the bartle bulletin

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May 23, 2013

How to have a fantastic day

Posted by runningfan | Labels: ,

1.  Wake up forty minutes before you and your three small children need to leave for the preschool field trip.
2.  Enter the address of the Bear Creek Nature Center into your phone at a stop light.
3.  Miss the exit.
4.  Take the scenic route, which is actually really ugly, and stress about being late: your number one pet peeve.
5.  Arrive just five minutes late.  To an empty parking lot.
6.  Find out from hikers that the Nature Center is closed on Tuesdays.
7.  Cry on the curb with your crying preschoolers.
8.  Take a call from the preschool teacher, who is (kindly) wondering why you are not at her house and why you aren't there to provide transportation for other preschoolers.
9.  Hang your head in shame and frustration.
10.  Try to figure out how to spend the next 45 minutes until the preschoolers arrive for the field trip that really begins at 10:00, not 9:00.
11.  Stroll around with small children, enjoying the scenery (this time it's pretty).


 12.  Decide to follow the running 5-year-old onto a trail head.
13.  Realize that your boots and the kids' flip-flops aren't really meant for hiking.
14.  Let the toddler loose and carry the stroller over your shoulder.



14.5   Realize two days later that you should have collapsed it and made your life 6,000 times easier.
15.  Stop occasionally to enjoy the breathtaking views.



16.  Lose one of the toddler's darling new sandals on the trail.
17.  Return to meet the preschoolers just as the organized presentation starts.
18.  Start to feel dizzy and nauseous.  Get worse and worse until you have to sit on the floor in the middle of the room where kids are walking around.
19.  Tell Rachel, the preschool teacher, that you can't function and need to lie down in the van.
20.  Pass out (maybe literally?) for 30 minutes while Kate plays in the van.
21.  Wake up and tell your children that you forgot to pack them lunches, so they have to watch everyone else eat.
22.  Require Rachel to drive you home in your own van while you collect your wits.
23.  Discuss mental illness all the way home.
24.  Listen to the children scream all the way home because there's not time to stop at McDonald's as promised.
25.  Wonder if the children are the sources of your mental illness.
26.  Feed the children nuked chicken nuggets and plant them in front of the TV.  Put the baby down for a nap.
27.  Pick up Clara, the babysitter.
28.  Go to Melissa's house to collect the large posters for senior night that she has kindly stored for you (in her house without small children or pets).
29.  Bring in the big package on her doorstep since she isn't home.
30.  Leave your big blanket in her living room.
31.  Set up for senior night at the church.
32.  Talk to Karla in the parking lot for a long time.
33.  Return home to happy kids and take Clara home.
34.  Try to clean up the house a little.
35.  Receive a call from Marcia, a friend at the boys' school.  Find out that Tyler is crying in the office because Zach took off after school without him.  Thank Marcia for bringing him home.
36.  Measure and cut and roll a new hem for the maxi skirt/dress/thing you want to wear to senior night.
37.  Roll the hem onto the outside of the skirt instead of the inside.
38.  Don't realize your mistake until you have sewn four inches.
39.  Spend ten minutes looking for your seam ripper because  you can't pull the stitches out of the slick fabric.
40.  Give up and call your neighbor, who is not home, if you can borrow her seam ripper.
41.  Quickly make one more thing in Photoshop for senior night.
42.  Give up trying to make the dang thing print.
43.  Gather final items for senior night in a bag.
44.  Meet Garry at McDonald's for dinner with the kids because it didn't happen for lunch.
45.  Pride yourself for eating yogurt (gag) and grilled chicken for dinner.
41.  Zip towards home, pick up a fellow cub scout, and take Tyler and his friend to the church for Den Meeting.
42.  Go home and change your clothes into the outfit you have decided upon in lieu of the dress with the stupid hem.
43.  Get your husband to help you print the thing you couldn't print before, and to find an HDMI cable, and to calm your frazzled nerves.
44.  Fly out of the house, five minutes behind schedule.
45.  Pick up the projector you are borrowing from Melissa for senior night.
46.  Find out that the package on her doorstep was outgoing, not incoming.
47.  Watch a fantastically hilarious senior night unfold at the church.
48.  Begin the slideshow finale.
49.  Recoil in horror when the slideshow stops right in the middle because your computer died.
50.  Realize you left the power cord on the desk at home.
51.  Drive home to fetch it.
52.  Start the slideshow again, but this time with half the audience because people started to go home.
53.  Go home, mostly high on euphoria, and not sleep for two hours.
54.  Dream about a colony of bees taking up residence in your piano, which mysteriously lived in your son's tiny bedroom.
55.  Start another day.

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May 22, 2013

Why I shouldn't blog...

Posted by runningfan | Labels: ,

...at least when Kate is awake...


This is especially funny because
I was blogging about something 100% superficial:
my couch (or the lack thereof). 
Where are my priorities?
Sheesh.

comments (1)

8:51 AM

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Posted by runningfan | Labels: , , ,

Last night our youth had a super fun activity to honor the three kids in our ward who are graduating high school this week.  I was in charge of the event, and the evening was practically perfect in every way.

Of course there was a lot of work behind all that perfection.

I borrowed the party theme from Dr. Seuss: "Oh, the Places You'll Go!"  With the help of many Pinterest pages and good friends, here are some snapshots of the party I planned.

There had to be a big poster with the theme.  Tara, a talented artistic friend, designed the poster for me, and then I filled in the dollar-store poster board with acrylic paints.  That was time-consuming but well worth the effort.


Then I made some silly sign posts with details about post-high school plans for each of the seniors (they were personalized, also with dollar store supplies).  Those were fun to make because I watched two episodes of The West Wing while I cut them out.


I emailed surveys to each of the senior's parents.  (That was a most excellent stroke of brilliance.) Their answers were the foundation of the posts and the games we played at the party.   They also sent pictures that made up a slideshow for the party.

The evening began with the Young Men president reading a little poem, which was a collection of phrases from the Dr. Seuss book. It set the tone for our fun night. Then we started group games. The first was a spin on Mad Libs.  If you aren't familiar with the game, here's the gist.  There's a sentence with a blank spot in the middle.  You have to fill in the type of word (verb, noun, adjective, etc.) that is missing. An example is: "Heidi was super {adjective} after planning a big {noun}."  You don't get to read the story before you choose the missing words.  The result is usually a really funny nonsense story.

I wrote three stories, each in the form of a conversation between parents and based on the seniors' accomplishments and future plans.  (Sorry, Karie...I changed my mind at the last minute.)  I divided the attendees (maybe 50 people) into three groups.  Each group had a big list of the parts of speech that would fill in the blanks of the stories.  The youth seemed to love coming up with the words.  Then the sets of parents (we had one senior with three "parents" present because...well, it's complicated) read the conversations using the words the youth chose, and the results were hysterical.  One story said that Austin wanted "infinity children."  Another talked about Tyler's "tall muscles."  And Holly's story had so many silly references to her desire for a big family that we were all roaring with laughter.  That made me very happy.






(holding her sister's baby)



After that, we played a version of The Newlywed Game.  I asked the seniors a bunch of questions and they wrote down their answers.  The parents were in the hall for this part, but I invited them back in when the seniors were done answering my questions.  Then I asked the parents the same questions.  The idea was to see how well the parents knew their children.  Sometimes the answers--the parents' and the seniors'--were extremely funny.  More laughter.  More inner satisfaction for me.


The final group activity was watching a slideshow (Shelly did an amazing job) of the seniors.  The pictures were set to Carrie Underwood's "Whenever You Remember" song, and they were of the seniors as kids, growing up to their current selves. It was quite tender.  If there hadn't been a major technological malfunction right in the middle (totally my fault), that would have been perfect, too.

To round out the evening, there were two more activities.  (Yes, we ran long, in case you were wondering.)  In one corner was a table where kids wrote notes to the seniors.  I will compile them in photo books for each senior.  In the other, Janae set up a "booth" where a photographer/ward member took pictures of the kids in ridiculous outfits.  That was completely awesome.  And of course there was also food.  Each treat was a favorite of the seniors, so we had Texas cake, cookie dough brownies, and ice cream.  Silvia made amazing graduation caps from peanut butter cups and chocolate bars.  Super cute, right?



In the end, I was very happy about the evening.  People made comments about how much fun they had, which was my primary objective.  I'm also thrilled that a friend in another ward will use the big sign for her ward's girls camp.  The ward's theme is "Oh, the Holy Places We Will Go."  I am very pleased that all the hard work on the poster will benefit someone else on another day.  


In my own world, I wish the next place I could go was a quiet room with a bed and a book, but I have company this weekend, youth conference and stake conference next week, Fathers and Sons the week after that, and then I'm gone for two weeks to Canada and girls camp.  Maybe I can rest in July.

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May 17, 2013

Design dilemma

Posted by runningfan | Labels: ,

My birthday gift was a red couch.  I've been longing for one for ages, and now the day has come!

Except that it hasn't. No couch yet.

We have donated our free-to-us-five-years-ago couch to the youth garage sale this Saturday (it's gonna be massive, so come support us!), so there's a big space in our living room where public seating used to exist.  

Funny how something like that gives me a push in the right direction.  I browsed a local furniture store the other day.  The girls and I roamed for about an hour.  They could not have been better behaved, so I took my time.  I also took a lot of pictures and fawned over many fabric samples.  I fawned so extensively that I have a problem: I maybe want a green couch.

So here's the room where the couch will live.  (Sidebar: Isn't my new clock amazing?)


Here is one of the couches I'm considering.  It is very similar in shape and size to the other couches we have owned. 


I would have it colored in this red fabric, with throw pillows in the fabric below.



Pretty simple, right?  Wrong.

Because there is THIS couch.  It's smaller and more tailored and is super comfortable for a short person like me (plus just comfortable in general).  Plus it's different.  So cute, right?



And wouldn't this side chair be amazing with it?


The problem is that this couch and this side chair do not come in a good red.  There's maroon, and there's pink-ish, but no red in the shade of my dreams.  Lame.  However, it DOES come in this awesome green, and I could have the side chair and the throw pillows in one of these darling (that word probably shouldn't apply to living room furniture) purple patterns.


I think I'm in love.

But now there's a new problem: the room is too green already for a green couch, and the valance won't match.  The simple solution, of course, is to buy a new valance and paint the wall under the chair rail purple.

Haha.

So.  What should I do?  Assuming I don't want to do anymore shopping, and these are the only couches in the world available to me, what's the better option?  I should probably make a decision soon, because this is how our living room will look in the meantime:



At least for now I can blame the mess on having no couch.

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May 16, 2013

Caption contest

Posted by runningfan | Labels:

What on earth?!?!  These kids are crazy.
Come up with a great caption for this photo and
you'll get, well, the immense satisfaction
of winning a major blog contest.


Haha.
Please try anyway.

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May 14, 2013

Chatterbox

Posted by runningfan | Labels: , ,

Kate can't stop talking, and it's the best.  Here's a current list of her fun words and phrases (yes, phrases!).

out
don't do it!
cut it
take it
no paper
mine!
'kay
yeah
please
thank you
welcome
bess you (bless you)
sorry
Zach
Wexi
Date (Kate)
Ranch (the dressing--haha)
hey! (after a perceived injustice)
shower
bunny
bye-bye, see ya (together)
haha (when she wins tug-of-war, takes a toy, etc.)
glasses
hand hurts
chawkick (chocolate--my favorite)
doggie scawy dweam (in the middle of the night)
Ode you (hold you, which means hold me)

Kate has a sense of humor.  Her full-tilt run is so darling. She loves dresses and usually likes having me fix her hair. She loves swings and slides and parks and anything with wheels. She has to ride in our stroller at the store because she can get out of the cart seat. This girl is also a true Bartle, having developed a talent for mischief.  Her latest tricks: moving stools and chairs to access high places (including door knobs), and closing my bathroom door while she raids my make-up.



On the day Kate hurt her hand, while I was making dinner, I realized things had been too quiet for a while.  I checked the bathroom first, but she wasn't there.  She didn't respond to my calls, and pretty soon the whole family was looking for Kate in the house and yard.  It had probably been 20 minutes since I had personally laid eyes on her, but with five other people in the house, I assumed someone was with Kate.  When I started questioning kids, Lexi said, "Kate just walked down the street."  My heart stopped.

So everyone started running around the neighborhood, calling her name.  No Kate.  I had circled the block, and Garry had circled another direction, and I was on the verge of calling the police.  That's when Zach ran out the back gate and said he had found her sitting in my laundry basket in the closet.  Words cannot express our collective relief!  

We all hugged Kate a little tighter that night.  We're so glad she is part of our family! 

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May 12, 2013

Super Littles

Posted by runningfan | Labels: ,

Gavin was fake-sick this week (don't get me started) and missed Dress-Like-a-Superhero Day at school.  When he returned and it was Wear Yellow Day (?) so Gavin made up for lost time.  Lexi never misses a chance to copy her big brother.  And so it was that the Littles dressed up as Superman and a witch just because it was Wednesday.



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10:15 PM

if it ain't broke, don't fix it

Posted by runningfan | Labels: ,

On Thursday Kate had an accidental altercation with the van's trunk door.  The door won, of course, and Kate's left hand had a big owie. Because I'm not an alarmist, and because my schedule was crazy that day, and because Kate really needed a nap, and maybe because I'm a bad mother, I consciously put five hours between her injury and the doctor's office.  I'm a fan of the watch-and-wait approach, unless it comes to my own insane reactions to medications (pun intended) and I'm vomiting or passed out on the floor.

Anyway.

I opted for cheap[er] and asked my peds office to work me in instead of walking into Urgent Care down the hall. As we sat and waited, I pondered the irony of Kate possibly being the first Bartle child with a broken bone.  



Fortunately, she did not snatch the honor from her siblings.  She's not broken after all.  Just a little swollen and bruised.

Isn't she charming?

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9:56 PM

funnies

Posted by runningfan | Labels: ,

Sometimes life just makes me laugh.

Gavin has taught himself to "whistle."  He purses his lips and blows some air, but not one bit of music comes out. Gavin is oblivious to this little detail, and asks us to listen to various whistling tunes.  I don't recognize any of them unless he tells me in advance.  Gavin has also declared that he has two favorite songs: "Jumbo Elephant" (a sweet song my grandma taught me when I was little) and "Marry You" by Bruno Mars.

Another funny: kids digging up a pair of Lexi's shoes in the back yard sand pit.  Tyler and a buddy unearthed them on Saturday.  They've been missing since last summer (the shoes, not the kids).  I wonder if the sand pit also swallowed Lexi's darling-but-AWOL cowgirl boots.


We found these foam pieces (road segments, if you can't tell) arranged in an interesting way on the shower wall. The artist: Tyler.


As you know, Zach joined the middle school band (so far just on paper).  He has to have a set of bells (not the kind you ring, as I have learned), and renting the bells kit for 10 months is 20 bucks less than buying a kit, so we bought one.  It was due to arrive on Friday, and when a big box appeared on our front porch (thank you, Mr. UPS), we carefully brought it inside.  Zach was all anticipation as he opened the box, until he saw that it was full of two giant boxes of size 4 Luvs diapers.  The bells came the next day.

The Littles talked me into making cupcakes with blue frosting.  They talk me into a lot of stuff.  Anyway, Kate got to lick the bowl for the first time.  I think she just wanted a bath.




Next we have an embarrassing moment for me.  Last night while I was vacuuming the basement and mentally moving on to my next task of making cupcake paper garlands for Lexi's birthday party, a friend sent me a text asking if I was coming to book club.  As I stood there, sweating in my grubby clothes and being annoyed with myself for not brushing my teeth since breakfast, I realized that I was 30 minutes late to the book club meeting where I was the discussion leader for a book I didn't finish because I thought it was boring. Oops!  So I high-tailed it over to Panera and spent the next two hours chatting with good friends.  We got kicked out 40 minutes after closing, and then I got kicked out of Target at 10:07.

At a court of honor the other night, I had my phone out to take pictures for the ward newsletter.  Lexi commandeered it and took no fewer than 17 shots of her beloved (and exceptionally ragged) dog, Betsy, who of course had to support the scouts.


During dinner one night we had a funny discussion.  One of Tyler's comments made me talk about myself as a child.  I shared some stories about playing dumb when I knew all the answers, mostly to get attention and be obnoxious.  Apparently Tyler could relate to this practice, and confessed that his friends refer to him as a human dictionary.  And then to me Gavin said, "I'm not pretending to be dumb like you."

Another night we sat around the dinner table and tried to make Kate demonstrate her ever-growing vocabulary.  Sometimes we know exactly what she's saying; others, not so much.  This night she kept exclaiming, "hodor!"  We didn't get it.  Gavin asked if I wrote that one down (I was taking notes).  I told him I didn't know what she was saying.  Exasperated, he said, "It means hitting your door with a hoe!"

Also, Kate likes mascara.


 Zach needs new socks.  That doesn't stop him from Ripstik-ing in the rain.



Lastly, I share a photo of a silly girl.  Our young women activity for the week was girls camp certification.  Our ward's youth camp leaders helped us start a fire (in a pit), cook with a Dutch oven, and tie knots, among other things.  Despite the date of MAY SEVENTH, it was cold and windy.  I had neglected my duty to tell the girls to wear warm clothes, so a few of my Beehives showed up in capris and sandals and were freezing.  This silly girl resorted to wearing a size 5T coat that was in a leader's car. 


Life's always good for a laugh, right?

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7:05 PM

Zackie Chan and the band

Posted by runningfan | Labels: , ,

Our family is charting new territory: middle school.



Last week we attended the middle school band's instrument selection event (say that ten times fast).  Zach would like to join the 6th grade band, but only as a drummer.  Fortunately for him, the two years of piano lessons I have forced upon him paid off; that much piano experience is required for playing in the percussion section.  Zach did a great job with his mini audition.  Garry and I were pleased to be able to tell the band director that Zach is a good boy and a great student.  The director said he needs kids like that in percussion because they sit in the very back of the band room and have weapons in their hands.  (Nice.)


So, with visions of weapons in his hands, I took Zach to the high school band's end-of-year concert.  The top band played with the Air Force Academy band (correct me if I'm wrong, local friends), and the concert was fantastic.  Afterward, a young man in our ward gave us a tour of the band room and showed him every drum, cymbal, and noise maker there.  Zach got a better idea of what fun things happen in the percussion section.  It was great.  I'm looking forward to the adventure ahead (trying not to think about the noise) and so is Zach (he can't wait to make noise).


In other Zachary news, he has given himself a new moniker: Zackie Chan.  I'm not sure what the name means (he's never seen a Jackie Chan movie...), but he writes it on all of his school papers, notebooks, and things at home.  Whatever his name, we are proud of our boy.

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