Wooooooo PIG SOOIE!

"WOOOOOOO....
PIG!
SOOIE!"

Saturday night we had our first Arkansas Razorback football experience. It was...interesting. The stadium was PACKED and we sat between a retired couple and some guy's armpit. The game was awesome and the Razorbacks beat the South Carolina game cocks 48-36. The game was on ESPN, so there were a LOT of time outs, which made for a VERY long time to be sitting in front of the most obnoxious southern accent we have EVER heard. (By the way, it's not "Go Hogs", in the south....it's "Go HOEGS" ...with a long "o" vowel sound, as said in HOE-down) Luckily our seats were conveniently located directly above the stadium cinnamon pecan stand (surprised? I would have thought cinnamon almonds as well, but here it's cinnamon pecans...and it's pronounced, "peCANs" here.) so the yummy cinnamon smell wafted up through the seats and drowned out the armpit/hotdog/pre-game tailgate alcohol smell beautifully.

I also had my first funnel cake....which changed my life forever. How have I not discovered this already? I was standing near the line and I asked the lady in front of me if funnel cake is any good. Why can't anyone out here give a yes or no answer? She went on and on and on...."oh honey, you ain't never had funnel cake? It's just the same as they got at the fair...." (fair? I've never been to a fair...unless the Gilroy Garlic Festival counts) Anyway, she took me by the arm with her to the front of the line as she ordered a funnel cake. THEN she broke off a piece of hers and insisted i try some. Seriously. I just met this woman. I politely thanked her for her testimony and ordered my own funnel cake. She patted me on the back in approval of my wise decision and was on her way.

FUNNEL CAKE IS AWESOME. The lady was right. Deep fried batter covered in sugar. What was I thinking? Of course it is going to be good!

I teased Aaron that he should have worn his South Carolina hat to the game....then someone might have thrown their funnel cake at us. He reminded me that his hat no longer says "Cocks" on it because Lynda (Aaron's mom) thought it was "suggestive" and used a seam ripper to remove the "inappropriate" embroiderered words from the hat.

What a great game, though. We really had a lot of fun. Especially since we didn't hit any deer on the way home.

Reasoning With Reese... at a Halloween Party

Walmart/Sam's Club threw a HUGE Halloween party at the home office for all the associates' kids yesterday. Quincy loved all the attention she got from Aaron's team...she thrives on attention....probably because she is the "neglected" child at home and someone has to tell her she's cute. Reese handled it a lot better than last year, where she was so terrified of anything that moved that she refused to be set down. This year she got a little shaky when a "big bad wolf" walked past us. Suddenly, she's tugging on my jeans...

Reese: Mommy. Let's go.
Meg: Don't you want to stay and play all these fun games?
Reese: No. Let's go home. I think the costumes are too scary-ing ...for Quincy.
Meg: Oh I think Quincy is fine, but we can go if YOU are scared.
Reese: No. Just Quincy...her don't like them. Let's go. Now. ...Hurry.

Calories Per Serving

My friend, Darcie came over this morning and we started talking about Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake and all of its awesome, fatty, glory. For fun we decided to actually figure out how many calories there actually are per serving by adding up the calories of each of the ingredients.

This is what we came up with:

Cake
Cake Mix: 2040 (yes, calories.)
1 Egg: 70
Butter: 800

Filling
Pumpkin: 140
Sugar: 1800
3 Eggs: 210
Cream Cheese: 800
Butter: 800

This gives us a GRAND TOTAL of 6660 calories for the entire cake.
If you serve 12 people its 555 calories PER SLICE!
If you serve 15 people, its “only” 444 calories. That’s a whole lotta goodness!
If you eat the entire cake…well you should probably check yourself into therapy because you’ve got some serious issues.

Tagged Again? Yes!

Ok HolleeAnn, here are my 7 (new) random things:

I am “thrifty”. Cheap, if you ask one of my siblings. I just really hate spending money on disposable luxuries….like cable (we have bunny ears), nails, babysitters ($6 an hour to sit at my house while my kids are sleeping? What a waste, I’d rather swap and pay nothing), electricity (yes, seriously. I am that cheap. It’s like a sickness or something….but I just LOVE seeing a super low electric bill) or internet (hence the long breaks between posts). Don’t get me wrong, there ARE things I will spend good money on…I’m just careful how I spend it. Which I guess leads to…
I LOVE to pay bills. About a year after we were married I started a “bill binder” to keep track of our income and all the bills we pay. I had a couple of jobs at the time, and from one of them I took home tips each night. But too often, I would spend the tip money on Taco Bell on the way home and it would never be accounted for when I paid tithing or did our taxes….so I started writing down what shifts I worked and the tips I made when I got home from work each day. THEN I realized what shifts brought in more tips, and asked to work those hours. After I quit that job, I still used the binder to write down all the bills I paid so I could see where our money went, and I still use the same system today. It seems tedious to some, but I LOVE it. AND I LOVE that I can look back and see how much I have spent on water, electricity, car, cell phones, etc. for the past 6 years.

I have heightened senses. No, not anything supernatural…I’m not a superhero or anything…but I probably could be if having an extremely strong sense of smell could fight crime. I also can’t stand when the T.V. is too loud. It physically hurts me in a way I can’t describe. Even my skin is sensitive. Being touched by someone else can be the most warm, wonderful feeling, or their hand can burn a hole in my shirt. I love to be hugged and touched and snuggled by people I know and love…But if you are a stranger, I will have no problem letting you know that and you are standing too close to me…especially if you should have stopped at just 2 sprays with the Lysol when you left the bathroom and the 3rd spray followed you out. Ew.

Christmas at my parent’s house is awesome. There is no other way to describe it. It’s not the presents or anything; just something about our silly traditions that makes it THE BEST. Unfortunately, since I was spoiled for 18 years having such a fabulous example of how Christmas should be…Christmas any other way just can’t compete. Ironic, but somehow having the best Christmas ever for 18 years straight has ruined every future Christmas away from my parents house because it just isn’t the same.

I used to be a people fixer. I would (subconsciously) attach myself to emotionally toxic people and then attempt to “fix” them and solve all their problems. I didn’t realize what a bad habit this is until about 2 years ago when I attached myself to another “fixer”… and then I became the project for her! Not only did she “not fix” whatever she thought was wrong with me, but she “kept me broken” by always letting me know what I was no good at. It got to the point that I was constantly apologizing for something ridiculous every time we spoke. I’ve never felt soooo terrible about myself as a Mother, a Wife, a Friend, a Mormon, or a Woman, as I did when I was friends with her. It emotionally paralyzed me and took forever for me to realize why I felt that way.

Luckily, this has been a learning experience for me. I never want to be the cause of someone else feeling this way. I have moved on from said friend, recovered (mostly), and am determined to no longer be a “fixer” for anyone ever again!

If I had daily access to a Super Nintendo, I would do NOTHING with my life. Yoshie pretty much got me through 7^th grade. I had no idea that a Nintendo addiction could stay with me FOR-EV-ER. I hadn’t picked up a Nintendo, XBOX, Play Station or any other video game in YEARS. Then we got Tetris World from Kasey, and Aaron asked me if I wanted to play it with him. He played for 5 minutes. I played until I was so tired that my eyes blurred all the little tetrads into the same shape and I had to stop. After that night, I packed up the Tetris game…outta sight outta mind, right? WRONG! They brought over Guitar Hero. Just in case you are living in ignorance, as I was until recently, let me fill you in. GUITAR HERO IS AWESOME. I am not so awesome at Guitar Hero…in fact my little rocker chick got booed off the stage the first 2 times I tried to play. But then I got the hang of it, and we spent 3 hours rockin’ out with Jimmie and Kasey this weekend. Such a simple, laid back evening, but it was the most fun we’ve had in a long time. I liked Guitar Hero so much that we sent it back home with her because I would neglect my children if I had access to it during the day. I can’t wait for Rock Band!

I am a good cook. I didn’t use to be. I can actually think of a couple meals we abandoned after 1 bite when we were first married. Aaron was always a good sport and would say something “subtle” like, “thanks for dinner, Honey...you should make that again next time I’m out of town”. Thank goodness marriage comes with a learning curve. His favorite dinner is actually called Burned Chicken because the first time I made it, I burned it. It was the first meal I ever cooked for him so he ate it anyway. He actually liked it though and requests it often…non-burned of course. I’ve come a long way, and I’m a really good cook now. But there are benefits to having a non-cook reputation. I still rarely get asked to cook anything at family get-togethers. This is also probably because I don’t have a “signature dish” that everyone can’t wait to have, like Ashley’s yummy Costa Vida Pork or chocolate cheesecake, John’s salsa, Julia’s cilantro lime chicken and homemade guacamole (my favorite, yum!), Kristie’s cheesecake brownies, or Amy’s Chicken Tortellini Soup. taking a break from the kitchen and I am totally contenteating everyone else’s good food. But I AM a good cook.

Wow, it was harder than I thought to come up with 7 more random things. Good thing I like to talk about myself. Kudos if you actually read all of that (I have GOT to get a new camera so my posts won’t be so boring). I tag Paul, Janae, Nicki, Caity, Keith and Arianne, Elden and Gretchen, and Amy. Go!

Burning Bush?

SO yesterday we decided to get some yard work done because it was so beautiful outside. (80 degrees at the end of October!) Anyway, I tore up a long patch of grass along our walkway and am hoping to get some bulbs or something planted there this week before it gets cold. While I was doing that, Quincy ate grass and Reese dug around in the dirt looking for "ladybugs" (bright green and orange grubs that the dirt beneath our lawn is totally infested with). Aaron decided it would be a good time to break in the chainsaw he bought from his friend this spring.

Now, earlier in the day he had borrowed one of those long tree saw-on-a-pole things from our neighbor and cut down two branches that were hitting our roof. I was impressed because the branches were like 20 feet in the air and pretty large so it was quite an ordeal for him to cut them down. Plus he saved us $60, which was the estimate I had gotten for their removal by a local tree trimming service.

I suggested that Aaron use his chainsaw to cut up the larger portions of the branch and put them in our firewood pile (we were able to heat the house with our wood burning stove for most of last winter and it saved us a TON on our electric bill, so we plan on doing that again this year)....which is WHY Aaron bought the chainsaw in the first place. He wants to cut up firewood in all the spare time he never has...on the days off he never has. It's really a brilliant plan.)
Anyway, does he cut up the 2 enormous branches that are now sprawled across our (and our new neighbor's) backyards? Nope. He takes the chainsaw to the ugly bush by the front door.

Now remember, our house was once owned by a thousand year old lady named Dorothy before we bought it, and all of the lovely 1970's decorating was, I'm sure, hand selected by her. I frequently joke about the house being haunted by Dorothy's spirit. With all of my remodeling, by now her spirit has got to be pretty dang upset with us for disturbing her beautiful Brady Bunch inspired interiors. Apparently the ugly bush by our front door was also a favorite of Dorothy's because her spirit was REALLY angry to see it go.

Again, I really wish my camera wasn't broken because i would LOVE to provide the world with visuals of yesterday's events...my commentary just doesn't do it justice.

Aaron had been watching a football game in the moments before he was inspired to get rid of the Dorothy bush, and in his excitement to play with the new chainsaw, he forgot to put shoes on. This wouldn't have mattered had he listened to me when I warned him that the ugly bush was FULL OF STICKERS! Aaron was about halfway through the trunk when he realized what was happening...

Remember in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when Harry stabs Tom Riddles Journal with the Basilisk fang and the journal like...dies and bleeds everywhere? I swear the ugly bush did the same thing!
Dorothy left Horcruxes in my house!
The inside of the ugly bush is this wicked fluorescent yellow color and it spewed tiny yellow stickers-of-death all over the porch and into Aaron's exposed hands and feet as he carved it out of the ground.

He is still limping today and I'm pretty sure there are still a few stickers left in his big toe. If you ask him about the incident he will only tell you that "the ugly bush from our front yard is the state plant in HELL".

And thus ended the great "Gather Your Own Firewood Experiment".

The Ants Go Marching One By One....

Quincy ate an ant. We were at the Zebley's with some friends having a fire in their backyard, and an ant (not just ANY ant, an ARKANSAS ant, meaning it's almost 1/2 an inch long and crunches when you step on it.) was crawling across the pavement. Quincy spotted it, went into tracking mode, and crawled after it, picked it up with her superhuman pincer grasp and ate it. We all looked at each other like, did she just eat that ant? There's no way she caught it, it all happened so fast....so i went over to her, picked her up and looked in her mouth. She smiled her big baby-toothy smile, and stuck right between the David Letterman gap in her new front teeth was a giant ant wiggling around. Not only did she eat it....she forked it between her huge (and very sharp) baby teeth! That can't have been an easy task. Ants are fast. My baby has skills.

High School Reunion

I recently had a friend go to her High School Reunion. She was obsessed about it every time I talked to her. She wanted to look fabulous and appear to have a fabulous life and a fabulous family and make sure everyone knows she is doing fabulous. All I can think about is that she really IS a fabulous person...so why care what everyone else that you knew 10 years ago thinks? Maybe High School was a bad experience for her or something and she feels she has something to prove? I dunno... are those people really worth all the fuss if you haven't bothered to stay in touch anyway? I think that no matter WHAT you were like in High School, people have got to assume you've changed a little, so why build yourself up when YOU KNOW you're already great?

It reminds me of my trip to NYC see my friend, Janelle (holla!) last summer when she got married. It was a mini reunion of several high school friends, and even though I can honestly say i HATE NYC (no offense to anyone who lives there, of course...it just wasn't for me) I got a chance to see many of the people that I would have wanted to see again (that i don't see otherwise). I was pregnant fat and my face was broken out and my friend and I had been on planes and trains and stinky cabs and REALLY stinky streets and we got stuck in the rain twice on the way to the wedding and our feet had blisters and were bleeding and we were so wet we had to RING OUT our clothes and hair on the way into the chapel...and it was A zillion degrees outside so on top of being soaked, it was all sticky and humid and muggy outside. But it DIDN'T matter, because NO ONE CARED, because they were my friends. We got to visit and catch up and laugh and i'm sure NOT ONE of them thought, "wow, she's really let herself go" (well...maybe I'm wrong...I did look pretty terrible, but seriously, who cares?) Isn't the point of keeping in touch with long-time friends that you can pick up where you left off and no one feels the need to judge each other? After talking with my friend, I'm not really sure if i'll even go to my reunion when it comes up.It really took over her life for awhile. Is it just going to be a bunch of Romy and Michelle's trying to prove how wonderful their life is now? Maybe life IS wonderful for them, and that is really great, but if it's not, that's ok too, it doesn't mean I still don't want to see them and swap pictures.
What are everyone's thoughts on this? Are High School Reunions worth it? Or is it just a chance to see who dropped out of college, who's fat, who's knocked up, who's successful, who's bald, who moved to central america and who's gay? Did any of you go to your reunions?