Summer Fun

Summer is coming. While I am excited about the nice warm weather, the fun holidays, and baseball, I am not excited for this: "Mom, I am bored. There's nothing to do." I am also not excited for my kids to watch 15 hours of TV a day, or torment their siblings 6 hours a day, or play video games 'til they develop blisters. So, in the interest of my own sanity, I have decided to have take a proactive approach to the summer. A friend of mine who lives is North Salt Lake plans a weekly field trip-type activity for her kids each summer. The idea was so popular with her ward members, that she prints out a schedule and distributes it. I thought I would be a copy cat and do something similar. Now, keeping in mind this is my first year attempting this, and it might not be all that exciting or cool, I am inviting any who want to join us to....well....join us. My kids are on D track and they don't go back to school until the end of August, so the schedule goes through then. I have planned two activities most weeks, but we will see if that works or is too many. Most activities are free or really inexpensive and we can try and get a group discount for the cost ones if enough people want to come. So, if you would like a schedule of the plans so far, email me at rjskinner@msn.com and I will email one to you. Come to one or all. All ages are welcome.

Another Tagging Adventure

I am not a very big fan of tags, because it forces me to face the fact that I am not very interesting. I always feared that my life is boring and predictable, but now I know it for sure. But since Marinda is a pretty nice person and I am hoping to make a good impression on her, I will do this one.

How To Play This Game of Tag: Post these rules on your blog. List: 3 joys, 3 fears, 3 goals, 3 current obsessions/collections, 3 random surprising facts about yourself. Tag 5 people at the
end of your post by leaving their names. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog!

3 Joys:
-Watching my kids grow into intelligent, kind, righteous people
-Reading a good book
-Spending time with the people I love: Rollin, my sisters, my kids, my family

3 Fears
-Death
-The Dentist
-Embarrassing myself

3 Goals
-Someday sit in the temple with all 4 of my kids
-Serve a mission with Rollin
-Move to Oregon

3 Current Obsessions/Collections
-I also am a picker: zits, my kid's scalps, hair off strangers' sweaters, the mascara off my eyelashes, whatever.
-Pillows. I am obsessed with finding the perfect pillow. Someday I know I will. Hopefully when I do it doesnt cost $500.

-Reality Cooking shows. I love them. Top Chef, Hell's Kitchen, Iron Chef, and a great BBC show called Last Restaurant Standing

3 Surprising Things about me
-I am a big baseball fan. I have followed the St. Louis Cardinals since I was 14
-I am fairly uncoordinated. I break things, poke people in the eyes, and run into things all the time.
-I do not like shopping. I find it frustrating, depressing, and a big blow to my ego. Once I find a store or brand I like, I just buy that without having to try anything on.

Now for those 5 people to tag, hopefully they are hoping to make a good impression on me and will answer.
Tamra A
Patty N.
Katherine Angelle
Marcy J
Lyndee G

My Lament

My cooking puts people to sleep.

I try. I really do. I want the consumers of my food to be excited and pleased when they eat. What am I doing wrong?

I dream that Tom Colicchio asks me to cook him my speciality and when he eats it he tells me it is improperly seasoned and the flavor combinations are bad.

I dream that I cook a meal for Gordon Ramsey and he spits his first bite out and asks me if I am trying to kill him.

Someday, when I get a chance to redo life, I will choose cooking school over business school because the joy on someone's face when they eat something amazing that you have cooked can't be replaced by anything in the business world.

At least that's how I imagine it feels.

Another Good Deal

A friend told me about a great movie deal and I thought I would pass it along. The Carmike theater on 9000 S. and Redwood Rd. is a fairly basic theater, no stadium seating, no lounge chair type seats, but they have good prices. First-run movies, kids $4 all the time, adult matinee $4, adult evening $5.50. But here's the kicker: on Tuesday nights, they have an awesome deal on popcorn. They will fill any container you bring in for $.50 (fifty cents.) Bring in your giant metal bowl, your 5 gallon ice cream bucket, anything you want and it is still only $.50. If your kids are like my kids, the #1 reason we go to the movies is so they can stuff their faces with as much popcorn as quickly as is humanly possible, so this is a great opportunity for a fun family outing. The one downside is that I hear their drinks are a little on the expensive side, so tell your kids to drink a lot before you go. Hope to see you all next Tuesday!

Tossing our pringles

Warning: This post may not be appropriate for those readers with delicate sensibilities or wimpy stomachs.

This weekend we took the opportunity to get out of town for a few days. We went up to Idaho to visit Rollin's parents. The kids love spending time with Grandma and Grandpa, especially since they get to spend the night with them and Grandma lets them stay up late, eating junk and watching movies. We all had a very nice time. Well, it was nice except for the ride home. We started our 3 hour journey home at 4:30 and didn't arrive until 9:00. Why, you ask, did it take us so long? One word: puke. We had to stop two separate times to clean out the car and the kid who ralphed all over both. I alternately cursed Rollin's extreme motion sickness gene, all the crap we had fed the kids on the ride, and our car which does not have a very smooth ride.
I feel that over the last 12 years of motherhood, I have in most part become immune to the gag reflex which usually occurs when one comes in the vicinity of a puker. I can hold back a child's hair while she vomits into the toilet with nary a problem, but I must admit I almost lost it the second time I was wiping up puke in the space of an hour.

When we arrived home last night, I had to immediately walk to the laundry room with a bag filled with soiled clothing, blankets, and pillows and start a load. I didn't even get the usual luxury of waiting 3-4 days to unload the luggage and do the associated laundry. Today I jumped in the car to go grocery shopping and my senses were assailed with the lovely reminder of our adventure. All the places we hadn't realized had been "hit" when we were cleaning last night in the dark, took advantage of the last 12 hours to really put out some odors. I spent some extra time this afternoon shampooing, wiping, and airing out the car. I am just hoping and praying that it did some good because I don't think I can stand much more.

I think I can safely say that this will be our last car journey for a while. (At least until the car starts smelling normal again.)

Genealogy, I am doing it

Yesterday, Jackson came into the kitchen and said "Mom, what is harpies? I just saw a commercial for harpies medication and I wondered what it is." Oh, you mean herpes. Oh dear. That is a conversation I am not quite ready to get into with him. I know he is 12 and the time is fast approaching (probably long past) but how do you explain STD's to your kids? We reassured him that it is a disease he does not need to worry about getting right now and sent him on his way. Waaahhh. I want him to go back to being 5.

On a lighter side, I have been reading the Joseph Smith biography, "Rough Stone Rolling." It has been very fascinating to learn a little more about Joseph and the times he lived. During my reading one night I discovered that the town where he spent a large amount of his childhood, and where he had his first vision, Palmyra, is just 12 miles from where I knew some of Rollin's ancestors lived. It got me interested to see if they were living there at the time of Joseph Smith's vision and receiving the gold plates, so I dug into the genealogy I have gathered.

Rollin is 1st generation church member, so there has not been a lot of work done on his family line. That was exciting to me when we first got married, because my family work has been done by so many people going back to the time of the pilgrims, and I thought I wouldn't have much of a chance to ever do genealogy work. In the past as I have worked on Rollin's genealogy, I haven't gotten very far, not much past his great-grandparents, but this time I had so much success! It was so cool to all of the sudden find these people. This is an actual copy of the 1900 census which lists Rollin's great-grandpa who I could not find for the life of me for 10 years and then all the sudden, here he is!



There are some interesting facts in Rollin's family's past, and I wish I could sit and talk to these people and hear their stories. That is what is so exciting about genealogy work. I have a chance to just imagine the people and what made them make the choices they did, or how they responded to the life changing events they were faced with. For example, Rollin's great-great-grandpa died while when he fell off the roof of a construction project he was working on. He was 24 and left behind his wife and 4 children. Rollin's great-great-grandma had to send three of her children to live with relatives because she had no way to provide for them. How tragic is that? I would love to hear her story.

Anyway, I am still working on getting back to the 1820's and 1830's in upstate New York with Rollin's line. I am pretty close thanks to some recent developments. Once I find out if they were actually living there, I would love to see if they were in some way involved with or at least knew about the Smiths. Knowing some of Rollin's relatives like I do, it wouldn't surprise me to find out his great-great-great grandpa carried a bucket of tar or a bag of feathers to crazy Joe Smith's farm one night. Cool, huh?