Yellow Wallpaper

We pulled in last night at eleven after a long drive and a fun-filled weekend away with family. I thought I'd write a quick run-down of our vacation: Thursday: We woke up bright and early at 4:30 with Little Dude, who informed us "it's Christmas in my bed". Thankfully we got him to go back to sleep until a more reasonable hour. Then we opened our presents, ate some breakfast, packed up our things, and hit the road (with only one small stress-induced argument). Then we drove through the desolation that is I-5 in northern California, dodging giant tumbleweeds and raging dust storms. The kids fell asleep somewhere in the mountains and slept through Los Angeles so we delayed dinner until Orange County. The only place we could find that was open was a McDonalds in Mission Viejo. We were all starving and tired so even the crappy service didn't mar our fabulous Christmas feast. The kids even got matching My Little Ponies. We were all very excited to pull into our hotel a...

The postal service did not deliver our anticipated package today, and the seller says she shipped it to us as soon as she could, so I found myself battling the crowds at Target to buy Little Dude a sleeping bag. It's not super cute, but it was cheap and he will love it. And now we'll have an extra kid-size sleeping bag on hand for when we need it. The yuckiness of Target on Christmas Eve was the only bad spot in an otherwise lovely day that included making gingerbread cookies with the kids and getting together with friends tonight. Tomorrow we're leaving for a few days, and even though we have to bring the computer so Mr. Fob can work, I've decided to try going offline for a few days. We'll see how that works out for me. Hope everyone has a lovely Christmas!

So far we've had an enjoyable holiday season without much stress. Today we had some friends over to decorate gingerbread houses and it went well (except for the massive amount of extra candy left over--but that's not all that bad). Last night we had a fun little trip down to deliver cookies for the Thteed family and joined them for a tour of the temple lights. The kids had a good time and I always enjoy spending time with their family. I'm getting excited to see all my family and spend a few days enjoying a fun vacation in a warmer spot. We even managed to have our home teachers stop by tonight to get in their monthly visit. The only dark spot on our holiday is the delayed arrival of Little Dude's present. We found a great sleeping bag on EBay ten days ago and bid on it. I don't know what's happened to it since then. It wouldn't be a big deal if he didn't get that present until later, but I specifically wanted it for our trip. I know that he'll see S...

I had a lot of grand plans for using my time off effectively, but instead I've gotten in a routine of spending time diddling around on the internet, and then watching TV until late at night. I recently discovered a bunch of old friends on the internet and I've spent way too much time lately on blogs and Facebook. Plus it feels like I spend the whole day doing something with one of the kids. Little Dude doesn't nap anymore and my days have been feeling long. S-Boogie is only in school for about three hours every day, and I think we'd both like it to be more. I realized the other day that things would probably be better for all of us if I tried therapy again (maybe the third time's the charm), and our stake directory handily has the local LDSFS number in the front cover, so I'm trying to get up the courage to give them a call and make an appointment. If I stop going to school we'll probably end up moving again next year, and I really dread going through the di...

Yeah, I know it's already halfway through December, but I like to keep track of what I've been reading (and I don't know if anyone has missed this or not). The problem is, during the quarter I don't have time to read anything for fun, and this quarter I didn't get to read any novels, so I'm not sure what "counts" or not. I don't usually put most of my school reading on stuff like Good Reads, but I thought I'd talk a little about what I did this quarter. One of my classes was on literary theory, so just read a variety of articles from theorists, including Freud, Derrida, Benjamin, etc. The second class I had was on Shakespeare; we focused on research methods and theory as well, so each week we read one play and two or three critical articles. Each week had a different way to look at Shakespeare, so we discussed things like animals in the plays, maps, gender theories, language theory, performance issues, and acoustics. We also read plays that a...

Christmas is only a week away and I feel like we've been doing a good job balancing our celebrating of the season without doing too much. Last night we printed off and prepared our Christmas letters for friends and family, and today I mailed them at the post office. I also mailed off our present for Mr. Fob's sister (his family does a name exchange, so we only have to get a gift for one other person), and a package for a soldier. Monday night for FHE we all drew Christmas pictures for a soldier in need, then yesterday I bought a few fun things for them at Target and we mailed it off. I wanted the kids to do some kind of holiday service, and sending nice notes and little treats to someone seemed like something we could do. My dad has spent the holidays deployed overseas, and I know that it can be scary and lonely without anyone to support you. So if you're looking for someone to send a little something to, check out this website for more information. Yesterday morning I als...

Since she hasn't been to a California parade for a few years and I'm sure she misses the charro horses and the folklorico dancers. I made a last-minute decision to take the kids to a Christmas parade this morning and it was so worth it. Mr. Fob went to help someone in our ward move so I had the kids all by myself this morning. I was tempted to just let them sit around vegging on television, since the thought of taking them by myself just wasn't that exciting. But it was only about ten minutes away, and the weather wasn't that cold (I made them wear coats and hats and gloves). I'd heard that it was the largest Christmas parade in northern California, and they were right. It lasted nearly three hours and we stayed for the whole thing. Little Dude was mostly done after two hours, but S-Boogie really wanted to stay and see Santa on the last float. This parade seriously had everything: fire trucks, vintage tractors and fire trucks, horses, marching bands, church buses...

Yesterday afternoon I rode my bike down to campus and slipped my last paper of the quarter under my professor's door. It was a great feeling. I actually found all three of my final papers this quarter to be somewhat easy to write. I put a lot of time into research and planning (literally hours on my Shakespeare paper) and for once I had plenty to say for each one. I'm still afraid that my professors are just going to laugh when they read my essays and then fail me, but at this point I don't think that would be the worst thing that could happen to me. So now I have three weeks of freedom; I celebrated last night by making a pear streusel cake, and then ate most of it today. Seriously. I made a conscious decision to have no self-control and just enjoyed myself. This morning Little Dude and I also went to the produce stand and had a heyday. It was awesome: broccoli for .33 a pound. I also spent $1.50 on five pounds of sweet potatoes. And I love living in a place where fresh ma...

So I'm taking a little breather from writing papers to write a post. By Friday I should have my final projects all finished up and turned in and I hope I'll have a little more time to write things on here. I'm really looking forward to having three weeks of time off to do whatever I want. I've been having some trouble with my Amazon wish list, because the email connected to it no longer exists and I have no way to log in and update it anymore. Apparently changing the email on your Amazon account does not affect the email on your wishlist , but my password got changed and I don't know how to figure it out. I need to call customer service one of these days. I'm not really sure what I want for Christmas; there are a few kitchen things I wouldn't mind getting, and I'd really like this book , but that's about it. What I'd really like is for an angel to appear and lay out my future for me (or for someone to make housing prices drop here), but that'...

For any of the parents among my readers: do your children scream all day long? Mr. Fob and I have come to the conclusion that our mental health is suffering serious damage because our children make noise all the time. With Little Dude it's the usual toddler lack of volume control. Especially if you leave him in his chair at the table too long, he'll just start screaming his head off. Then S-Boogie will get sick of him screaming and start yelling at him to stop yelling. And then they have a nonsense argument at top volume. S-Boogie mostly just has a constant stream of noise coming from her. Usually it's some sort of humming or imaginary conversation, but sometimes it's highly annoying yelping. She's also decided that when she's scared or excited, the best thing to do is to scream as loud as she can. Oh, and then there are the numerous times during the day when one of them decides to take off running and screaming through the house, which means the other one has ...

If you have a Safeway near you, you really need to go try the following foods: Pumpkin Pie yogurt--I've never seen this flavor before, but it is really tasty. It's a "limited edition." It's the Safeway brand (Lucerne). They also have pumpkin flavored cream cheese, but we haven't tried it yet. Gingerbread Cookie Ice Cream--Also Safeway brand. It's super tasty ice cream with soft little gingerbread cookies in it. I think I'm becoming addicted.