Easter Baskets √

ever since i got married we have been buying easter baskets each easter. it's time to stop. this year i decided that i would make our baskets and then just reuse them every year.

last year we bought the kids some really expensive baskets. they were probably about fifteen dollars each. so, thirty dollars total. sure, the baskets came with stuff in them, but really, it wasn't much. so, i went to the dollar store and i got four baskets. then i went to my favorite fabric store, mill end fabrics in carson city, and i got about a quarter yard of four different fabrics, and about a yard of ribbon for each basket. oh, i also got some cheap paint and the kids helped me paint the baskets. i think the paints were about 60¢ each, or so. all together it cost about ten dollars. that's for four baskets, not just two. i think i made the right choice.

anyway, here's the before and after.

i think emmy has a future on the price is right as a model.

What to Do?

my sister, emma, wants to give some things away on her blog. she wants people to show pictures of things they've made and then have something to give away. i don't know what i could make to give away. i don't think that i have made anything good enough. well, the couch is good, but i'm not mailing anybody a couch. any suggestions?

It's Egg Balancing Time: Welcome Spring!

first of all, i'm not a pagan or a wiccan. i belong to the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints, aka the mormons. i still like celebrating holidays using the old traditions. i just like to know where the traditions come from. many of our Christian holidays and traditions come from paganism and were just given new Christian meanings. i find this sort of stuff fascinating.


here's something that i found on the internet.

Eggs represent new life and new potential, thus they are often used as symbols of Spring festivals. According to folklore, eggs easily balance on their ends during equinox. Eggs are often colored and covered with symbols that represent wisdom, strength, and fertility. Eggs are often given as gifts or charms to children or other loved ones during the festivals
Read more at Suite101: Rituals and Traditions of the Spring Equinox: Pagan Holidays Celebrate the Change of Seasons http://paganismwicca.suite101.com/article.cfm/rituals_and_traditions_of_the_spring_equinox#ixzz0ikA5tfWW

another good site about eggs at the equinox is snopes.com. go there and search "egg balancing". they say that the tradition of balancing eggs started with the chinese. also, you can balance eggs on end at any time of year. the point is that they are a symbol of spring. balancing them is just a fun thing to do.


i always use hardboiled eggs. that way, if they drop, there's no big mess to clean up. i boiled 8 eggs, but only had enough patience to stand up three of them.



emmy ran in the kitchen and made one egg fall. i colored it with some crayons and stood it back up.




as an added bonus you get to see some of my chicken salt and pepper shakers on top of my bread box. how befitting.

An Irish Blessing

I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover...

my husband told me the other day that he's never found a four-leaf clover. i thought that was interesting. i've found several throughout my life. i don't think that they are as uncommon as people think. whenever i see a patch of clover i search for a four-leaf one. usually i don't find any, but sometimes i get lucky. so, why would derek never have found one? i think he doesn't take the time to look like an idiot and search the ground. of course, i have no problem looking like an idiot. i do that on a constant basis. i would love to somehow have a way to preserve a four-leaf clover so that i could put in on display. hmm, it's starting to seem like i'm obsessed with clovers. must be the irish in me. i'm a quarter irish. we're something called orange irish. so i'm supposed to wear orange and green on st patrick's day. unfortunately i don't have anything orange or green to wear. literally. if you were to look in my closet you would find white, pink, purple, red, blue, and very little black. my favorite colors to wear are pink, red, and purple, not necessarily in that order. i really need to figure out what i'm gonna do for st patrick's day. i always feel so guilty when i don't wear green, or at least some kind of pin that says "i'm irish". of course i probably won't go anywhere this year, so i guess it doesn't really matter. we'll probably just stay home and watch "darby o'gill and the little people". i think that's the only "irish" movie i have. i do have another movie, "the happiest millionaire", which predominantly features two irish people. they sing and dance a lot. one guy talks about the good fortune he's having now that he's come to america. the lady dances a dance that she and her father used to dance. if you haven't seen either movie you should definately check them out. anyway, hurray for being irish! hurray for four-leaf clovers! hurray for holidays!

Truly Neverending

emmy has been watching all three installments of the neverending story constantly since monday. we had watched them at my mom's house, but she said that emmy could keep them since no one at her house watched them. thanks mom! i swear emmy thinks she's the childlike empress. i think emmy can almost quote the movies verbatim. i've seen the first one, but the second and third i've yet to sit down and watch. the only thing good about the third one is that jack black is in it. other than that it is so ghetto, as derek would say. at least the second one seems sort of similar to the first. anyway, i hope that emmy gets burned out on them soon. i don't know how much more i can take.

Ichthyology

the science of fishes; that part of zoology which treats of fishes, their structure, form and classification, their habits, uses, etc.

that's what my dictionary says. my mom used this word last night in scattergories. i think it was for college major or something like that. none of us knew what it meant, but we let her have the point. it's a good thing that we did. i came in last place after my mom and rachel. rachel won. it was a fun game. it was also fun finding out a new word.

Emmy Was So Funny Today

okay, i've talked a little bit about all my sisters. i think that i'll leave the brothers 'til another time.

emmy is so funny. today she was talking to gram about going to the goodwill store tomorrow. emmy said that she wanted to go to the goodwill, but not the naughtywill. it was hilarious. gram says that it shows that she thinks things out and reasons. emmy is pretty smart. plus, she speaks clearly, when she speaks. she talks all the time at home. we can't get her to shut up. around people she doesn't know she clams up. she is just shy. i'm kinda the same way.

andrew, on the other hand, is not shy. he'll talk to anybody, but he mumbles and talks too fast. it's hard for people to understand him.

Rachel

well, well, well. my sister rachel has finally given in and started a blog.

rachel is 5½ years older than me. we used to share a room. we spent a lot of time in there together. she used to draw for hours. she's good at it, too. she even has a wood burner. she can sketch something and then put it on the wood. sometimes i am amazed at the things she can do. once, at a family reunion she was in charge of the games with a charlie and the chocolate factory theme. she made oversized nuts for the kids to hunt for. they looked so real i couldn't believe it. i remember thinking that there's no way that i could ever do something like that. she makes piñatas for birthdays, make her kids their halloween costumes, makes aprons and shoulder bags, crochets hats and scarves like lightning, and so much more. i can crochet, but i take a really long time. if i were to make a hat i could maybe do it on a few days if i were really diligent. if rachel were to do the same hat she could do it in about an hour. i'm serious!

i remember when we were little and some punk neighborhood kid was picking on ej. rachel pretty much beat him up. i remember being on the school bus and this girl, jenna, was making fun of ej. rachel was sitting behind jenna and wound her fist in jenna's hair and said "say that again." jenna shut up so fast. needless to say, rachel is tough.

rachel likes to sing and dance. i saw her when she played zanita, the mayor's oldest girl, in the music man at the civic theater. she was so funny. i was really proud that she was my sister. when she was in the junior miss pageant i used to watch her practice her dance routine. when i was really little she used to pretend to ice skate in the living room. it was really funny.

not only is she creative, but she's a formidable opponent in word games. when we play games i like to play boggle or scrabble, or scattergories or taboo. i know that she's gonna be good at them, so the scores are usually close, which i like. i like to win, but not everytime.

so, anyway, back to her blog. she does it in rhyme! she sums up her day in poems! totally love it!

I, Emma: Child of God

my sister emma used to think that the song "i am a child of God" was about her.

emma is 6½ years older than me. i remember that she was always there to help. i remember once when i got shots in my legs and i was really sore. emma carried me around that day so that i wouldn't hurt. i'm sure i was heavy, but my legs hurt so bad.

i was really glad that she did that. i remember when emma shared a room with me and sarah. emma would bring the hallway phone into the bedroom and sit against the door and talk to people for a really long time. she never seemed to mind that i would be up on my bunkbed listening in. i got to hear lots of funny stories that way. emma was a good influence on me. especially since she was so covert with her deviant behavior that i never knew about it. just a few years ago she told me how she used to skip school sometimes, or sneak out at night. these were things that i never knew. hmm, maybe i shouldn't be telling on her...oh, well.

emma played the piano. i mean, she played. and played. and played. for hours. almost everyday. we would be watching tv in the living room and she'd be in the next room playing the piano. somehow it didn't bother me much. she even taught me to read music. she showed me where the notes on the piano were and taught me some simple songs. she also taught me to direct music. she must have done a good job because i was singled out to demonstrate in music class at school. the teacher said that i was very good. of course, good for an elementary student.

when i was in sixth grade emma was helping in choir. she would have been a senior in high school, i think. anyway, all the choir kids liked her. it upped my popularity level to acceptable acquaintance when people found out she was my sister. i wasn't in choir, and i don't know why. i enjoy singing. anyway, i remember this one guy, tim, never said two words to me, but then he saw me with emma. suddenly he would talk to me. he would tell me how cool emma was.

when i go to emma's house now we have fun and talk. i used to live in utah near her. she would pick me and andrew up and take us to her house and we would spend hours there. derek would get off of work and come to pick us up, but we would still stay for an hour or so. derek didn't say much since he was usually tired, but he didn't rush me out of the door. i think that he likes listening to emma. most people do.

Yo Me

when i was little i couldn't say naomi.

my oldest sister was only 7 ½ years older than me. we had almost nothing to do with eachother. i know that she drove me to a few places or picked me up, but that's about it. she went off to college and i don't think that i missed her. she came back and stayed up late talking to emma. i remember sitting in the kitchen just listening to them talk. i didn't have anything to say, but i remember being so interested in what they were saying.

eventually, i went off to college. by this time naomi was married and had a couple kids. i think it was her who called me first on the phone. we would talk on the phone for hours. i couldn't believe that we had so much to talk about. i also couldn't believe that it took us that long to have a good relationship. my second year of school i had a car, so i would make the 4 hour drive to visit her. we would play games, watch movies or tv, talk, laugh, and almost pee our pants. her kids are cool, too. sometimes when we'd be playing something her oldest would come and sit at the table. he didn't say anything, he would just sit there. i realized that he was doing the same thing i used to do. i was surprised that i was now interesting.

i still call her on the phone, but we don't get together very often. i wish that we lived closer to eachother. right now we are about 8 hours apart. i do plan on visiting her at the end of next month.

K Sarah Sarah, Whatever Will Be Will Be...

i used to think que sera sera was about my sister.

when i was little we had a house right across the street from a playground. me and my siblings went there a lot. i remember my sister, sarah, doing tricks on the swings. she would swing really high and then as she was at the top of the front arc she would flip backwards off the swing and land on her feet. i remember trying to copy her, but i always landed on my bottom. i just wasn't as good as her. she was also better on the trampoline we had in the backyard. she could flip over and land on her feet, whereas, once again, i was on my bottom.

sarah and i shared a room until she was a senior in high school. that was the trend in our house. when you were a senior you got your own room. of course when naomi was a senior that meant that the other four of us girls shared a room. we had two sets of bunkbeds, but that's another story. sarah and i shared a bed when we were really little and then we got bunkbeds. i remember wanting the top because i figured that if a killer ever came in the room he would think that it was a canopy bed and just kill sarah. years later i told sarah about this. she laughed and said that she never wanted the top because if a killer ever came in then i would be at eye level and would be killed while she stayed safe. neither one of us knows why we were so worried about killers coming into our room.

even though we were both willing to let the other one get murdered, we've remained close. when she went off to college i would talk to her on the phone. when she went on a church mission in austria for over a year we wrote to eachother. my favorite letters from her had silly little poems in them. it was funny to see her lose her english. when she got back from austria we were roommates in college and after she got married i lived with her for a while. i sure wish she would move out here to nevada.