My favorite place in the house

We bought a piano this summer, and I love having it in our house. No one can play it just yet, not unless you count dinking out the right hand melody as "playing", and I'm not even very good at doing that. Luckily, at least one of these three will turn into a budding musician.

Kate starts lessons in a week, and I am so excited for her. I always wanted to take lessons when I was young, but I never got the chance. Now I'm living vicariously through my daughter and getting so much joy from it. Hopefully, she'll like piano lessons and appreciate what we're doing by giving her this opportunity (yeah right). You want to know what she said when we bought the piano? She said, "I want to play a different instrument."

I furrowed my brow and asked her, "A different instrument? Like what?"

"The violin," she told me. (There's a girl down the street who plays the violin.)

"Well, you have to start on the piano," I told her. "And after two years, then you can start lessons on a different instrument if you want." (If we can afford it, I wanted to add, but she wouldn't have understood that at her young age.)

Seven Years & Three Kids Later . . .

Seven years ago, my young husband and I got married and went on our honeymoon to the exotic place of . . . Jackson Hole, Wyoming! It really was kind of exotic to me because I had never been there. However, if I had known that just two years later we would be moving within 60 miles of this exotic destination, I might have suggested we go somewhere else. But, we didn't know that we would be moving to Idaho Falls at the time, so we went to Jackson and Yellowstone Park and had a great time.

Don't we look young? And carefree?

Here we are at the famous arch in Jackson. Again, don't we look young and carefree? Now look below.

Not so young anymore, and definitely not carefree.

We're smiling, but we're exhausted. Taking three kids under the age of five for an overnight trip anywhere is A LOT of work, as we found out.

I'd like to say that we hiked up this mountain, but when your two oldest girls cry that their legs hurt when they're only walking around the block, you know your limitations. We took the tram up above Teton Village to enjoy the view.

Lilly kept trying to escape from the carriage ride.

Kate tried to do it too. But we talked her out of it.

I told you we were exhausted!

If Only . . .

If only I had a spare $1200.00, I would buy this.

Instead, I picked up some old student desks for free (thanks to freecycling), but they aren't pretty in the slightest. My kids don't care, though. They think the desks are the coolest thing in the world. They love to color, do worksheets, and other independent stuff at their desks (which I think is GREAT!). But I hate how they - the desks, not my kids - look, and I really want to refinish them. The only problem is, I think the tops are made out of formica, and I don't know where to begin, or if I can even do anything about them. I really want to make them pretty. Can I paint over them? Could I sand them down? I've never been into crafts, and I'm about as clueless as you can get when it comes to stuff like this. But I'm willing to work at it if I only knew what direction to head in. Here is a photo of one of the desks. The other one looks similar, only the top is a brown, wood-looking surface, but it feels like formica too.

I know the metal part I can spray paint, but it's the surface I need the most advice about. I really think it would be cool if I had crushed flowers or something really pretty on top, with a smooth varnished surface of course. Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, offers of help would be great. The blogger world can be pretty amazing, and maybe someone out there knows something that can help. Here's hoping!

Mistaken Identity

July has been the month of mistaken identity for me and Mac. First, I get a facebook message from a woman, pleading with me "as a wife, mother, Christian . . . " to break it off with her husband and rethink my plans to run away with this man and break up the families involved. Part of me felt really bad for this woman and her situation, but another part of me thought who in the world would send a message like this and not know to whom they were sending it? So I blocked her. Then this week, Mac receives a letter from a local business offering condolences on the passing of his mother. They thought we may like a copy of the obituary, so it was included, and it was for a woman with our same last name, who happens to have a son with almost the same name as Mac's.

Wierd. And this video clip, kind of about mistaken identity, is even more bizarre.



How do you make that mistake?

Boomerang Diet

I must be on the boomerang diet: Lose 5 pounds, and slowly gain it all back.

The boomerang diet sucks.

Whining isn't pretty

I really should learn to stop whining. I wrote the last post on the morning of my birthday, and I didn't think I had a lot to look forward to. Except that I DID! Only the best birthday ever!!! Practically every year since I've been married, Mac manages to surprise me with something, and this year on my 30th birthday, Mac surprised me bigtime!

First of all, the day of my birthday wasn't half bad. My grandma surprised me with a birthday cake before I left town (and yes, my grandpa was able to fix the disposal). And on the drive home, all three of my girls were amazingly good. Even Lilly slept and didn't fuss once. What a great birthday gift!

So the surprises didn't start happening until Saturday, June 20th. Let me first explain that I asked Mac NOT to get me anything this year for my birthday because of a trip we decided to take to San Diego last minute, and Mac agreed. So imagine my surprise when, upon waking up, Mac told me that he was taking me (and the kids) to IHOP. I LOVE eating breakfast, so I was really happy to hear this. And IHOP was great. When we came home, Mac gave me a card. When I read it, there were some nice things said about me, and then another surprise - a manicure and pedicure had been scheduled for me at a local spa! So I quickly jumped in the shower, got dressed, and rushed off to my appointment. I didn't even have time to do my make-up. No big deal, I'll just do it when I get back, or so I thought. When I was finished at the spa (I'm still sporting lovely dark pink toes!), the lady at the check out handed me ANOTHER card! I opened it and read some more nice things and discovered that - SURPRISE! - I had an appointment to get my hair styled! Mac had conveniently programmed the address into our GPS, so I followed the directions (except when they told me to turn the wrong way down one-way streets) and found the place. It turns out Mac's assistant at work. Alese, does hair on the weekends, so it was fun to chat with her while she used a flat iron to make my hair look great, especially since I hadn't had time to get it looking good before I left in the morning anyway. And now I'm really wanting a flat iron of my own! They are magic!

You're probably thinking like I was at this time - what a great morning and what great presents, but that was it, right? Nope. There was more. Alese handed me another envelope, in it another funny card with directions to take myself to the mall where I would meet a "personal shopper" and have my own shopping spree! I'm not kidding - that's what it said. So I meet my personal shopper (who turned out to be my friend Andrea) at Barnes and Noble, and I got to buy some nice things. Andrea had an envelope of cash that I was not to see or know the amount that was in it, and anything I wanted, she paid for with cash from the envelope. I've never felt more pampered! It was a whole lot of fun, and I think it's proven now that I'm married to the most thoughtful guy in the world. Thanks Mac!

Here I am giving him a chaste kiss in front of the girls to express my thanks (don't worry, I thanked him a lot bit better once we were alone . . . .)

And here I am with my girls and the birthday cake my grandma made me. Thanks Gram!What could I possibly wish for after such a great day?

Happy Birthday to Me!

It's almost nine o'clock and I'm sitting at my parent's table in my pajamas while my kids watch PBS, dreading the chore of packing up all my stuff that is scattered throughout the house by now, not to mention the cleaning I have to do before I leave so that when my parents return home from Florida, they won't be greeted by a total mess. In our short time here this week, my girls and I have managed to break a precious piece of pottery my dad made and which is my mom's favorite, and the kitchen disposal. I'm working on that last one right now. I'm hoping my Grandpa Marquiss might be able to fix it for me, I mean, for my parents so I don't have to tell them about the destruction I've wreaked while staying unsupervised at their house. And then I have the four-hour drive home to look forward to, by MYSELF (minus the three kiddos) because Mac is in Arkansas. Did I mention that I am now 30?

It's my birthday, and I'll cry if I want to.

I'm throwing myself a party - a PITY party!