Talking TV

I have a grievance of the greatest kind:

The Voice and Splash are on at the same time.

Usually Splash wins over because The Man likes it too.  He's not too into the singing shows, and normally I'm not either but the dynamics between the judges on The Voice is genius.

Putting Shakira and Usher on that show was brilliance.  It used to be the chemistry between Adam and Blake that had me hooked.  Shakira and Usher fit into that like the missing puzzle piece and I'm in l-o-v-e with the show.

We usually watch Splash as a family.  Louie Anderson makes that show.  I'm so glad he came back last night because who doesn't want to see a 400 pound, 60 year old man, jump from the height of a three story building? Plus his swimming outfits are fabulous.  He's by far my favorite and even though channel 4 cut out and I didn't get to see the rest of the dives, I'm pretty sure Louie didn't get scored off again because he got some pretty highs scores for taking on that 33 feet platform.

Last night when channel 4 decided to up and quit on us, that gave me every reason to switch on over to channel 5 for The Voice where I got to watch Adam begging for Taylor Beckham after she got eliminated by Blake, and thanking her profusely after she chose him over Usher for the steal and I may or may not have imagined Adam hearing me belt out a Maroon 5 song in my car (always in my car) and reacting the same way for me.

If we were up with the times and had tivo or some sort of thing such as that I would be golden, but alas, we don't.  We don't even have cable, we're barely scraping by with local channels and netflix.

After The Voice the show Ready For Love came on, a Bachelor takeoff where they have matchmakers involved as a twist and the teasers drug me in by showing how one guy had an ex-girlfriend show up to try and win him back.  I wanted to see that drama and was generally too lazy to change the channel since we only have local stations and it's hard to find a good show to get into.  I watched for two stinking hours only to find that he keeps his drama ex-girlfriend over one of  the cutest girls and I am now officially done with that show.

Lame sauce.

I'm still waiting for netflix to update Downtown Abbey with season two, ugh, I know, right?  And a new season of Vampire Diaries and Hart of Dixie would suit me well also.

What are the shows that you get into that are on the local stations?  (CW included, we somehow get that one) Inquiring, lazy minds want to know.

Also, this is the best song ever... for right now.

Happy one year! Spring get into my life! And Netflix isn't updating.

Ladies and Gentlemen.

 Welcome to another Monday.

Happy Anniversary to my twin and my newest sister.  One year down and a lifetime to go.

I love them.

Over the weekend I got to have dinner with a dad and a sister, a niece and a nephew. It was one of those things that just comes together last minute. I might have the best family ever.

 Ever.

 And while I'm on the subject I love the growing relationship I have with my sister McKell who is Amazing with a capital A.

I wrote my last paper on Obamacare.  Can I get a hallelujah on that?

Hallelujah.

You Don't Have To Handle Dad. And A Lip Sync.

I saw Kody Brown and his wives on TV.  It was a little news story about how they're suing the State for the right to be married as a polygamy family, being of age and consenting and taking care of their family and what not.

So I decided to check their show out on Netflix.

We watched a couple of episodes and learned that they had (at the time of the episode) 21 people in their family.

Cali's jaw dropped.

"Whoa.  We only have six!  Good thing you don't have that many Mom."

"What are you talking about?  We have eight in our family."

"There's only six of us."

"Yes, we have six kids, but we have two parents so that makes eight."

Without any hesitation she responds with, "Yeah, but you don't have to handle Dad."

To which I could do nothing but burst out laughing.

"You just wait Cali, you're in for the shock of your life when you get married."

The Man just grinned and shrugged.

Last night I was treated to a lip sync.  By the time it was finished I was laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face.  That may just be because they're my kids and this is the sort of thing that only a mom can really appreciate, but I'm going to share it anyway.

Please watch for the accidental fart in the middle.

I'm not usually one for potty humor of any kind but Brynn's reaction had me.  I died. (1:05)

And watch near the end when Tayler accidentally pokes herself in the eye.  I died again. (2:57)

Oh, and that would be a sticker face on Tayler's forehead.

And I have no words for Cali.  None.  I promise it wasn't me who taught her to dance like that.

I swear it.

Believe me Cali, I'm certainly glad we're not a family of 21.  I have more than I can handle with just the eight of us.

Africa is a state, Toma Toes, and staying home for a day

Yesterday Tayler woke up with a headache.  Normally I question headache claims, especially in the morning.

But Tay's eyes were ringed with red and even before she told me about it I was asking her if she was okay.  She just seemed... not herself.

So I sent her to bed and called my boss.

I love my job because I don't get guilt trips handed to me when I need to stay home with a sick child anymore.

Some days I desperately miss being a stay at home mom.  I look forward to the days when I have an excuse to just be home.

I changed out of those pesky slacks and pulled on my jeans.  I sat down and made my to do list.  Half the fun of staying home when you're not the one who's sick, is making the home nice to come home to for everyone else.

I sent The Man a text letting him know I was staying home and that I planned and doing a lot of decluttering. 

He asked if I was decluttering between my ears?

I replied that if he weren't careful I was going to throw out all of his stuff.

I love to banter with that man.

It wasn't too far into the morning that Tayler woke up and decided that her headache was gone and she could go to school.  I walked her to school and she told me about how her class is studying geography and learning the continents and the states.

"I'm learning about Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Idaho... these are states, Mom... Colorado, Africa..."

"Tayler, Africa is a continent, not a state."

She giggles.

I got home from taking her to school and decided that I wasn't about to put those slacks back on so I decluttered my closet and dresser.  I tackled all the random papers in Tayler and Cali's room.  I cleaned the bathroom and the laundry room and rotated all the laundry that had been started by the kids that morning.  I did dishes and vacuumed that entire house.  I put dinner in the crockpot and it filled the house with a delicious aroma.

It just filled my soul to have the house clean and smelling like wonderful dinner for when everyone walked through the door.

And then I watched a lot of Vampire Diaries because season three is finally on Netflix.

I love staying home, but if I'm to be completely honest with myself, I think I would get bored with it really fast, especially now that all of my kids are in school all day.  I think my happy place, would be to have a part time work schedule.  Then I could keep up with my cleaning and projects at home, but still get the personal fulfillment outside of the home that I love. 

Though if I really look at it, my job is so flexible, that it's totally possible for me to take a day here or there as I need it so I guess I really did find the best of both worlds.  I'm going to have to add that to my list of why I love my job.

So that was yesterday.  And being that I was off my usual routine, I never sat down and blogged about The Man's discovery of Toma Toes.

Have you figured it out yet?

We were driving down the road when the man blurts out, "what in the world are Toma Toes?"
I was confused.  Toma Toes?  What is he talking about?
He points at the corner where they're setting up fruits and vegetables for sale and without even seeing the sign that had confused him I knew.

Toma Toes.
Do you mean tomatoes?

I watched the understanding of his mistake spread across his face.

He's special.

In his defense the sign was spelled out on two rows.

toma
toes

But it sure is fun to tease him about it.

He said he thought it was a type of tomato, like Roma tomatoes.  Which makes it even funnier that he was thinking of tomatoes, but didn't realize that it was just tomatoes.

Papa Mike stops by a time or two through out the week which makes us all happy because he plays games with the kids and talks about cars and four wheelers with The Man.

We like to feed him dinner when he stops by.  I love watching The Circus swarm him.  They sure love him.

And last but not least, Cali is was proud of this drawing from school.

I personally love the platypus.

Busy Weekend: Draper Temple, Family Pics, State Fair, Dinner With Ert

This weekend we...

taught Milo how to play soccer:



I talked Casidee and Jayme into running a mile and doing bodyrock with me...

I like having them with me to do this because they push me to get it done and to push myself while doing it... but boy do they ever have more stamina than I do.

Cas and I joined the youth of our church on a temple outing to the Draper Temple.  I sure love being in the temple with that girl.

We headed over to Fotofly for some family pictures.  Let me tell you, we were laughing so hard through that session.  I can't wait to swing back over there to see the pictures and pick them up.

We hit the State Fair.

 Where we saw Babe the Big Blue Ox in real life.
Seriously, this bull was humongous, it's shoulders were as tall as West's head and it's hooves were as thick as my thigh.

Billy Goat's Gruff?

 This goat made me think of Billy Goat's Gruff... and that made me think of the time that we had Thanksgiving dinner at my Grandma E's house and my brother Bill would get under the table (we were littler) and my cousins would laugh and say there was a billy goat under the table...

We loved all the science stations they had set up throughout the venue.
The Man showed the kids the trick to balancing all the nails on top of just one:

 The favorite for The Circus was the Lemur tent:

We hit Leatherby's where I ran into some old friends that I haven't seen in forever.
Man alive, I miss old friends.
Also, at Leatherby's, we discovered they have a "sampler" on their menu.  Have you ever done this?  You get five scoops of ice cream, but you only get to pick two flavors.  The other three flavors will be a surprise.
It was pretty fun to figure out what flavors they'd given when our ice cream arrived.

We joined Aunt Lindee at The Old Spaghetti Factory at Trolley Square to celebrate her graduating post and landing a job on a police force.

We sure are proud of you Aunt Officer Lindee!

We love that place because the atmosphere is fun and the prices aren't crazy.  We can feel like we're taking our circus to a nice dinner without breaking our checking account.

Cas is taking Chinese in school this year.
She wrote her name on her leftover box in Chinese, and when she showed it to Sean he exclaimed, "that looks like cool Vampire writing!"
"Sean, it's not vampire writing, it's Chinese..."

To West.
-The Parking Garage.

This weekend we also discovered the TV show "Once Upon a Time" on Netflix. 
In love!
And it's kid friendly which scores high points in my book. 
We're catching up on the first season so we'll be ready for the second season to start on September 30th.  So excited!

That was our busy weekend.
Hope yours was just as good.

Jayme's braces and other thoughts that are neither here nor there

Jayme started her braces.

If you ask her to show them to you, she'll hiss at you like a vampire, baring her teeth.

We're a little bit into vampires at our house.

{source}

Over the weekend I may or may not have eaten an entire box of mint ice cream sandwiches.

... all by myself.

Listening to this for a half hour straight was enough to drive me bonkers:

b

Sorry to our neighbors for that.
That ball just did not want to come off.
I blame it on West's dad, Mike.

We're a little off on our kid schedule right now with the winding down of summer, which left us with no kids on a Monday night.

The Man took me to the new Mexican restaurant that's been on my hit list.
Can we say new favorite restaurant?
They had an amazing guacamole sauce to go with the chips, and I got to order a stuffed avacado.

Chicken, cheese, and avacado? Sign me up.

Yesterday I pulled Casidee's class schedule from the school district's website.
Like it or not, Mom, Jr. High is happening.

Except in our neigborhood it's a middle school.

The girl is taking Chinese. 
(How am I supposed to help her with homework questions???)

After writing this post, and letting some people know about it, I received this in my facebook message box:

which is hysterical.

Does anyone else have that problem?  I know that one time I posted this picture of Cali and her ripped pants but I hardly think that qualifies...

{the original post}

tayler's logic, india can't help me, turkey bacon, and who edits the tv show LOST?

Tayler tells me, "I like to finger paint.  Even though I've never done it before."
"Then how do  you know that you like it?"
"Because I like to paint with my fingers."
Who can argue with that logic?

We had a copy machine go down at work so I called the service hotline to help me fix it.  My call was sent to India where, although the gentleman on the other side of the phone was nice, I struggled to understand his accent.
And I could tell that I was frustrating him.
He would be asking me to look at things and check things as I stood at the machine with him on the line and when I couldn't understand what it was he'd said, I would guess.
The line would go dead silent.
And then he would very slowly say, "no ma'am."
And he'd repeat, slowly and loudly, what he had said.

I received those long pauses followed by "no ma'am" several times during the course of the phone call.  I'm pretty sure he thought I was incompetent.

I had a huge craving for a sugar cookie one day so I swung by a local bakery, knowing that they had amazing sugar cookies.  When I entered the bakery I notice on their signs that they also served sandwiches, and one of the sandwiches they had listed was "turkey bacon and tomato."
We eat turkey bacon at my house and I was surprised to see them advertising a turkey bacon sandwich.  I usually avoid ordering bacon when eating out because it's never made crispy enough, I hate dealing with stringy, fatty bacon.
I was intrigued so I ordered it.
Have you ever seen those pictures where it talks about commas saving lives?

Commas are so useful.
Especially when you think you're ordering a turkey bacon and tomato sandwich.
And what you get is a turkey, bacon, and tomato sandwich.

Also, along with there being an axe on the airplane (here), where in the world did the Lost plane crash survivors find all of those tarps to make tents out of?  I know I always pack a tarp when traveling by plane.
Don't you?

We have some good questions that we're working on answers for you.  One of them in particular is hilarious and I can't wait.
We'll get those up on Friday.  Feel free to let me know if you have a question you want The Circus to tackle for you, all in good fun of course.
I like seeing what they come up with so thanks to everyone who's asked something.

Serving Time

Today I'm going to talk about work.  But not the boring details about how we go after the bad guys and interview victims and do all sorts of legal paperwork and go to court and all that shiz. 

Nah, today I'm going to talk about food at work. 

Ever since I started here, my boss has been constantly talking about how we needed to go eat lunch at the prison because they have great hamburgers there.  He was so excited about it and he mentioned it at least every other week.

Some of our investigators finished a pretty gnarly certification course so we decided we needed to take them out to lunch to celebrate their hard work in finishing this course.

Let's go to the prison for lunch!

I have to admit, I was pretty excited about this.  It was different and not something that I would have ever thought about doing.  Until about an hour before we left, then I started to get butterflies.  Ugh.  I'm going to the prison for lunch...

Just don't tell them where we work and we'll be fine, I was told.  Thanks for the reassurance guys.

I calmed down when we pulled up and I saw that the cafe sat on the outside of the barbed wire fence. 

It sits on the frontage road with a sign that reads, "Serving Time Cafe Open to Public".  Once I saw that we didn't have to pass through any gates onto the prison property, I felt much better and my excitement at doing something new came back.

It sits outside the women's facility and, while we were there, was operated by women inmates.  Cord's brother is a prison guard there and he told us that working in the shops outside of the gates is a big deal for the inmates, so they do all that they can to be allowed to do it.  Meaning, these people are on their best behavior because they want to be allowed to work "outside".  We do a lot of contractual work with the prison and I've had to deal with inmates before when I ordered a sign for our office door.  Their manners were in full force with pleasant voices and they were just happy to help you.  Except the guy I dealt with sounded just like Teddy T-Bag on the TV show Prison Break

with is smooth talking voice and his "yes ma'am's"... it gave me the willies.  Have you ever seen that show?  If you haven't then you have no idea what I'm talking about, but if you have... then you get it.

I digress.

Once we got there I got caught up in the details.  They've made it a fun little place.  Well, as fun as it can be sitting just outside a barbed wire fence that is.

a family portrait to be proud of?

The food was good and the place was full of guards, not watching the inmates, but actually sitting and eating lunch.  And there was a lot of public there too, the place was quite crowded for a bit.  Would I recomend it?  Absolutely.  It's a great little "greasy spoon" and the atmosphere... well, it's like no other.

I would like to add here that I didn't see a single underwear necklace (here).  Tina, you have some explaining to do.

Yesterday was Kerry's birthday.

Cord has a thing for The Office. 

That combination results in this:

That would be Kerry's stapler in jello.



Since I'm talking about work and prison I might as well tell you a few more random tidbits that happen to be my life now that I work here.

When getting into the backseat of an unmarked police car (to go to lunch) please make sure that the child locks are not on.  If you don't check this your coworker may or may not laugh his head off and may or may not let you out.

And this after making fun of one of my Young Women who told me that she got to ride in the front seat of a police car.  And after I told her, "as long as it wasn't in the backseat."  Let this be a lesson, Sariah.  Never  in the backseat.  Even if it is an unmarked car.

The FBI knows you by your first name.  (But only one agent.  Not the whole office, so I guess that's okay?).

When your husband sends you a text that says, "these 11 hour days suck and I still need to go home and make a bracket and do parole. blah, " you don't even blink an eye.  You just simply reply, "Parole?  Do you need tell me something?"

Gotta love auto correct.