Mormon Penguin

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Kid's in Cedar - Day 3

Sadly, I don't have any pictures for y'all from today. I was a little on the tired side and the focus needed to remember to snap a picture was beyond me. I've decided that having roommates that enjoy keeping you up until 2 or 3 am and then getting up at 8 is not a good combination for mental awareness.

Last week, my friend Charlotte (we call her Shawesome - short for "she's awesome") talked me into volunteering on the Special Olympics Utah organizational committee. What I didn't realize at the time was that the games are next week.. which meant that today was my first and last meeting. Luckily, most of what I'm doing is implementing the plan that the SLC person has already made. I'm in charge of the bus scheduling and making sure that they don't leave with only two people kinds of things. It should be pretty easy, but time consuming. I'm not going to be seeing much of my house or the kids come Wednesday. I'll be one busy girl, I'm excited to be able to help out though.

When I got to Cindy's house I found out that they had had about as much sleep as I did. Turns out that Shelly didn't go to sleep till 10:30 because she kept asking for Rachel. Then Jason woke up around 2:30. They both ended up on Cindy's floor by the end of the night. I don't know how much sleep Emily got, but she was down for a nap when I got there at 11, so she must not have slept well either. Poor Cindy!! I quickly realized that what the older kids needed was a good, slow movie to watch and rest for a bit. Since Cindy's collection of movies for little kids is small - shocking, I know :) - I jumped on YouTube and found Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie for them to watch. It worked miracles! Not only did it give Shelly and Jason a chance to rest, it gave me the opportunity to give them some needed TLC and attention. By the end of the movie they were back to their normal, adorable selves.

Cindy had fun with the kids while I was at my Special Olympics meeting. Turns out she also had a meeting at that time...who knew? Cindy certainly didn't, not until her secretary Paula - who I love, by the way, she's amazing! - called to ask if she was coming. Cindy couldn't think of anyone to call on such short notice to come watch the kids, so Paula graciously offered to tend them during the meeting - see why I love her so much? She rocks! After Cindy's meeting they went to McDonald's for dinner and when I showed up to watch them while Cindy went to yet another meeting they were playing in the backyard having lots of fun.

Jason enjoyed setting his chair in front of the door to the play house, effectively blocking Emily inside and making her scream. He'd move it two inches at a time until she could get out and then they'd start the whole process over again. I let it go on till I couldn't handle hearing Emily scream anymore - so it was about twice, maybe three times :) Shelly had fun sweeping the cement. I'm not sure if her sweeping made the backyard more or less clean than before.

After the kids were in bed and Cindy was home, Becca and Bryan showed up. They are on their way to California and stopped for the night at Cindy's. We had fun chatting, but I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open so I went home to sleep. I keep forgetting that my roommates don't let me sleep...

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Kids visit - Day 2

Today was harder than yesterday, but not by much. I had Institute at 10 and Cindy had an interview at 11, but we were able to work things out so that I could stay for the whole class. I booked it across campus after my class got out to get the kids at Cindy's office - with a bag full of snacks in tow. The kids and I took a walk around campus before heading to Cindy's house. It was a fun walk, right up until the end when I realized that an hour and a half had past - which explained why the kids were getting grumpy. We ran out of water five doors down from Cindy's, Jason was so mad about it that I sat him down on someone's lawn and told him to find his happy voice before we continued onward.

We continued on to Cindy's - once Jason found his happy voice of course - and we were so excited to get to sit down! I fed the kids, put Emily down for a nap, and stuck a movie in for Shelly and Jason. After Emily and I had our naps, we all went outside to play. The kids love Cindy's swings. There are only two swings, but Jason came up with a good solution to that problem:

Sharing!

Shelly quite enjoyed pushing them, mostly spinning them around in circles. Thankfully, no one got dizzy enough to throw up!

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The kid-lets come to visit!

With Rachel being 9 months pregnant, Cindy and I thought it would be nice of us to take Shelly, Jason, and Emily for the next 2 weeks. Mark and his mom drove the kids down here last night and left a little after 10 this morning. The kids seemed to not really realize that they're stuck here with us...hopefully, they'll be happy when reality sets in :)

The kids wanted snacks, but Cindy only had banana bread. Luckily I had stocked up on gold fish, pretzels, and fruit snacks. Once the kids knew that all that good stuff was at my house, they weren't satisfied until they had some in their stomachs. So I loaded up the kids in my car and headed to my house. I got them all snack bags and tossed in a movie to entertain them while I talked to my roommates. Kami and Nilla were home and way excited to meet the kids. Emily was a little shy of them at first, but warmed up to them before I took her back to Cindy's for her nap.

Shelly and Jason weren't nervous after I said that Kami and Nilla were friends. Jason especially liked it when Kami pulled out the Wii and let him play some Mario Kart. Shelly had lots of fun throwing pillows and squishy balls down the stairs with Nilla - I should say "at" Nilla actually. The kids did a great job of listening to me and playing nicely with the roommates (Jason kept referring to them as teammates instead of roommates. I'm not sure where that came from, but it works..). Amy came home for lunch and was amazed at how well they listened to me when I asked them to do something.

After a little bit the kids wanted to go on a walk. I took them over to campus to run around on the grass field near my house. It started to rain so we went inside the Sharwan Smith Center to escape the rain (Back story - the SSC is named after a past student of SUU and there's a statue of her in there). This is the conversation we had as we were walking through the SSC:

Jason (pointing to the statue of Sharwan Smith): "Is that Satan?"

Me: "What?!?"

Jason and Shelly (in rather loud voices): "Is that Satan?"

Me (completely caught off guard and hoping no one is listening to this...): "No..that's a statue of a nice lady that went to school here."

Jason: "Ok.." (still staring at the statue as we walked away - quickly)

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The scriptures are melting

My roommate and I like to write messages to each other on the mirror in our bathroom with whiteboard markers. Usually it's funny quotes, reminders, or just to say hi kinda things. On the middle mirror (there are three medicine cabinet mirrors) we write out scriptures that have caught our attention, we change it up a few times a month depending on how much we like the scripture.

Well, this morning I woke up and got in the shower. When I got out and looked at the mirror this is what I saw:

Now, I'm quite certain that it was not like before I got into the shower. It has never done that before - heck the only time I've ever seen something like this is when the "very blustery night turned into a very rainy night" in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and the rain ran down the pages of the book. I was quite shocked to see it. I laughed really hard and then proceeded to write my roommate a message stating that I didn't do it...at least I didn't think I had :)