Tag Schmag

So I've managed to make it this far in the blogging world without being tagged. (Okay, that may be a lie-I've been tagged but have never chosen to do it before.) BUT, since I have nothing to blog about ( I know, it's a surprise to me as well) I thought I would go ahead and take the challenge. (This is for you Krisit! Thanks ALOT!) I like to sub-title this post: things-that-you-never-knew-about-me-and-probably-never-cared-about-in-the-first-place-but-I-still-hope-you-enjoy!

1.What is his name? Who's name? My husband's? My stuffed animals? My pet mouse in my pocket? Okay, let's just go with husband. His name is Lewis Richard Nuttall


2. How long have you been together? Since July of 1997! (Holy hannah that's a long time.)

3. How long did you date? 3 months dating, 3 month engagement = six months total

4. Who eats more? Eats more what? Broccoli? Me. Ice cream? Tied. Protein shakes? Lewis. In general? Lewis, but I can pack it away too.

5. Who said 'I love you' first? Lew

6. Who is taller? Have you seen my husband??? I am a midget compared to him. (And so is most of the general population.) He is a foot taller than I am.

7. Who sings better? Honestly? Neither of us. (Sorry to be dissin' on you Lew). I do sing really well in the shower though, but doesn't everyone?

8. Who is smarter? Well.....not to toot my own horn.......


9. Who does the laundry? Me again, but not very well. (Sorry babe). I am trying to be better. (Thanks for the inspiration Emilie!)

10. Who does the dishes? Mostly me, but when Lewis is not gimpy he does his fair share of helping out.

11. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Moi


12.Who pays the bills? Lewis, but sometimes secretly I wish that I did so that I could get some things past him. He sees and knows EVERYTHING! (Sometimes it ain't pretty.)

13. Who mows the lawn? Right now? Anyone that we can bribe to do it for us. (Just kidding gimpy-don't get your pants in a wad.) Gimpy and all, Lewis still manages to have the most beautiful lawn on the block. And I can honestly say that I have never mowed a lawn in my life!


14. Who cooks dinner? Me. When Lewis cooks it's called "going out for Mexican."

15. Who drives when you are together? Right now? Me again. Sir gimps-a-lot can't drive. (And he may be the worst back seat driver in the history of man.) Normally Lewis does though, and he probably would say the same about me.

16. Who is more stubborn? Oh, me, by a long shot!

17. Who kissed who first? Lewis kissed me on our SECOND DATE. Can you believe it? I think he must have mistakenly heard that I "put out" or something. :)

18. Who asked who out first? My brother asked me out FOR Lewis.

19. Who proposed? Lewis.

20. Who is more sensitive? Guilty as charged.

21. Who has more friends? Me again, but really, I don't have that many friends. (Gee, I kinda sound like a loser, don't I?)

22. Who has more siblings? Me. (3 older brothers, 1 sis.)

23. Who wears the pants in the family? No one. We don't believe in clothing. (Ooh la la)

And on that note: Je suis Finis

And I tag no one. Cause I'm like that. And I like to break chain letters too. SO THERE.

What the????

Today, because I had a half an hour break in between my kids swimming lesson (and that fact that the weather was crappy), I ran to the gas station to pick up a quick treat for the kiddos (and a lovely beverage for me, of course.) I was standing in line waiting for the cashier to change the cash register tape (because that ALWAYS happens to me) and I spotted this little beauty.

Ahh yes folks....this product is actually for SALE....it's promise, well, to eliminate that pesky alcohol smell from your breath. This is a great comfort to me.....driving around the town with my four kids in tow and realizing that any schmuck who is drunk of his arse and has $4.99 to spare can "fool" that cops into believing that his is not wasted beyond belief! I am a frequenter of gas stations. I visit them all the time for various odds and ends (ahem, donuts and drinks) but have never seen such a sight in my life. I was a little taken back by it, to say the least, and then I realized AHA! I'm in Spanish Fork, of course. 'Nuff Said.

P.S Get a load of the "Police Officer." Yeah, in your dreams buddy!

The Pollyanna attitude

I am going to tell you a secret about me: I am the HUGEST fan of the movie "Pollyanna" that you will ever meet. As a kid, I probably watched that show 100 times. Even still, I will watch it a couple of times a year with my kiddos and I am always trying to prompt them to watch it more. (I want them to love it as much as I do, naturally.) One of the great things that I love from the movie is her attitude of always trying to find the positive in something: whether it be people, or situations or what have you. Now, I bet your wondering how this relates to my life. Well, even growing up I would always try to have the Pollyanna "attitude." If something negative happened, I would try to turn it around and find three positive things about that situation.(Try it sometime. You'd be surprised to find that you can ALWAYS find at least one thing positive, even if it is warped and twisted to make it so.) Now, why am I telling you all this. Well, as most of you know, and most of you probably don't care, my husband had surgery on his foot back in May. This has been very hard on all parties involved (read: mainly me) and so I am going to dedicate this post to him. I am going to list the top six (because try as I may I couldn't think of any more than that) reasons why I am "glad" that my husband is a gimpy. Do you think I can do it? Well, just watch and learn.

Reason #1

My husband is actually HOME for the summer. This is not good for him, by any means. Because of his surgery, he had to cancel 2 backpacking trips, one bike trip, numerous (as in I'm unable to count because there is just too many) softball games and tournaments, golf games, ect. ect. you get the picture. He is bummed beyond belief. I am glad to have him home. Never have I been able to do so many things as last minutes notice and have him just be here to watch the kids. This should have been the summer that I trained for a Marathon. I may never have this opportunity again.

Reason #2

All the ice cream and cherry limeades you can eat. In fact, too many. We are two bad little kids who indulge WAY TOO OFTEN, and it is fantastic! Is there anything better than laying in bed, watching shows and drinking cherry limeades from Sonic? I am definitely going to need a diet before this is all over.

Reason #3

He lets me pick his clothes out. Since he does want to crutch himself to the closet every morning to pick out his clothes, he lets me do the dirty work. I love it! He hasn't let me pick out what he was going to wear since we were first married, and now he is at my disposal. Ha ha ha (insert evil laughter here.)

Reason #4

No one has driven my new car but ME!

Reason #5

Manual labor is good for me. I am a working wimp. Sure I clean my house and all, but the outside stuff, that's a man job isn't it? I have never before pulled so many weeds, picked up so much garbage, dumped so much grass, and swept so many sidewalks as I have this last month. You should have seen my tonight dragging the garbage can across the lawn because I couldn't lift it up. I felt like I was in one of those "tough man" competitions that you see on ESPN. It was quite the sight. And is is definitely making me appreciate all the hard work that he does around the yard.

Reason #6

He still WANTS to do whatever he can do. As exhibited by these pictures: he still mows the lawn and plays baseball with the kids. Of course, plenty of time is still spent laying in bed watching the baseball games, but not ALL of his time. He is trying to help out whenever and wherever he can.

So there you have it. I may complain (a lot) about the lack of help that I have this summer. I may feel like I am taking care of FIVE kids. I may call him gimpy and el gimpo and sir gimps a-lot, but the truth is I wouldn't care so much if he wasn't such a big help to me normally. I miss his help and deep down inside realize that he is probably more bummed than me that all of this ever happened in the first place! I love you BABE, even if you do have a bum foot!

Swimming with the fishies

Tonight at the dinner table we had the most hilarious conversation with our three year old. And since kids say the cutest things I just had to share......After all, isn't that what this blogging business is all about.


So, over our delicious dinner (it really WAS yummy. You can ask anyone. I'm not just giving myself a pat on the back. Okay. I am.) I struck up a conversation about Lewis and I's very first trip to Hawaii. I was 10 weeks pregnant with Savy at the time, so I just casually mentioned to the kids that Savannah was the only one of our children that had been to Hawaii. Well, cute little munchkin that she is, piped up: "I was in your tummy, right mom?" "Yes, honey, you were just a baby in Mommy's tummy. You got to go swimming with Mommy." "OOH, (she's says with the cutest look on her face) was I wearing my swimming suit?"





And now I end this story with another story.... Since we're on the topic of Hawaii and swimming.... I really must love all of you to share this story with you as it was not the highlight of my life. Picture this: beautiful Maui, Hawaii. I am pregnant with my third child, and VERY morning sick. But, I decide to be a trooper anyway, and Lew and I sign up for a snorkeling trip. (Hey, when in Rome......) I am someone who gets motion sick anyway, add that to the morning sickness, and the fact that I couldn't take anything for the motion sickness because I was preggers, and you have a recipe for disaster. We took a boat ride out to the place we were going to snorkel. I got sick, but sucked it up. We got in the water and started to snorkel. I was having a lot of fun, but kept swallowing the salt water. ( I was the very NOVICE of novice snorkelers.) Finally, I had a little too much of the ocean, I gagged, and up came my breakfast. (Now let me rewind a little bit. Before you leave the boat to snorkel you are given hoards of instructions, one of them being to "under no circumstances" FEED THE FISH!) Well, you can imagine what happened. It was a feeding frenzy for those fish. I was swarmed by literally THOUSANDS of fish, all trying to eat my vomit (which is disgusting in and of itself), and I literally had the most panic filled moment of my entire life. I was scrambling and trying to swim out of there and hyperventilating and wanting to crap in my pants and couldn't reach the boat fast enough and one of the fish actually BIT MY FINGER. No lie. It was total pandemonium. And all the other snorkelers were in heaven. They could not figure out what had happened (no one saw me throw up, not even Lewis), but they were loving all the fish that had come around and assumed that someone had brought food off the boat into the water. Well, needless to say, I got back to the boat, hung my head in shame, and would NOT get off to snorkel again, not even to see the Sea turtles (I now wish I had.) I spent the rest of the trip with my head in the toilet and the knowledge that apparently I had a fear of fish. (Who knew.)

Spring Cleaning

I just spent the last hour in my own private "he**." I don't know what I was thinking. Two children are taking naps, the other two occupying themselves quite nicely, and I'm scuttering around picking up the house. It's then that I notice the one thing I have been trying not to notice for, I don't know let's say, two years now. My blinds are a disgrace! They are past the point of a casual dusting, and now need to be cleaned and scoured slat by slat, one at a time. Well, I am up for the challenge. I can do this, right? I load up my trusty bucket with pine-sol and a rag and go to town. Only then does it become blatantly obvious that I have quite the project on my hands.


Wow. This is taking so long. Who knew these blinds were white? When was the last time I really washed these down? Oh yeah, that's right...before Braden was born. Yowza! Braden will be two next month. OOps. Hey, listen, I am a Mother of four! I just don't have time to sit around all day washing blinds. I am busy. I have many things to do. I hate washing blinds. This sucks.

Then, as I am standing over my kitchen sink on a stool, I am praying that I fall off and die.....okay, just fall off and break my leg, because hey, that puts an end to blind washing doesn't it? But NO, no such luck. So I continue on. I am mentally calculating how long it will take me to wash all the blinds in my house? Do I have 7 years of free time??? Why won't one of these dang kids wake up? How long do I have to keep up this manual labor? And then.......SALVATION! I glance down and notice that there is......A HOLE IN MY BUCKET! (No....I do not make this stuff up....well not *Most* of it anyway.) And that's my ticket out of there. Can't wash the blinds if I don't have a bucket. Ahhhh, crisis averted. Now if I can just keep my husband from reading this post...... He'll make me finish what I started....Oh, the horror!

School's Out

No more homework, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks! Summer is here baby, and we couldn't be more excited. Things we will do this summer: play, eat otter pops (boxes and boxes of otter pops), swim, ride bikes, go to the park, lay in the grass, look at the stars, have bbq's (dozens of them), run through the sprinklers, roast marshmallows, go hiking (whoops, never mind....strike that. Unless we don't invite Sir Gimps-a-lot. :), swing, jump on the tramp, color pictures, do crafts, visit the zoo, visit the Children's Museum, go camping, go to St. George, sleep in late, read LOTS of books, go to bed late, and just plain RELAX! (Gee, I sound like the best mom in the world, don't I?)

Kylie and Zachary on the LAST day of school

Just one last thing to mention. Summer.....please be kind on this dear girl. We had a rough year last year, what, with a near drowning, scooter Olympics that led to about 50 stitches, and OH, there was that incident in Wal-Mart involving six paramedics and a split open head. Take it easy on this little one. She's a mover and a shaker, I know, I know, but watch out for her. My poor sanity cannot take anymore accidents. Thank you for your time.
Happy Summer to all!!!

Ghosty

I think I have a ghost. Today, while I was taking out the garbage it turned on my garbage disposal. And when I came back in the house it was just going for no reason. PLUS, my favorite tee shirt is missing. AND, here's the clincher.....THREE hostess cupcakes are missing from my pantry. And I didn't eat them....I'm almost positive that it was not me.....oh please let it not have been me.....could I have eaten three cupcakes in one day???? Nah, it had to have been that darn ghost!