today's Sesame Street moment

Thanks to Andrea for linking to this on her blog. I've mentioned here before how much I love Feist, but it bears mentioning again!

he got the job!!

Thank you to all for your prayers, thoughts, good vibes, etc. They are extending the formal offer on Thursday. We are so happy and grateful!

Also, I got the online work-at-home job I was applying for/testing for! Yippee!!!

a stupid thing

This is called "My First Trampoline" (with Enclosure). Seriously, how much fun do you think a kid is going to have on a "mini-bouncer" (what we called them when I was a kid) with a net around it. Whoo hoo.



I believe in keeping kids safe, but too often it is taken WAY too far.

Edited to add: I checked the specs, and I guess it is 55 inches, which may be slightly larger than a "bouncer" but still. Lame.

i had no idea

that the little tiny plums on our "ornamental plum tree" are not only edible, they're DELICIOUS! YUM!

my life, lately

David & I celebrated our 7th anniversary on Sunday. We went out for dinner on Friday, even though we really wanted to go see The Dark Knight, but it was sold out all weekend. We did go today, though. I thought it was excellent, even though it completely maxed out my violence/intensity tolerance. It's funny, because when we were married three or four years, it seemed like it had been quite a lot longer. I think because we packed so much into those first three years--a baby, both of us in graduate school. But seven years feels exactly right. It sounds as long as it feels, if that makes any sense. I am certainly grateful for that fateful trip to the Amazon nearly eight years ago. And grateful for all the factors that played into me getting to go. I'll have to tell that story sometime. I think it's a pretty good one.

I'm super excited about the new X-Files movie. I can't believe I didn't know about it until a few days ago. Which is probably just as well, since now I don't have to anticipate it for months. Although the anticipation can be a good part of the fun! I loved X-Files. One semester in college, a couple of roommates and I and another roommate's boyfriend would watch it every week. (The boyfriend would come over and wait for his girlfriend to return from work.) And David and I would watch it when we were first married.

David has a first interview with one company and a second interview with another company tomorrow. Also, things are moving forward on his investment project thing, so we are feeling much more hopeful about our near future job situation.

I took both required tests for the online job I'm trying to get. I passed the first one, but won't hear about the second one for a few days, I think. It would be really nice to have an additional income stream, especially since my babysitting "gig" is ending mid-August. Until summer started, I was getting about $250-300/month babysitting, which a number of times was just enough to bail us out of some really tight financial spots. We hope that those are behind us, but I will be happy to have a regular source of income to help pay down our debts.

Last Saturday we wanted to do something fun, but free, seeing as we have no money. We decided to go to the river (a couple of blocks away) and play around. We took some tennis balls and had a fun time tossing them upstream and then waiting for them to come back and catching them, and a couple of times we had to retrieve them from various encumbrances. I think there might have been a beaver dam of sorts there, but we didn't see any beavers. There are lots of gnawed trees in the area, though. We also stacked rocks (David is very good at making balancing rock towers) and generally just splashed around and had fun. When we bought this house two years ago, we were quite happy to still be close to the river trail. Our apartment was close, and we loved taking walks/rollerblading/biking on the trail. I am truly grateful for the beautiful area we live in. I hope our kids will have many fond memories of the nature in this area.

I taught the lesson in Relief Society on Sunday. I hadn't taught Relief Society since 1998 (I was the second counselor for a summer term before I left for Europe) and I was a bit nervous. Since I've been married, I've had chances to work with and teach the youth, but no chances to teach adults. I was kind of excited, in spite of my general loathing of public speaking. But then I found out that three of my good friends in the ward were all going to be out of town for the weekend. My enthusiasm dwindled. Luckily, by the time I found out, I'd already spent a fair amount of time preparing, so I didn't have too much to do besides get my outline on paper. I was happy to realize on Sunday that I have more friends in the Relief Society than just those three "buddies." I really really love our ward. I have found many kindred spirits, to borrow a sappy phrase from Anne of Green Gables, and it has been really nice to feel like we belong here and are welcome. We lived in our last ward four years and never got that feeling. I think maybe if we hadn't been apartment dwellers and viewed as transient that it might have been better. But the general attitude of the ward was much different. I am happy to be here. Anyways, my other friends stepped up to the plate and helped me greatly by participating in the lesson. The topic was Hope and Consolation in Time of Death, so it was definitely something I needed audience participation to do successfully.

We told the rest of the family about our baby. I'd been worried to tell my dad, seeing as we are presently jobless and I didn't want to hear any negative things, but he surprised me. (He does that sometimes!) Judging from his email, he was genuinely excited for us, and that really made me happy. He really is a great man. We just don't view the world from the same lens. But that's okay.

I'm sure there is more that I could blather on about, but this should suffice for now. Now, since I have a few minutes while David is out playing chauffeur, I'll try and check in on some of my friends' blogs. I've been so busy there hasn't been time.

drum roll please....

Here it is, my photography business blog! Yippee!!

yellow sun studios

my little guy

a little frightening...

when your farcical news source is the best predictor out there...
be sure to note the date on the article...I think one of Bush's staff members mistook this article for a mission statement

hmmmm....

David and I took a test to see how we ranked as 1930s wives/husbands.

54 As a 1930s wife, I am Average Take the test!

128 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

swoosh swoosh swoosh

That's what an 11 week (in utero) baby's heartbeat sounds like. And we heard it today.

Yes, this is an official announcement. The baby should arrive sometime the first part of February. Yay!

lame blogging week

yeah, so it happens to the best of us, right? To partially make up, I'll give a bit of a recap of the last week or so.

For the 4th, we went to the parade in the morning, and it was my first parade in years. I actually had a good time, but I'm pretty sure that was due much more to the company than to the actual parade. Spud kept asking if the only thing to do was to watch. Afraid so, m'boy. The "big" parade in my hometown growing up was for Dairy Days, and many of the floats (especially the lame people in cars who you really don't care about) would throw candy, and they always handed out ice cream bars or ice cream sandwiches and little cartons of milk. So I am not very impressed with parades with so few freebies. One thing I did think was pretty cool was the giant balloons. Unfortunately there were only two, maybe three, of these. We liked this monkey one.



After the parade, we went and saw WALL-E, which is now one of my all-time favorite movies. Completely worth the ticket price, especially if your father-in-law is awesome and buys your whole family tickets. (No, you can't have him. Unless you're a single female between the ages of 20 and 26 and marry either Adam or Eric....) Loved it! The kids loved it too, so it's fun for the whole family.

Then we had a super delicious barbecue. Oh YUM! And I ate way too much but I didn't even care. It was some fabulous food.

After that, we tried to find a place to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks, but ended up picking a lame place so we left before the show started, then stopped on the way home to pull into a parking lot to watch them. So not quite what we'd planned, but still fun.

The day before the 4th, we went to the "Pioneer Village" downtown and visited the Printing Press museum and the other cool stuff they had set up. I think I need some stocks for the front yard. I'm all about reintroducing shame as a punishment.



This week has been busy, but not with anything particularly noteworthy. Noodle caught a really cool looking dragonfly, much bigger than the others I've seen around our yard. I took some newborn pictures of my friend Leah's new baby, which was a good learning experience. I finally came up with a name for my photography business (and no, I won't tell you yet...). I made it through the first screening for a part-time job that I could do at home. And I've been doing a lot of reading and housework. See, aren't you glad to know all this? I know it's hard to sit around and wonder, "What is Mindy doing with all of her time? She's not been ranting, raving, pointlessly pontificating or posting silly pictures." So now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

stephenie meyer fans...

You really have got to read The Host. I loved it. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.

isn't it funny...

that when crude oil prices increase, we see an increase in pump prices almost immediately, but when they drop (like they have about $10/barrel over the last two days), we don't see the same almost immediate decrease in pump prices.

my nephew strikes again

This time his younger brothers & sisters also make an appearance. I love them!

happy independence day!

God bless America! (And may the rest of us try to make it ever better!)

laddie & gratitude

(if you squish the title of this post, it's "latitude.")


I read it in a whirlwind to finish before our discussion group met tonight, but I give Laddie by Gene Stratton-Porter (same author as highly reviewed-by-me Freckles) five stars. This book has it all--enlightening thoughts on education, characters who inspire you to improve your own life, mystery, adventure, romance, humor, fabulous pastoral descriptions...I could probably go on for a bit longer. This book is on the Thomas Jefferson Education short list of classics to get started in furthering your own education and developing the skills necessary to be an effective mentor, and after finishing it, I can plainly see why. This book is online in its entirety on Google Books. I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy from a friend, since it isn't quite the same to sit at my computer on a metal folding chair and read such a lengthy work. (sidenote:I think I need a more comfortable office chair....maybe it's time to hit D.I. when I get some disposable income.)

Anyways, you should read it. It's fabulous.

Today I'm grateful for ward/neighborhood members who look out for each other. And for people with skills willing to share them. And that my house is no longer 85 degrees.

snigger

this week's sesame street moment