One of many reasons that you shouldn't text while driving

You might decide text a love message to your husband and accidentally scroll past your husband's name (in my case, Bobby) and select your brother-in-law's brother's name (in my case, Brendan) instead. Then you'll start laughing hysterically and turn bright red from embarrassment and endanger your life even more by hurriedly texting an explanation to said brother-in-law's brother. Trust me, my friends- I speak from experience.

getting jiggy with it

We have this radio station that students from our local university run. I LOVE this station. Thanks to them, I've found these two gems. (Although I have to give credit to my friend Josh and my brother-in-law JP for telling me about them first. I merely heard them for the first time on this station.) Listen to them. They'll be "like music to your ears." Literally.





I've heard them play "Sexy Sadie" by the Beatles, the Breeders, Bob Dylan... And these are college students? They do such a good job. And somehow, miraculously, they knew tonight that I wanted to hear "Getting Jiggy With It" by Will Smith. I took car dancing to a new level tonight, my friends. Seriously, I could teach lessons.

Jump Picture Fail

Do you read the fail blog? It's provided Bobby and I with hours of laughter. Check this one out.

After going through my pictures from Chicago, I came up with my own "fail."

Natalie and I were walking along Lake Michigan and stopped to take some pictures. I told her she should jump and I'd try and take a picture. We switched cameras and she tried to do the same for me. It didn't work out too well. See for yourself.

Nice try.

Not even close.Ah, forget it.

Car dancers of the world, unite and take a bow

Do you ever feel like there is one song for a Monday morning to get you going, and sometimes you're lucky enough to have your local radio station pick it out for you and play it? Well, today as I was driving Franny to school, getting ready to make a left onto Illinois from Baltimore and wiping the sleepers from my eyes, I heard that very special Monday morning energy song. Today that song was "Everybody Dance Now" by C & C Music Factory. I always wonder what my kids are thinking when they watch me start dancing in the driver's seat, using the steering wheel as my own personal drum set and singing my heart out. They are probably thinking, "my mom is a freak!"

I'm curious if anyone else out there is a car dancer? I'm seriously asking. Show yourselves. I always try to get my kids to join me. It's been a slow process, but they're coming around. Sophie will sometimes try to copy my moves and I see Franny bobbing her head fairly often. I am hoping that someday one of my friends will tell me, "I saw you driving in the car and totally rocking out!" I don't think that will ever happen though because I always keep an eye on the road (good thing, right?) and as soon as I see a car that looks familiar I stop what I'm doing, put on my mom face, and calmly smile and wave as I pass my fellow mini-van. I should be true to myself.

EVERYBODY DANCE NOW!

Since I know you are dying to hear that song now I'm including a little playlist featuring that song along with some others from my youth. Enjoy!

I'm so happy right now.

In my dreams

I like to have noise in the background when I'm doing housework, so I'll often pop in a movie that I've seen before and I catch bits and pieces as I'm in and out of the room. I was perusing our collection on top of the DVD's were two Brad Pitt movies: Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Legends of the Fall. That immediately reminded me of my dream last night. The best dream I've had in a long time.

I have to preface by saying that my dreams are chronically boring. They are even more mundane than real life. I dream about putting pieces of silverware in the dishwasher, or washing a black sock with a white load of laundry. It's sad. Bobby gets bored just hearing about them. In fact, I get bored just recounting them. So last night when I dreamed that Brad Pitt and some new hot up and coming actor who nobody knows about yet were fighting for my love, I knew I had to call Ashley and dish. (I thought maybe Bobby might not appreciate hearing about it.) But then after I gave her all the details I knew this dream was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence and needed to be documented. And now, thanks to a recent photoshop lesson from sister-in-law, I have a visual to go along with it. (And about 15 minutes of time wasted.) I love you Bobby- this is just something I have to do. ;)

I had decided that Brad Pitt was all wrong for me, and it was time to break his heart. He was a bad boy on a motorcycle and the relationship wasn't going anywhere. Plus I had met this cute new guy with dark hair who seemed perfect for me. I knew I needed to let Brad down gently, so we hopped on his motorcycle for one last ride and had a great talk, where I was uncharacteristically smooth and said all the right things to let him down easy. (I am a lot of things, but smooth is not one of them.) Then I went back to the new man and lived happily ever after. It was beautiful!

Tagged

My friend Jessica tagged me a while ago with these questions.

1. Where did you meet your husband?
I was a cage dancer at a local club in Rexburg, ID. Here's a video taken that night.

Ha ha, just joking. I was showing off my sweet moves on the dance floor the night we met, though. It was at a Ricks College dance in 1997. His roommate was out on a date with my roommate and we were sort of aware of each other but had never met. My friends and I had filled up water balloons before the dance so we could chuck them at people walking out. We invited Bobby and his friends to join us. (It's possible that I'm mixing up two different occasions here. Bobby and I can't remember for sure. The water balloon launching may have occurred after a different dance, but it makes for a good story, so I'll just leave it.)



2. What was the first thing you said to your husband? I have no clue. Bobby reminds me of one of our first exchanges, though. It went something like this:

Bobby: "Where are you from?"
Me: "Huntington Beach."
Bobby: "Where's that?"
Me: "You don't know where Huntington Beach is?"
Bobby (with attitude): "No."

I have a hard time believing I could muster up that much sass having been totally mesmerized by his dashing good looks and witty personality, but that's his memory.


3. Where was your first date?
Hmmm.... We went to Preference together. It's a girl-ask-guy dance, but he asked me. I thought that was kind of sneaky, so I made sure to get the word out about who really asked who.

4. Where was your first kiss?
I had never seen Wayne's World before so we all got together and watched it one night after devouring an entire pan of brownies that we dug into with forks. I fell asleep, of course, with my head on Bobby's lap. I woke up a few hours later and everyone else was gone and Bobby was playing with my hair. When he noticed I had woken up, he leaned over and gave me a kiss. It was really short, but really sweet. Incidentally I've still never seen Wayne's World.

5. Did you have a long/short engagement/courtship?
Our engagement was short, I guess. Four months. We had known each other for four years when we got married because he served a mission in between.

6. Where did you get engaged?
I have to tell this story right or it just sounds lame. I had sort of specific instructions for Bobby on how I wanted to be proposed to. I told him I wanted to it to be a surprise and special and romantic, but nothing too kitsch or trite. And not boring or lame. And not in front of a temple. Most importantly, however, I did not want to know when it was coming. Or so I thought.

So Bobby planned to propose to me when he visited me in California for Christmas. He had asked my father's permission to marry me and had this great idea of how to ask me, which I didn't find out about until much later. We both love vintage metal lunchboxes. He had found a Hot Wheels one, in pristine condition, and built this little container within the lunchbox with flaps and stuff to hide little presents to give me for Christmas. One of the flaps opened a box that was the perfect size for a ring. He sort of hinted that he was planning on asking me while he was out there, and I asked him not to! I told him I was not ready.

So then we're back at BYU, it's February and a school holiday was coming up on February 19. He told me, "don't plan anything for the 19th. We're going to spend the whole day together." So I'd have to be stupid not to pick up on that hint. This time I was definitely ready. Bobby's mom lived in SLC at the time and we'd often go up and stay with her. We spent the night there on the 18th and after we woke up and got dressed and ready, Bobby said to me, "So do you have anything you want to do?" I was shocked to hear him say that and I totally over-reacted. Wasn't he supposed to have every minute of this glorious day planned from start to finish? So I did a very girlish thing and started to pout. Perhaps he wasn't going to propose after all. I couldn't hide my disappointment and the day was ruined. We ended up just heading back to Provo and arguing the whole way until finally, around the point of the mountain, I admitted how utterly disappointed I was since I was expecting a proposal. I felt like an idiot when he told me that was his plan- he just really wanted to know if there was anything I wanted to do in SLC before we went back to Provo, where all the glorious proposal plans were scheduled to be carried out. Oops.

A few weeks later, my roommates and I were watching a wedding video at our landlord's house. (He had just recently gotten married.) It was a lovely video, but as I sat there I thought about Bobby and I getting married in the temple and felt so happy and so peaceful and so sure that's what I wanted. I had to see him. He was already asleep when I got to his apartment, but I barged into his bedroom anyway and told him I was ready. (I'm not sure if he knew that I wasn't ready before, but he handled it all very graciously and seemed happy with my announcement.) He mentioned that he had the ring (which was news to me), and asked would I like to see it? I said yes. He pulled the ring out and asked me if I wanted him to propose then or if I would be disappointed that it wasn't a surprise. I insisted that he do it right then and there, in his brown pajamas in his bedroom of his basement apartment in Provo, UT. Now you understand why it takes so long to tell this story. What seems like a very boring and mundane proposal was actually very romantic and kind of funny because that night I realized that I'm a little more of a control freak that I ever knew before.

7. Where did you get married?
San Diego temple. We had a luncheon immediately following in La Jolla at this lovely restaurant called the Marine room that was on the beach and looked out on the shore. Our reception was in Corona the night after. We stayed in a Marriott on Coronado Island on our wedding night and in all of my careful planning, I forgot to get directions to the hotel from the restaurant! Two newlyweds driving off to their honeymoon without the slightest idea of where they were going. We had to laugh.


I tag Julia, Ashley, Erin, Melody, Jill, and Betsy.