My quirks

Okay Shellee, I saw your quirks on your blog and you "tagged" me, not sure what that means, but I'll just post some of mine here. Maybe I can come up with six.

1. I also get irritated with people who use the English language ignorantly. My biggest pet peeves are "Nucular"--President Bush still hasn't figured out the proper way to pronounce "nuclear" as in nuclear war; and "I could care less" about something. The phrase should be "I couldn't care less" implying that I have reached the limit of how little I could possible care about it. "Irregardless" is another one.

2. When I find a book I enjoy, I like to read as many books by the same author as I can get my hands on. That's why I've read 30-something Anita Stansfield books even though some of her quirks are getting really irritating to me.

3. I love hot bubble baths, even when it's hot in the summer.

4. Lately, I love Webkinz--thanks to my kids. I think they are so cute, and the games online are really fun. Whenever I find a really good sale price on them, I stock up (hey, if I can get one for $8-$10 rather than $15, how could I pass that up?!!) I then let the kids buy them back from me (at the sale price, of course) as they earn and save up their allowance. I even have an account I share with Brooke, since she's too young to play with her pets on the computer.

5. I love organization, but I'm really bad at staying organized day to day. Junk piles appear and multiply like magic at my house. I really feel like I'd be happier in an orderly house where I could find everything when I want to. I guess the chaos has something to do with the five other people I share my space with, but I can't put all the blame on them.

6. I have to sleep with my bedspread "right side up", meaning, the stripes running the length of the bed, not across, and the right edge up by my face rather than the curved decorative edges that go at the foot of the bed. Jon "couldn't care less" which way it goes, so I often have to fix the covers before going to sleep.

So there you have it. I probably have some more, but that's all I can think of right now. Kezhia, would you care to share your quirks?

Summertime

The things kids come up with to entertain themselves during summer vacation! Emily found a stash of binkies somewhere. (Brooke hasn't given them a second thought since she was about six months old.) Suddenly, all four kids are crawling around, acting like little babies! Cute at first, but it got old after about 10 minutes.

Okay, so I haven't posted anything here on the blog because I've been very busy. It's a lot of work to plan, pack for, and actually go on a vacation. We flew to Cleveland, then drove a rental car up around Lake Erie into Ontario. We had fun at a local zoo, Marineland (a small version of sea world), Niagara Falls, and a family reunion on the farm where Jon's ancestors lived. The kids loved fishing in the pond (Kelsey caught a catfish and the hook went through its eye-gross!--they had to cut the line and leave the hook in. It's either dead or swimming around with a hook in its eye) and gathering eggs from the chickens (we called them rent-a-chickens since they were just borrowed for the time we were there!) We drove back down to Cleveland and briefly visited Kirtland before flying home Tuesday afternoon. A funny coincidence: While touring the Kirtland Temple, I kept trying to figure out where I knew this girl from. She looked so familiar. She came up to me after the tour and said she was wondering the same thing about me. We figured out that we lived in the same dorm building during my sophomore year at BYU. Jon was also in our ward that year, and she recognized him too. Funny how you can be so far from home and happen to run into someone you knew 14 years ago.

I can't figure out how to add a picture, then text to go along with it, then a different picture and text to go with that underneath. So my pictures are all kind of bunched up at the top. Any hints Shellee?