the power of snow

reagan is the only member of our family showing signs of being a snow fan. the first time he saw the snow, he stood at the kitchen window for about 20 minutes. he was in awe of the fact that the night before we had grass in our yard and then in the morning we didn't. and before you southern readers gasp and wonder if we have supplies to last us a few days in case we are snowed it, don't worry your pretty little sunkissed faces. it usually only snows a few inches. the ice and freezing rain are much worse than the snow.

we were such dummies the day it snowed. we didn't check the weather report and we bundled the kids up for a trip to the gym. we noted on the car ride that there didn't seem to be many people oot and aboot that day. after returning home, we watched the news and their were multiple school closings due to freezing temperatures and slick roads. so glad we braved the elements for a few sweaty minutes at the gym.
reagan testing the snow. he wasn't sure if he was supposed to pick up his feet or if he was going to fall off the snow.
he was pretty pleased with the whole experience. i have found that i can use the threat of snow as a great diversion.

reagan: wanna watch mickey mouse!!! AHAHAHA!

mama: look reagan, i think it is snowing!

and he will stand transfixed at the window watching for any snowflakes, happily forgetting about his prior requests.

or better yet:

reagan: wanna piece of chocwick candy! reagan no wanna eat chicken!

mama: reagan, the snow won't come if you aren't a nice boy and finish your dinner.

i love a little manipulation in parenting.

i am the best parent ever. no contest. the end.

what do you have when you get 300 sugar laden children missing their naptimes(i know of one little boy in particular who ate a small tub full of chocolate chips), 100 stressed out parents, a gabillion jangling toy tambourines, one cd of repetitive children's music and three skittle-colored broadway musical wannabes?
the doodlebops live at independence center!!!

reagan is a pretty big doodlebops fan. most of his musical "training" comes from watching their show. he can strum a guitar, beat some skins, play the piano and shake a tambourine with the best of them. so when i heard that they would be at the mall(or "the center" as those in the know call it) i jumped up, shuffled around and got my groove on and headed to the mall with the kiddies in tow. plus, this event was free. there was no way i was paying $18-30 a pop for the live show. after waiting for more than an hour, we finally got to the front of the line. and reagan entered heaven as he knows it.

this cracked me up! this little kid on the bottom right excitedly stripped his shirt of for the doodlebops to sign.

poor reagan was ecstatic to see them. but he didn't want to sit by them for a picture. i don't blame him. check out that freaky makeup and those weird bulbous fingers.
i left reagan's eyes red on purpose. the picture is even funnier that way.

after we had our turn we just stood and watched them from an upper level at the mall. reagan hardly even blinked. all the way home and for the rest of the night reagan would repeat over and over, "reagan had fun with the doodlebops."

faith

“Faith in something greater than ourselves enables us to do what we have said we'll do, to press forward when we are tired or hurt or afraid, to keep going when the challenge seems overwhelming and the course is entirely uncertain.”-Gordon B. Hinckley

a little bit of heaven

since moving back to cow town, as kansas city is affectionately called, we have discovered a few things that we love.



heidi: the mcdonalds by my mom's house has SWIRL CONES!!! this is a huge deal. most mcdonalds don't do that anymore. plus, this mcdonalds workforce makes them colossally large! for pocket change i get a few moments of pure bliss.

thomas: quiktrip is the nearest thing to perfection(or being back in the South). 89 cent coke fountain drinks! what more could any guy ask for? besides georgia being ranked #2 in the final football standings, few things taste as sweet as a cold swaller of coke. and this particular quiktrip is across the street from the swirl cone mcdonalds. talk about a cheap date!

reagan: gramma has a piano! both gramma and reagan are in hog heaven. the quickest way to get to be grandma sandy's favorite grandchild is through piano playing.

scarlett: there is always someone wanting to cuddle and tell me how precious i am.

only 360 more payments and she is all ours!

after much searching we have found our tara. the fact that it does resemble a southern farmhouse is purely coincidental. i promise. i think it must be God's way of helping ease thomas into life in the heartland. we have moved in and we are digging through the mess in hopes of finding some sanity. it must be packed in here somewhere.

a few things i really like about the house:

built in shelves in the master closet. if thomas is real good, i'll let him use them too.

a southern front porch. the tacky screen door is just about to be ripped off its hinges. that wasn't a selling point for me.
it was really sunny in this picture. that smirk on my face means i like it.

dancing a jig in front of the house.

the fireplace
the sweetest little face in the world.

as soon as it was ours, the first thing i did was rip off the lace that was glue gunned to the cabinets. no gracias mi amigas!

the previous owners left us some celebration champagne. now we are really high rollers.

thomas just wasn't in a dancing mood like i was.

return to the motherland

today was the day that i left my adopted home of the deep south to return back to the motherland of the great midwest. i wish that i could say that it was a pleasant and uneventful plane trip, but i can't lie. it is never that easy. especially when reagan and i had only gotten about 3 hours of sleep the night before. wrangling one child by yourself on a long flight is one thing; i had experienced that rodeo numerous times before with minimal problems. wrangling two small children by yourself on a 6am flight with a LONG layover in atlanta(the most ridiculously crowded airport in the universe) is a whole other kettle of fish. the onetime pleasant and enjoyable traveling companion that i once had in reagan was not there today.
i had just watched this bill cosby stand up routine the day before i traveled. i had seen it a few times before, but it really hit home today. perhaps this clip can better describe my experience.



my saving grace of the day was when my anguished and pleading prayer was answered in the form of a former nanny that offered to hold scarlett while reagan and i tangoed through the duration of the flight. i have never had a prayer answered so instantaneously. one minute i am on the verge of tears with two screaming children clinging to my neck and the next moment, both children are calm and soothed. a new year's eve miracle.

family bliss

this pretty much says it all:

*to those with keen vision, i am well aware that i am wearing gold shoes, gold sequin trim and silver jewelry. it's a fashion statement. it's called crazymom. try it.

forever in flip flops

thomas, scarlett and i spent a quick weekend in KC to do some serious house hunting. it was pretty much a dream come true. except for this part:

the view from my mom's driveway. YOW! an ice storm blew in the day before! it was culture shock! we left beautiful, sunny 75 degree weather and we were welcomed by ice, freezing rain and snowflakes. the snowflakes were fun, but the rest was enough to make me want to go back to savannah and deposit myself out in the grass and have the nice autumn breezes waft crunchy leaves on my face!
my mom's back yard view.
the pernicious path of icy doom, also known as the front walk.
why are we doing this? summer clothes are so much cheaper than winter clothes. i feel like i am going to need a whole new wardrobe. especially boots! i guess there are some pluses.
only our burning, passionate love for one another will keep us warm.

most of the house hunting that we did we pretty normal; fresh paint, recently vacuumed carpet, neutral decor. then we came upon this last house. it was the most interesting house we had seen all day.
check out this wallpaper:
this wallpaper covered a huge room with 12 foot walls. at first glance i was rendered speechless. i wish my batteries in my camera had been working better because this horse wallpaper was in 3 different rooms. there was this, a hunter green version and a black version. floor to ceiling. nice. reeeal nice.

what a great way to end a great day of house hunting!

we got back last night and i decided that our little fam was going to enjoy our few remaining weeks of warmth and sunshine until spring rolls around in KC in a few months. we went to the park and "gave the ducks some bwead" as reagan calls it. then we wiled away the time swinging and playing on the slides.

i am determined to wear flip flops, sandals, anything opened toe until we move. perhaps there will even be an appearance of my bare alabaster legs in a skirt. societal conventions be darned!

holy fudge

christmas means one thing to me. FUDGE. i love it. while it tastes good year round, it tastes so much better in late november, early december while you are watching mr krueger's christmas with your family, laughing at the costumes and the dancing and weeping at mr krueger's loneliness. but, good fudge takes an enormous amount of work and patience. work i can do but my patience is reserved for the kiddies. a few years back i discovered this gem of a recipe. great, easy delicious fudge a la heidi:
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
6 ounces milk chocolate chips
1 can sweetened condensed milk
splash of vanilla
hunk of butter(optional)

directions- melt all ingredients in microwave. stir. pour in 9x9 pan. chill in fridge. lick spoon and bowl. smile with gluttony.

this plate was full last night. we are happy little pigs at the simpson house.

Y i hate U

rivalry weekend is my absolute favorite football weekend. sports are best enjoyed when emotions are high and bragging rights are on the line. (and a side of tortilla chips and 7 layer bean dip doesn't hurt.) of course, my favorite rivalry is BYU-Utah. it is in no way the biggest rivarly ever(i did hear one woman describe it as such and i nearly laughed in her face) but being that BYU is my alma mater, it is the most enjoyable to me. taking a cue from this blog, i created a list of things i don't like about the ewe-niversity of utah. while i cannot say that i officially "hate" utah, this time of year brings out my most intense anti-ute emotions. actually, my maternal grandfather played football for utah way back in the 40s, so i try to be civil. most of my animosity stems from football and the ridiculously ignorant ways ewe of eew fans hate BYU.
in no particular order:
1. utes who can't get over urban meyer. i despise his smug facial expressions, his "tricky" yet unskillful play calling, and his air of false superiority. but most of all i hate that he now coaches the hated florida gators and thinks that he is the bombdotcom.
2. "zoobie". this is the dumbest insult known to man. what is a zoobie and why is it so offensive? please give BYU fans a little credit and think of something else to yell at us. once i was at the university mall in orem and several orem high schoolers came up to me and starting calling me a "zoobie". wow, that hurt. it hurt so much that i have nothing else to say about it.
3. the utah fans' favorite argument against BYU fans is that BYU students are closely policed and can't make any choices and that they are forced to follow the honor code. hello! i chose to go to BYU, i chose to follow to honor code. and we can choose to go to another school if we don't want be there anymore. the honor code isn't this restrictive covenant that requires an ankle bracelet that buzzes whenever you approach the boundary of an acceptable BYU activity. i didn't have to revamp my lifestyle in order to attend BYU. it was the lifestyle i was already living. in my opinion, the honor code is more about keeping people that don't want to live a particular way out rather than cloistering people in. (and to clear up a popular BYU misnomer, you can wear flip flops on campus!)
4. utah fans also like to throw out that all BYU fans are self-righteous. this bugs me to no end. granted, there are plenty of self-righteous people at BYU. and at UVSC. and the ewe-niversity of ewe-tah. and at Utah State. and pretty much any other place in utah. having lived in several different places outside of Utah, i have discovered that self-righteousness is in proportion to population. i lived in the glorious state of Alabama for 4 years. while Alabama has the lowest number of LDS people per capita, there were still self-righteous people in all the wards i attended. including people that had never even set foot inside the state of Utah. and i am sure that even i have been self-righteous on a few occasions. that has nothing to do with my BYU degree.
5. finally, ewe-tah fans have this unfounded belief that their football team deserves a higher ranking than they are usually given. they've had a few good years here and there and have a decent coach. but put the yewts against any team in the SEC and they will get beaten. even Vanderbilt. it may be close, but Vandy would bring home the win. San Diego State is in no way as challenging as Ole Miss or Tennessee. and don't give me any of that Emerald Bowl 2005 bizness. Georgia Tech is by no means a Georgia or an Alabama or an Auburn.
now put that in you pipe and smoke it. oh wait, that's against the honor code.
GO COUGARS!

invisibaby

scarlett's 4 month check-up was last week, even though she will be 5 months old on the 28th. she weighed in at whopping 12lbs, 23 3/4 inch length and 41 cm head circumference. what does this prove? while she is very much my little "piglet" at feeding time, she is still teeny. natalie's and paula's twin babies could eat my little scarlett for breakfast.

here's the game: it's like where's waldo?, but it is more aptly titled where's scarlett? can you see her in this picture? like waldo, she is wearing red and white. i propped her up while i folded laundry and she quickly wiggled herself into my towel pile and took a nap. for a minute i couldn't see her. and a big thanks to meatball for taking a nap on my sock pile.

class of '98 rulz

i happened upon these pictures while i was tidying our bookshelves. i can't recall the last time i had seen some of these. i can't believe that my 10 year reunion will be this year. i didn't attend my 5 year reunion, but since i will be living in kansas city, the city of my youth, am i obligated to attend my 10 year?
anywhooo, these pictures painted a grin on my face. they are all from my senior year.

blue springs south prom. i am the dork in the bolero jacket. i actually still have this dress in a box somewhere. my mom convinced me that i would go on lots of dates to dances while at byu and that i would need to take this dress with me. wow, my mom is no psychic. date record for freshman year a whopping 3 dates. and buddy ball at the knight-mangum building doesn't count.

oak grove high school prom. i wasn't too thrilled about the evening as displayed by the great care i took of the photo. white out? mold? tears from sadness for graduating high school? i don't think i mourned that occasion once. i was too cool for school.

my best friend margo and me at graduation. my graduation dress was sleeveless(GASP). that created some drama at my house, but i turned out okay in the end.

the homecoming parade. how in the world i was a queen candidate i will never know. was it someone's cruel joke? was i a "carrie"? if i was, i sure didn't care. i was excited to wear a tiara and ride in a parade. i would still like to do that today! mrs. missouri usa here i come!
go jaguars!

stupid mom tricks

how many balloons can you blow up while taking a shower?
as of today i know that i can do at least 3.
how can i say no to that face?

pumpkin crumbly yumbly in my tumbly bars

ingredients:

1 package yellow cake mix

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 egg
2 eggs

2/3 cup milk

1 (1 lb) can pumpkin

2 1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup reserved cake mix
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 cup butter, soft

reserve 1 cup cake mix for topping. mix remaining cake mix, 1 egg and 1/2 cup butter together to form dough. press into the bottom of 9x13 inch greased pan.

mix 2 eggs, milk and pumpkin and spices until smooth. pour over first layer. combine reserved cake mix, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 cup soft butter and 1/4 sugar together until crumbly. sprinkle over pumpkin filling. bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes.

can either serve warm or chilled. tastes great with whipped topping.

moving days are here again

since we have lived in savannah for 2 whole months, we figured that it was time again to move. i know, i know, we move more than anybody else on the planet. pick your jaw up off the floor and keep reading. we are moving to kansas city in january. luckily, thomas' firm is paying for the move. plus, it has been a ton of fun to be house hunting online. all those years of watching property ladder and house hunters has really paid off. and since i am from kansas city, i already know what places to look and what areas to avoid. anywhooo, i will keep you posted on moving plans.

rise and shout, the cougars are out!

things i miss about byu:
1-sugar and spice. i loved eating those gigantic shakes for lunch.
2-people watching in the cougareat. the best way to skip a class.
3-summer time. 1/3 of the people on campus but 10 times more fun.
4-byu info. calling them for ridiculous answers and for random people whereabouts was awesome.
5-the first warm day in spring. everyone would layout in the grass and pretend to study. it looked like a war zone with all the bodies on the grass. plus there were always the token frisbee players.
6-hanging out at DT pool. uno, juvenile fiction, trivial pursuit cards and gossip.
7-byu football. i lovelovelove the cougars. and i hatehatehate the utes. can't wait for this year.



8-the hfac. all the weirdo artsy fartsy people walking around singing at the top of their lungs. the best!
9-trudging up the hill by the botany pond and considering it your exercise for the day
10-the letters to the editor on tuesdays and thursdays. each year the same topics were rehashed:
should the university allow caffeine-free coke to advertise?
why are there so many self-righteous people judging me?
why can't men have long hair at the testing center when Christ has long hair?
people that save seats for the devotional are going to hell.
and my all time favorite...girls shouldn't wear the messenger bags across their chests; it is suggestive and makes me have bad thoughts.

go cougars!

seven deadly things about me

i was tagged by my SIL sarah. here are 7 things about me:
1- i wish that i had matching flatware for 8. we got a really nice set of flatware for our wedding, but slowly and surely, pieces have been lost, misplaced, or eaten by the disposal. whenever we have people over to eat, i have to scrounge through the leftovers in the silverware drawer for acceptable fill ins. this time next year i will have a beautiful matching set and i will keep it locked in a secret drawer in my house!
2- i hate the color blue. i can't explain it. i rarely purchase blue clothing. looking in my closet, i have one blue shirt that i wear occasionally. very occasionally. more like rarely. when looking at houses, blue almost turns me off immediately. and pink is becoming a color that i don't like. it's just too much for me. everything for baby girls is pink. i am pinked out! where are all the cute black baby clothes??? there have got to be more options out there people. are we breeding a generation of conformists?
3- i can't eat japanese food anymore. two trips to kabuki while i was pregnant with scarlett has turned me off completely. just the thought of the scent of japanese food makes me want to run for the hills. i can't talk about it anymore.
4- i would like to take adult dance lessons. prehaps tap or jazz. or hip hop as all the youngsters call it these days.
5- i really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really wish i hadn't cut my all my hair off 2 months ago. i think i utterly despise it. i just don't feel like myself. i feel like i am supposed to have long glamorous, luxurious hair. even if it is only glamorous and luxurious in my own mind. i am trapped with another person's hair!
6- i would like to be a sharpshooter. i think it would be fascinating to be able to hit a target at a long range.
7- i would like to go on jeopardy, win the whole show, and then correct alex trebek on his pronunciation of an answer! it is so annoying when he does that on the show. the only reason he knows how to say anything is because he has the answer key and he was prepped before the show was taped. better yet, i would have my own game show called heidi vs. alex: ultimate trivia challenge. it would probably have a timed taco eating component and of course, wrestling.

unphotogenic

even supermodels have a bad day. a couple months ago, whilst we still lived in montgomery, the whole fam damily went to a circuit city store opening, just for kicks. to commemorate the occasion, circuit city brought in jay novacek and a couple of cowboys cheerleaders to sign autographs and show off their plastic surgery(the cheerleaders, not jay novacek). during the last few months of my pregnancy with scarlett i watched CMT's dallas cowboys cheerleaders reality show late at night to get through the sleeplessness and heartburn. it was only appropriate that i brought her to meet such icons of sports history and pop culture. too bad it just wasn't our night for picture taking. we all look a bit off:

thomas is sooper happy, reagan was afraid of jay novacek, and mr. novacek looked like a greasy redneck. but i would never say that to his face because he was absolutely huge. thomas is 6'3 and jay was more than that.

the cheerleaders were extra cheery, scarlett looks annoyed that there was only silicone coming out of those boobs and i look tired, bedraggled and pale. so it was a typical day for me.

this whole blog everyday is really causing me to scrape the bottom of photo barrel for ideas. can you tell?

hostess with the mostess

christmas is coming, we are getting fat,

would you please put a penny in the old man's hat.

or better yet, in my hat so that i can afford to buy more christmas presents!

so, here's the question of the day:

what will y'all be bringing as hostess gifts to holiday parties/dinners/get togethers? normally, one would bring a bottle of wine, but seeing how our house does not imbibe, that is not an option for us.

candles? chocolates? stationary? a book? any good websites for ideas? throw me a bone here people!

also, these pics are from this weekend. we visited a revolutionary war era cemetary downtown. have i mentioned recently that savannah is a FANTASTIC place to visit?

i feel like i needed to redeem myself from the awful "mom jeans" picture!