everybody loves a booty girl!

one winner. 655 losers. and i eat losers for breakfast. with a side of cheese grits. and sometimes the winner doesn't finish 1st. she finishes 137th with a new personal best of 27:07. 5th in her age group. let the boastful speeches begin. you want it and i'm serving it. with a shake.

pre-race. everybody loves booty shorts. they make you run faster. though utterly tasteful, i thought mine were a touch too short. check out the teenage skanks that slipped into the picture with me and made me look like a modest prude.

my personal cheering section. littlebigmouth mostly cheered for the free donuts they were handing out. el presidente was cheering for the football lights at the stadium. thank goodness legaleagle had his blackberry to keep him occupied.

take a gander at my romanian-pre-teen-gymnast hairstyle. i think i had eight hair barrettes in total. all i needed was some spray glitter for my hair and a too small long-sleeved leotard that rode up in the back i would have been set. i'm not one of those runners that can handle their hair touching them at any time. it ruins my concentration and focus. plus, it's extra gymnasty(my new word) because i am stretching while balancing on the curb. gold medal-tastic.

the purple circle is me. the red circle is my time.
holla at my boy!(tim gunn)

and so this completes my 2008 three road race goal. what have we learned kids?

1. you don't have to have any athletic abililty whatsoever to be a runner.

2. i now consider myself an athlete and i walk with a jock-swagger wherever i go.

3. is that it?

and one for all the baby's mama's mamas. that's you grandma and mimi.
reagan's soccer team is like herding cats. 10 three year old's who can't listen to save their lives.

balancing the ball on one hip, while the other hand was nonchallantly placed on the other hip and smiling at the same time was almost too much to ask for.

and don't get me started on the team picture.
the end. fancypants out!

gone with the awesome!

if you read my blog courtesy of bloglines or google reader and normally don't actually pull up my blog, pull it up today! i have a fantastic new header lovingly handcrafted by my AMAZING dear friend, emily. i cannot get over her incredible creativity. she knows me so well. check out the awesomeness!

you love me, you really love me!

i was given an i love your blog award by the fabulous meredith! in order to accept this illustrious award, i need to complete the following tag, while only using ONE WORD ANSWERS! yikes! bikes!!! can it be done? i am usually a bit wordy! let's roll!

1. Where is your cell phone? near
2. Where is your significant other? downtown
3. Your hair color? perfect
4. Your mother? perfecter
5. Your father? missionary-oriented(hyphens make it one word)
6. Your favorite thing? jokes
7. Your dream last night? sneaky
8. Your dream/goal? self-sufficient
9. The room you're in? officenook
10. Your hobby? running
11. Your fear? insignificance
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? 34
13. Where were you last night? dreamland
14. What you're not? serious
15. One of your wish-list items? abs
16. Where you grew up? bluesprings
17. The last thing you ate? apple
18. What are you wearing? sequins
19. Your TV? old
20. Your pet? clean
21. Your computer? on
22. Your mood? pensive
23. Missing someone? grandmabonnie
24. Your car? garage
25. Something you're not wearing? anything
26. Favorite store? ice cream
27. Your summer? cool
28. Love someone? duh
29. Your favorite color? black
30. When is the last time you laughed? recently
31. Last time you cried? recenterly

hot snot, we're back in business!

who can name the movie referenced in my post title???

october is finally upon us!

the week started out with a bang. more like a barf. reagan got the flu on tuesday. it was his first sick day from school. to make the most out of it, he accompanied scarlett and me to the doctor's office for her 15 month check up and made the visit extra special by throwing up all over the office. i know the staff is looking forward to us coming back soon, and reagan is no respecter of persons. i was hit in the downpour.

this is how he spent most of the day.

on saturday the whole fam damily went to a "pumpkin patch"(more like someone's big backyard with a barn and some pumpkins and they charged an exorbitant admission).

i milked a cow. even though it was fake, it was still gross.

i wore inappropriate, but fantastic shoes.
we perused the pumpkin selection.

we took test shots for our christmas card.

i love this yawn picture. it's just funny.

this particular part of the "farm" was disturbing. it was a giant air-filled contraption that resembled a gigantic tapeworm. the kids climbed in the mouth...
...and they exited here. at the end. it was gross. like a science class right up close.
hurray.

and my halloween seasonals are up!!! okay, they have actually been up since mid-september, but some people at my house think that is weird. i just like to get my money's worth

the most wonderful time of the year!!!

and my most favorite event of the week was general conference. for those not in the know, general conference is the bi-annual conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. the uplifting words are my balm of gilead; they soothe my soul and buoy me up in hard times. my favorite speaker was elaine dalton. click on her name for a good listen! she looked AWESOME and her words spoke straight to my heart. and i was loving the black bows around her neck. so chic!

the will to win means nothing without the will to prepare.

and the most shocking news of the conference was the announcement of a temple to be built in the greater kansas city area. oh the joy that fills my heart! i cannot begin to describe my elation at this news. i had to listen to the announcement three times before it truly sank in. i was so taken by surprise! i had always written off the possibility of a temple in this area in the near future. just two weeks ago we dedicated our new stake center(large regional church building) in the area and now this. we are so blessed. seriously.

i have heard rumors of where the temple will be built, but i prefer to play location speculation! i can think of a few areas just down the road from my house that i think would be perfect locations! hurray!

not quite martha

when we were house hunting last december, our realtor was REALLY excited to show us a particular room in our soon-to-be-purchased house. he said that i would just LOVE the little girls room. i was pretty excited to see it too. the previous owners had a little girl so i figured that they must have done an extra special decorating job in her room. boy did they. extra pepto special.

i remember walking into the room and having to take a step back. my eyes were assaulted by fuschia overload. ON EVERYTHING!

the ceiling fan:

the walls:
the ridiculously cutesy lightswitch:
the curtain rod and tie back(not visible):
i HATED it. but we bought the house nonetheless. it's a good house. the perpetual pink problems were all cosmetic. like zitty skin, all the room needed was a facelift.

(scarlett in february at the beginning of the project.)

and for some reason, i thought i was the woman for the job. i took design classes in college, i consider myself an unpaid professional. so i cleaned walls, taped the molding, picked out colors, and ordered bedding. and then the real work began. who was i kidding? i am no perfectionist and this room is evidence of that. i think of my special closet full of half- finished crafts and random projects that i never got around to finishing. it looks like where bad crafts go to die. indeed, a bad craft graveyard. martha would shriek.
the pink paint was nearly impossible to cover even with my tinted primer. i scraped the bottoms of the cans of paint like my life depended on it. i should have purchased more paint. instead, i was tired of painting and considered the job finished. shortly after finishing thomas told me that if i had wanted, i could have hired someone for the job. that was information that would have been useful in january. people who have seen the room probably think i am trying to get all romantical with them since i only show it to them with the lights dimmed. my mistakes are less visible that way.



even with a flawed room, littlebigmouth still loves me.

(this was scarlett yesterday, at the end of the project. yes, all the decor details took me forever to finish. a true labor of love. someday when scarlett is an insolent teenager, i will remind her of this often. and yes, i totally put her in that dress for my little photo shoot so that she would match the room.)

my "theme" was southern belle. someday i will let scarlett pick what she wants to have in her room. that day is not today. and tomorrow looks cloudy too. perhaps when she starts bringing some money to the table i'll let her have opinions.

my little gone with the wind collection. until she can make up her own mind, i am forcing her into being a miniature fan. i sewed that table runner. the objets d'art are covering the mistakes i didn't feel like fixing.
the ceiling fan was probably the hardest thing to paint. it looks terrible. if the fan is on, you don't notice the splotchiness of the paint. i am quite pleased with the black ric rac trim. i am a glue gun extaordinaire.

in this pic, please note the FANTASTIC gone with the wind signage above the closet door. prolly my favorite item in the room. facing the closet is a print of some majestic georgia oak trees. it reminds me of the street we lived on in savannah.
feeling romantical?
you can find ANYTHING on ebay. like this switchplate. and it was only $6! someday i plan on bankrupting our vast fortune on gone with the wind knick knacks. like the cookbook i spied yesterday. or the metal character magnets. and salt shakers. and lamp. and juice glasses. and a handmade version of the infamous red velvet dress marked down to the bargain price of $400. perfect for grocery shopping. i will be the belle of wal-mart and everyone will be vying for me to come through their check-out line. this will be about the same time thomas commits me to the asylum. but frankly i won't give a damn.
in short, (but when i am ever short?) i am hanging up my paint roller. the drop cloths are retired. this was my first and last major painting project. from here on out i will be in supervisory positions only.

the end.

everybody's got their something. these are mine.

mindi (are you guys reading her blog yet? you should be! funnystuff) confessed her guilty pleasures on her blog and i was inspired to share mine. she, of course, had some guidelines to follow like favorite guilty pleasure movie, favorite guilty pleasure food... but i couldn't follow those parameters, so i just made a list of my guilty pleasures, in no particular order:



1. watching burn notice.

it's great. and ridiculous. it's a one man A-team. and it's got gabrielle anwar from wild hearts can't be broken as the sidekick/explosives expert/love interest. so it is sooper great. and ridiculous. and they all carry shiny guns. i would love to whip a gun out of my purse one of these days. i bust out laughing at least once during every episode because of something funny. and it is usually not meant to be humorous.

2. the ORIGINAL beverly hills 90210 in reruns on the soap channel. i never watched this show back when it was in it's heyday. all my little pre-teen friends did, but not me. i was too busy reading. and being a social outcast. a 90210 marathon played over labor day weekend that started from the first episode and i was hooked. i have about 14 episodes in the queue. hurray. the early nineties never looked so good.

3. rereading Gone With The Wind for the bazillioneth time. for reals. i know i should be reading the scriptures, or the ensign or something i haven't read yet, but i can't help it. i especially like to carry around my copy that looks like a gigantic old-fashioned Bible. just to throw off people at the gym. how funny would it be to see someone on an elliptical maching reading a HUGE Bible? that's some serious heavy lifting. maybe that's just funny to me. i just finished reading it again last night. bawled my face off again, but i always cry at different places each time i read it. last night i cried because bonnie dies. i usually don't care too much because she is so ugly in the movie. and i cried because of lovely melanie. have i finally learned to appreciate her? i consoled myself by thinking of ways i would rewrite the final chapter. one version involved a scarlett o'hara/belle watling shootout. (i know they aren't real people. the line between reality and fantasy isn't that blurry over here.)

i also told legaleagle that he needs to grow a rhett butler moustache.



because it totally works on him.
and because it really doesn't work on me.
***and if anyone in the comments section decides to make a comment about how much they hate scarlett o'hara, and how much they like melanie and that i should have named my daughter melanie, you will be dead to me. you and your mother. mark my words.***




4. britney spears. i know what you are thinking. you don't even need to comment. but, have you ever listened to the heartbreak of "lucky"? or the power in "stronger" or the heart-wrenching sadness in "toxic"?

5. mariah carey. i just love her screaching high pitched voice. and her desperate lets-hold-on-to-this-relationship-ballad. and her pseduo-gangsta-ishness. do you know how hard it is to find a picture of her that i am not embarassed to have on my blog?

6. reading blogs of perfect strangers just because they wear fantastic clothes. boring posts=amazing outfits. it's all eye candy.



7. watching anything on E! while i am running on the treadmill. it's amazing how many miles i can put down while watching some of their educational programming. today it was the top 20 young royals. i also like E! news with ryan seacrest and giuliana. it's like i am running and reading a tabloid at the same time.

8. blogging. does it get guiltier than this??? few things accomplish so little and take up so much time and i can't help but LOVE IT! i keep a list with me at all times of things i would like to blog about. you never know when you will be inspired. it is right next to my list of items of clothing i see on other people that i would like to own too.

9. reading obituaries in the newspaper. i find it really heartwarming to hear about all the nice things they accomplished in their lives. it's a tad morbid. i look forward to it. i am already writing my own.

how 'bout you? what's your guilty pleasure?

dear uncle bonecrusher

dear uncle bonecrusher,
my little brood and i would like to thank you for the fun 5 weeks that you were here this summer. we especially enjoyed the last few days as we tried to pack everything that we had not yet accomplished into the few remaining hours of daylight.
el presidente still asks for you each day and he was pretty upset when he discovered that you weren't at the icecreamqueen's house. littlebigmouth hasn't said anything about your departure. that's how choked up she is about the whole deal. legaleagle would sure like your opinion on the byu/washington game.
we hope that you enjoy this semester of school and we can't wait to see you at christmas.

love, me(just a gentle reminder that i am still accepting nickname suggestions.)

the final week with uncle bonecrusher recap-

all summer long, uncle bonecrusher and i had planned on revisiting several places from our childhood in this 'hood we call KCMO. we decided to have the first annual KANSASCITYDAY. we were so busy and had to cram most of the activities into 2 quick days. interestingly enough, one day was nice and warm 85 degrees, while the second day was a surprisingly cool and rainy 58.(thank your hurricane gustav.)

SIN-tennial pool was visited, where most of the bikinis worn were deemed a sin. i mean seriously, being proud of your body no matter how many donuts you ate for breakfast for the last 15 years is one thing, protecting the eyes of the innocent is another. unfortunately, no pictures of that display.

uncle bonecrusher flexing for the camera.
as you can clearly see, we were the two oldest people, by about 15 years, jumping off the diving boards and going down the slides.

can you see my smiling face in this one?
on the way home from the pool...
we decided to drive by the "cave"
the "cave" is our local polygamous cult. see, not just in utah! the cave operates under the guise of being a science academy, when in acuality, it is the residence of our local crazy man who decided he was the new prophet and collected more wives and took his family and went and lived at this compound. the place has a complete absence of spirit. i get chills thinking about it. anywhooo, being the adventurers that we are, we drove to the entrance to take some commemorative pictures.
yikes. double yikes. i triple dog dare you to call the number.(not really, please don't. the thought frightens me.)
uncle bonecrusher was braver than i was. i barely got out of the car to take this picture. when he picked up the phone i was worried that the gates would swing open and we would be dragged inside by their tractor beam and you never would have heard from us again.

moving right along. day 2 of KANSASCITYDAY began with a fun lunch with aunt heather(no nickname yet) at our favorite diner winsteads, home of the skyscraper milkshake.

the weather was so dreary that we had to wear jackets and sweaters. uncle bonecrusher was defiant against the weather and wore shorts.


after lunch we enjoyed shopping in the rain at the plaza(plah-zuh for you pretentious types) and the fantastical and free nelson atkins museum of art, home of the world famous shuttlecock scultptures.

uncle bonecrusher just loves art so he was in heaven. he studied each piece carefully and took the chance to mentor young el presidente in form and beauty very seriously.

posing next to my favorite, water lilies by claude monet. didn't know i was so cultured and refined did ya? i try and keep that part of my life secret since my incredible intellectual acuity tends to alienate the unwashed masses.

uncle bonecrusher and the world's largest bong.

el presidente getting excited at the thought of exhibits on buddhism and impressionist painting.

did i tell you that uncle bonecrusher is thinking of going into animal proctology? he practiced on the brady bunch horse.
so clever. i am the first person to think of doing this.
uncle bonecrusher and el presidente got stuck in the revolving doors.

two great thinkers




russell stover, headquartered in KCMO. please visit. i need another excuse to go to their outlet store.

finally, the gigantic and shiny and new bass pro shop in independence. i felt a little out of place being that i don't even know how skin a buck, let alone run trout line, but they had a fudge shop, so i felt remarkably at home.
bess, the 103 lb catfish.
country folk can survive.
the end. who says kansas city doesn't have any class?