Eight years of wedded bliss.

My favorite joke when people say something about how long I've been married is to say that it feels like it's been forever.  It's partially true.  Eight years isn't really that long, but it's long enough that you feel like your life has always been together.  And for me, it's been great.

Kelsea and I went to St. George for our anniversary, and saw the Tuacahn production of Tarzan.  We stayed at a bed & breakfast called the Seven Wives Inn.  Despite the apparently true connection the house has with polygamy, I think the name and theme of naming each room after a supposed wife is in poor taste.  I'm sure they could think of something equally clever, but less controversial.

So other than the name of the place, we really enjoyed staying there.  It is an old house in St. George's historic district, right across the street from Brigham Young's winter home.  It was a very nice house, with some cool little antique (-looking) furniture and smaller details.

For dinner, we weren't very hungry, but needed something to eat before going to the show, so we stopped at Jazzy's Rock 'n' Roll Grill for some very delicious hot sandwiches and sweet potato fries.  The light fixtures were made of brass instruments.  We were the only people there at the time, but I would guess it fills up, and gets very loud, later.  There was a performing area, and ads for local bands, and an open mic night.

Tarzan was pretty entertaining.  I'm kind of a hard sell for most things like that, but they have a few little tricks that they incorporated into the show to keep it interesting.  And some pretty good acrobatics.  Tarzan is a good story, and this one is based on the Disney movie.  The program mentioned that the earlier versions were much bloodier, which of course made me wonder what happens in other versions.  Maybe I'll look it up sometime.

In the morning, Kelsea and I had an excellent breakfast, though Kelsea's croissant french toast was bathed in too much jam.  I looked through the complementary newspaper and, oddly enough, we decided to drive past a few yard sales.  We didn't stop at any, and it was terrible weather for yard sales anyway, but it didn't eat up too much of our time.  We went to the outlet stores after that, and got some fun things, and joked about decorating our house, or my office, with a moose head.  I still think it's a good idea.

Before leaving town, we walked around the temple, and I even took a picture for a couple that was apparently not happy with their self-portraits.  We packed our own camera, and thought about taking pictures several times, but we couldn't find it in our bag.  So after I took the picture for that couple we though it would be funny to ask strangers to take pictures of us, then give them an email address to send it to.  Just to see people's reactions, and to see if anyone would actually send them.  But we didn't do it.

We got home late in the afternoon, and picked up the kids from my parents' house.

Maybe my next post will have some pictures.  Maybe Kelsea will get back to posting.  No promises.

Way behind

So, I had good intentions of blogging a bit more, but you know what they say about good intentions: they make an... oh wait that's what they say about something else.

Anyway, my tie project ended, and I took pictures of all my ties laid out on my dresser.  All of the pictures came out fuzzy.  Don't worry, I'll still post them.  That way, everyone can see what my tie collection looks like to people who are near-sighted.

I have 93 ties.  I still have 45 that I got in Italy, and three from before I went to Italy have survived.  I have given some away, and one time I let Kelsea make patchwork pillows out of some ties that were past their prime.  Kelsea suggested I get 7 more ties to make it an even 100.  She wasn't feverish, though the suggestion was a bit out of character.  The long and the short of it is that I have more ties that are not from Italy than ones that are, which makes me kind of sad.  There are a few Andrew's Ties stores in the US, including one in Las Vegas, so I've added a few Italian ties here.  They sure cost a lot more here, though.

In other areas of our life, our horribly decrepit fence is being painted.  I'll be glad to have a freshly painted, repaired fence, though it means Kelsea is even more anxious to have house repainted, which will require stucco work.  I look forward to that part, too, but it's all money.

The girls started swimming lessons yesterday, which is good.  They love the water, but we hadn't gotten around to putting them in any lessons.  Holly had a great time, though she's one of the older ones in the class.

Kelsea and I will be going to Tuacahn for our anniversary later this month.  We're very excited.  We've gone in the past and had a great time.  I wonder if they have figured out a way to flood the stage during Tarzan....  Our last experience with a motel was less comfortable than sleeping on the ground (true story!) so I went ahead and booked a room at a nice bed and breakfast.  Unfortunately, its name refers to Utah's polygamous history.  Not the best choice, but I've just chalked it up to bad taste on the part of the owners, and will try not to let it bother me.

Oh, I almost forgot.  The reason there aren't any pictures is because I almost ruined our computer by trying to install a second operating system (Ubuntu anyone?) which didn't work and almost broke Windows.  Which I was fine with, but Kelsea insisted was a problem (she didn't want to change operating systems).  It was running slow, and several programs mysteriously stopped working.  I'm convinced it's in bad shape, but I'll let Kelsea and the kids use it as long as they want.

Tie

For those of you wondering whatever happened to my little project of wearing every single one of my ties, I haven't forgotten about it, I just have a lot of ties.  Starting March 1, I haven't worn the same tie twice.  I have worn 74 ties since then.  These are the ties I haven't worn yet:

She knows it's a lot of ties.  Her arms were getting tired.

Flowers for Mom

Happy Mother's Day Everyone! I hope your Mother's Day was as good as mine was. On Saturday morning I went to get my haircut. I came home to find Mother's Day surprises: As I walked up to the front door I found my first gift, a ceramic bear poking out of a log that says "welcome." Inside on the table were flowers and a card. Holly and Mia picked out some pretty flowers that are also pretty bright. The kids were so happy to have me home so they could show me the flowers and the cookie cake they bought for me. The kids must have enjoyed giving me flowers because later it turned into an ongoing game. Holly and Mia would make various bouquets with silk flowers and then deliver them to me. Each time expecting me to gush over their thoughtful gift. Then they would collect the flowers so they could make another arrangement for me. I was so spoiled; I received flowers all day long.

Jay even brought me flowers! Dee took Jay out during Sunday school and let me sit and listen to the lesson. Half way through, they came back, and Jay was holding a little yellow flower that he picked outside. Jay climbed up on the bench next to me and reached out his little hand to give me the flower. Awwwww! I love being a mom!

Names

I just saw that the name Mia made number 10 on the top ten girl list for 2009.  Bummer.  Dee and I tried hard to pick names that weren't so common.  I guess that everyone must have seen how adorable my blond hair blue eyed Mia was and then they named their babies after her.

In case you hadn't realized Dee and I both have kind of unusual names.  Growing up with my name was complicated.  I liked that the name Kelsea was unique but nobody could spell it or pronounce it right.  Plus my name always gets underlined as being a misspelled word.  Look!  It's doing it right now!  Ok, you probably can't see that.

In grade school I would always correct people who said my name wrong.  After that I gave up and just answer to anything that was close.  So I have been called Kelsey, Kel-C-ah, Kelesiah, and somehow some people manage to put a T in there KelTs-e-ah.  It's kind of a long name with no cute nick name to shorten it.  K through 12 grade, I insisted on being called Kelsea.  Except in eighth grade when my closest friends called me BoBo.  But that was a weird phase.  In college everyone shortens everyone's names.  So to my roommates I was Kels.  I think Randi is the only one who still calls me Kels.  Don't worry Randi I don't mind.  I find it endearing.  But Dee met me back in middle school so he has only ever called me Kelsea.  I take that back, sometimes he calls me baby, honey, or sexy.  But those don't really count as names.  I remember when Dee and I first got engaged we would try out those terms of endearment like honey and sweetie and laugh at how weird and silly it was to say them.  Some of the silliness seemed to fade away and a couple of those names stuck.  I think it was when Holly was little I called Dee "Honey" so much that she would call him that too.  She would even say "That's not Dad.  That's Honey".  When I was young I never wanted to refer to Dee as "Dad" and never wanted to have him call me "Mom".  But once you have kids you kind of have to.  You can't let your little kids keep calling their father "Honey".  A few weeks ago Dee called me Kelsea in front of the kids.  Holly asked "Why did you call her that?  Her name is Mom."  Now it's almost like my real name has become a bad word.  Oh, can't say that in front of the kids.

So because of the challenges I faced being named Kelsea I wanted to give my kids simple names.  You hear it once you get it.  Easy to say, easy to spell.  I also didn't want to give my kids names that were so common that they end up in a class with 3 other Mia's.  When we named our baby Mia I thought that name was fairly original.  How did it become so popular?  Maybe a girl with a popular name is destined to be popular herself.