OK, that hurts..

Emily opted out of church today, she has a cold.  So we all headed in together which is unusual because Scott and Erik usually head in early so Erik can help pass the sacrament.  Anyway, so we are walking in our standard back door, when Erik said to me, "Mom, I feel like I don't really have very many ties that are appropriate for church.".

WHAT?????  Scott put his hand on my shoulder to keep me from hyperventilating. I love to dress the men in my family, I really love to dress them in Sunday clothes.  My son has known since he was five that wearing white socks to church was never an option, he knows that undershirts need to be worn under white shirts, he also knows that he should always unbutton his suit coat when he sits down. So my son's comment really hurt.  I was confused and concerned, when I got home I went and counted...15 ties he has, including 2 bolos. He has Captain Moroni ties, CTR ties, temple ties...I have no idea why he thinks he has ties that are inappropriate. Alright, maybe the naked girl ties...just kidding...those are Scott's! So now there's only one thing left to do..I have to go shopping, until the pain goes away.

Gospel Principles/Scientific Principles

Well, it’s that time of year again when Emily and I went to spend an evening at the New Beginnings program. Yes, it has taken me two days for the pounding headache to abate enough to have coherent thoughts on the evening. No, this year I will not rant and rave about the dress code (but yes, the stake, Emily and I were the only ones in dresses). However, I am going to expound about having to endure an evening with (and I will steal my favorite talk show host Neal Boortz phrase here) the dumb masses.


First of all if you have been asked to speak and you are going to use something as an example, perhaps you should actually know how that something works. For instance, if you were going to use the example of a hot air balloon rising into the air, and you wanted to talk about the scientific principle behind it, perhaps you should take a minute, Google it and learn why a hot air balloon rises. That way you wouldn’t be standing up there and say something like this: “so the balloons have these big propane burners and they heat the air in the balloon and it …like…turns it into helium and the balloon rises up”. That way, in turn, I wouldn’t be forced to sit there wondering if a railroad spike being pounded into my brain really would be more painful.

But moving past that scientific massacre, the speaker then moved on to talk about how he had done a charitable act as a teenager (in great detail), which whenever he thinks about it now he feels like he is being buoyed up like a hot air balloon. I, on the other hand, thought he was confusing the warm feeling of doing something nice for someone with his extremely large, over inflated sense of self importance. We then were called on to TELL something we had done for someone else. Because my husband and mother have repeated told me that I can’t publicly smack people down, I chose to study my thumbnail really, really hard. After the group had shared…he concluded that doing small acts of kindness can lift you up like the hot air balloons.

See, here’s the deal…I think that when you do things for others, you aren’t supposed to talk about it. You have the choice after doing charitable acts to seek the earthly reward or the heavenly reward, but I don’t think you get to do both! Bragging about what you did makes it not count! So, on the way home, after dissecting everything to Emily, and explaining the either/or principle of charitable blessings, I told her that since I never did kind things that must be why I was cold and dead inside. She looked at me and said, “Oh Mom, you’re not cold … and dead inside”. Later when I started thinking about it, I realized the way she phrased it, apparently I must be one or the other, I’m just not sure which. I just hope she was practicing her sarcasm.

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!