Yo ho me hearties

Here is the progress so far of our pirate wall mural. I think this was the easy part. And boy was it ever easy. I wiped down the boys' wall with some water and a magic eraser (those things are sooo cool) to get off all the boy dirt. Now, witness my amazing camera skills and take a gander at the wall. How boring...let's spruce it up a bit.

We (the boys and I) taped the transfer paper to the backside of the mural pattern, and then taped them both to the wall. I wanted to make the mural just a bit bigger since the boys are getting big and the wall is so bare, so I split the mural and lengthened the pole part of the picture. Easy enough. We used some left over painter's tape so we wouldnt pull off any of the wall.

Then we got to tracing. Look how intensely the boys were concentrating. It really took no time at all, about 15 minutes from start to finish. Now our pirate skeleton head is just waiting for our painting skills to give him a bit of color.

So Saturday will be the next session. See the numbers on the picture? That is so color and design challenged folks like me can't mess it up too badly. I think the painting part might take a bit more time and skill and I am hesitant to let the kids help, even though I think they will want to. I guess it is their room, but is it mean of me to want to do it myself so I can insure that it looks good? That is assuming that I don't mess it up. But this mural seems pretty mess-up-proof. At least that's what I'm hoping.

We will keep you posted.

Oh, I also just wanted to take a minute to mention that in the past week, my email account has informed me that I have won the British lottery 12 times, the Irish lottery 9 times, and Donald Trump's personal lottery twice. My amazing luck continues!

My Scout

Well, it has been a pretty crazy week around here.

Jackson was at Scout camp this past week. It was really weird not having him around. We really missed him. This is his first week long overnight camp and I was a little worried about him wandering off into the wilderness or being eaten by a bear. He came home safely though. If fun is to be measured by the amount of dirt accumulated on a person's body, I would say he had the time of his life. I don't think I have ever seen a dirtier person walk through my door. He came home with a whole mess of bug bites, a very severe case of chapped lips and a little sunburn, but overall he was no worse for the wear.

My cute sister Laura, her husband Darren, and their 3 beautiful kids came to visit this week. Laura joined me at Bunco, and we had dinner with them and my parents on Sunday. We had so much fun seeing them, and because we love them so much, we passed along our family sickness to them. Poor Riley and Laura both got the pukies from us. Sorry girls.

Also this past week, I started working full time. It has been a challenge getting up early again and leaving the kids all day, but overall it has been a good experience. I am working at CR England trucking in their recruiting department. You sure get to talk to some interesting people when you are trying to hire truck drivers. I have had to study up on my southern so I can understand some of the people who call in. There are some thick accents out there!

Lastly, I received my Pirate Mural kit this week. We are all excited to tackle the project starting Saturday (when I say we, I do mean everyone except my non-crafting husband.) I was looking at the instructions and was very pleased to find out that it just requires acrylic craft paint. I was so worried that I would have to go buy ten 1 quart cans of latex paint and that would cost me a fortune. Now, I can just go down to Robert's craft and get ten $1.00 bottles of acrylic craft paint. That, I can afford. Stay tuned!

Oh and one more thing....today I stopped by Smith's and saw that they are having their great cereal sale this week. When you buy 10 Kelloggs cereals, you get them for $10. Can't beat that deal. We stocked up and got 20 boxes. I love saving money!!

A Great Opportunity

So, you all have heard lately about my thirst for swag from bloggy contests. Well, one day in my searchings for fantastic contests, I ran across one that peaked my interest. It was a contest and an assignment rolled into one, but I was up for the challenge. Here was the deal. The winner would receive a paint by number wall mural kit for free, and in return he or she had to agree to blog about the painting process. The murals were totally cute, so I entered.

And do you guys even need me to tell you if I won or not? Of course I won! So get ready in future entries to see the process as I, a pathetically unartistic woman, attempt to liven up my darling boys' room with a really great pirate wall mural.

Thanks to Wall Story for the great product and for choosing me and my blog to give it a whirl.

If you are also unartistic and would like to liven up a space in your home, check out their site.

http://www.magic-mural-factory.com/Level_1/introducing_wallstory.htm

My Sammy

This past Sunday was Sam's 10th birthday. I can't believe he is in double digits now too. He is such a good boy. I am so lucky to be his mom.

Things I love about Sam:

He gets so excited when he hears a new random fact on TV. "Mom, did you know that an ant can carry 8 billion times its own weight?"

He is the only other person in our family who has a temper like mine.

He is so quietly shy and he hides a little when attention is drawn to him. That is so cute.

He is soooo ticklish and when you really tickle him good, his laugh is so contagious.

He is an occasional daredevil and proudly bears the scars that prove it.

He doesn't like to be called Sammy, but he lets me.

He is such a prefectionist and gets so frustrated when he can't do something.

He is just so darn cute.

He is just so darn good.

I love you Sam! Happy Birthday!

We love the 80s

The other day I was driving in my car and heard "Lessons in Love" by level 42. What a great song! Anyway, it got me thinking about a movie which has the song on its soundtrack. That got me thinking about other awesome 80s movies that had amazing soundtracks. Rollin and I were talking about it later that night and decided there are a lot of great 80s movies we haven't seen in a while which we should revisit. We also thought, maybe we will write up a nice little review here on our blog so our friends can get some suggestions for great 80s movies to watch.

We are very happy subscribers to Netflix, so that night we spent like 2 hours reminiscing about movies we loved as kids and adding them to our Netflix queue. We received our first 2 yesterday and watched Karate Kid with the kids last night.
I am sure that some of you are far too young to remember Karate Kid, but I sure have some fond memories. It is such a nice little family movie with such a good message. And that message is: if you rub your hands together really fast, you can heal most minor injuries!! No, really the message we got from Karate Kid can best be summed up in the words of Mr. Miyagi "Walk right side of road, fine. Walk left side of road, fine. Walk middle of road, (squishing sound.) You have to decide, Karate yes, karate no, but not karate maybe." We are constantly trying to pound that message into our kids' heads: whatever you decide to do, you need to give it 100%. Half an effort is not good enough.


We would highly recommend Karate Kid to those who have never seen it and to those who haven't seen it in a while.


Our next movie: Tron. How cool is that? Stay tuned for the review.

If there are any 80s movies you would like The Skinner Movie Show to review, please let us know.

Also, my playlist is now totally populated with songs from movies of the 80s. Since our last music contest was so successful (congratulations Heather!!!) how about another one? Name the movies that had these songs on their soundtracks. The person who can name the most will win a totally tubular prize. You can email me your entries to the address on the right side bar, better not leave a comment or else people can steal your answers. (Extra special bonus prize if anyone knows the movie that had Lessons in Love, which started this whole mess, in it....it's a hard one.) No cheating by looking them up on the internet, act like it's still the 80s and just try to use the computer in your brain! Let Mr. Miyagi be your inspiration.

In hindsight, comments were not a good idea so I removed a couple comments with some answers, but never fear Becca and Katie, I have saved them and calculated your scores.

Update

A large box of 100% free, no strings attached, enivronmentally friendly laundry detergent arrived via UPS at my home this afternoon! Thanks Dropps Laundry Detergent for proving my hubby wrong and restoring my faith in online giveaways.

WOOOO HOOOO

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Oh yeah. Guess who just won a Prince tennis racquet and balls?

Yup, I did. And this is just how good I will look when I use it, too.


I am sitting back thinking I am one lucky son of a gun and Rollin has to burst my bubble by suggesting that perhaps my winning has nothing to do with luck, but is instead an elaborate fishing scam to gather my personal information and steal my identity. He is such a kill joy.

We'll just wait and see who's right when my stuff starts arriving at our front door! (Or when my credit score goes down the toilet.) I choose optimism.

Our Weekend

Hurray for holiday weekends! We had lots of fun. So many things to do!

Thursday night, Rollin and I went out for my birthday celebration. We saw the movie "Get Smart." I thought it was pretty funny. We went to Red Robin for dinner. It was our first time visiting that establishment and we found it to be pretty good for a burger joint.

Friday morning, our wonderful neighbors invited us to watch the West Jordan 4th of July parade with them. There were about 6 families from the ward who all sat together to view the parade. Terry brought donuts (thanks so much) Brynn brought juice and milk (and to you too) and we all just had a blast. The West Jordan parade is no Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, that's for sure, but boy do they throw out a ton of candy! The kids had a great time running into the street to collect the booty. We came home with about a pound of salt water taffy, a frisbee, and quite a few fliers. The only bad part of the morning was that Rollin and I made some poor choices on our route to take to get there, and we ended up on a road that was closed for the staging of the floats. We parked and walked a long, long way to our spot when it turns out we could have taken a different road and parked about 30 feet from our watching spot. If I had called sooner to ask, this mess could also have been avoided, as Rollin quite enjoys reminding me.

Friday night, we lit some fireworks in our front yard. We bought a bunch of fireworks last year and for reasons I don't remember we never used them. So this year there they were ready to be enjoyed! This was Mya's first year of really being awake for the fireworks and she is a big fan. She said "Oh that's beautiful", "Dad, do that again", and best of all "That's fantastic!" She is such a crack up.

On Saturday we got up and took the kids to the zoo. We rode the train and the new carousel. We saw the much anticipated albino crocodile and the amazing bird show. The crowds were very light for a Saturday and the weather was quite nice.

Lucky Old Girl

Hey you should all come over and rub my head, because I am one lucky girl this week!

I just won another contest! This one is for a year's supply of laundry detergent. Woo hoo. Now I will have hot lips AND clean clothes.

Not a bad way to end my 35th year of life.

Yeah, I turn 35 tomorrow. I think that after about year 25, I have dreaded adding another year to my age. This one hurts more than usual though. Maybe it's because this is a multiple of 5 year or something. Maybe it's thinking about all the things I am now just too old to do, like be an olympic gymnast. Maybe it's the ever increasing number of wrinkles I see every day. Maybe it's because the average age of ladies in my ward is like 19. Maybe it's because I am now on the inevitable down hill slide toward 40. Oh that hurts just to type.

I will try to accept my age with grace and style though. Let's look at the positive aspects, shall we? Are there positives? I don't look or feel 35, do I? That's something I guess. I would not want to go back and do my 20s again. They were hard. Having really young kids is harder than older kids (but probably easier than it will be in 5 years when I have 3 teenagers.) I don't embarrass myself nearly as easily now as I did when I was younger, so I guess I have gained some wisdom in my old age. That's also nice.

Ok, 35 isn't so bad. Not that being sad about it is going to keep those years from marching by anyway, so I will just accept my fate. But then again I might start lying about it and trying to pass for 29.

See? I haven't changed at all!

Bloggy Winner!

Hey, look at me! I won a contest on a blog.

http://thebeautycounter.blogspot.com/2008/06/armour-beauty-review-giveaway.html

Last Saturday, in my oh so extreme boredom, I went to some blog giveaway sites and entered about 50 blog giveaway contests. I just felt in my bones that at least one of these contests would yield some great little bit of swag for me, and I was right! Some of the contests aren't over yet, so you never know, I could win more! If you want to be a winner too, check out some of the links on the left hand side of my blog.

I feel like I'm queen of the world!!! And man are my lips going to look hot!