Home

Just landed and already noticing the most silly details about "home" that make me smile.

Trucks
More trucks
Speeding tickets
Space - I can see for miles and miles
Snow capped mountains
Legacy Highway - don't even know where it goes so we will stick to I-15
Diesel truck for FedEx with three trailers attached
Sign "Bridge Ices Before the Road"
Church steeples popping up through the trees in every neighborhood
Five lane highway with minimal mid-afternoon traffic
Michael's craft store
Costco
Lowe's and Home Depot
RVs for sale
Big SUVs
Dairy Queen - blizzards
Joann fabric
A dollar store!!
Brian pulled onto the wrong side of the road and my stomach knotted up until I realized he was on the right side after all
Very clean windshield - wipers are where the turn signal should be
Dry air
Old cars - I'm pretty sure a car older than five years in Singapore is sold off to Thailand

I Found Kathi

Jake saw the tabernacle choir and said he found Kathi. Then he found her again and again and again. "I found LOTS of Kathi's!!"

Graffiti at Church

While we were inside at church services we got graffiti-ed. I thought it was hilarious! No idea who did it but we saw one on the Coombs van as they drove out of the parking lot too so we aren't alone.

Quotes of the Day

Kids are learning the alphabet game in the car. Maddie says, "You have to find G in English not Chinese okay guys?"

Also of note:
"I'm just going to look at the clouds to find a letter shape there."
And
"Does it count if the tree is in the shape of an L?"

Restaurant Dining at its Finest

I was invited to but my lunch at McDonalds today from this helpful staff. Jacob wore an apron made of his woobie and a Mickey Mouse chef hat. Maddie and Ben specialized in fancy dishes like spaghetti (rubber bands in medicine dosing cups I got at my hospital stay), noodles (more rubber bands in cups) and chinese dumplings (bean bags). It was delicious!

My Mask

This is the mask my kids made me today. Maddie made the paper part and Ben made a chain of elastics so I could wear it.

The Anti-Angie

That has been rattling around in my brain for about two weeks. “The Anti-Angie.” It’s how Brian described Gina one afternoon while we were talking. Now that I put it in writing, it seems like that would be a very negative thing, but it totally wasn’t. We were discussing how I’m trying to loosen up and how things are so different with her here. She does laundry and finishes every single batch. She starts dinner before lunch by getting out the proper meat to thaw. After lunch she chops vegetables that she will need. Midafternoon you will find Gina assembling the meal so it’s ready to pop in the oven. She’s amazing. She, as Brian puts it, is the anti-Angie.

 

When she started I told her that I don’t love cooking so I cook a double batch or enough of anything I make to do two dinners and plan it as a leftover meal. It was fine with me for her to continue that way and just warm a meal every other day. I have come to the conclusion that she is paid to cook here so she wants to do a great job. She cooks something every single night. I figured on the weekend she had Saturday and Sunday nights off so I would end up cooking what I wanted. Nope. Since she cooks so many amazing meals in the week, we spend our weekends eating her leftover meals. It’s fantastic, delicious and mentally confusing to me. You can’t teach an old dogs new tricks when it comes to meal planning.

 

And left overs…that was a source of contention when we were newlyweds. Brian ate leftovers for lunch. In the Robinson home that was a major sin. If there was enough of something for another meal then by golly it better be used for a meal. If there wasn’t enough to feed the family then it would be used as a pick your own dinner buffet night. We did NOT eat leftovers for lunch. Never. EVER. Now he is laughing inside and telling me to please eat leftovers for lunch. I remember about once a week. Otherwise I have a standard old everyday variety sandwich I’ve had every lunchtime since birth.

 

The Anti-Angie is pretty great. I wonder how much of her style I will be able to adopt while we’re together. I’m learning lots from her. I figure anything I can learn to do like Gina can only make me better at this housewife thing. I do have to say though, we went to dinner and a movie last Friday night and left her with all four kids at dinner time with the bedtime routine after their bedrooms had been fumigated so she had to set up new sleeping bag beds in the playroom and settle them down from the excitement while she bottle fed Ashlyn. You know, regular life in a family. It was the first time since she arrived on February 1^st that I saw dishes still in the sink at 9:30pm when we returned home. It made me feel just a little bit better that she might not really be superwoman like I thought. Four kids must have kept her pretty busy. I know they keep me on my toes!