Gomer Pile

Sometimes when you use a very old notebook you find amusing chicken scratches from year ago. This one cracked me up. I assume I was talking about baby names for our fourth child and looking for patterns or something. 

Benjamin Brian 

Madison Mae 

Jacob Robert

Gomer Pile

It makes me glad Ashlyn Anne turned out to be a girl or she may have ended up with that name.

Wendy's Guilt

It isn't very often I eat out these days. Why should I? We pay someone to cook dinner for us every day and the other two meals are really pretty easy to manage then. This Thursday I found myself at the eye doctor without any children in tow and then ran errands that kept me out until noonish when I stopped in Holland Village to back order the kids school pictures from the photographer for the last THREE years.

That's when I saw it. Wendy's. I smelled the french fries the instant I looked up and saw the sign across the parking lot and 4 lanes of traffic. I think I may have just smelled it in my head not my actual nose but it had been a very, very long time since I had partaken of those lovely deep fried salty slices of heaven. I resisted going in as I walked past, I went to the photographer and ordered the kids pictures but on my way home I caved.

I walked into the restaurant and up to the counter asking for a bacon-ator combo. A moist burger loaded with bacon to accompany those fries sounded like heaven. I plopped down my $8 and found a stool to enjoy my feast. No sooner had I sat down than the guilt began.

My head flooded with self loathing thoughts. You can't do this. It's so irresponsible. Too much money. You'd be in trouble if anyone knew you were doing this. NONE of this food is even healthy. You can't afford to be wasting money like this.

It's kind of funny to me that I can go to Burger King or McDonalds without the same emotional reaction. So why the aversion to Wendy's? Well more than fifteen years ago after I had graduated high school and was waiting to go the University in the fall I didn't have a job and wasn't having any great luck finding the perfect one.

I had been hired for a part time day job at a law firm downtown and worked 4 hours a day but that wasn't enough to foot the bill for college. After a few weeks, my dad, not being pleased with my lackadaisical efforts to find more work hours came up with a new plan to help me earn money. My new job was finding a job. I was to get up by 7am and be out of the house by 8am. My job was finding a job. He didn't care where I went to apply but unless I was dropping off a job application or going to an interview I wasn't allowed to drive the car. I couldn't come home until after 5pm. Every day.

It took two weeks or so to find a workable job situation and I had to negotiate both with employers AND my dad. Since I was already committed from 1pm-5pm it was tricky finding another job. Eventually I was hired to start at 4:30am and an office supply store changing price tags and glorious stuff like that. I worked until 11:30am.

I was not allowed to use the car to get to the law firm for work at 1pm so had to walk out to the bus and take it into town. Now that I had another job I was hoping my dad would let me drive because I was being responsible. Nope. Because the city buses didn't begin running until 5:00am, after I already had to be at work, I could use the family car to drive to work the first job. BUT because the bus was working when I got off at 11:30 I had to change clothes and catch the bus from 21st South to downtown. (After work finished at 5pm I took the 5:30pm bus back to the car and drove the rest of the way home.)

The timing of the bus after job #1 generally put me arriving hot and sweaty and about 45 minutes early for job #2. They didn't want me working extra time at the law firm, so I couldn't show up early. I just had to kill time for 45 minutes every day of the week in the terrible awful desert heat of the city with no where to go (and still arrive looking well put together an professional for the next gig).

My stop downtown on bus #35 was right across the street from Wendy's. And it was lunch time. And I was hungry. Everyday. And no one was watching me. So I started to get a spicy chicken sandwich really, really often. Every time the air conditioning and wonderful aroma lured me into those glass doors my heart would pound just a little harder. What if my parents found out I ate out? Would I get in trouble? What if I can't afford tuition second semester because I ate it in the form of spicy chicken sandwiches?

It was my fault I didn't have a scholarship in the end. I did all the forms and applications. Got the recommendation letters, wrote the essays, everything. Scholarship applications were due Jan 28. I found the envelope on my desk, sealed shut, stamped and ready to go on Feb 28. I was desperate. I got scholarships at the colleges I hadn't ended up choosing to attend. I was "good enough" to earn one. I was just late. I called and asked if they could do anything at all. Nope. Tough out of luck. So I kept silent about my mistake. What good would it do anyway. I'd just get yelled at. Better to just tell the truth, "I didn't get any scholarships." That was 100% true. My mistake. My problem to fix.

Was I eating my tuition on those scorching summer days in a cool Wendy's with a pounding heart. I felt guilty every time I went into that nice, cool restaurant. Eventually I resolved to only go in once a week. But then I found a sandwich shop downstairs from the law firm and then the ice cream shop one building over. Oh it was a rough summer of self deprivation. All the things I wanted and had to chose not to have. I had to make the choice to stop eating my tuition money (and books and fees groceries and all the other things you need to live in college).

I hope each one of my kids is faced with good problems as they grow up like I was. And some day they will tell me where they can't eat without feeling guilty like I do at Wendy's.

Bad Day For Pants

I believe in the old pioneer adage (most of the time). Today we took the kids to the school for a Girl Scout service project. It was called Second Chance School Supplies. The teachers clean out their rooms this week and dump all the things they aren't going to use anymore into huge boxes and we sort and give it all away to multiple organizations like Food from the Heart, Caring for Cambodia and the YMCA. It was a good day of hard work and breaks on the playground with a pizza lunch. 

Of course with all things like this though, some of the stuff gets thrown in the trash. Some things I was okay with, but mostly I want to repurpose way too much. I seriously thought about not going at all because it might make me nuts to toss things. I did okay though as I only snagged a couple things out of the trash. There was so much more screaming at me to take it home.

I hate throwing anything out and my house screams of this little problem I've got. My clothes closet in particular. Today we loaded the kids into the car and as I slid into my seat I heard it...RRRRRRIIIIIIPPPP! I think I got those pants either in high school or first year of college. I wear them a lot. When the knees wore through I could no longer wear them to work at the law firm so I patched the hole and just wore them to school. Finally the hole wore through again and they became cut off jeans. Then I figured they were nice enough looking to hem the edge and so I made them "nice" again.

So I continued to wear them...until today. I went back upstairs and changed into a pair of Capris that I've had since, well, more than 10 years. At scripture time tonight I climbed onto the bed in the pile of freshly bathed bodies of little people and looked down to see that the side seam of these pants too have a hole. Sigh. These capris have been through all 4 pregnancies through the weight coming up and going down. They were the goal weight pants. When I could squeeze into them I knew I was close even if buttoning the waist hurt my tender, c-section sensitive muffin top belly. It was my personal victory to wear these capris again. I'm not giving up on them yet but they have only one or two more wears left in them.

The announcement...Its a tradition

Here is the announcement...

Many years ago my parents announced the coming of my little brother (the fourth child in our family) by calling the family together and giving everyone a gift. We never received gifts other than birthdays and Christmas, so we knew this was a very special occasion, and boy, were we excited. Not only were we getting a gift, but it was HUGE!!! Even our birthday presents weren't this big. Imagine our surprise when we unwrapped the packages to find...diapers. I was five at the time, so I cannot recall the emotions of the day. I only remember seeing the huge present. I remember laughing, but not much else.

Recently my younger sister announced the coming of their fourth child by following what is now an official family tradition. I am not sure if my older brother followed this tradition, but a tradition it now is. As you can see in the video, I followed the tradition to announce our new baby to our kids. In case you don't want to watch the 4 minute clip, the highlights are:

• Ben's smile when he finally figured out why our family would need newborn diapers. He is excited to have a little brother (he'll accept a little sister if needed)
• Maddie was completely ticked off because "Diapers are a terrible present!"
• Once Maddie understood we were announcing a little baby, she asked me if I could feel the baby yet. I answered that I couldn't so she decided it might be a large vegetable growing inside me...perhaps a giant broccoli.
• Jacob was super excited to receive a package of diapers. Perhaps he thought this meant that we were postponing the potty training and he could just enjoy life a little longer.
• Jacob decided that we are not going to have a baby, but instead a "yittle fluffly doggie."

I am due in March and we are all very excited.

That Boy Was Built for Richfield

Ben is such a people watcher. Today we went to the park down the street from Mali's house in Bangkok Thailand so the kids could run and play a little. The playground is at the entrance to their compound where everyone must pass and it was time for the US Embassy shuttles buses to unload like clown cars and some kids were selling lemonade by the swimming pool trying to catch the workers as they came in the complex. Ben's play kept getting interrupted because he couldn't help but stop to watch people coming and going. Brian and I were laughing about it when Brian said, "He is the perfect person to hang out on the porch with my grandma." Brian is right. Those two could have sat on the front porch swing for hours and hours together talking about people as they passed by. Ben would be full of "Why do you think that person does...?" and Grandma BerDella would never tire of answering because she would have all the answers and a story to go along with it too since she had been porch sitting and people watching for such a very long time. She would never tire of his questions but enjoy the time together with him. Makes me smile to think of them together on a porch somewhere in Richfield, Utah where she spent most of her life. Truth is Singapore is Brian and my exciting dream not his. We are the ones who want to see and experience the world, not Ben. He has a quiet soul that doesn't require much in the way of adventure. He would have been quite happy to spend seventeen years at school in Fairfax on Roberts Road (elementary, middle/high school and college are all within one mile on the same street).

I count his transition going so well here to positive support at home, amazing teacher(s) and school counselor and mostly generous blessings from a God that knows Ben's soul much better than me. Life is good here and my people watching boy has lots of new people to study. Maybe someday he will have stories to tell grandma when they meet again in heaven.

Valentine's Day for Losers

I’m having a little me time. Catching up on blogs that I have not read since after young women’s camp ended in August! After that I put myself into high gear to dejunk the house and prepare to move to Singapore. That’s almost 6 months of not reading blogs and to be fair, not writing much either. Just think of all the funny stories I missed and now forgot because I was too busy. Sad. Today I have been reading and reading and reading. It’s so much fun, but I did notice one thing. I suppose it actually doesn’t come as much as a surprise.

Our kids would kill to be from another family. Have you seen the amazing and cute Valentine's Day things people do for their kids? Seriously? Start blog stalking and you'll know what I mean. Some are darling handmade cutsies, or 14 day countdowns with daily love notes, lots of people did some craft or made a treat and spent time with their kids and still other people gave their kids what I would classify as a mini-Christmas with some SERIOUS toy spreads. Sitting here on the couch side by side with our laptops (romantic, I know) I mentioned to Brian how we were failing our kids. His response? “No way. They need to show us some love. We do stuff for them all the time.” Can you tell we had a knock down drag out miserable day with the kids? I take that back, Ben was great all day. Maddie and Jake were tail spinning into disaster zone by 8:30am. Just ask Grandma and Grandpa how well behaved they were while we tried to Skype. It wasn’t pretty and only got worse.

As far as Valentine’s Day goes, I don’t anticipate a change for next year either. We know who we are. And we’re not cute. One of my favorite stories to tell from my working days proves it. I was asked to prepare a multi-million dollar budget plan for the proposed projects on the radar for prioritization. It would be submitted several levels up to the bosses for review with my research and justifications on which projects are the most important based on timing, safety concerns, environmental impact, etc. I worked for a few weeks and had my spreadsheet well researched and nicely laid out to concisely deliver only the most relevant facts and cost estimates to the big cheese guys in charge.

I submitted it to my direct line boss for approval first. He was less than impressed. I was sent back to tweak it a little and make it look nicer. I added a bit of pastel coloring to color code areas and departments. Nope. Still not good enough. Asking for direction, my boss took me into his office where he showed me an example of what he was looking for. I kid you not, he showed me a spreadsheet that had animations all over it and boxes that had sparkle borders that twinkled and moved. He told me to go make it look more “pretty like this.” Uh huh. And how am I supposed to do that on a printed paper?? Pretty? ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?! All the required information is included. What is the point of all that was all I could think.

Beyond frustrated, I returned to my office and let loose my feelings to my cubicle buddy and good friend Jared. He looks me straight in the face and says, “Well, Ang. We all know you’re just not a pretty person.” I can still hear his voice and see his mannerisms as he said it too. It’s crystal clear in my memory. Instantly I couldn’t stop laughing. He realized what he said the second it came out of his mouth. It was priceless. And I can’t argue with him whether the comment was meant to have a double meaning or not. I don’t wear make-up, get my nails done OR put sparkles on my spreadsheets. I’m Angie and on most days I’m basically pretty happy with what I am.

In summary:

Valentine’s Day will continue to be a mediocre affair at our house for a long time to come. I do hope to reinstitute the tradition Brian and I had since we were dating of making sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day. The kids have loved it in years past. And that, folks, is the size of a “pretty” goal that I can handle.

Kid Updates

Maddie Mae – Wears socks on her hands almost daily, the fancier the better in her opinion. Last night I finally put the pieces together. They are her fancy princess gloves like the long white ones Cinderella wears to the ball. She cracks me up.

Jacob – Has begun to stutter. Sort of. He has been saying the “t” sound after most of his sentences. Otherwise he speaks almost crystal clear in full sentences, at least for a two year old. How he will say stuff like, “Jakey want go with daddy in a car t-t-t-t-t.” Jenny suggested today that it was because I was teaching Maddie how to read. Are you scratching your head like I was? She explained it happened to her two girls when she was teaching the older one to read. The younger daughter was imitating the repetitive sounds made when you are sounding out a word (s-i-t) and the adult will repeat a sound to help them understand and remember. Makes total sense to me so I’m buying her theory. Otherwise I’ve got no explanation why he stutters a “t” after sentences that don’t even end in the letter.

Ben – Came home from school and his white polo shirt was clean for the first time in three weeks. Of course I noticed and teased him, “Ben, I can tell you didn’t have any fun at school today.” “Huh?” “Well, your shirt is totally clean and white still so I know you didn’t have any fun.” The grin starts across his face immediately, “Oooooh, NO! I had LOTS of fun! We had recess on the rooftop playground and I climbed into the tunnel tube (he begins sketching out a schematic diagram of the playground on scratch paper so I can understand) and when I was right here (points) I was right above the girls (draws two stick figures). And so I listened really carefully to them and got their secret plan to chase Caleb around the playground. I snuck out and told him so he didn’t get caught and he ran away. It was AWESOME!!”

I guess recess play is the same across the world. He played spy on the girls in first grade in Virginia too. Although there he usually chose to be on the girls team so he could protect them. (Smooth. Get in good with the ladies.) Not sure if we should worry about his love interests yet. He definitely liked someone in his last school class. Too bad he missed the Fairy Tale Ball right after we moved or he could have had the chance to dance with his fair maiden. This week when we read who gave him valentine cards on Monday night his face lit up when I read MacKenzie’s name. “Do you know who she is yet?” “OH YEAH! She stands in front of me in the lunch line and she is the funniest girl in the whole class. I like to be by her.”

I remember first grade. Recess was filled with kissing tag for the better part of a year. Mostly I didn’t like it. Nathan liked my best friend Bethany and his best friend John liked me. I recall going in during recess in tears to Mrs. Zagarella to tell her I wanted them to stop. Wasn’t a whole lot to be done I guess. She explained it was because they liked us, but I wasn’t impressed at all. Just mad at stupid John and dumb Nathan. After first grade though I don’t remember any romantic encounters for anyone until about fifth grade. Maybe we’ll be in the clear soon. People here don’t date until they are much older than they do in the States and don’t marry until much later in life. Hopefully that translates into the younger grades too.

The Water Cup That Wanted More

I was sitting on our back porch the other day when I happened to notice something that made me smile. I was sitting on the deck pushing anyone and everyone in the swing and happened to be facing the house. I noticed how clean and nice the neighbor's backyard light cover was and how dingy, old and gross ours was looking. For a half a second, I considered taking it off and cleaning it when I realized that could only lead to problems. You see when I was in college I lived in an apartment that we affectionately called Melrose Place. It was so named in honor of that old night time soap opera show in the 1990s that came on right after Beverly Hills 90210. (Mom - just to clarify, I NEVER watched that show. I know you outlawed it in our home and of course I would never disobey. Of course I never, ever watched it sitting two feet back from the tv set so at the first sound of your feet coming up the stairs I could change the channel. Nope. I've never actually seen it...but...umm....yeah...I've just heard of it.) At Melrose Place we have a more or less open door policy for walking into each other's apartments (at least the living room and kitchen areas). There were plenty of practical jokes and it was a real good time. Sometime before I moved into the apartment someone had taken off the light cover to replace a lightbulb at the front door and never replaced it. Our light was bare and all the other apartments had the clear glass cylinder shaped cover. The apartment was the sort of college place where when you wanted to move out you just had to find your own replacement and you could leave. That meant there were a lot of accumulated items that just stayed there because they had been abandoned or forgotten. Most of our dishes were in this category and not a single one of them matched another. One day when we had guests, someone commented how weird their cup was. It had a funky sort of lip at the top. Then everyone had to look at it and think about it and eventually, through the course of conversation, we realized it wasn't a cup at all. We had been using a light cover for at least a year as a cup. When we all stopped laughing, we washed it up and returned it to it's rightful place. Brian never lets me forget it though. Maybe it was him that figured it out. He was probably totally grossed out. Hey, at least we washed it.

Tour of Duty

Hey family - do these faces look familiar??

What if I gave you some hints? Baker, Purcell, Anderson (Zeke), Goldman,

McKay, Johnson, Ruiz, Taylor and Horn

Just wanted my family to know that they should all be extremely jealous of me today. This morning I volunteered at Ben's school. (Side note - he has been real upset that the kids lately have been telling him he is a liar. He told them he's magic and his dad is magic. They don't believe him. I got to tell them the truth about Ben and his dad today. Those kids were eating out of my hands this morning as I described different tricks Ben and dad can do. Now I'm crossing my fingers we have no more tears about mean kids calling him a liar.) A neighbor stopped me on my way out and asked if I could help her with math. Then the babysitter (Wonder Woman Lucinda) said I could do errands or whatever and come late to get the kids after bus pickup. That gave me an extra hour. So I came home to do a little math with my buddy, but she was at school when I got home. Now the part that will make my family wish they were in my living room with me. I'm paying bills and stuff for my "free time" but the up side is that I have Tour of Duty playing. I got a Netflix subscription for my birthday last year and ordered the entire first season on DVD. It's awesome. Nostalgic. Tour of Duty was the best show growing up. It stopped my family in its tracks and we all watched together. It was on Tuesday nights. I remember when my mom helped with the youth at the church on Tuesday nights and had to miss it. That may be what put us over the edge into getting an old hand me down VCR from my grandparents. (My kids won't ever know what a VCR is!!) The most important duty we had those nights was to make sure we hit record at the right time so Mom could watch when she got home. More important than homework or anything. Then we'd watch the same night, even though it meant we went to bed late on a school night. Tour of Duty is probably also what made me fall in love with war movies. I'll take a good, quality war movie any day over all other types of films. Don't you wish you were watching Tour of Duty with me right now?? If you were here, I might even let you pay my bills.

Good Grades Reward

Do tell. What did you get as a kid when you brought home a good report card? Ben brought home his very first report card this Friday. He got all good "grades". Of course, this means we are crossing yet another milestone in our marriage. A time of discussion and BIG decisions. The question of the day: What kind of reward does he get for good grades? Realize of course, that Ben has no idea what a report card is yet or the impending doom that it can potentially be for high school kids. He also has no concept of the fact that it could be a cash cow he could milk for the next 13 years to bleed us dry. I know people that got over $250 each quarter - that's a $1,000 a year for doing what you're supposed to do anyway. If you're a student you job is to study. Anyway, it's all up to us and it's time to start setting a precedence for this brood we call the Zufelt Zoo. Here's generally how I remember the conversation with Brian going... B: "So do we give him anything for doing a good job?" A: "I guess we could. He did a good job. But I don't want it to be something HUGE. I mean, really, on a basic level, good grades are more of an expectation than a magical surprise to which we must heap mountains of praise and reward upon the child." B: "What kind of thing were you thinking?" A: "I don't know. What were you thinking?" Neither one of us wants to break first. You know how that goes. Isn't a rule of negotiation that the first person to put forth a proposal is the automatic looser of the negotiation? B: "What did you get as a kid for good grades?" A: "I know we had a couple choices, but I remember we pretty much always chose to have a week of hot lunch at school." B: Bursts into open, wild laughter!! Smile from ear to ear. "You got what?" A: "Hot lunch for a week. It was AWESOME!!" Now he's laughing so hard he is almost crying. B: "You got PUNISHED for good grades?" Shaking his head, he wipes the tears of laughter from his eyes. "That really sucks! Wow. I would have hated that. We always had to have hot lunch at school. A real treat would have been COLD lunch. That was cool." A: "Whatever. I had cold lunch every day of my life. I think sometimes we got to choose a box of cold cereal if we wanted." B: (still laughing) "Seriously?" A: "Yeah. We never got sugar cereal for breakfast. Ever. Why are you laughing?" B: "I guess I'm laughing because I know your family and that is just exactly, well, your family." A: "So what did you get for good grades?" B: "Nothing." A: "Nothing? No way. Nothing at all?" B: "Nope." A: "I don't believe it." I don't think we ever concluded our conversation about what to do for poor Ben. We got all excited and I called my sister and brother in law to see what they got growing up (hot lunch for my sister, cash for the bro-in-law). Then we called Brian's brother and had him call his wife to report back. I had to make sure Brian wasn't lying. Sure enough. They didn't get a darn thing. They think maybe that they might have gotten to go to dinner as a family once in a while for good grades, but couldn't be sure.

Stephanie's House - A Little Piece of Heaven

If you don't know Stephanie, you are really missing out. She was the last one of my old crew of friends to leave me. At least she didn't leave the state or the country. The Pillings only moved a few miles away, but it's just over that natural hump of magic distance that makes it just enough of an inconvenience we don't get together often. Luckily, we still like each other so we are doing a date night babysitting swap. And we're trying to be regular about it. Time will tell. Friday night I watched their kids so they could catch a movie. Brian brought our kids. They played for an hour, then we cleaned the toys up. We sent the Zufelts home to bed with Dad. Mom stayed. We got Penny brushed, changed and snuggled in her bed, then into Margot's room. Books littered the floor. I suggested we could clean them up. Margot, the most precocious child I believe I have EVER met, said she prefers to clean books in the morning. I urged that it would be a great and happy surprise for her mom and dad if they were magically away when they came home. She plead her case like a seventeen year old rather than a four year old. After a bit of a sales pitch, she was finally presuaded. I got down on my knees, grabbed a load of books and crawled toward the bookcase. I stopped dead in my tracks. What was that AMAZING warmth I felt? Oh my. This is wonderful. I was paralyzed. Memories flooded into my mind. Heaven. This is what heaven feels like. I'm positive this is heaven. Turns out the Pillings have natural gas. This means they have a REAL heater. It blows out WARM air. It is AMAZING. I'm not going to lie. I considered asking Margot if I could sleep on her floor on the heater vent. I decided against it. Now as I think it over two days later, I should have snuck into Stephanie's room and slept on her heater vent. See, our house has electric heat. The body temperature is 98.6 degrees F. We all set our heaters at 68 or 72 or whatever. Warm air, but cooler than our bodies. Our electric heat pump blows out air warmer than the 68 degrees we set our heater at, but much, much cooler than my body temperature. The net result is that the room warms up. It just isn't warm and cozy to have blowing on you. In fact my assigned chair at the kitchen table gets direct blowing from the heater and sometimes I have to move seats at dinner because it's too cold with the "heater" blowing directly on me. It's miserable. Gas heaters, on the other hand, blow out some serious hot air. It's divine. Like I said, a piece of heaven. I have many memories a little girl of sitting directly on the heater vent. Sunday was the best day to do it. You come home from church in your dress and crouch down on the vent. Your dress puffs up huge with warm, delightful air. Pure bliss. My sister and I would fight over who got to sit by the vent in the bathroom. The vent was right above the scale. You would shut the door to trap all the warm air and sit on the scale. During my late elementary school years through high school I would get a book to read with a pillow and blanket. Lay with your feet on the vent, tightly wrap the blanket around your body to capture all that warm air and enjoy the afternoon with a good book. It's been years since I could enjoy the heater bliss. We get coldish-warm air here in our Virginia home. In Texas we had good heat but it came through the ceiling. Just a little hard to sit on the ceiling. In college we had steam radiators that could burn you if you touched them. Oh the longing. I may just have to see if I can move in to Stephanie's house for the rest of the winter. Or maybe she can rent me some time to toast my toes on her warm, warm air. Sometimes in the midst of a new adventure in your life, you forget things you love. It's the simple things in life that make it good, isn't it?

The Case of the Missing Sheets and Blanket

In May 2000, about one year after Angie and I were married, we moved to Freeport, Texas (just south of Houston) for our first internship. The company was providing a fully furnished apartment, complete with weekly cleaning and linen service. We arrived Saturday afternoon. The since the company arranging the housing details was closed on the weekend, they simply left a key for us. We obtained the key and went to the apartment they had previously communicated was ours. We were surprised when the key provided wouldn't open our apartment, so we went to the apartment complex office to straigten things out. They simply asked us which apartment we were in and quickly provided us with a new key. When we entered our apartment, it was missing a lot of things--cooking utensils, tupperware, and linens, among others. Again, we couldn't contact anyone at the housing office until Moday when it opened. No problem, we thought. We can adapt and deal with the situation given to us. After unpacking our car, we made a run to Wal-Mart and purchased the basic items we needed to survive the weekend, including a set of sheets for the bed--white sheets with purple flowers. On Monday we called the housing provider and found out they gave us to the wrong apartment information. The apartment we were supposed to be in was ready and this one was not supposed to be ready for another week when its new occupants would be moving in. Now we understood why our original key didn't work. Imagine if someone had already been living there when we arrived! Since we had already moved in, we asked to stay. It being our first exposure to Texas heat and humidity, we were not anxious to move out and in again to a second story apartment in that terrible weather. The company was nice enough to oblige and soon finished preparing the apartment. We kept the sheets since we had already used them. Over the following years the sheets invoked memories of this experience whenever we saw them and quickly became our favorite set of sheets. Now, fast-forward a few years to 2004, about a month after Benjamin was born. At this point we had moved seven more times and were living in Houston, Texas. We had the pleasure of receiving a visit from my parents, my younger brother, and one of my older brothers, along with his wife and two kids. They drove all the way from Utah, which must have been a very long 3-day drive for the two kids ("Brian and Angie live 3 days away from us!"). We pulled out all the linens we could find to host our guests, including our favorite white sheets with purple flowers. We had a great visit and were sad when the end of the week came and our guests packed up and left for home. We washed all the linens and stored them away until next time we would need them. A little while later, Angie and I were washing the sheets on our bed. We decided we wanted to put our favorite sheets on the bed, so we went to the linen closet to pull them out. They weren't there. "How strange," we thought. We couldn't imagine where we had put them. We pulled out a different set and finished the task at hand. Over the following weeks we searched the house, but couldn't find the sheets with the purple flowers. Since they were not in our house, we decided they must have found their way into my families suitcases. We called them with no avail--they had not seen our sheets, but promised to double-check. Over the following weeks and months we searched anywhere we could think they might end up and asked my family again, but never had any success. Fast-forward again to late 2009. For Thanksgiving this year we enjoyed the company of most of Angie's immediate family with their spouses and kids. Only one sibling's family was not able to make it since they had just moved to Australia. Once again we pulled out all the sheets and blankets we could find so our guests would have suitable bedding. One of these items was a warm furry "wolf" blanket. We had a great week, enjoyed a great Thanksgiving feast together, and missed them once they left. Some weeks after this I was having a hard time finding a nice warm blanket in our house to use while in the basement. Part of the problem is the fact that the blankets never stay in the same place. During the day the blankets move all over the house as the kids build forts, tunnels, walls, and anything else a blanket can be used to construct. I always had to search the house to find where the blankets were last discarded. Then, when I do find a blanket, it might be one of the kids blankets which are a bit small for me. I am left with the decision to keep searching or try to curl up into as small a ball as possible and positioning the blanket in a diagonal fashion to provide the longest coverage from my feet on up. It seemed, however, that our large blankets were sparser than before. Then it hit me one day that I had not seen our "Wolf" blanket for a quite some time. No wonder it has been hard to stay warm--our warmest blanket was missing. Now, this blanket has been a favorite of mine for a while--my mom purchased it for me when I moved to college. It was my bed cover at college and through my two-year mission in Florida. It travelled with Angie and I through our eleven moves in the past ten years. It has been especially useful during the winters in Virginia to keep me warm while watching TV in our cold basement. Over the following weeks I searched all around the house to find the missing blanket. I asked Angie and the kids several times if they had seen it. I could not imagine where the missing blanket had gone. I sort of started wondering if someone in Angie's family had packed it up and taken it with them. "No," I thought, "they wouldn't have done that--the blanket is just too big for them to have gathered it up without noticing." I really missed the blanket. Yes, part of it was due to the sentimental value and the memories. Thinking about it also reminded me of the missing sheets and how we were never able to find them. However, I think I missed it most because none of our other blankets could keep me as warm as that one. We have had some very cold days lately and I have had to pile on multiple blankets to achieve the same warmth and coverage it provides. One day this week I came home to find a large gift bag sitting on our bed with my name on it. Angie went out of character and fancied it up with color-coordinated tissue paper and had attached a large card to it. My birthday had already come and gone, so it couldn't be a birthday present. When I asked Angie what it was, and she just smiled and said, "A present for you." I pulled out the tissue paper to discover the long-lost wolf blanket folded up nicely inside. Angie had found the missing blanket in Jacob's room. It had fallen behind the Futon and landed on a bar that runs across the back about a foot above the floor. We had previously looked under the Futon, but not behind it.

We are very pleased to have solved the mystery of the disappearing wolf blanket. However, the mystery of the missing sheets still remains unresolved. In the back of our minds, we still wonder if my little brother has been hiding them since his visit to our house in 2004 because he has an affinity for purple flowers. So, if you happen to visit him, go check out his bed for me and let me know if you find a set of white sheets with purple flowers.

I Can and I Can't

I can do all sorts of things. I can change a tire on the side of the road. I can replace an alternator even when it requires rolling the engine. I can change the brakes and the calipers too. I can put the car up on ramps and change my own oil. I can check all the fluids under the hood. I can check the fuses and change a headlight then fine tune it to point the right way. I can jump start my date's car in my prom dress because he doesn't have a clue what to do with those long cable things. I can put in a new battery. I can and have done all sorts of things for the trucks we've had over the years. I cannot, however, no matter how hard I try to slam it just right and how many times I open it up again and slam it again and again and AGAIN...I cannot close the hood of those same dang cars and trucks. I'm just retarded like that I guess. So, honey, tonight I put oil and antifreeze in the Honda. Checked all the fluids. We're good to go, but before you drive to work...you might wanna latch that baby down like it's supposed to be. I stopped slamming the hood down after four tries for fear of waking baby Abby peacefully sleeping 20 feet away in her bedroom. What's the point? I can't do it anyway. Love ya! Acutally, this reminds me of the time when...no...I wasn't going to mention the time you got knocked out while tightening a lug nut and have tatoo makeup to prove it. I could tell that story, you know I love to, but not today. We'll save that one for another ay. Today I was actually thinking of the other time when we worked on the big blue boat of a car together at my parents while we were in college. Ahhh. The beautiful Pontiac Grand Prix. Who knows what we were doing, but Dad has all the tools, so we went there. Remember how you couldn't quite get the hood to close right after we were done working. But we were tired and just didn't care that much anymore. Remember how it latched (you must have done it since I don't have that skill)? It was closed tightly, but a tiny bit cockeyed. Weird. You did it a few more times but it still sat a teensy bit off. We just cleaned up and went in. Three weeks later my dad called to see where we had put one of his tools. I'm thinking a crowbar/cheater bar of some sort but can't recall exactly. We claimed to have cleaned up everything and I put it all away since I knew where it all went after 20 years of living there. I insisted it was in the drawer. He insisted it wasn't. I insisted he was wrong. He insisted we check our tools and our trunk. We did and I triumphantly reported that we did not have his silly tool. Finally he told me to check under the hood to see if it had fallen somewhere and stuck there. I checked. Nothing. Just like I suspected. But wait...remember how the hood was just a teensy bit cocked? Yeah. That darn tool was right there. Safe and sound for three weeks by the cockeyed hood, lodged just so against the front grill but out enough to prevent the passenger side of the hood from going down flush like it should.

Late Nights with Dad

I love watching the local nightly news. I feel like I have to watch it every night before I can go to sleep. It's mostly because I have this weird need, a real true need to watch the weather. I have always watched the weather, even as a kid. My dad would watch too. I remember he would lay on the couch in gray sweats and dark socks (leftover from his work clothes). He would watch a 9 o'clock show and relax as he unwound most nights. I would watch with him. Then the 10 o'clock news would begin and he would watch some more. Dad had the couch, I laid on the floor in front of the TV. As the evening wore on and he got more tired I'm sure that his body got heavier and heavier. I know that feeling now as an adult. It is so hard to get up and go to bed. So dad would lay and watch or snooze. And I would stay. I learned over time that if I moved he would send me to bed. I may never know if it is because it drew his attention to me making him notice I was still there or if it was because he figured I was asleep so he'd let me sleep until he went to bed and then tackle the issue. All I know was that if I moved I had to go to bed. If I was still I could stay. I would lay lifeless on the ground. I would do everything humanly possible to not shift or wiggle. Not one inch. If I had an itch coming on I would fight the need to scratch it. Close your eyes. Imagine it away. Pretend you don't feel it. It isn't there. You can take it. Be strong. If you move, you will have to go to bed. All thoughts running through my head. If I had to give in I would fake a groggy stretchy wiggle allowing myself to appear asleep and tired while I shifted my body to scratch the itch. All the while hoping and praying I wouldn't arouse my dad's attention that would surely banish me to my bed. These are the years I fell in love with Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show. I remember the colorful curtain behind him as he did his nightly monologue. I know I didn't always get all his jokes. I wasn't up on current events, politics or the Hollywood scene when I was ten years old. I remember sometimes thinking the monologue was dumb because this day or that day I just didn't get the jokes or know who in the heck he was talking about and making fun of. The longer I listened, the more I loved it. Eventually Jay Leno replaced Johnny Carson. I was about thirteen at the time and I didn't care for the change. For a while I didn't mind going to bed earlier. He wasn't worth staying up to see and all the associated strategery involved to stay still on the living room floor in front of my dad. Over time I fell in love with Leno. Again I would lay on the floor through the 10 o'clock news hoping and praying I could stay still as a statue so I could remain on the floor watching Leno at 10:35pm. Now we live on the East Coast outside of Washington DC in Virginia. Primetime TV starts at 8 o'clock instead of 7 o'clock like in the Mountain Time Zone. That pushes the news to 11 o'clock and Leno to 11:35pm. It's late and I'm tired by the time Leno starts, but I still find myself staying up and watching. I was sad to see him retire. Though I told myself this would be the perfect time for me to break my late night habit begun over twenty years ago on the living room floor of my childhood home with my dad. For a while I didn't care for Leno's replacement, Connan O'Brien. Actually, I don't know that I'll every really like him but my channel flipping during his show has revealed another option. Jimmy Kimmel. Oh how I love Jimmy Kimmel. He is so fun. He seems to use cleaner, more light hearted comedy than O'Brien or Letterman. He's better. He's funnier. He has Guillermo and Uncle Frank. Gotta love Guillermo and Uncle Frank. Problem is Leno/O'Brien/Letterman were at 11:35pm. Kimmel starts at 12:05am. I may never break this late night habit but it is nastalgic for me. Though today instead of trying to stay painfully still and silent on the living room floor so I'm not sent to bed, I have a TV in my bedroom with a sleep timer. Instead I try to stay very still and not flip flop too much so I don't disturb my sleepy sweetheart Brian.

Cleaning Up for Company

I'm having company for the rest of the week. My sister and her three little people are coming in about twelve hours. I was up late, late, late cleaning off the counter top in preparation of her visit and for making bushels and bushels of applesauce this week together. Anyway, so I was cleaning the kitchen up. You see, she's the clean one in the family. I'm the clutter bug. Maybe the best example is from the days when we shared a room as kids. She actually put tape down the floor of our bedroom to divide the room in two so she could have some "clean space" without my stuff "messing it all up." Too bad her side of the room was the side without the door. That meant she would have to cross into my side, the dirty side, to leave the room. A fight ensued...mom came in...tape was removed. I also remember a blue dresser we shared for a while. It had two doors on the bottom that swung open. To latch it closed you had to have both sides close together. My stuff was always falling out and making it so she couldn't close her side. Made her nuts. Know what else made her nuts? Oh, gosh, I'm all giggly just thinking about it! She would make her bed every morning. It was perfect. Sheets and bedspread tucked and smoothed to perfection. I would get my sheets up in the general direction of the pillow area and throw the bedspread over the top. Good enough for me. Here's the good part. When she was gone, I'd go over to her side and press my finger ever so gently into the middle of her bed to cause just the slightest of wrinkles in her bedspread. It would make her go bazerk! My poor mother. We did NOT get along. Don't worry. We're great friends now, but it wasn't pretty for a long, long, long time. Like from her birth until she was about 16. Of course, most of the time, she started it. Not me. I was just standing there doing nothing. So I cleaned and organized and put away all sorts of stuff. Piles shrunk by measurable quantities. Many items were returned to their rightful places. The recycling bin received generous donations, as did the trash when I finally gave up on the ginormous stack of broken toys of dollar store quality that just happened to fall in. Then the kids woke up this morning. Time's up. I did a little more this morning to dejunk the place, but didn't get far with Jacob and Maddie. Kristie will never notice, but I made a huge dent in the messes strewn all throughout our house. I worked hard. So I felt tired tonight after last night and then picking apples solo with three kids for three hours and the long drive to the orchard and back out in the lovely countryside of Virginia. Instead of scrubbing the toilets tonight after the kids went to bed I caught up on all ya'lls blogs. Yep I did. Read everyone. If you wrote in the last five days I read it. And that's alot of reading, folks. A lot. Then I talked to the hubby for an hour updating him on the exciting news of the day and the small glimmer of hope that Maddie might be coming around to potty training. Now I've sufficiently rested myself from the labors of the day so I'm ready for bed. Maybe I can scrub a toilet or two during my sanity window tomorrow morning while Ben is at kindergarten, Maddie is at preschool and Jacob naps. Cross your fingers and say your prayers that he naps at the appropriate time tomorrow. If not, my awesome tidy sister might see a dirty bathroom. Gasp!! It wouldn't be the first time I was caught. I hate cleaning so much that I always wait until the last possible second to do it. I remember one time in particular. Talk about last minute. Brian's parents were coming to visit us at college. Life was busy, blah, blah, blah, whine, whine, whine. I found every excuse in the book not to clean the bathroom until I actually heard a knock at the front door. I jumped to attention, ran into the bathroom, shut the door and cleaned that dumb bathroom while Brian greeted them. Tell me it isn't obvious when your guests come into your tinsy apartment and can hear you working and can smell the obvious scent of cleanser, etc. I knew I was caught. And I knew it wasn't the first time either. Embarrassing. Oh well. Like they didn't know I was a weiny before that dumb day anyway. Too late. Brian already said "I do" years earlier, sealing the fate of another totally innocent family. They're stuck with me. For better or for worse. In sickness and in health. With clean or dirty toilets. Oh heck, I could have cleaned all four toilets and Maddie's potty chairs while I wrote this. Sorry, K.

Brain Dead Moments

I wrote this down for Catherine's Brain Dead Moments on her site and decided since it was written, I ought to post it here too. We lived in an apartment that overlooked the interstate and a bridge that lead to the school bus parking lot in Fairfax. Ben was about 18 months and would go absolutely CRAZY everytime he saw a bus. We'd make a huge deal in the car as we drove around and saw one, yelling, pointing and screaming "BUS!! BUS!!" One day I dropped him at a Gretel Patches house for a little me time. I saw a bus on my errands and went wild, crazy over the school bus. When I didn't hear a thing from the back seat I tried to engage him while I dutifully watched the road in front of me. Tempting him with, "Ben...what do you see? Beeeennnnn...I see a big bus. What color is it?" Etc, etc, etc, on and on. When he still didn't respond, I glanced back to see if he had dozed off only to see the carseat was empty and I started freaking out not knowing where he was and pulled over to think. When it hit me that he was playing with his little friend, I felt like an idiot.

Kid Free House to Kid Proof Zone

I'm pretty sure from chatting with old timers in the neighborhood that no children have ever lived in our home. Never. Do you find that as weird as I do? The house is thirty plus years old. You'd think it would have been graced by at least one year of baby spit up, toddler toys or homework at the kitchen table. Anyway, it was a kid free home until the Zufelt Zoo moved in. This means it was set up as a kid free home, not a kid friendly one. The three stories are connected with open air stairs. You know the kind where the carpet is wrapped around a slab of wood and you can drop stuff straight through them down two stories if you aren't careful. This took countless hours to remedy when Maddie was learning to climb stairs. Brian cut a zillion pieces of custom boards to fill in each and every hole, including the triangular one open to the front door area. Before we did it, we almost lost one of the Packard kids. Luckily for us and them, we caught saw him as he was slipping his skinny little body into the hole to hang his body down one story. His big noggin just wouldn't fit through the hole, much to his chagrin. I think he totally would have jumped if he'd have gotten through (he was three years old at the time).

The stair rails are so old that my kids can go right between the vertical metal poles. I know they are 5th percentile kids, but you'd think with 90th percentile heads Ben and Maddie would be to big to fit. I can tell you why they changed the building code on stair rails. I once walked down the stairs to find Ben at 2 1/2 yrs had climbed through the rail to the open side and walked across the rail and was suspended half a story up and darn happy about his "accomplishment" while I shrieked in terror not to let go. We have wire tied baby gates and super tall dog gates to the rails and cut custom boards to fill all the holes so we don't have anyone go overboard. I can only imagine the tragedy and ambulance ride that would result. Attaching standard baby gates to the metal rails was also a feat. In the absence of a router, we borrowed a table saw and Brian ran the boards back and forth and back and forth and back and forth a million times to create a "U" shaped wood piece that could wrap around the pole and was then wire tied around the rails. Then we could drill into the wood and mount our gates. The breakfast nook has carpet under it. Nasty, nasty carpet. I'm sure it wasn't nasty before we moved in. Really. Single adult type people have always owned the house. I really believe it wasn't nasty before I moved in with my little people. But after three and a half years of spilling on that carpet under my kitchen table, I don't even want to try to clean it. It's a lost cause, really it is. Who puts carpet under a kitchen table? Someone without kids. No one else is that dumb. One thing Brian and I always knew was that our house would have to have a circle for the kids to run around. You know so you can run through the kitchen to the hall to the dining room to the living room and back to the kitchen while mom is making dinner and drive her nuts. The circle is essential to a healthy childhood. It's where we as kids went round and round and round doing all sorts of things. We played chasing games, drug our siblings on blankets trying not to whack their heads on the wall corners, rode toy horses and most importantly chased each other in wild, ferocious anger threatening to beat each other to a bloody pulp when we were fighting. All the corners of our circle have paint chips.

My Basement:

Yeah. Our house looks like kids live here now. That pristine beauty is long gone. I think back to the pictures I took of our house when we were house shopping and how amazing it was. An office and a guest room upstairs instead of two kids in one and a crib in the other room? Huge, mondo, big flat panel tv in the basement instead of all our junk and tons of toys. Another generous sized flat panel tv on the main floor with a wet bar and gorgeous furniture instead of carpet stained with carrot spit up and mud from the backyard adventures. Oh the damage we've done in the name of our children. Makes me wonder, would we have ever bought this house if it had looked then like it does now??? Hmmmm.....

The Basement Before Zufelts:

Thinking of You, Anthony

Hey Antonio, remember when you and Krisite shared a house with Brian and Ben and I for a year? Yeah. Those were good times. Remember when we got a movie one night and popped popcorn and ate and watched in the living room? Remember how when the bowl was basically empty, I picked through the remains and ate all the tiny buttery popcorn crumbs since no one else was going to eat anymore? Remember a while later how you aparently did the same thing? Remember how you wanted to vomit when you found out that I had eaten the popcorn and spit the unpopped kernels back into the bowl and how I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants when you realized that you ate those same kernels? I still say, "WHO EATS THE UNPOPPED KERNELS? What the heck?!?!" Yeah. Good times. You'll be happy to know that Maddie spit her unpopped kernels back into the bowl today and I unknowingly scooped up and ate at least three of those slobbery kernels. Yummy. Just thought you'd wanna know that five years later, someone got even with me on your behalf. I didn't eat them all though. Just let me know if you want me to mail them to you.

I Love Texas Too

After my posting the other day on how cool Utah and Virginia are, my good friend Laura asked what I miss about Texas. I think she was feeling neglected. =) We loved Texas, I just missed the snow. So, here it goes. Things I love about my time in Texas:

• having a garage
• my mailbox was on my front door so I could get my mail in my underwear, plus I heard the lid slam shut so I knew the instant it arrived (I'm obsessed with getting the mail. I love, Love, LOVE it! Even if it's just a bunch of bills.)
• lane dividers were raised. Don't know why this struck me as so extremely cool, but I really loved it. They didn't get snow, so the snowplows wouldn't ruin them. When you change lanes it makes a weird noise. Weird, I know.
• flip flops year round
• shopping for groceries at H.E.B. When my credit card statement came each month it said I shopped at H.E.Butts. Made me smile every single time I saw it. I shopped at Mr. Butts store. See, I'm smirking again.
• watching the sunrise over the ocean
• seeing the dolphins jump all around when we rode the Bolivar ferry
• getting steak at Gus's in Texas City. I've never been cool enough to ask for something that wasn't on the menu. It felt so exclusive to be "in the know."
• seeing flare stacks, cokers and towers. Recognizing parts and knowing which ones I had climbed inside as I drove past on the freeway.
• climbing the dericks on the coker tower about 250 ft up a tiny little ladder and looking out at Galveston Bay
• playing at the beach at Galveston. Okay, so it's not crystal clear water, but it was SO accessable. We would throw the BBQ grill in the truck and run down to the beach and play, swim and laugh with all our friends while the kids entertained themselves for hours. Endless, innocent, free fun any day of the week if you wanted it.
• parking spaces were big enough for our truck. Not so in Virginia. They go for compact cars and minivans here. I'm still holding out on the minivan. Not going there yet. I'm a loyal truck gal.
• accents. I'm a sucker for a Southern accent and a bit of a sponge. I soak up accents and begin to use them whereever we live without ever noticing or meaning too.
• the Birth Certificate. Ben is our Texas baby and has the birth certificate to prove it. Everything is bigger in Texas including that. It is the size of a college diploma and has the proud Texas flag waving in the wind across it in full color. I got such a kick out of it, it is still framed on his wall in his room. For comparison sake, Maddie and Jacob were born in Virginia. Their birth certificates came like your bank pin # does. Rip off the perferated edges to open the "envelope" if you can even call it that. Then it has tearable perferations right through the middle of the thing. Lame-O.
• walking to church. Our house was one tiny neighborhood block away from our church building.
• being immersed in spanish speaking culture. Here we eventually dropped the Spanish with Ben because no one else but us spoke it, so he refused to speak it.
• blue bonnets in the spring. Seriously cute pictures to be had all along the freeways for miles and miles. Even a beginner could produce a stellar photo shoot with their kids and a cheap camera it was just that gorgeous.
• an attic to store my junk (Christmas, tools, kids clothes, etc.)
• slower pace of life
• country music has always been my first choice. I fit in better in Texas.
• Rodeo Houston. Fun. Fun. Fun.
• living across the back fence of NASA in our apartment and then a stones throw away when we bought our house. I drove past space ships in the Rocket Garden every single day on the way to work.
• Kemah boardwalk and the fountain in the ground. Good fun for little people and a great way to cool off an adult in the hot and humid summers too.
• cheaper houses/mortgage. Of course, I would never have appreciated it if we hadn't moved to the DC area and seen smaller, older places selling for more than triple the cost. It's all relative to your perspective.
• kids called us Mr. Brian and Miss Angie. LOVED that!!!
• my lamaze class playgroup friends
• church friends
• all our spanish speaking friends
• work friends from BP and ExxonMobil
• Buck Booth saying "Hello" in his own...ummm...well...very special way
• finally, the number one thing we (Brian and I) both agree that we miss the very most about Texas is the PEOPLE. We've never been anywhere in all 13 of our moves that the people as a general rule were more kind, friendly, helpful and down to earth. I love the southern charm and hospitality. The people are so warm.

So there you have it Laura. I guess we should move back. Some of our best friends just got orders this week they are transfering back to Houston. Maybe this will help Candy and Buck be more excited about the move. Gosh, now I want to move back.

Utah Perks

I arrived home last night and have been noticing things I love about here that we just don't have in Virginia. 65 mph speed limits!! No more 55. It's just sooooo slow.

Family. My family is here and it's nice to be with them. Familiar roads. Roads I've driven my entire life. Stores that are the old faithfuls. Billboards. The Utah freeways are littered with gaudy billboards shouting messages at you. Virginia has zero billboards. It makes the drives more relaxing if that makes sense. No trees. It is a desert afterall. You can see for miles and miles and miles here. In Virginia, you can see about as far as the next curve in the road for all the trees. And finally, a memory surfaced as I drove to the hospital to visit the new Arveseth twins last night just after sunset. I was headed from West Valley to Murray and realized how absolutely amazing and beautiful the mountains are. I love the familiar snow capped peaks and valleys I grew up with. In Virginia I live in a dungeon. At least that's what I call it. A beautiful dungeon with lush, tall, green foliage and trees, but I'm at the bottom of a big hill with huge trees that make the TV signal weak and cell phone reception sometimes disappear in my home. Growing up on the "West Side" of the Salt Lake Valley in Kearns I had this image, whether it was true or false, I always thought of the East Side as the rich part of town where you lived if you had tons of money, nice houses and fancy cars. The reverse stereo type also existed regarding West Siders. We were the poor people. For six years during junior high and high school I was bussed across the valley every day. I got to watch the sun rise over the beautiful Wasatch mountains, then drive to school and watch it rise again. It was sort of novel and cool to watch the sunrise twice each day. I also enjoyed just looking at the mountains on our daily drive. They are gorgeous. My favorite time is in the spring when the mountainside is green with snow capped peaks. On my drive yesterday I reflected how silly it was for me to always wish I was an East Sider. I would have missed the amazing expansive view of the mountains. I love the view from my childhood home. It was perfect. So, once again, like we did on occasion in junior high school, I'm holding up three fingers in the shape of a "W" and saying "WEST SIDE PRIDE" baby!