he took the tests last month with the rest of his class. I think the accelerated curriculum (to which we did NOT have access in the ALPs-dominated Jordan School district, much to my dismay) has done him a lot of good. I really like his elementary school and his teacher in particular.

Good job, my super-reader Jonas. Right now he's reading The Little House books. Oh, my mother heart smiled at that! Elise didn't really like them so I didn't think any of my kids would, but after reading a ton of fantasy--which he still claims is his favorite genre--he's decided to read some historical fiction. He read a few WWII books (Number the Stars and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) and then thought he'd give Little House a whirl.

Anyway, thanks for being such a great kid, Joe. Love you.

To Germany With Love

So on this Valentine's Day, I was thinking about the very best man I know -- yes, the very same man my 16-year old, acid washed, big-haired self managed somehow to woo -- and I wanted to send him a message.  A cryptic message, yes, since this is a public blog, yadda yadda yadda, but it's a message he will understand. And so will some of you.

So I went to Youtube, trying to find the music video for Alphaville's "To Germany With Love." (Fun fact: when I was 16 years old, I went to Washington D.C. all by myself to a national program called Washington Workshops as a representative from Cyprus High School.  Forrest lent me his Grandma's blue suitcase and his Alphaville tape, and I listened to it over and over on both plane rides and at night before I went to bed.) So now, 21 years later, here I sit in my office in our house in Minnesota, surrounded by our four rapidly growing kids and all the stuff we've accumulated over the years, googling "Germany With Love," trying to find something that represents the depth of my feeling for the man who's more responsible for my happiness in this life than anyone else.  And this, dear readers (and dear husband of mine) is what I found.

It seems even more eerily apropos that the "station" where one can find this one-of-a-kind video is called "ForrestTV" (seriously--you can't tell in the embedded video, but look it up on Youtube. Synchronicity?)  This message is for you, my love, brought to you by the very best exhibitionistic balding hand dancer on the internet:

(for my gentler readers: don't worry, the disrobing ends after he takes off his shirt)

On Writing

So my C Jane post went up on Sunday and it was a fun ride. Interesting to think on how it's probably the most widely-read thing I've ever written: a blog post that I labored over for two whole days! It was an honor to be able to do it, though, and even if it doesn't really translate into many Dispensation sales or Irreantum subscriptions, it's satisfying that a few more people know now that such things exist. A step in the right direction, yes?

Now I just need to figure out what my plans are with my own writing. I'm stuck (again) on another novel, feeling like I'm going the wrong direction but a little sick about chucking it all and starting over again. It's easy to stand up and preach the gospel of revision, but man, it never stops being extraordinarily hard to do in practice. Especially when there's no guarantee of anyone actually reading the finished product: three, four years of your life, hours and hours and hours of work, all for the sliver of a chance that it might get an agent, then a tinier sliver of a chance that it will get published, then an even tinier sliver of a chance that, after publication, it will be read instead of slinking off into the ever-crowded corner of literary obscurity to curl up into a ball and die.

Wow. This is really uninspiring.

Part of my own problem has to do with permission.  It's hard for me to give myself permission to write toward such a nebulous goal. And it's galling for me to even write these words since I spend so much energy encouraging others to do that very thing (be brave! you can't be a successful writer until you allow yourself to carve out the time and space necessary to make it work! the vast majority of anything you write will end up discarded -- that's the process!).  But I'm still struggling with it.  Working on Irreantum, working on Dispensation, writing blog posts or essays for Segullah, all those things are easier for me to get my arms around because I know what I'm doing will eventually get out into the world and be read. It justifies the time away from my family, from cooking dinner or folding socks.  It also justifies the really really really hard work. Writing fiction (for me) isn't like reading, which is pure enjoyment, or even other activities that people would call leisurely, like (hey!) blogging or baking or gardening: activities that can be broken up into discrete blocks with discernible results at the end of the day. A new blog post, brownies, a planter of petunias on the front porch.  No, writing fiction requires this kind of leap of faith, coupled with the ability to work hard and be disciplined for the sake of working hard and being disciplined, coupled with a kind of single-mindedness that requires me to shut everyone and anyone else out.  (I can't even have somebody put a hand on my shoulder when I'm writing. Jerks me right out of where I need to be.)

But I'm going to keep plugging away.  Keep writing slowly. While I sit and simmer about my (possibly) abandoned novel, I've started working on a short story. I haven't started a short story in years because I've wanted to spend my fiction writing time on getting a *&(* novel finished, but I think I need the kick in the pants, the creative jolt that starting and finishing a work of fiction will give me.

Wish me luck.

And isn't the sound of all those Egyptians cheering in the streets an inspiring thing?

Cool!

The back yard, winter morning

So the coolest thing about the last week -- and no, I don't mean temperature-cool -- is that Ethan competed in his very first speech tournament and (drumroll!) he won 2nd place in novice storytelling! First time ever, freshman, right outta the gate, baby! Over 900 students from all over the state participated in a number of different categories.  We're really proud of Ethan and know he'll continue to do a a great job the rest of the season.

Elise has been busy with her musical rehearsals every day after school, and it's been fun to hear her upstairs practicing her guitar now that she's taking lessons.  And Jonas has been singing in his school choir and getting ready for his Battle of the Books competition in a couple of weeks. He had to read all 12 books nominated for the Maud Hart Lovelace award, and he and his fellow team members (they christened their team "The Nerd Herd," and I think it means you're not that nerdy if you're able to self-referentially call yourselves The Nerd Herd) will compete in a trivia competition based on the novels. Jonas has also been reading The Series of Unfortunate Events books like a maniac (seriously, like 10 of them in the last few weeks, to the point where he's ignoring things like, ahem, the dreaded "purple packet" whose unfinished contents were the source of much discontent a few mornings ago).

Wyatt is chillin. (See? Extending the cool metaphor.) He made everyone laugh at dinner the other night when he pretended to be me prodding Jonas to eat his dinner: "I'm going to count to three! One, two . . . don't make me get to three!"

Am I really that obvious?  Um, yes.

A yucky cold has been circulating throughout the family, but we're all holding up okay, despite a few missed days of school. The combination of sick kids + icky weather + nothing really much to force me to go outside has turned me into a bit of a hermit.  Strange word, hermit. Not a pretty one. It's bad enough being a hermit; you'd think they could come up with a nicer word to describe us. Like "philanthropist." There's a pretty word. Or "dilettante." That's a perfectly pretty word wasted on amateur wannabe artists.  What I really want to be is a bon vivant, but a bon vivant is the polar opposite of a hermit, yes?  So you see how I'm stuck. And how I like French words.

Oh! The other super cool thing that happened this last week is the birth of Tony and Cindy's sixth baby, this beautiful little bundle of squishy goodness (I'm assuming he's squishy based on photographic evidence and past experience with Tony/Cindy Babies, since I haven't been able to personally squish him):

That makes 16 grandkids on my side, seven boys and nine girls. And more good news: Mindy and Pete will be having another baby this summer, rounding out the cousins on Forrest's side to eight. I'm thinking it has to be a boy for the sake of evenness: three boys and one girl from Forrest, three girls and one boy from Mindy. Seems about right!

So, for more formless rambling, how about this. From the world of current events: everything going on in Egypt is fascinating. I, too, would be irritated if a guy named Hosni had been running my country into the ground since I was a little kid.  Go freedom!  Just don't end up like Iran and we'll all be happy! And I've heard some scuttle that Jon Hunstman is probably going to try for the Republican nomination for President. (He just stepped down from his position as ambassador to China.)  I've always liked him a lot more than I liked Romney. Plus my dad guarded his dad's house, so that makes us almost friends, yes?  Could get me a ticket to the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn? Should be interesting.  The Mormons! They're everywhere!

And finally, I'm guest posting on C Jane Enjoy It! on Sunday.  Eek! I also need to keep it under 800 words.  Double eek!  I'm going to write a little about stories -- how stories connect us, feed us spiritually, all that.  But much more articulately.  I won't say Eek!  But maybe I'll say dilettante.  Or bon vivant.  Maybe my bio can be "Angela Hallstrom is a dilettante bon vivant hermit who enjoys Top Chef All Stars and period dramas.  And by period dramas, she doesn't mean "menstruation histrionics," (see comments by Andrea and Delise), because who enjoys menstruation histrionics?  Certainly not her loving and ever-patient husband, Forrest. Just ask him."

Bingo!  You'd read a post by that woman, right?

And now, I've gotta go.  Somewhere.  Maybe I'll wander to the upstairs loft.  Little change of scenery and whatnot.  Maybe I'll do some laundry.  Maybe I'll load the dishwasher.  Maybe I'll help Wyatt made a gun out of his Thomas train tracks (his latest project).  All sorts of options!

Wyatt Dean, 4 Years Old

 

My sweet boy turned 4 on Friday.  He's still little enough that he can tell me he wants to marry me when he grows up without an ounce of self-consciousness, but he's big enough that he can write his name and go to school and build a fort (well, kinda--more like he can harangue me into helping him build a fort).  I'm just so glad we have a few more years of cute little-kidhood to enjoy in our house, since the other kids insist on wrestling with long division, scaring me into thinking there's an intruder in the house by calling my name in a deep manly voice, and wearing eyeliner. (You can decide which kid is doing which in the preceding list.)

On Friday, Wyatt brought treats for preschool and then the two of us met Dad at McDonald's (with a Play Place--unlike in Utah, not every single McD's has a Play Place in MN) and Wyatt opened his present from us: a Transformers mask he'd tried on the last three times we wandered through the toy aisle at Target, and a new game for his Leapster.

But on Saturday Wyatt had his first friend birthday party.  He's met a cute little group of kids at church and through the babysitting co-op and was so excited to have them over.  Two of the five kids we invited were girls, so we couldn't have the Transformers birthday he originally requested without making them feel a little left out, so we decided instead on having a Toy Story party.  Woody AND Jessie, you see?

I took advantage of the wonder of the internet and googled some Toy Story party ideas and found a few that were simple but fun--right up my alley!  I haven't done a little kid party in a while, and although I remember dreading them somewhat in the past, this one was actually kind of fun to plan.  Crazy, I know!  Here are a few of the highlights:

Thank you Disney.com for the cute Toy Story alien cupcake idea.  I find it particularly hilarious that I made these cupcakes the weekend after writing a Segullah post in response to the now-infamous Salon Mormon Mommy blogger article where I made a point of explaining that my husband makes most of the cupcakes at my house.  Now look at me!  A Mormon mommy blogger stereotype, and something of a hypocrite to boot!  But dang, aren't those cupcakes cute?  I wish the green was a little more lime-y than grass-y, but otherwise I was quite pleased.  And this is coming from someone who's experienced some wicked birthday-cake-making disappointments.  (Elise's 6 year old birthday My Little Pony cake debacle is a particularly tragic memory.)

And this is the table before the kids came. Each kid got a cowboy hat (although the girls weren't so keen on wearing them.  I guess they weren't feeling the Jessie vibe. Imagine if they'd been invited to the Transformer party!)

Then the kids came.  Such cute kids:

And even though I realize this isn't the most interesting thing to blog about and I could instead regale you with my opinions on the Republicans and Democrats deciding to sit with each other at the State of the Union . . . here are the games we played:

Game #1: Buzz Lightyear beanbag toss.  Forgot to take pictures of this one, but we have a bean bag toss game already, and I found this little Buzz Lightyear bean bag toy thingie at clearance on Wal-Mart. That's the only thing that made it Toy Story-ish, but the kids didn't seem to complain about going off theme too much.  Instead, they simply edged closer and closer to the wooden bean bag receptacle until they could basically drop the bean bag into the hole, then one kid stood on the wooden bean bag receptacle and cracked it.  Whoopsie!  The only real collateral damage from the party, though, which isn't bad considering there were six 3-4 year-olds in the house.

Game #2: Hot Mr. Potato Head.  Just like Hot Potato except one uses a Mr. Potato head.  Like in Toy Story!  Get it?  I downloaded "You've Got a Friend In Me" from iTunes and played it as the kids passed Mr. Potato head around.  When a kid got out, he/she got to take a piece of candy from the storage area in Mr. Potato Head's backside (hmmm, that sounds unsanitary), then the winner got to take TWO pieces of candy.  Seemed to work well: the kids who got out first got their candy first, and the kid who won got two.

Game #3: Buzz Lightyear Moon Rock Hunt.  I told the kids that Buzz Lightyear had crashed and dumped a whole bunch of moon rocks upstairs in our house.  Instead of putting their party favors in a goody bag at the end of the party, I wrapped the favors up on tin foil ("moon rocks") then had them all hunt for them.  They each got a thing of bubbles, a party blower, and a $1 bag of silly bands (bandz? harumph--I refuse to spell words with a z instead of an s), then I put their names on the "rocks" so that one kid didn't end up with 10 rocks and another with none.  They had a great time on the hunt and unwrapping their prizes.

Game #4: Of course, you gotta play pin the tail on SOMETHING.  Big thanks, again, to Disney.com for the Pin the Tail on Bullseye game I could print out for free:

Each of the kids had a Toy Story bandanna that I made (read: cut out but didn't hem) from some fabric I bought at Wal-Mart.  Quick funny story: I don't buy a lot of fabric, and I really don't buy a lot of fabric at Wal-Mart, so when I went shopping late Friday night to get last minute stuff for the party I wasn't prepared for how long it would take to find somebody to cut the fabric for me. Anyway, took a while.  But I finally got it cut and price-tagged, grabbed a few more things, waited in line for a Wal-Mart amount of time (3 1/2 minutes more than I would have spent in line at Target) . . . but when I gave the fabric to the checkout lady, the price tag had disappeared.  We both looked on the ground, on the other items, pretty much everywhere, but alas, no price tag to be found.  So we had to "suspend" my purchase and I headed back to the fabric counter to try AGAIN to find somebody to price it for me.  Waiting, ringing little ineffectal silver bell on table, stalking around grumpily, waiting some more, until finally I found somebody in the toy section who said she'd send someone else over shortly.  More waiting, more grumpy stalking, then finally a lady showed up.  I started to explain that I'd already had this cut and priced, I was at the checkout counter and everyone was waiting for me, etc etc., while in the midst of my breathless recitation she reached down and pulled the price tag off from the front of my coat in the area right under my chestal region (you know, the region that I'm least likely to be able to see without the assistance of a mirror.)  Stuck there the whole time!  Sigh.

Last game: pinata!  The pinata broke after the first couple of whacks at it, but luckily McGuyver dad figured out a way to rig it up:

One of the final swings, to jostle out the few remaining morsels of candy.

The kids ate their alien cupcakes, vanilla ice cream, and root beer. (POP! I know, I gave them pop.  Funny how you can give them cupcakes and candy and nobody blinks, but give them pop and the kids look at you with a little thrill in their eye that means "if only my mother knew what I was doing!" We're a bad influence.)

They opened presents:

I love how little kids all hunker together in a big group to open presents and can't help but "help" the birthday boy open it.

They were just altogether cute.

We rounded out the party by watching a little Toy Story 3 on DVD and I wondered during the scary cymbal-banging monkey scene whether or not I was REALLY being a bad influence (pop + scary monkeys = who is this woman and does my mom know what's going on here??) . . . but all the kids assured me that they HAD seen this movie before, so I'm hoping I didn't send home kids who wouldn't go to bed due to a sugar high and then woke up with cymbal monkey nightmares.

Wyatt had a great time, and it's kind of nice to finally say he's four.  He's looked four for almost a year now, so it's about time!  We sure love our Bubba, though, and I secretly wish he'd never grow up.

So It's January

and that means a few things:

1. It's cold.  Whoda thunk.  And the snow just keeps coming.  Yesterday I pulled out the cell phone camera to snap a picture of Wyatt playing in the snow drifts while I scraped off the vestiges of that day's snowfall, and to prove that I do, in fact, venture out of doors every once in a while:

And here's our front yard.  The thing about Minnesota is that all the snow just accumulates.  It doesn't melt, it simply piles up and reminds you how far you've got to go before you see grass again:

Can you see our row of mailboxes off in the distance, the snow piled up to the bottom of the mailbox door?  It would be a hard job, delivering mail in Minnesota during the winter.

2.  Another thing about January:  it usually makes me feel a little funky.  Not terrible or anything--just sluggish, yearning for a little warmth but aware how far off spring really is.  And big news!  Forrest tells me (just now as a matter of fact) that Thursday night we're going to reach double digit below zero temps.  Without windchill.  So, yeah.  But you don't want to hear about my winter blahs on the blog do you?  No, of course you don't!  So I'll change the subject to:

3.  Period dramas!  An excellent cure for the winter blahs.  I've been going on a bit of a period drama spree with our new Netflix account, having rewatched a few old standards (Howard's End, The Age of Innocence, The Remains of the Day) as well as watching The Duchess with Keira Knightly for the first time (good, but a little racy, in a period drama kind of way), seeing The King's Speech in the theater with Forrest (SO excellent--and the only reason it's R is because he lets out a string of swear words during a session of speech therapy, otherwise it's totally PG, not even PG-13--not that you should be watching rated R movies, heavens), and devouring the new BBC series Downton Abbey on PBS.  If you haven't started watching Downton Abbey yet, check your local PBS listings and see if you can catch the first two episodes in reruns.  There are two more episodes to go and I've found it utterly mesmerizing.  Plus it stars Elizabeth McGovern--the 80s actress some of you might remember from the Kevin Bacon movie She's Having a Baby (among others)--and I love seeing how her lovely face has aged in such a non-Hollywood way.  She's beautiful.  Anyway, all the period dramas must be serving as a bit of comfort-food-for-the-soul.  Why is it that these constrained, stoic, highly regimented societies are so fascinating, and even attractive?  Beyond the amazing clothes and servants-catering-to-one's-every-whim, of course.

4.  And finally, January means we're back in the swing of kid activities.  I've been doing a lot of chauffeuring: Jonas to choir and Battle of the Books; Ethan to speech (first tournament this weekend); Elise to guitar lessons and play practice.  Elise was excited to learn today that she got a solo part in the school play: she gets to sing "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" from Annie Get Your Gun!  I still have a copy of my script from my foray as Nellie in the Cyprus High School production of Annie Get Your Gun when I was in the 6th grade.   I remember getting out my yellow highlighting pen and marking my lines AND my suggested costumes on the back--oh, the thrill!  So it's particularly exciting that Elise gets to sing this song.  I'm so happy for her.  Forrest has been keeping busy with work, but a good kind of busy.  He's enjoying being back in the thick of things at headquarters and he's looking forward to an upcoming trip to Germany.  He's also cross country skiing like a mad man, venturing out in ridiculously cold temperatures to go tromp around in the snow at 7:30 a.m.  Yes, opposites attract, apparently.  (See staying home and watching period dramas, above.)

And that's January thus far.  This weekend we're celebrating Wyatt's birthday with his first friend party--a Toy Story theme.  He's so excited he can hardly stand it.  Photos to come!

Happy New Year!

I hope all of you had a fun New Year's Eve and are spending today contemplating the myriad ways you plan to improve yourself in the next twelve months.  (I, for one, have spent today--after going to church, of course--eating leftover ham, reading a book on my new Kindle, and losing a game of Scrabble to Forrest by 8 measly points.  But I hope YOU are contemplating.)

We did have a fun New Year's Eve, though.  It seemed to me that after so many years of muy excellente New Year's parties at our place involving different combinations of Mindy and Pete, Tony and Cindy, Andrew and Andi, Amy and Dave, and various cousins and grandparents, that it would be muy triste (that's "very sad" in Spanish--I looked it up for the sake of parallelism) to let this New Year's go by without a little fun.  So we invited three other couples and their kids and had a really good time eating, playing SingStar (of course!--and even though I'm convinced nobody SingStars like our family, we got the group at our house going and I had to force most of them to stop so we could play Taboo.  Why won't anyone ever play Taboo with me without arm-twisting, I ask you????)

Here are some shots of the fun:

A little Bananagrams action.  A bunch of the teenagers, including Ethan, left at 9:00 to go to the Multi-Stake dance in Minneapolis.  We missed them . . . but I don't think they missed us. :-)

I'm glad to finally be able to use our big center island for a large group and lots of food.

Wyatt and his friend Max singing Pink's "Rock Star."  (Wyatt's version of this song goes like this, and has for months: "So what! / I'm still a Rock Star! / and it's a New Year! / Yes it's a Neeeeww Yeeeeaar!"  His version seemed appropriate for the evening.

Another shot of Wyatt and Max.  They had a ball dressing up like "Injas" (ninjas, you know) and running all over the house.  Wyatt finally crashed a little bit before 11, when our neighbor Steve came downstairs and said he'd tucked Wyatt in bed. :-)

This is Steve.  And his wife Becky.  They live just one street down from us in our neighborhood and have been great friends to us and our kids since we moved in.  A real answer to prayer.  Their cute oldest daughter [I'm not putting names because I don't know how these guys feel about names on blogs, so I'm being safe and conscientious here] is in the chair, unable to go to the dance because she just had surgery on her foot. 

Steve and Becky's son and Jonas, dancing on the front porch in sub-zero temperatures to herald the new year.

And Steve and Becky's OTHER daughter with Elise at the stroke of midnight.  I have a special fondness for this sweet girl because she let Elise sit with her and her friends at lunch from day one of middle school.   

Steve and Becky  have one more child, a boy who's Ethan's age, but both he and Ethan were at the dance at the fateful hour.  (The two of them went skiing at the local resort a few days ago and I was going to take pictures then, but forgot.  Whoopsie!) Forrest went to go pick up the kids from the church, so by the time the kids were picked up and dropped off and home, we didn't get to bed until a little before 2 a.m.! I don't think I've stayed up that late for years and years and the next day I felt it in my bones.  But we had a great time, and it was worth staying up that late because Ethan had a blast at the dance.  I've been so grateful for the really strong youth groups in our ward and for all the opportunities they have to do fun stuff together.

And now it's 2011!  Can you believe it?  I can't.  Man, I'm old.

Finally, here's the promised video of the kids' Christmas skit, written by Ethan and rehearsed by all in about an hour on Christmas Eve day.  The picture quality isn't the greatest (it was kinda dark) but I think you can get the feel of it anyway.  Gotta love those kids of mine.