Let 'Er Buck

This man changed my life.


He made me think I was the best fiddle player on the planet. He introduced me to some of my very best friends. He took me—along with hundreds of other bratty kids—to Europe year after year and acted like he loved every minute of it.

If it weren’t for Terry, Kat and Ben never would have met and Maggie and Cash probably wouldn’t even be alive. So three cheers for Tuck!

Now he’s gone, and suddenly I miss him a lot.

Confessions of a Missionary

My little brother left on a mission in November. Before he got his call, he was 100% surfer. Then he got his call and became 50% surfer/50% missionary, spending every day at the beach and every night at the temple. Now he’s all missionary, but I think this little clip from his letter home yesterday defines him perfectly:

Just the other day, I was daydreaming about waves when I caught myself and directed my daydreaming to baptisms, etc. I was so much happier thinking about baptisms.

Honestly, who directs their daydreaming? I think he might still be at least 1% surfer.

Do I Have To Teach Him Everything?

I thought that human beings were born with the innate ability to eat a popsicle. Isn’t it common knowledge that you hold the stick and suck on the yummy part?

I gave Liam his first popsicle today, and he was totally clueless about the popsicle laws of nature.

First he was all, “So do I hold this cold, gooey part and eat the stick?”


Then he was like, “Oh I know. It’s like corn on the cob, right?”


Finally he started to grasp the idea of which end goes in his mouth.


I think he liked it. What do you think?

Send Me Off to Glory in a Glad Bag

Tonight after dinner as I was putting away the leftover lasagna, I realized that our “Saran™ wrap” and our “Ziploc® bags” were both actually made by Glad®. I began to feel bad for the Glad people because all of their products are known by other companies’ brand names.

But then I remembered this cool song that my friend Cat sings, and I realized that Glad doesn’t need to be known for their plastic wrap or their sealable bags. They’ve got their trash bags to carry on the Glad name.

One Last Excuse

I didn’t realize before I married Ben how much free stuff he came with. The hand-me-downs never stop trickling in from his parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles.

One of the cool things that came with Ben’s dowry was a sweet dresser. It was the dresser Ben used when he was a little boy, so it had seen better days, but it served us well all the way until our first married trip to Ikea a year or two later.

Now it sits in our guest room, totally abandoned by all living things. I hadn’t thought about the long, lost dresser until I started searching for knobs and pulls for our new cabinets. Then I had a great idea…

I turned this:


Into this:

And that concludes my list of things that kept me away over the past few weeks. I am officially done painting for a long, long time.

My Real Reason for Abandoning the Internet

Once upon a time, Ben and I moved into a house that smelled like cigarette smoke and dead animals, with a kitchen that looked like this:

And that was taken after we got rid of the smell, tore down the wallpaper, painted, patched the giant hole under the microwave, and bought a stove.

Then, three years later, we finally got around to the real kitchen project. We were like, “Brown cupboards? White countertops? I hate those colors.” So instead we went with white cupboards and brown countertops. And we like it much better.

My Apologies

Dear Blogosphere,

I know I’ve been abandoning you lately, but I’ve been doing really important things like science experiments involving the symmetry of Ben’s face...


and making scripture cases out of Capri Sun wrappers.


I mean, can you blame me? Anyway, I’m sorry. I'll try to be better.

Yours truly,
Kim

I Always Have To Steal My Kisses from You

It’s not that easy to get Liam to give kisses. If you’re lucky, he might lean his cheek in the general area of your lips when you ask for a kiss, but you probably won’t get much more than that.

Today we bought some hydrocortisone cream for Liam’s eczema, and as soon as I had finished rubbing it on his red little toes, he kissed the tube of ointment. Twice.

Apparently he saves his kisses for the things he really loves.

Jealousy

I didn’t think it was that hard to say “Mama.” Aren’t there tiny babies that can say Mama? I think it’s one of the easiest words in the English language. So how come Liam can call my sister “Schmath,” but he can’t call me “Mama?”