Small confession

I was at IKEA the other day to buy some towel racks and hooks so I could better organize my closet (thanks to the January issue of the Martha Stewart magazine for the ideas), when I got out of the car and saw a dirty receipt on the ground (it'd obviously been run over a few times). I got the urge to bend over and pick it up.

For using your debit card, IKEA will give you a coupon good for 3% of the total value you spent that day for your next visit.

So as I looked at this dirty receipt that I had just picked up, I saw that it was good for 16 cents off my next debit card purchase, so I saved 16 cents that day!

Is this terrible/weird? Is this something you would have done? Was 16 cents worth it (mind you, I couldn't tell the total amount until I picked it up)?

Weekly update

Well! One of the things on my mind is a "You know you're the mom of a toddler when..." kind of post...I'll just jot down a few ideas here. I had so many good ideas last week, but I have forgotten all the good ones...oh hey! That's my first one! You know you're a mom of a toddler when you try to remember something that was SO important and you can't remember for the life of you...oh well.

You know you're the mom of a toddler when:

...you start finding toys in the toilet and pacifiers in your clothes drawers. This is after you notice that of the 6 pacifiers you KNOW you had last week, you can only find 3. I think the other 3 got tossed out in the trash.

...you tidy up the house but 20 minutes later, you can't even tell a thing was done!

...you wear a pedometer to count your steps and you routinely log 2-3 miles per day without ever leaving the house.

...the constant refrain ringing in your head is "mommy mommy mommy mommy."

...your child has so many bruises from falling down that you're worried you'll get picked up for child abuse.

...you have to write everything down or else you will forget it.

...you occupy an entire side pew at the church so at least one escape route is completely blocked off.

...you split turns with your husband who gets to try to keep the baby quiet and happy for three hours during Church.

...when it ends up being your turn to take care of him during the last two hours of Church, you come home and immediately crash for a nap.

...you can't wait until he turns 18 months and can go to Nursery so both of you can focus on the lessons for the last two hours of Church.

...your DVDs are completely rearranged....every day.

...you feed the floor as much as you feed your toddler.

...you walk into your home office and realize with a sinking heart that you left one of the drawers of your filing cabinet open and he's grabbed the file with all of your bank statements and scattered them all over the floor. (I'm looking at it...right now)

...you go to play catch with your toddler with his favorite plush soccer ball and it hits you and the leather couch with a wet THUD, because he's previously dunked it in the toilet, and now there's toilet water and pedialyte (because he also got into the pantry) all over the kitchen floor and you just mopped yesterday!

...you roll your eyes at your husband when he suggest not having so many toys downstairs because it makes everything look cluttered (and exactly how do you propose that I keep the baby away from the DVDs, the pantry, the dishwasher, the drawer underneath the stove, etc if he has no toys to play with?)

...you are annoyed (yet secretly proud) that he says Mommy way more often than Daddy.

.......any other ideas?

Funny newspaper story

So Leo and I are on the couch right now and he's reading me some of the headlines from our city paper.

The best one so far is "Senior Center Field Trip to go to Museum of Ancient Life"

Hmmm...

Weekly update

What to write?

A week ago at this time, we were driving back home from my parents' place. We decided to break up the trip in two and stay in a hotel overnight just over halfway so that Baby Monkey wouldn't be confined in a car all day long. The drive down took 14 hours when it normally takes about 9 or 10 because we had to stop to let Baby Monkey out and eat!

After a stop at Stateline, a casino/outlet center just barely inside Nevada on the border with California, and scoring some good deals (80% off at Williams Sonoma which made things...normally priced!) we continued on to St. George. I got to drive the entire way, through no real fault of Mr. Monkey. I usually drive in and out of California because I know the freeways better and plus my "California driver mode" switches on by the time I hit the metropolis that is Southern California, where drivers are faster and more aggressive. Then by the time we left Stateline, it was getting dark so Mr. Monkey asked me to drive because he has terrible night vision. So that's why I got to drive all the way!

I was excited to land in St. George because our hotel had a TV with cable in the room so that meant I got to watch HGTV for a few hours! Oh yeah! The plan for the next day was to stop by my Uncle Don's house (the last remaining brother of my Grandma, so he's a great-uncle) and have him give us a tour of Zion's and show us the dinosaur foot prints about a mile from his house, but the baby threw up in the morning so we thought it best not to expose him to any potential viruses as he's almost 84.

I got to drive from St. George back home, because Mr. Monkey was worried about potentially driving on snow and ice (not used to the stick shift in my car yet), so of course there was NONE all the way home! It started snowing like crazy a few hours after we got home so it was a good thing we didn't stay in St. George any longer.

What next? It's soooo nice to be at HOME!

Mr. Monkey started back to work on Monday, after two weeks off. He commented that it's hard to get back in the grind, although he was excited to get some stuff done! He got a larger salary raise this year than most people in the company because it was stipulated in our contract when we returned from Mexico that he would get a certain percentage at the end of the year, and that was before the whole economy fell apart. The company is in good shape, though so we are happy.

Baby Monkey has been a pill lately since he's entering the toddler phase AND he's teething three molars at the same time (OUCH!). So we've been operating on less sleep than normal, although he's slept through the night for the past couple of night so maybe we're over that part for now (hopefully I haven't spoken too soon!). OH! And he was sick, too....so the combination of all three did not make for the most pleasant baby to be around.

My sister and her husband joined us for a few days while they waited for the day to arrive for them to go to Cancun (lucky!). We got to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday which was on the 6th. The 6th is also Three Kings Day (when the wisemen supposedly found the baby Jesus), and in Mexico it is celebrated with a butter-dough cake called the Rosca de Reyes. There are a couple of plastic dolls (very small) hidden inside of the cake and the tradition goes that if you find a doll in your piece of cake, then you are supposed to bring the tamales for yet ANOTHER party to be held on February 2nd. I love how we have parties to find out who gets to host the next party!

I actually found a Rosca de Reyes cake at a WalMart nearby...I was so surprised, since it's a Mexican tradition...I also found a tortilleria inside this WalMart, which I thought was pretty cool. But what is not cool is that they have a bored-looking white girl making flour tortillas (don't they know that it's the CORN tortillas that taste the best fresh!). And they didn't even have any fresh ones wrapped up and ready for me to take home, so I had to settle for the packaged kind. So I got the cake and then I used a gallon of milk to make Hot Chocolate with chocolate from Oaxaca, Mexico and Atole which is a corn-starch based drink which tastes like drinking liquid pudding (yummy!!!). Ready for a big party!

My sister didn't want to celebrate her husband's birthday with people they (well, he) didn't know (which was supposed to be Leo's brother, sister and her fiance), they ditched us and celebrated his birthday with some friends in Provo. Leo's brother, sister and her fiance didn't even end up coming up for the Rosca because they said the freeways were too bad to drive (so my sister and her husband made it down to Provo and back just fine and these kids couldn't make it up from Provo?) So Dear hubby and I were all alone for Rosca de Reyes with a gallon of drinks and a huge cake. Stinkers.

BUT! We invited some friends of ours over from the ward who are from Brazil, so we got to introduce them to this custom and we had a GREAT time! They have a little baby who was born in late November, so we were trying to get Baby Monkey to hold the little girl, which he was doing for a few minutes until I took the picture (of course!). Now it just looks like he wants out!

So since I found one of the dolls in my piece of cake, that means I'm providing the tamales for a party on February 2nd and our friend Melyssa (the blonde you see in the picture) agreed to bring Brazilian Cheese Bread (yum!). This is a good opportunity to fulfill one of my goals for this year, which is to learn how to make tamales!

And that's our week in a (long) nutshell!

Welcome 2009

Welcome to the New Year!

I get excited at this time of year, not because it's snowing outside...I envy now those of my friends who are living in Hawaii or Brazil. As we all know, it's a time to clean the slate from 2008, reflect and set goals for 2009.

My resolutions always get out of control. I start out with the generals like "Lose Weight" or "Be More Patient" and then I have my bullet list underneath of how I'm going to acheive it. My bullet for "Be More Patient" is that I can just yell "Serenity NOW!" whenever I'm feeling bad....Seinfeld fans will get the joke.

So a shortened list for you all. This is just so I have it out there and in public!

*I resolve to blog regularly when I am at home, my Windows Calendar has been set to remind me every Wednesday to write a blog.

*Organize and scan all of our photos. I have then already in boxes sorted by "Leo" "Jordy" "Both" and "Tiago", I just need to sort by year, scan them and then organize them on the computer by labels (Windows Vista has this, so you don't need to go out and buy Photoshop Elements). I should have done this when I had all the time in the world before Tiago...oh well! This way we have a digital backup of all our photos in case of fire, I can just grab the harddrive and go.

*Keep up on 2009 scrapbooking (blogging will help with this!) and catch up on 2008.

*Lose weight (did you really think I wasn't going to make this resolution this year?)

*Learn to make tamales, sweet, chicken, pork, all sorts!

*Paint several rooms of the house and generally become a better DIY-er!

So there you have several of my big ones...hopefully you will see posts that pertain to the fulfillment of all of these sooner or later!

For family members on Grandma Belcher's side

Beth Mitchell (August 14, 1927 - December 12, 2008)

Beth W. Mitchell, age 80, passed away on December 12, 2008 at the Orchard Park Care Center in Orem, Utah. She was born to Samuel LeRoy and Annie Margaret Gillen Williams on August 14, 1927 in Murray, Utah.
She married Albert Wilford Mitchell on March 19, 1947 in Sandy, Utah and they were later sealed in the Salt Lake Temple on March 19, 1957. They are the parents of four children; Dale, Dean, David and Joyce.
Beth was a devoted loving wife and mother and she enjoyed spending time with her family. She was active in the LDS Church and served as a Relief Society teacher, Secretary, on the Old Folks Committee, ward baptism coordinator and was a great ward greeter.
She is survived by her husband of 62 years, the love of her life, Albert and three sons; Dale (Karren), Dean (Gaylene), David (Renee), daughter; Joyce ( Russell) Baum, 15 grandchildren, 27 great-grandchildren, brother; Don (Elaine) Williams. Preceded in death by her parents, brothers; Elmo Williams, Rex Williams, Roy Williams, sisters; Eva Belcher, Ella Broadhurst, and Elda Johnson and daughter-in-law Susan Mitchell.
Funeral services will be held Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 11:00 a.m. in the Lehi Stake Center, 200 North Center. Friends and family may call Monday evening from 6-8:00 p.m. at Wing Mortuary, 118 East Main, Lehi, Ut. and one hour prior to services at the Stake Center on Tuesday. Interment, Lehi City Cemetery. Online guest book at wingmortuary. com.
The family would like to thank the wonderful staff at Orchard Park Care Center for all their loving care.

Help! My 14 month old has surpassed me in technology!

Tell me if I'm going crazy, or do the kids pick up on technology at much younger ages these days?

I'm still in shock after witnessing Baby Monkey walk over to my DVD collection, pull out a DVD, then carry it over to the DVD player where he pushes the button to open it. After that, he deposits the DVD in the open tray, surveys it to make sure it's in correctly, and then oh-so-carefully pushes the button to close it. Then he looks at me as if to say "Yay, we're going to watch a movie!"

Leo is a witness to this, so I know I'm not hallucinating.

Next thing I know, he'll be using a handheld GPS system to find me if he ever gets lost in a store. Forget about ME using one to keep track of HIM, I'm sure he'll be much more proficient in using it, so it'll be him trying to keep track of me.