Update on Youth Kick Ball League

Last Saturday I met the city athletic association president for coffee to go over my proposal to add kick ball to the city youth athletic association. The meeting went well and he liked my proposal. The next step for it is to take my proposal (with me being the director) to the other top officials of the athletic association board. If they deny the proposal it is done and if they accept the proposal, then we move one more step forward and propose it the entire board (consisting of the other sport directors) for approval.

I will be meeting with the top officials sometime in February and then the entire board at the end of March.

The president explained to me how the city's youth sports board and programs work. It consists of all volunteers with the exception of a paid treasurer, publicist, and one other position. It's pretty neat that such a successful program is working with mostly all volunteers.

I'm pretty excited that my proposal has gotten this far, which is much further than I expected. The president said that often times adding a new sport doesn't happen as the person proposing it doesn't step up to the plate to move it ahead. In my case though, I am proposing that I will be the director of it, so I have a better chance at getting it added.

You'd think he'd learn

The young lad missed his bus AGAIN! WTH!? Monday morning he calls me after his bus left..."Hello, Mom..I missed my bus."

Me: "WHAT???!!"
Caveboy: "Well, I was getting ready."
Me: "You missed your bus??"
Caveboy: "Well, I was getting ready."
Me: "Are you kidding me that you missed your bus?"
Caveboy: "I missed my bus."



I hung up and took a few moments to calm myself. I then emailed a friend of mine who is a foster parent and asked him if he wanted one more. After the butt chewing and grounding that kid got, he goes and misses his bus on Monday.

Tuesday morning, I left the house and said "If you miss your bus, I'm going to send you to foster care."

God, please grant me the patience with this child....

It's tough being 10

The oldest caveboy is grounded. He is grounded off of TV, computer, and X-box until Sunday morning. This started yesterday morning, when he tried to claim that drinking too much orange juice in the morning made him have an upset stomach and he tried staying home from school. This after he claimed the day before his breakfast made him throw up and I let him stay home from school. Later that evening he was caught having a pillow fight with his brother. "Oh, I'm fine now" he said. Yeah, sure he was, cuz he was faking being sick anyway.

He didn't decide to be sick yesterday until 2 minutes before the bus was to arrive. So guess who missed the bus. Yep, my son. I told him his excuse was bull and drove his not sick body to school. I gave him the riot act the whole way too. I'm sure he was glad to get out of my van and be at school.

Being grounded off of all these privileges, which he deems as necessity, isn't just hard on him, it's hard on me too. In his world, his life has halted. Oh no, what else is there to do? I told him lots of things, reading, math worksheets, drawing, playing games, doing chores. He didn't like those ideas at first, but now that we are day into it, he's adjusting.

Last night after he realized that the punishment was set in stone and there was no redeeming himself and earning his privileges back early by good behavior, he ran to his room crying. I went to go see what the matter was and he sobbed out "why do bad things always have to happen to me?" Oh the poor boy.

Tonight, he asked me what he would do all day tomorrow with out TV, computer, or X-box. I told him to go through and read the books we have at home and do his homework. So then we decided we would go to the library and get some books for him to pass his time away.

I do hope he survives. It will be too cold to send him out to play. Which is really too bad. That just means he'll be antsy all day tomorrow for Sunday. God grant us the patience to get through his grounding.

Bucket List

January is typically a slow month for us. Not much going on. Which is not a good thing. It gives me way too much time to think about things and it makes the month seem to last too long. What's worse is there are 31 days in January, and there is no escaping it. When I retire, I'm never spending a January in Minnesota or any other northern state again. January is cold, dreary, and blah.

My mother recently told me some news about the health of my 98 1/2 year old great aunt in California. She has a heart condition and needs a heart valve replacement. Well, obviously, she is not going to undergo the surgery because of her age, so instead her doctors told her to slow way down. My aunt still lives in her own home and actively gardens and gets out and about. So telling her to slow down is like telling the circus tiger not to try eat Sigfried & Roy. So the news has been hard on my aunt.

Since I've had nothing else to do in January besides think, I've been thinking a lot about my great aunt. I really hope she continues to do the things she loves to do. I hope she feels like she has accomplished everything she has ever wanted. And if there is something spontaneous that she hasn't done, I hope she goes out and does it. At 98 1/2 she is certainly entitled to do what ever she feels inclined to do.

Now, active women with longevity, seems to be a good thing in my family. Even some of the men have lived actively past the age of 90. Well, I am hoping that these longevity genes have been passed onto me. If that is the case, then I have another 10 years before I am mid-life, which is good, because I have a hard time believing that 40 is midlife.

All of this brings me to this point... What are the things I want to do in life? When I am 80 or 90 or even 100, I want to say happily, that I did the things I wanted to do and I grabbed life by the horns and gave it a good ride. I'll be going out on my own terms thank you very much with no regrets. So, I started my own Bucket List.

Things I'd like to do:
Learn to ski.
Swim with the dolphins
Scuba dive
Go on an African safari
Hang glide (I might save this one for last)
Learn to play the violin that sits getting dusty in my closet
See Mount Everett, I don't want to climb it, I just want to see it, maybe take a helicopter to base camp and hang out.

Places I'd like to see:
Alaska (I told the hubby he's taking me here for our 20th anniversary)
Havasu Falls of the Grand Canyon
Coast of Maine
Nova Scotia
Sweden
Southern Spain
Cape Town, South Africa
Angel Falls of Venezuela


I realize I have at least 30 or more years to do all things, so I'm hopeful of crossing these things off my list eventually.

I'm glad January is almost over and I'll have less time to think about such things.

The Great Outdoors

We almost forgot what is was like to be able to stand being outside with out risking losing our appendages. Last night the hubby went to a friends house to play broom ball with a bunch of his co-workers. He got a new pair of broom ball shoes, so he can keep up on the ice. I guess they had a little too much fun as he came home with a black eye from getting hit with a stick. Boys will be boys, I guess. Even the big boys. So he has a lovely shiner today.

Today it warmed up to around 20 degrees. The hubby ran out and got all 3 vehicles cleaned. (By the way if you know anyone who would like to buy a van, we have one for sale.) I took the boys to the tubing hill that is about 4 blocks from our house. For $2.50 you can rent an inner tube and go sliding for as long as you want. There were lots of people there finally enjoying some decent winter weather. Lots of rosy red cheeks and smiling faces on every one as they came speeding down the hill. It was fun to see my boys having fun outside. It's been over a week that they've been able to actually play outside and get some much needed fresh air.

Sam was a bit reluctant to go at first. He just wanted to hang out at home. I don't think he believed us that it was actually not to bad out. When we got to the park, he got in his tube and slid down the hill happily screaming the whole way down. I asked him "How did that feel?" He got off his tube, and said "GREAT!" as he ran by me to get back up the hill. Funny kid. And he thought he wasn't going to have any fun.

Kevin loves tubing as well. He was all smiles as he came down the hill. No screaming from him. He enjoyed it by giggling all the way down.

I took my big huge camera and took some photos. There was a group of high school boys that decided to try to make some sort of pyramid on one tube and one guy was standing up. Surprisingly, they made it all the way down the hill with out wiping out. I took pictures of them as well, as I have never seen that feat pulled off before. They walked by me on their way back up the hill and one of them asked me "Are we going to make it in the newspaper?" I laughed. That was probably kind of mean. I wasn't laughing at them, I was laughing that my big mongo camera got me mistaken for a newspaper photographer.

Deep Freeze

This whole past week we have had sub zero temperatures. The school buses have been running on time all week except for this morning. They ran 2 hours late. This morning was the coldest day so far with it being -28 degrees below zero. And that is not including the wind chill. The wind was blowing, but I didn't bother to see what the wind chill temp was. -28 was cold enough for me.

It is the kind of cold that makes you hurt. At work, parking is a total mess in the winter. No one can see the lines where to park and no one can seem to make a straight parking row with their vehicles. It's simple really...start on one end and each car should park next to one previously parked. It's like making a line. Instead they pull in all willy nilly and crooked and take up too much room, and before you know it, you've got a messed up parking lot. So to avoid getting stuck in the main parking lot, I always park in the extended parking lot. It's a bit of a walk from that parking lot to the main building. A long enough walk that by the time you get from your car to the building you can't feel your legs because it's so cold. You keep trying to walk as fast as you can with out looking ridiculous and with out slipping on the compacted snow and ice. I suggested they have a shuttle that goes back and forth from the extended parking lot to the main building, but no takers on that.

This whole sub zero week, I have been making sure to meet Kevin at his bus stop so that he didn't flash freeze from the bus stop to the house.

This evening we have warmed up to a balmy 6 degrees above zero. Finally...a temperature above zero.

It is supposed to snow all weekend, but at least it will be above zero. So I am hoping that we can all get out of the house, as we are getting a case of cabin fever.

The kids are happy for snow. Our snow hill in the cul-de-sac is already ginormous!

My Mom Started a Blog

My mother will be 72 on Groundhog's Day. She decided to keep up with her daughters and start blogging. We could have created a blogging monster.

My mom is actually pretty computer savy for her age. Back when the internet was first popular (thanks Al Gore for the internet!) she had her own mIRC chat room that she was the Op of. It was mostly so that we could all get online and talk, since my mother and my sisters all live in different states, and keep in touch. She ended up inviting some of our friends in and we'd have some pretty good internet chats. I guess now we'll have to catch her up to speed on Yahoo Messenger.

My mom recently got a new lap top and look out, she's upgraded! She still does not carry a cell phone. But I would not be surprised if she showed up one day with a blue tooth ear piece one day. I certainly wish she'd get a cell phone (hint, hint, mmom we're all on Verizon). I could also see my mom with an iPod. She could listen to books with it.

When she turned 70, we pitched in and upgraded her to a digital camera. We got her off of film. Which was a good thing too. She's quite the photographer and she even won a contest and her photograph was made into a postcard.

So that is my little shout out to my uber cool mom. She's in her 70's and she's still cool!

Celebrity Morphing Fun

My friend Leslie created a celebrity morphing mini video clip on her blog. I decided to see who I looked like. It really depends on the photo that you use because really, I do not think I look like Russell Crowe or Hugh Grant. I really did check "female" on the sign up box. Ok, so time to choose a different photo! Whoa la! Two of my favorite leading ladies.

I searched for a better photo to morph myself I was matched to Meg Ryan, which is funny, because about 8 years ago I took a photo of Meg Ryan with her super cute short hair cut to the salon. "I want Meg Ryan's hair", I told the stylist. She cut off lots of hair, permed it, and shaped it, Well, I did not come out of the salon looking like Meg Ryan, but rather more like Antonio Bandaras. He is a rather good looking guy, I will admit, but I did not want to look like him! So finally, alas...I was matched to look like Meg Ryan.

I then selected another photo, to find a better match, and found that I also look like Camilla Belle. She is the gorgeous woman in the movie 10,000 BC. It is ironic that I look like the leading lady in a movie about CAVEMEN! Camilla and I also share birthdays. I was born Oct 2, 1968 and she was born Oct 2, 1986. Ok, now that is a bit ironic. I guess if they ever make a movie about my mundane life, I think I know who will play me!

I decided to morph my caveman and whoa la! I'm married to George Clooney. Ok, maybe not the George Clooney, but the picture I chose of my hubby, he was matched to George Clooney. I'll take that! Eat your heart out ladies...I'm married to George Clooney's twin.

Miracle Fruit is CRAP!

A month or so ago, my husband and I were watching CSI NY. We love that show. Their case involved a fruit from Africa with a big long name containing something called Miraculin or something like that and in short is called Miracle Fruit. It is a fruit that tricks your taste buds into thinking things are sweet.

The day after I did some research on the internet and decided to order some of this "miracle" fruit. Turns out it is real, and people have had good experiences with it. People in New York have parties and people eat the fruit and then taste all different kinds of sour or bitter foods. These parties are called "Flavor Tripping" parties.

I ordered some miracle frooties, which are tablets made from the extract of the fruit from the part that contains the miraculin. I received them in the mail this week.

Today I went to the grocery store and bought some fresh baby spinach, carrots, onion, snap peas, broccoli, and orange bell peppers. All foods I HATE. All foods I was expecting to have no taste or a slightly sweet taste after having the miracle fruit.

I put the miracle fruit tablet in my mouth and let it dissolve as I rolled it around on my tongue as directed. I did get a small tingly feeling on my tongue like it was a mild numbing feeling, but nothing too serious. So I figured this stuff must just numb your taste buds in order to remove the taste, but then where does the sweet come into play?

The smaller the tablet got, the more sour it tasted. I wanted so badly to spit it out, but I sucked it up and held out thinking I'm doing this for my own good. This will help me be able to eat foods I can't tolerate. As my face cringed and contorted from the sourness, I was looking at the food thinking "this had better be worth it".

After the tablet was completely dissolved, I waited a few seconds for the full effect. I took a big bite of baby spinach. I chewed it up and it tasted horrendous! I gagged and spit it out in the sink.

Next I tried a carrot. Gross! It still tasted like a carrot. I spit that out too.

Then I tried a bite of broccoli. EWWW! Disgusting! I spit that out as well.

Figuring something had to give, I took a bit of the snap pea. Nope, that tasted horrible too. Dang! I was getting so discouraged.

Next came the onion. BLECH! It was still a nasty onion! I spit that out too.

Finally, I hoped my last resort the orange bell pepper would taste sweet. I took a bite, chomped on it, and threw up. So much for the so called "miracle fruit".

After that I reached for the jar of peanut butter and ate two spoonfuls to get the taste of all the disgustingness out of my mouth. I'd just been traumatized!

I want my money back!

I went back on the website today to see if it had a big sign that read "Dork that fell for our miracle fruit crap" on there. That wasn't there, but it should have been. It did have a page of recommended fruit, such as lemons, limes, tomatoes, rhubarb, strawberries, green apples, pineapples, and grapefruit.

I figured out the secret after reading that. Of course those fruits will taste sweet compared the most extreme sour tablet you just had.

I'm glad I tried it. I went in with an open mind, and I can honestly say that I tried. I really would like to be able to eat those kinds of foods.

Back to School

Tomorrow Winter Break is officially over! Whoo Hoo! The kids go back to school tomorrow. I think I am more excited about it than they are.

The kids had a great two weeks off. Daycare was also closed for those two weeks, so we had a college girl come in and watch the kids. They had a great time with her. They couldn't really get out much because of the cold weather. Sam did try to give the babysitter wedgies all two weeks, but was unsuccessful I think. Mostly because she was fortunate enough to have a warning first, so that gave her time to stop it. I wish they'd give me a warning.

The kids will get back in their normal routines of learning and not sitting around letting their little minds warp. My husband and I also get back in the routine of working a full 5 days a week. Having the holiday in the middle of the week sure does mess up a persons schedule.

Swimming also starts back up after a couple months off from that. Swimming is the only winter activity we have going on.

Sometimes I forget I'm 40

Yesterday my son Kevin & I ventured out to Minnehaha Falls to get some great photos with our camera's we got for Christmas of the frozen fall. Neither one of us have seen an actual frozen waterfall.

It was BEAUTIFUL!

We decided that we would climb over the "stairs closed" chain and work our way to the bottom of the falls. Going down the icy stairs was not easy. The first set of stairs we hung onto the rail and slid down on our feet. There was no traction. So the next three sets of stairs we decided to slide down on our bottoms as it was just sheer ice covering the steps and it was pretty smooth sliding. You only had to slide down about 10 or 15 steps at a time. No problem! Weee...this is fun!

We made it to the bottom of the falls. It was spectacular!

Then....I decided it was a brilliant idea to make my way up the icy side of the hill and get behind the waterfall. Other people were doing it. And hey, that would be cool. After the fourth attempt, I finally made it up the slippery side of the hill and made my way behind the falls. It was so neat. Definitely worth the trip. I took more photos. Poor little Kevin just never got his footing and he kept sliding back down.

Getting down from behind the falls to the bottom was not as easy as everyone else who had done it looked. I sat down to slide myself down the icy slope. I held onto my camera so I wouldn't knock it around. Wow...you slide much faster than you would think.

Midway down, I didn't veer to the left like I was supposed to and like everyone else who slid down did. I don't know what went wrong. I hit an ice bump and ended up spinning around and hitting the middle of my back on a big ice rock. OUCH! Then I continued spinning on my back hitting every other single ice chunk, bump, rock in sight.

Kevin described it as coming down the hill like a rag doll. He asked as I laid at the bottom of the hill saying my last ouch if I needed an ambulance. No, I was fine, I just needed a minute to compose myself and assess the damage before I stand up.

I got up and was dusting myself off, when BAM! I got hit with an ice ball in the arm. It flew from out of no where. I honestly have no idea where it came from, but it hit me hard. Left a mark too. It was then that Kevin said "Let's get out of here, Karma isn't being very good to you today. What did you do to make it mad?"

We walked down the path that followed the river to try to find an easier way up back to the van. We didn't want to try to make our way up the icy stairs that we slid down. So we found a spot further down the path that looked like a good path on the side of the hill to make our way up. No ice! We could dig our feet in to get good grip and there were tree branches for us to grab hold of. It was certainly steeper than it looked, but we made it!

I told the hubby about our venture when we got home. His reply after I told him "everybody else did it that way, but didn't wipe out" was "How many of them were 40?"

Ok...he got me on that one. Smarty pants. But it was completely worth the beating. Although, I won't be trying that again.

Happy New Year!!

2009 is upon us! We had a nice relaxing night at home and had my brother-in-law and his girlfriend over. The oldest caveboy stayed up to make noise with us and watch Robbie Knievel jump his motorcycle over a mini volcano in Las Vegas. Oh, the excitement was just too much. Ooooh, awwww....

We say goodbye to 2008. Here is my ABC's of 2008

A – Atlantic Ocean in September
B - Blog, oh how I love to blog. Blig, Blog, Bliggity, Blogger
C - Cavemen, where would I be with out you?
D - D.A.R.E - Kevin graduated from the D.A.R.E program this year.
E - Education - I'm always getting this with living with cavemen.
F - Forty - I went kicking & screaming, but ended up embracing being 40. I guess it's not so bad after all.
G - Godparents, we became Godparents to Baby Curtis this year in Montana. He's such a cutie patootie!
H – Horseback riding is so fun. Giddyup y’all.
I - Internet - I'd be so lost with out it.
J - Job, so glad we have these this year!
K - Kick Ball. I still play this two seasons a year.
L - Lottery - Keep buying them, still not winning. :(
M - Magic Wand - Really wish this came with Godparent status.
N – New Nikon camera & Novel I started in November.
O - One Hundred Year old Grandmother Gracie’s celebration.
P – Pacific Ocean in November
Q – Queen of the house, that’s me!
R - Remote controls - Why can I never find one?
S – Spuddie. My favorite Aunt. She lives in California, so I don't get to see her often, but she is the greatest. I got to see her this summer and it was really great spending time with her. She will be 99 in 2009.
T - Tattoo - Yes, it's real. Yes, I got one for my birthday. No, I haven't lost my mind.
U - Update. We updated our house this year and got rid of all our little kid and baby stuff. Our house grew up, as have our kids.
V - Vacations - We sure do love going on these!
W – Wyoming – one of our favorite places to be.
X - Xciting...ok..so nothing starts with X that we did in 2008. Kevin has an exciting year in baseball. His team "The Rangers" won the little league championship.
Y - Yawn...I find myself doing this a lot just trying to keep up with every one and every thing.
Z - Zoo. We just LOVE the new Grizzly Bear Exhibit at the MN Zoo. We also loved the San Diego Zoo too. Kevin's favorite exhibit was the snake pavilion, Sam & I enjoyed the Giant Pandas and baby panda. They are so cute. Too bad they are capable of ripping your face off, cuz they sure do look cute and snuggley!