I Don't Get It...

This is Emily and Scott's reaction.....



This is Allison and Erik's reaction....

To this........

Emily's "sweet" new ride!

Ever since she was little Emily has been fascinated with cars from 1965 to 1975.  Not cool Mustangs or even clever VW Bugs.  I think it must be some sort of genetic mutation, and I blame her Father.  Anyway, introducing "Elvis".  He's a 1971 El Camino.  I just don't get it, Scott says, "You should see people's heads turn!"  We have differing opinions as to why.

I feel responsible. I heard last week that Hostess is having to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They probably noticed the downturn in their sales about 4 years ago, after I had my surgery. I love Hostess chocolate pies, Ding Dongs, and yes the infamous Twinky. After my surgery I gave these beloved items up (along with Diet Pepsi, moon pies, root beer floats, ...) anyway, I felt responsible when I heard the news. So while I was at Walmart last night doing some shopping, I picked up a box of Twinkies. When I got home Erik looked at me very surprised while he was helping to put the groceries away. "You bought Twinkies?" I held my breath, my son is notorious for being a picky eater, "I like Twinkies"  he said, whew! This morning while fixing breakfast Scott came in, "Twinkies!" (not in a good way). "Yeah, don't you like Twinkies?". "No, I'm more of a Swiss cake roll kind of guy." Now I'm wondering if my husband is a communist...

An Unhealthy Interest

Ronald Reagan is one of my favorite presidents (if you said Clinton or Kennedy, why are you still reading my blog?) anyway, one of my favorite quotes is "trust, but verify"

Now I will get to my story, Emily got a kindle for Christmas, one of the reasons was because it is difficult to shop for Emily (she honestly doesn't ask for anything). So we thought she might like a kindle for fun and for possibly reducing the poundage of all those textbooks. She likes the the kindle and so far has a couple games on it, can watch Netflix and her scriptures are on there. Well, she took it with her on Sunday, since that is her scriptures now.

On Wednesday night Scott stopped by the church to fix a printer and someone in our ward (yes, the same one that has been worried about my daughters chest) approaches Scott and this is the conversation:

Sister Bertha Better than you: Emily seems to really like her new kindle.

Scott: Yeah, she does.

Sister Bertha Better than you: How do you keep her from downloading inappropriate things?

Scott: Oh we do.

Me (when he gets home and tells me about it): What the &@$!?$&@. Is she serious?

After my husband casually tells me about this, and I have given my opinion, I turn to Emily who is sitting there playing bubble buster on said evil device "Emily, don't download porn to your kindle". "Oh, OK" she says.

I know people who don't have the Internet, or don't allow their children to get on the Internet because of the all the "bad" things on it. In my opinion these people are either cheap or they don't trust their spouse. Technology isn't a fad, I don't think that someday Emily is going to be sitting around trying to explain to her granddaughter what the Internet was. All these wonderful advancements are just like anything else, they can be used for good or they can be used for bad. Avoiding them doesn't prepare our children for anything but failure.

See, Scott and I have the opinion that if you take the mystery out of something it loses a lot of allure at the same time. This is our opinion about guns, money, sex, drugs and the Internet, when it comes to our children and we are brutally honest about any questions they have. Plus, if you never give them the chance to be trustworthy, how do they become it?

When Emily was 12 she did get lured into a chat room, and thankfully we found out about it before anything happened. She was shut off for a few months then filtered for a few more. My children know at anytime their Mom will check their text messages, or that their Dad can track any and all pages even thought about by their computer. In fact the other night at Texas Roadhouse, Emily was very tex-tracted and so I snagged her phone to see what was so interesting, "hey, what about privacy?" she joked, "privacy is for people who pay their own cell phone bill" I told her. She just laughed and said, "There's nothing exciting in there Mom". She was right.

So that is pretty much our opinion until proven otherwise, we will trust but occasionally verify.

This morning just as she was leaving for school I spotted Emily's report card from Seminary, straight A's and excellent attendance for the last 2 1/2 years. Then she told me, "I'm a little tired this morning, I stayed up late to download some porn, inappropriate video games, and watch some R rated movies, I think one of them was called Hellboy". Then she gave me a little smirk. I was so proud... I thought she would never get the hang of sarcasm!

Christmas PJ's

I know, I really don't need to say anything more!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Percocet Christmas

All I want for Christmas is a percocet, a percocet. All I want for Christmas is a ... no, it works, you just have to be sure to hit the syllables with the notes!

Scott and I are awesome parents, as an early Christmas present we gave Emily a wisdom tooth extraction! I know, you wish we were your parents. Well, if she could possibly take a few days off from school we wouldn't have had to do this at Christmas break. But, getting congress to agree would be easier than getting Emily to miss a day of school, and we didn't just finish a bunch of orthodontic work to have it messed up with those pesky wisdom teeth pushing their way in.

It turns out that my daughter is pretty fun stoned! She doesn't remember anything, but her Dad, the doctor, and the nurse thought she was pretty funny. It also turns out that anesthesia gives her the hiccups.

So, chipmunk cheeks is now resting in the recliner, with a liquid diet and a bunch of pain medications. Actually, Scott and I are feeling pretty guilty, she is in a lot of pain and misery. They say the third day is the worst, I think that works out to be Christmas, so while our timing may not be very good our intentions were the best. So here's to a heavily medicated Christmas.

It's Not My Fault

I've been thinking a lot about my weird, wry, sarcastic sense of humor lately. Maybe it's because my daughter has started catching on to some of my comments or the three new people at work keep making statements like "I can't believe you just said that." Anyway, I was wondering why I have this particular personality trait, then I thought of a favorite story of my sister Nancy's from her childhood.

My family had been pushing cows all day in the Dominguez Canyon on the Uncompaghre. The trail to get out of the canyon is pretty treacherous and was terrifying to Nancy. It's a steep cliff and as they were getting ready to start up, Nancy (ever the worrier) asked my Dad what would happen if the horse stumbled and she fell. My Dad look at her and said, "We'll sell that horse, right after your funeral."

See...it's not my fault!

Never Been Kissed

This morning on the way to school, a favorite Chris Ledoux song came on the radio, "County Fair". I really like this song, it has a catchy tune and I was happily singing along. I got to the line "there's nothing I know of, can make you fall in love, like a night at the county fair". In a moment of poor judgement I grinned at my son and said, " do you know how many times I fell in love at the county fair?". My son looked at me with all the innocence of a boy who is completely sure his mother has only kissed his father and said, "do you mean with the rides?". Mmmm...yeah, the rides.