2008 - A (Blog) Year in Review

I thought I would update you all on some past blogs of the year.

I am Mommy Gorilla - Well, this was such a popular post, I installed a "Scout Tracker" so everyone could keep up with Scout's latest animal persona. I didn't update it everyday (or as many times as she changed which is SEVERAL times a day) but you all got a little taste. She is no longer just a cat, now she needs a name. It is usually "Socks" one time she wanted a new name so I said, "Boots?" that was no good, she informed me that Boots is already taken (Dora's monkey). About a week later, she said her name was "Booty". That cracked Rob and I up to no end.
Anyway, that little aspect of her character has in no way slowed down. In fact two nights ago she tried to hop into the front of my pants again, but she wasn't merely a kangaroo baby, she was Roo.

Confessions of a Guitar Hero Nerd - I don't play so much these days, but have been able to up many of my scores in my trusty book. My bro Matt liked my book so much, he made one too. Rob said I should market my idea. I think people would like it! So what if he told me that tongue in cheek. My book still amuses him.

Make Scout Famous! - Sadly, her pictures did not win, but was fairly popular. The yelling one made it to page 5 out of hundreds of pages of pictures. Thanks for all the votes!

3 Reasons Why I have Recently Become a Chump - Reason 1 - Still doing the clippys, straightening iron, etc. But I am getting faster. My hair is even longer but I am liking it. I do however need a haircut at present. Reason 2 - We are back to the good old DVR and couldn't be happier. No more commercials or live tv at all come to think of it. Reason 3 - Turns out, the short was in the section that plugs into the wall, had a very universal output cord, and we even had a few spare hanging about the house (on the playstation for one). We went through months of annoyance for a $6 cord! The sad part of that story is Rob's splicing job damaged the battery pack, so we had to replace it with a $80 contraption. That one has since shorted out too. But at the part that plugs into the computer this time, so no quite as easy to replace. I'm sure when we do, Mose will squeel in delight of a new contraption to mess with.

15 Albums Everyone Should Own - My what a can of worms this post opened up! But about the original post, I wonder if I did the list again, would it have all the same albums on it? I don't know, it's a pretty good list. The Radioheads would stay for sure, although I don't listen to those albums near as much as I used to. Hail to the Theif is dominating my cd player at present. Plus, itunes has added all (or most) of Radioheads singles available for purchase for 2 to 3 dollars, so the last 4 or 5 months I have been in B side heaven. But that's a little off subject. The most controversial of the cds on that list proved to be the Fiona Apple one. I still stand by it! I burned it for B and she likes it by the way.

A Breakthrough for me - As you have all been updated on the continuing saga of my broken ovaries (fallopian tubes), there isn't too much to say. I am now at the end of my 3rd round of Clomid, my doc gave me refills enough for 4 rounds. I don't know what happens from there, you can't stay on Clomid forever. Sigh.

Three Mother Quails - Those eggs never did hatch and mommy quail flew the nest about 3 days after that post. I broke one egg (it was still liquid) and threw the rest away and told Scout they hatched and flew away, and she was delighted. She doesn't need to be subjected to the fragile circle of life yet.

A Very Sad Goodbye? - No calls from Park City. The good news is that Scout continued to adjust to Kiki #2 very nicely, and it has since lost it's new appearance and looks every bit as ragged as Kiki #1 at this time. On the subject, I have to share that I now tuck kiki in at night. Yes, you heard right, the blanket gets tucked in -with a blanket. I'll take a picture of it sometime.

The Jell-o Salad - Mary made me bring Jello to Thanksgiving. Oh and Liza if your reading this, that boy's name was Maurice! How could I forget Maury? He was Harry Connick Jr. boy. I still can't associate him with Jello, that is still not connecting. I remembered him instantly when I was going through boxes one day and I found a picture of all of us.

I Like Books - Since reporting on that list, I have added: Lord of the Rings Trilogy (almost done with it, just have most of the 3rd book to finish), Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Hobbit, and I finished 1984. That brings my total to: 45. Wright peeps, we never have done the Wright family list! We need to get on that. Maybe in the very boring month of January we can make it a goal.

The Gauntlet - What can I say? The Harry Pot Pots vs. the Fro Bags has become quite the ordeal. I believe I am currently the only Fro Bag that has read a word of the series. Lame Sauce. I am finding it pretty interesting and suspect I will have more good to say from the whole thing then bad. I am sure I willl find that I can make fun of Sue still though (but I will be able to spell "orcs" right, and do it all with a little affection). The Harry Pot Pots has done very well. Sue is on book 4, Amy is on book 5, and Haley inhaled them all in record time! Kyle is on book 7 -I think (or done), and I believe Marcus is stuck on book 6 (or was last I checked). Confession: I was a closet Harry Pot Pot and read books 3 - 7 in the midst of being a Fro Bag. I couldn't help it! I was talking about them too much.

Bloggy Blog Blog - We indeed made a family blog and it has proven most popular. Visit it with care, you may just find out what a crazy family I really have.

The Cow that Won't Die - The cow is no longer going moo moo moo moo everytime, now he lets out one feeble moo. He is currently residing in the upstairs linen closet. We don't hear from him much anymore. **update** it is now about 2 hours since I wrote this and I have heard the cow moo 3 different times! I swear I haven't even opened that closet. I haven't heard him moo in weeks. Do you think it is mechanical enough to interest Mose? Check out this line in the original post, "right after we moved into our new house, we started hearing mooing". Something to think about...

Emily's Wal-Mart Gripe - No trips to Wal-Mart from me! It has proven to take not even a little effort to keep this goal. The Smith's Marketplace by my house has made this very easy indeed. It would be the coolest grocery store I have ever been in, had I not experienced "Wegman's" in New York. Ahhh.....Wegmans.

Crazy Psychic Scout - I kid you not, Christmas morning, she picked up a present from my mom and said, "I want to open my cars", Rob and I laughed and said that it would be funny if it really was cars. It was!!!!! Two little matchbox cars. We have it on video if you doubt Scout's psychic powers.

Happy New Year everyone!

2008 indeed had it's moments, but I am hoping that 2009 kicks it's butt.

Merry Chrimas Ebah!

We had a joy filled Christmas.

There is nothing like a child just figuring out Christmas and all it's glories to put some life into it. As parents we got to experience the bribery of the phrase, "Santa's watching you" and we will miss that tremendously. Last year that phrase just struck terror on her face (she wasn't thrilled with the idea of this big bearded fat man watching her and going into her living room).

This year, we even left him a cookie under the tree.

We had Grandpa Pugh, Uncle Nathan, and Aunt Christie even joined us from Scranton, Penn. They spent Christmas Eve with us, we had a nice dinner, then they left that night and we got some annual Christmas Eve dunglees and put Scout to bed. She was very excited about Santa coming and what he might leave. She came into our room at about 7:30 asking for some breakfast. I was kind of like, uh- wouldn't you like to see if Santa came? She retorted with one of the answers I had been giving her, "Santa is going to come to our house and bring presents". I was like, "I think he might have already came". She processed that for a few, and then her eyes lit up and she said, "let's go see what we got!!" She totally forgot! Then, as she saw the spread, she noticed the cookie was gone and she kept discussing that and ignoring the toys, I love Scout. The rest is history.

As you can probably guess from these examples, we COULD NOT get a normal picture of the bean. Chalk it up to Christmas Eve excitement.

We also forgot to have someone take a family picture before everyone took off, so this was the best we could do.

Scout made out like a bandit with a My Little Pony carnival, a robotic tiger cub (the hit of Christmas, his name is Wowee), a couple games, new crayons, etc. Mom and dad got a new flat screen (courtesy of Rob painting some dude's basement) a dvd player, dad got a new game and mom got a new rice cooker (my old one is acting weird. It's probably Mose, so the problem most likely will continue, since it has worked fine for years until we moved here.) My dad got me a set of folding chopsticks complete with a little pouch that can be put on your belt. He's funny. We spent the rest of the morning at Grandpa's opening more presents together. I got a book telling the story of a woman survivor of the Rwanda Holocaust (a little light reading). We also got a new motherboard hurray! We think it is getting installed tomorrow. Later that day, we tried to beat the storm (with success) and went to Sampan for some traditional Christmas day Chinese food. Sadly, I forgot my chopsticks.

I have to spend a minute telling you about Wowee. For weeks, Scout was a little tiger cub named Wowee and I just thought it was a name she came up with, and she was trying to say, "roaree". One day I happened upon a commercial for a little robot cub that meowed and purred and slept and growled by a company called "Wowee", and thus discovered what Scout had been obsessed with for weeks. I figured that would be an excellent gift from Santa. I benefited from the bad economy/waiting until the week of Christmas with a Target sale, selling them for half off. I got her the white tiger cub and boy that thing hasn't left her sight all week. It totally creeps Rob out, but I have to admit, it totally brings out my mothering instincts! It blinks it's eyes and purrs if you pet it's head or back. If you leave it alone for 5 minutes it goes to sleep and snores for a few minutes then, just keeps it's little eyes closed until you wake it up. I go into her room after she is asleep, and Wowee is tucked in next to her, both of them sound asleep and I have to give him a little love too, they are so cute sleeping together! I also can be seen giving it a little squeeze when she drops him in my lap to take care of him for a minute, while she does whatever she needs both hands to do. This morning they came into bed with me after Rob left and Scout became a Wowee lion cub and I got to be it's proud owner. She would fall asleep and prompt me to press her ear to wake her up. It was cute (and classic Scout).

Since we won't buy Scout a real animal, I told Rob that this is the least we can do, and he has to get over his fear of Wowee sneaking up to his bed at night and attacking him (his eyes make a little mechanical noise when they blink and that is mostly what haunts him).

Anyway, we had a very Merry Christmas and hope you all did too!

Crazy Psychic Scout

So, Scout has exactly two wrapped presents under the tree at this time. One is a My Little Pony by the name of Rainbow Dash, the other is a new little porcelain tea set.

Not this tea set, but you get the idea..

At about 7 this morning, Scout comes into my room and said, "mom, there is another Rainbow Dash! Now I have two Rainbow Dashs and they can have a tea party!!" (She got a miniature one in her happy meal early this week, a rainbow dash that is)
My heart sinks and I said, "Scout! Did you open up the presents that are under the tree?" She said yes and I hop out of bed chastising her with the intention of confiscating them and re wrapping them.
I go downstairs and I was surprised to find the two presents exactly where they have been, neatly wrapped under the tree. Confused I go in her room, and she has her old plastic tea set all set out and her My Little Ponies poised to have a great party.
What kind of crazy coincidence is that?? She likes her tea set, but hasn't played with it in weeks. I told Rob the craziness about a half hour ago and he said that he took her to McDonald's last night (surprise surprise, mom was at work) and he told me that Scout got another little Rainbow Dash. So, she really did get another Rainbow Dash and they really were having a tea party, just not at all like I was imagining. I have no explanation as to why she answered yes when I asked her if she opened the presents, except that sometimes she just answers my questions affirmatively thinking that's what I want to hear.

CRAZY!

My Experience Reading the Two Towers

It is no secret that I had a wee hard time getting through The Two Towers. It took me over two and a half months to finish it. This is not a reflection of how much reading time I have had, I took a bit of a break in the middle of the book and read 6 books before I picked it up again. I didn't hate the book, in fact I liked probably 65% of it. There are just certain characters I am having a hard time getting into and caring about their journeys. The characters are as follows: Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli.

I think I have figured out why. They kind of encompass my preconceived ideas I have of fantasy novels. Just like men on quests doing stuff. I don't know how to further explain that, but I think that is it. I realize that my experience with Fantasy stuff is fairly limited, therefore most of my ideas about it are perhaps misconstrued. In past posts I have explained a little about what I like about fantasy "magical objects, etc." So maybe I will explain a little about what I don't like about fantasy -men on quests doing stuff. My brain just naturally shuts off. Having magical powers or senses doesn't help at all (they don't hurt, just don't help.) Having a noble reason for the quest also doesn't help. Anyway, for whatever reason, that is what I think of when I think of fantasy and I just go -blah.

I also don't have a lot of concern with "the ring" I know it is powerful, I know it has some bad guy's spirit in it or something and if it falls into the wrong hands, life as all of these people know it in Middle Earth will be destroyed. I also know that it is the crux of this series. I care that Frodo has to destroy it and I am totally with him there, but the whole idea of the ring isn't that interesting to me.

Ok, now that that is done, I really like Frodo and Samwise. I liked all of the story with them and Gollum traveling to Mordor, that was good stuff. Shelob was freaking cool and I wasn't expecting her. It had a good ending too, cliff hanger-ish. I also am liking Pippin and Merry too. They are funny and hold my interest nicely. Treebeard was really cool and I found his whole part really interesting. Rohan was boring to me and gave me flashbacks of Rivendell. But that was the three people I was talking about before, so perhaps my brain inadvertently shut down.

I have a bit of a beef with Mr. Tolkien about something. Why in the world did he name his two bad guys, "Sauron" and "Saruman" this confuses me greatly! They are so similar in spelling and sound, I have great difficulty telling them apart and figuring out who we are talking about at any given time. What is up with that?

I have one more point to bring up, which doesn't have to do with plot or storyline. Sue, in your review of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" under your dislikes category, you state:
The line in the book "celebrity is as celebrity does". I think Lockhart says it to Harry. When I read the line I almost threw the book across the room in disgust. The Forest Gump people should sue her.
Is this on account of plagiarism or something? If so, I would like to draw your attention to Pg. 624 of my copy of The Two Towers (the last few pages of The Window on the West) : "You've spoken very handsome all along, put me off my guard, talking of Elves and all. But handsome is as handsome does we say."
So, should Tolkien's people sue the Forest Gump writer first? Or is this a legitimate saying that has been tossed around for centuries where you throw in the proper word for the situation?

So in conclusion, all in all, I liked the book. I struggled a bit through parts, but am left with a desire to read the last book so I can see how it all works out. I think I am going to attempt to see the first two movies first. Sue watched a few Harry Potter movies and it may do me some good. Maybe I will understand or care more about the three I am having a hard time picturing. Plus, I must say I am curious to see some of the things I read about come to life. It will also be interesting to see the first movie again and see if anything comes back to me.

Ransom!

Ok, this post is SHAMEFULLY overdue. Remember the time when B said she hated Neil Young and me and my sisters got all up in arms and the war was on? I vaguely remember someone sending B the severed head of a rubber ducky..........
B did get back at us long ago (we can blame Mose the Amish Ghost for a good fraction of why I haven't posted this yet), but to be fair, he only deserves a fraction. I finally got creative and figured out how to post this despite Mose's best efforts. (in your face Mose!!)

Sometime in July, Matt and B came down to Salt Lake and we all watched a Neil Diamond impersonator concert together. It was on the grass and so I brought some blankets. (I'd insert footage of Scout dancing to Neil right here, but Mose is winning THAT battle). One of the blankets was the beloved "cookie blanket" it is ultra soft and covered with cookies and everyone loves it. I made it for Rob to curl on the couch with a few Christmases ago. After the concert, we went back to Sues and watched Will Ferrell (I think) and true to form, B fell asleep. She fell asleep wrapped in the cookie blanket (she is one of cookie blanket's biggest fans). I didn't want to disturb her (aren't I so so nice?), so I left without it and went home figuring I could get it from Sue sometime in the future. The future came that next week. I believe I was going to give her a cd I made for her of Radiohead as an intro for her to the best band ever, -man I created a masterpiece with that and liked it so much I kept it as a playlist on my itunes and enjoy it from time to time --how's that going by the way Sue?). Anyway, Scout and I were going north to the library, so it all worked out nicely. Except that Sue text me that she couldn't find the blanket in question. That was kind of weird and we were both really stumped until we thought of B........ I KNEW she took it and text her that night and she really acted innocent. There was a second where she seemed a bit fishy, and I called her on that, but I kind of believed her a little bit. Sue and I turned into self proclaimed super detectives by the name of Nancy Drew (Sue) and I was George and I think we named Cath Bess. After some mental sluething in our matching outfits and handbags and kicky heels, we came to two conclusions- 1.) B took it and is lying (in the name of rubber duckies everywhere). or 2.) (I'm sorry B, but it's true) B took it cause she loves it so much, without Matt's knowledge and was up in the attic ala' Bertha Rochester, stroking the cookie blanket in secret.

Well The Case of the Missing Cookie Blanket dragged on for a few weeks until one morning I got a text from Sue wondering if I had looked outside my door yet. I had not as it was only 8:30. I peeked outside and immediately slammed the door and text Sue, "What in the world is that??!!" The sight that greeted me was this:That's not quite right, my doorstep had Timmy with crossed out eyes (black electrical tape) and a small scattering of cookies (my pics are still in my camera and have to stay there until we figure out our computer problem). At Sue's house she was greeted with a ransom note, the above picture and my cookie blanket draped on her scarecrow.

B composed that herself to the tune of a lovely Neil Young song:

So, B did have it, and Nancy and Co. solved the case (with option number one, which is probably for the best, cause option 2 was kind of creepy and we are glad Matt doesn't have that to deal with). Rob didn't think it was fair, cause it was his blanket and I quote, "I don't even like Neil Young!". Poor Timmy, Sue never even noticed he was missing......

Here is the best part of this whole thing. Matt and B drove down to execute this little caper and went to Sue's first, and then down to Orem to drop the goods off at my house. It's 3 in the morning and what do they do now? They can't stay with any of their sisters, we can't know they are in town. SO they go down the street from my house, park at a park and sleep in the car! To make it even funnier, one of the people that live across the street knocked on their window at like 8 in the morning and gave them muffins and juice. Haha! Happy Valley............................

By the way, if you're totally lost by all this read this, start from the bottom post and work your way up.. (hint: there is vital information in the comments).