SPF 50

Kinley and I recently made a trip to the swimming pool to try and beat the heat.  As soon as we arrived, we did the usual pre-swim routine; swim diaper, potty break, sunscreen application, etc.  I had only grabbed Kinley's SPF 50 sunscreen but decided it was probably appropriate for my extremely pasty skin as well.

After about an hour and a half in the pool, we loaded up our belongings, hit McDonalds on the way home, and went home to recover from the outing.  After being home for about 30 minutes, my shoulders started to feel a bit hot.  I began to inspect my shoulders and found a pretty good sunburn.  This sunburn of course began to worsen as the day went on and I even ended up with some blisters.  So my question, mostly to "Banana Boat", how on earth do you get sunburned after using SPF 50???  What does that say about me?  Is it because the majority of my body has not seen the sun in about 10 years?  And why I ask you, did Kinley leave the pool unscathed???

On a some what separate note, to the parents of the 2 little girls that would not leave me alone at the pool.  Please, oh please, teach your children that you should never hang on strangers.  More importantly, please teach them that it is never okay to announce to said stranger, "oops, I peed in the pool" and then giggle about.  

May your trip to the swim pool be less painful then mine.

Still homeless...

I'm not really sure that any additional information is needed after the title, but here goes anyway.  Friday was our big day and what a day it was.  Rich and I head to the apartment offices to sign our lease at noon.  At about 1:00 p.m. we finish signing our paperwork and head to our new apartment.  At 1:05 p.m., Rich and I are trying to put on our happy faces.  Around 1:10 p.m., we both come to the realization that this apartment is just simply not going to work.

Apparently I have a different idea of what "clean" is than this particular complex.  To me, you clean the stove, doors, and walls, and make a good attempt to get stains out of the carpet.  Silly me, right?  So after much discussion and deliberation, we return to the apartment office at about 3:30 p.m. and return our keys and tell them that the apartment is unacceptable.  They, of course, don't seem to care.  The office staff then proceeds to tell us that they had given us the handicap unit (your guess is as good as mine as to which one of us needed the handicap unit) and that they had just been in the unit and thought it was very clean.  I find it very odd that you can have an awesome club house and show this well maintained and updated model unit and then rent out something completely different.

The day was incredibly stressful, but we have chosen to return to our temporary location and we will SAVE, SAVE, SAVE, and hopefully will be purchasing a home very soon.  If anybody needs to know where NOT to live in Idaho Falls, just give me a ring.

Additional thoughts from Wyoming

Dear hitchhikers near Evanston,

I could not help but notice that as I drove past you, you both looked deeply disappointed that I did not stop to pick you up.  Your well thought out sign of "fallen on hard times, need help" nearly had me, but alas, I did not stop.  I would like to take a minute and explain exactly why I did not pick you up.

First, neither of you looked as though you had bathed in a few days and I couldn't help but imagine that there was most likely a certain stench around you.  I am sure that is rude of me, but I'm not big on smells.  The second problem was that there were 2 of you and only 1 little old me...not to mention you were complete strangers and looked a bit "crazy", though that could have merely been the uncleanly appearance about you.  The last, and most important reason, the enormous black dog with you.  If I could give you one bit of advice, it would be to hitch hike without the giant dog, most people don't want a giant dog inside their car with 2 strangers.

In an effort to make you more appreciative of your circumstances, let me tell you what happened shortly after passing you.  My sweet little daughter started pointing to all of the rocks and very loudly proclaiming "wock".  Now you can imagine how long this went on seeings how the majority of I-80 near Evanston is filled with "wocks".  Some how during this fun adventure she learned that if she plugged her ears she could yell a lot louder...so much fun for all of us.

So now I bid you farewell and wish you good luck on your trek, I certainly do hope somebody gave you a lift.

Sincerely,

Concerned citizen in the blue car

Where to start

We have had quite a couple of weeks that are worthy of a few posts (I'll get to them eventually). We decided to move out of our apartment a little early so that in hopes that they would rent it out quickly and save us from having to pay rent through the rest of our lease. Well, it worked. We moved out on Saturday the 24th and somebody moved in on Monday. Yay for not having to pay double rent. We are currently homeless and have been taken in by some very nice friends until we can get into our new place on Friday. You know us, we just LOVE to move, so we thought doing a 2 part move sounded like a blast. May I add, moving with a nearly 2 year old is such a blast, I highly recommend it to everybody, and moving with a really stubborn and bossy nearly 2 year old is even better.

On Friday, Kinley and I packed up and headed to Wyoming for my oldest nephew's graduation and to visit family and meet the newest addition to the Rawlings clan, baby Paige (my sister Nicole's new baby). We had such a great time and I am happy to report that Paige was still alive when we left and Kinley was very sweet with her. I had thought she would want to chuck her around like she does all of her babies, but she was actually very gentle with her. I know, I'm shocked too, she didn't even try and run her over a single time.

We also were lucky enough to catch a dance recital for 3 nieces and 2 nephews. They all did an awesome job and Kinley was clapping the loudest of everybody. I was so worried she would be bored and ruin the whole thing, instead, she was a very captive audience and had a blast. When the girls did their ballet routines, Kinley would sway her arms along with them, it was cute. So I am guessing she likes ballet the most which I am not thrilled about. I can fully appreciate the skill and talent it takes to do ballet, it just happens to be my least favorite style of dance to watch, but if she wants to be a ballerina, you go for it baby doll. The nephews did some great hip hop routines that were excellent as well.

I have other thoughts from the trip that I will share later, but here are a few pictures to get you through. My apologies, not my best post, but it at least gets you caught up a bit.

This is Paige, but this picture in no way does justice to her. She is the most adorable baby, so much hair and just a very happy and content baby.

Kinley taking a swing at her first pinata. She did a decent job, good form, excellent concentration, looks like a future home run swing to me.

The mottos we live by

As I look back over my life, I find that there were certain quotes or mottos that I would live by.  During high school my motto was "fake it until you make it".  A handy quote given as a pre-game thought.  Whether it was trying to figure out what in the world Mr. Staker was talking about in chemistry, or trying to find confidence during a serious hitting slump, I'd simply fake it until I made it.  In all fairness to Mr. Staker, if I had maybe talked a little less and paid attention a little more, chemistry might not have been so difficult.

Then in college I fully embraced the saying "a place for everything and everything in its place".  We all know I am just a wee bit OCD, so I'm sure you all see the appeal of this.  Isn't it so nice to know where everything is and just feel the peace that comes with excellent organization.  After marrying Rich, this motto became a little bit more difficult to live by since Rich doesn't share my passion for organization.  Bless his heart though, he makes many great attempts to live by the motto, but also to help me loosen up a bit.  I must say that organizing Kinley's dresser was one of the truly great days of pregnancy for me.  I have Kinley's dresser perfectly organized, bottoms in one drawer organized by type, same with shirts, jammies, etc. 

During the April General Conference, Elder Ballard gave an excellent talk targeted towards mothers.  In this talk he quoted a mother who said that she "wished she had enjoyed the "doing" more and the "getting it done" a little less".  What a perfect new motto for this stage of my life.  I think it is time to let go of my old motto and change the way I look at things.

Recently Kinley has turned into mommy's little helper.  She loves to help unload the dishwasher, make my bed, put my shoes away, and any other chore I can find for her. Typically she races to unfold the clothes faster than I can fold them.  This week, she decided to mix it up and actually try and help me.  I folded the entire batch of colors while she folded 1 washcloth (we are working on her speed).  As soon as I was done, she immediately grabbed the stack of her jammies and headed up the stairs.  I thought this was amusing, so I grabbed an armful and followed.  When we reached her bedroom, she dropped all of the jammies, opened the jammy drawer, then just chucked them all in.  Oddly enough, none of the pajamas stayed folded and none managed to make it in the correct position in my column and rows system.  I would usually view this scene with my normal eyes and see nothing but chaos in that drawer.  However this day, I was trying out my shiny new mommy eyes.  What my mommy eyes saw was this beautiful little girl beaming with pride, jumping up and down and clapping wildly.  She was so pleased with herself and I could see her sense of accomplishments.

I have had my mommy eyes for nearly 2 years now, but I just didn't know how to use them properly.  I am proud to say that Kinley's pajama drawer is still a disaster and that I'm okay with it.  I'll take a look of pride in her work over a perfectly organized drawer any day (any day being the day she is old enough to comprehend the columns and rows system).   

Not quite what I had in mind

For the last few weeks Kinley has been consumed with her wonderful collection of Happy Meal toys, specifically the dolls. She loves to hide the dolls, walk a few feet away, then start shouting "doll" until her keen investigative skills lead her to the dolls' hiding place. She really loves it when you get them all standing up at the same time. One day recently, after playing dolls for a considerable amount of time, I suggested that her dolls would really enjoy going for a ride in her car. She took off with an arm full of dolls and seemed to be having a great time (judging by the constant jabbering and giggles). When I went to check on her, this is what I found.


Now stuffing the dolls in the steering wheel wasn't quite what I had in mind, but then again, I only have a small fraction of the creativity that Kinley does. Once the dolls were freed from the steering wheel, I happily put together snack time for Kinley and her friends.

Irony

Last night Rich and I were watching SportsCenter and they had this touching little piece on a softball player from a Division II school who had always wanted to hit a homerun over the fence. Well the girl did hit a homerun and while running the bases she severely injured her knee and tore her ACL, rendering her unable to continue around the bases. The umpired determined that her teammates could not help her around the bases or her homerun would be reduced to a single. Two girls from the opposing team ended up carrying her around the bases, rather touching. The team of the girl that hit the homerun went on to win the game. I said to Rich, I hope they lost by more than one run, but wouldn't it be ironic if they only lost by 1 run? Followed by, is that actually irony? Then the broadcaster informed us that her own teammates actually could have carried her around the bases. Again, Rich and I asked, is that ironic?

Realizing that neither of us has a good grasp on what is irony is, led to a great discussion. Now this wasn't one of Rich's off the wall discussions on something such as why the word "understand" doesn't make sense. Why you ask? Well, because "under" generally mean below, or maybe not enough. So, if you "understand" something, doesn't that mean you don't quite get it? So if you wanted show you comprehend something shouldn't you just "stood" the topic? Sorry, got off subject, but I just like to share some of my Rich experiences with you.

The first thing we did was consult who we thought was an expert...Alanis Morissette. She must be an expert, she wrote an entire song on the topic. So, let's check her song and see what she has to say. "A traffic jam when you're already late"...hmm, no, not ironic, unfortunate but not ironic. "It's like rain on your wedding day"...hey wait a minute, I don't think this lady knows what she is talking about at all. So we grabbed a dictionary to get the definition of irony, "ill-timed arrival of an event or circumstance that is in itself desirable. Hmm...clear as mud (or in otherwords, I still "understand"). Second dictionary, "incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the expected result". Well, still, not much help. So we came up with a couple of scenarios of what we think would be ironic. We will leave it up to the genius readers of our blog to let us know if we are on the right track.

1. You cheat in an effort to win the game, and the very thing you cheated on causes you to lose the game.
2. The fact that the song "Ironic" merely contains unfortunate circumstances and no irony at all.
3. I leave a party early and head to the grocery store to avoid running into a certain person and find myself face to face with them in the produce aisle.

So, to yet again quote dear Alanis, "Isn't it ironic...don't ya think?" Well honestly, I still have no idea.