Is It Naptime Yet

….ring, ring, ring, you weren’t home.

So I have a song in my head, and it’s for kids and not something I can easily find, so you’ll just have to go with my craziness, but this post is about calling someone, only they were home.

So, auditions for Cinderella are less than a month away. I’m a little nervous, but mostly I’m OK. I think.

I’ve decided to sing George Gershwin’s Someone to Watch Over Me. This is a song I love, plus it was our wedding song when I married Jon nearly 8 years ago. I sung Lullaby of Broadway last year, and wanted a change.

So I have the sheet music, but nothing to sing and rehearse to, except what’s in my head and what I can get on-line, and even though I would love to have Ella Fitzgerald accompany me as I sing my solo, I think I need to be able to sing the song alone since most people would rather just listen to Ella than me, but the point is to listen to me.

So I needed to find something to practise to.

The problem: there is only cheesy karaoke music on-line, and it’s just not something I can work with. So I thought I’d call up a woman in my ward who is very accomplished and ask if she would practise it a couple times and then allow me to record her playing it for me so I could rehearse to it.

I get my ward roster out and call her up. I get the “Do do do…I’m sorry but this number is no longer in service” lady and thought crap, how can I get her number. Then I thought, well she did call me about giving us books at the beginning of January, maybe I can recognize her number if I look through my caller id.

So I start flipping through my caller id. I knew her number was just the number, the problem was there were several numbers that were just the number, and I had no idea who they belonged to. I tried to use logic and deduce what number might be hers.

I choose and number and I called it.

It rang and rang.

Then a gentleman picks up.

“Hi Lacey.”

Oh crap! He knows my name and I realize I do not know who I’m calling. My mind races with what man might know who I am and I decide maybe I called Paul, a gentleman I bought some fabric from.

I tentatively say, “Hi, is this Paul?”

“No, this is Kevin.”

The light bulb goes on. Kevin is my friend Anna’s husband and the director for Cinderella and had called me a couple times.

“Oh, Kevin. I’m sorry I was trying to call a friend and only knew I had her number in my caller ID, but didn’t know which number. I’m sorry.”

I think he laughs and then says that’s alright and we have a short conversation about an e-mail he had recently sent. Before he hangs up he says, “I hope you find Paul.”

I didn’t need to find Paul, so I felt stupid for calling a number not knowing who would pick up, and I still needed to call the sister to see if she would play the song for me.

I think and remember I had a ward bulletin from Sunday and it had a list of all the important people on it, and she was important. I found it and called her. She said she would play the song for me. Yay!

I tell my friend Sam my silly story and she says I should have called her, she has to call this sister quite frequently for church related things.

Darn… I should have thought of that.

Also, I’ve realized my phone only stores 40 numbers, and her number wasn’t even on there.

I called you on the telephone. Ring, ring, ring, you were home.

I am a Gospel Principles teacher for my ward. In this calling I teach investigators, new members, and returning members of my church. This year we got a new manual, or really revised one, and the class right after mine is also teaching from it. It’s not too bad because they teach from it only twice a month, the second and third week, and we teach from it every week. The problem we encountered was I was sick the very first week and asked a brother in our ward to teach for me. He wanted to leave the lessons for me so he did a discussion on the Articles of Faith the first week.

So I taught lesson one in my class the second week of January, and my friend’s husband also taught lesson one the second week in his class, which is directly after mine. I taught lesson two the third week and lesson two was taught directly after my class once more. I knew this might happen, but it was interesting to see how the sister taught the same lesson as me, only different.

So the fourth week of January we were set to have lesson three taught. Our Sunday school presidency is offering other classes, one about marriage the other about teaching, along with the regular Gospel Doctrine and my class, Gospel Principles. The Sunday school president called me up and said he would teach lesson three for me and I could then go to the class about teaching, being taught by Brother M.  So I didn’t prepare my lesson and enjoyed the week off.

Fast foreward to this past Sunday, or the week I was suppose to have off.

The girls and I got to sacrament meeting a little late. Partially because my neighbor got pulled over by a police officer right in front of our house  and blocked my driveway and I had to ask the police officer if my neighbor could move his car so I could go to church. As I’m sitting in sacrament meeting I do not see the Sunday school president so I read the lesson, just in case I need to wing it. After the sacrament is passed and finished I see the the Sunday school president come in with his family. I’m relieved and I enjoy the rest of sacrament meeting.

Then after sacrament meeting I start talking to the Sunday school president.

SSP: So Brother M’s wife had her baby this week so I’m showing a movie in your class.
Me: My class, as in the one I’m going to today?
SSP: No your class.
Me: My class? The one your teaching?
SSP: No, I’m showing a movie in your class.
Me: Which class? The one I’m going to or the one I teach?
SSP: The one you teach.

After this very fuzzy conversation I get a little nervous. He hadn’t prepared a lesson because Brother M was going to help him, since our own Sunday school president doesn’t teach. Bro. M’s wife had her baby last week and due to the chaos Bro. M hadn’t been able to help him prepare and thus gave him one of those  Living Scripture movies to show in my class.

I was slightly annoyed, but mostly just worried. I needed to stay on schedule so the lessons could start being farther a part between the two hours where we use the same manual. I also didn’t want to miss a lesson since we have exactly the number we need to teach for the year, minus one, but since we started on the second week we need to stay on track.

When explaining why I was there, yet we would be  watching a movie anyways, one of the elders jokingly mentioned how he would even teach the class because having the same lesson twice in a row on the same day was “boring”.

I decided to man up and teach the lesson.

Then the Stake President walks in.

My stomach starts to shake and I get as nervous as I get when I need to give a talk in Sacrament Meeting. Those symptoms include, but are not limited to: a rapidly beating heart, butterflies in my stomach, noodle legs, shortness of breath, unclear mind, and my whole body shaking so hard that those sitting behind me think I will literally shake out of my boots since my knees are knocking so loudly that I lose my balance while speaking.

I explain the situation,  apologize, try to hide my wildly shaking hands as I read from the book, and get on with the lesson.

At one point we read a scripture and I get the doctrine completely wrong. Well not completely wrong, just mixed up. The stake president then raises his hand and I call on him “I believe in that scripture our first estate is pre-mortal existence and our second estate is our earthly bodies. If I’m wrong someone can feel free to correct me doctrinely.” (I had said the first estate was our earthly bodies and the second was everlasting life. What a great teacher I am.)

The Stake President also called me Lacey throughout the lesson, which in turn my new teaching partner, who just got called and this was her first time in the class, started calling me Lacey, and our relief society president who also attends my class, and it happened last week when I was asked to give the prayer in relief society by one of the counselors. Why can’t I just be Sister Blake !?!

Jon says I should start calling myself Sister Lacey, then I said what happens when someone asks me my first name and I say it’s Lacey and then they ask “Your name is Lacey Lacey?”

Sorry, family joke. Your parents named you Harvey Harvey?

So class ended and I didn’t do too bad of a job teaching a lesson I hadn’t prepared. The elders said I did a great job and our Sunday school president said I bailed him out big time. (Can you imagine putting on some scripture movie because you hadn’t prepared your lesson and then the Stake President coming into your class? And the scripture movie isn’t approved church teaching material and you’re the Sunday School president so you should know this, and so should your counselor who gave you the movie because he was just in the bishopric?)

Anyways, I think the class went pretty well, despite not preparing the lesson a head of time and I saved myself and those in my class from watching a movie from a company whos business I think is run in a very annoying matter.

It’s all about the principles and the lesson.

I am very shy.

What?

You’re one of the people who don’t believe me, or maybe you are one of the people who does believe me and are nodding your head in agreement.

I tell Jon I’m shy and he doesn’t believe me. My own husband.

I told my friend Sam I’m shy and she says that is the one word that would never enter her mind if she had to describe me. She then told me how I’m friendly at church things and how I talk to people.

True, I have introduced myself to others at church things.

True, I do talk to people, but there are many times I hate talking to people, and thus don’t, but it’s because I’m being too bashful to try to start a conversation. So see, I’m shy.

Since two of my closest friends don’t think I’m shy, I think I’m faking it pretty well.

Honestly, I hate going up and talking to people. I introduce myself to individuals in my class on the Sundays I teach, but the other Sundays I usually sit back and watch.

Lately, I’ve hardly said hello to anyone I don’t know well at church or to the two co-ops I attend.

I was recently at a wedding for a friend from high school and was too shy to say hello to some people. I found those I was most comfortable with and talked latched onto them. I was in a bashful mood and I worried that people wouldn’t remember me, or worse, they did remember me and didn’t want to talk to me.

The wedding was probably worse for me because I think I was at my shyest in high school. I was very quiet. So quiet that on a trip to Disneyland, on more than one occasion, my friends were surprised that I hadn’t left the group because, I was hardly saying  a word and just walking with them. (Why I was so shy around my friends is another story, but we’ll leave it at the fact that I didn’t know if any were true friends at that time.)

I know I can be friendly, and deep down I want to be super friendly, as in I never worry about being outgoing and am automatically a friendly type of person, but for now I fake it.

Some days I fake it better than others and I now want to make it a goal to be outgoing to those I meet, so I can one day say to myself I am not shy.

I say fake it till you make others believe you and then maybe you’ll finally believe them.

So Lilah is selling Girl Scout Cookies.

We went to a meeting a week ago and as I sat there listening to what we needed to do as independent girl scouts, she sat there reading though the different things you get once you sell so many boxes. Well, she read that if a girl scout sells 500 boxes they get to go to Camp Foxtail, so she wants to sell 500 boxes.

She’s not doing too bad. She’s sold about 160 boxes thus far, and there are still some people we need to contact and we still have one week to try to get various orders.

I am somewhat of a realist so I tell Lilah to work for her goal, but I also tell her it might be pretty hard. We have already used many of our resources, and even though I plan to sign her up for booth sales, I have no idea how many they’ll be able to sell, since sells differ for booths from day to day and hour to hour and they then divide the sales between the number of girls there during that time.

So here’s my little plea to help Lilah achieve her goal.

If you’d like to order Girl Scout Cookies and you haven’t done so already, please leave a comment  and tell me if you’d like an e-mail message that you can directly order from, me to call you, or have Lilah and me come by your house. (I’d have Lilah call you, but I have a hard enough time getting her to talk to people for this in person.)

If you feel that you might have some friends or co-workers interested, and you’d like to ask for Lilah, I can e-mail you an order form to take orders for her, and she’ll deliver them to your work and to your co-workers on the day you select. (My hairdresser volunteered to do this for her so I thought there might be others willing to.)

We’re taking pre-orders till February 1st, though I can get a few more until the 18th. I then will be picking the cookies up on the 19th and Lilah and I will be delivering them the week of the 22nd, before booth sales start.

They’re $3.50 a box and you do not pay till you get your cookies. (I’m wanting to deliver them the week of the 22nd, but I can deliver them to you later if need be. We have till the 16th of March to collect money.)

Also, for every 6 boxes you buy you’ll be entered into a contest to win 52 boxes of assorted Girl Scout Cookies.

If you’d like to support her but live far away, you can also order a box for Troop to Troop, and the cookies are then sent to our military overseas and I will discount you $0.50, or the cost to mail the money to us.

Thanks for all the support so many of you have already shown.

It’s cookie time!

Christmas is almost here….Are you ready?

I’m mostly ready. I just have gifts to wrap, in which I’m not completely happy with what I got Lilah, but I think she’ll still enjoy it. I’m very excited for this Christmas.

I love Christmas music and so do my girls. They’ll replay whatever CD is in the player, which is Faith Hill, and then they sing to it and create “plays” to each song. It’s a good thing I really like the Faith Hill CD, or I think I would have gone crazy. They always hit play when my hands were messy with truffle making.

Speaking of truffles,  I mostly sold large bags of popcorn for $5 a bag, but I did sell some truffles, though my mom put in the largest order and I will say I’m giving her a large discount because if I wasn’t selling them and she had asked me to make them, I would have done it for free.  I’m happy I was able to make a nice dent and repay some of the money I’ve spent for Sew Lacey. I have a lot of material and after the Holidays I hope to get some motivation back and begin sewing some more. I made a really cute nursing cover and matching burp clothes for a friend recently and am thinking of adding that to my list of items.

I’m so happy for Christmas and can hardly wait for the new year!

Also, the committee met and interviewed a friend’s husband for the play next year and loved him. I’m so excited to work with him and hopefully be in the play.  Once it’s official, as in the board meets and approves him and the play, I’ll give more information. For now I just can’t wait till 2010.

Sorry this post was so scattered. I just wanted to jot down some thoughts while the truffle center warmed up so I could make them. I had it in the fridge too long and now it’s too hard to shape.

I’m jumping head first into my first business type venture and I would be lying if I didn’t say I was scared.

I’ve had some things happen and have decided to start sewing for money and figure now is the season, and hopefully it works. My biggest worry is finding the people who will pay what I’m worth, since sewing does take time and I don’t work for just a dollar a day and mass produce products.

My main focus will be bags and then aprons and maybe other things, like nursing covers and custom orders for other things.

I’m not sure if this will work and Jon’s been so supportive of me. I’ve talked about making and selling things, but have never done anything, and now I’m doing something and I’m so happy and love that he’s so supportive and helping me and giving me ideas.

We just bought a domain name and once it’s up and running, at least minimally usable, I’ll let you know.

Also, I’m doing  a small craft fair on November 5-7th. It’s in a woman’s basement, but there will be different people also selling handmade products, including my friend Sam’s lotion. Mark your calendar and come by if you have the time. I’ll post more info later.

For now just send me good thoughts and extend the days to 34 hours!

I’m just not good at doing things for myself. I take time away to relax, but it’s the easy relax, watch TV, go on Facebook, try to find blogs to read. I occasionally find time to go out with girlfriends, but most of the time it’s because they’ve planned it. I really like these things, but they’re not completely fulfilling. I want more. I think that’s the story of my life right now.

Wanting more but feeling to blah to do anything because of all the other things I have to do.

I’m not all self sacrificing. I feel that I’m a pretty selfish mom and wife in some ways.  For one I have the girls eat the heels to the bread because I don’t like them. I know I’m terrible. We always made my mom eat the heels of the bread, so I blame her. She allowed us to be picky. I do occasion eat the heels, and Jon dislikes me making the girls eat something I won’t. Sometimes if my brown sugar is really hard I use the bread heel to soften it, but I’m just too selfish and picky to eat heels of bread and now the girls don’t even whine when I give them a sandwich with a heel. I figure it’s only a matter of time before the get older  and start leaving the heel for me, like we did for our mother, once they start making their own sandwiches and realize they have a choice.

I know I’m a selfish wife in some ways. I can’t think of a particular habit right now, but I’m sure there’s something I do to benefit me in my relationship with Jon. I just feel like I’m doing a lot right now with him in school that I can’t think of something.

I’m sewing an apron today for a friend of mine. She has a sewing business on the side, and has passed some of her work my way. I find it funny that I’ll be sewing an apron for someone else, when the one I want to sew for me has been just waiting. I will say I’ve misplaced the instructions, and it’s a little different, so I need to find them before I can actually sew the pattern, but I find myself to be pretty silly when it comes to doing things for me. I love to shop and buy clothes, but make something for me even when I’m excited, doesn’t happen? Sometimes I wonder why I’m so strange.

On an up note, I’ve organized my food cupboards. I think it was for me, and it’s satisfying to know what I have and where it is. I’ve realized that I’ve become obsessed with canned beans. I have a few recipes that use them and have needed to buy them to make them, so in the last two months I’ve stocked up on them just because. So now I have 5 cans of garbanzo and kidney beans, each, and 6  cans of black beans. I think I need to make some hummus, black bean enchiladas and Tuscan Bean stew.

What do you do or not do for yourself and is there a food you don’t like so you pawn it onto your children or spouse?

Yesterday I was busy from the moment I woke up till the moment I crashed on the couch. Well really just till we got home, but I was so tired I crashed on the couch at like 10:30 pm and Jon stayed up late watching a movie. Total role reversal.

My day went as following:

7:20- Get up and shower for hair appointment.
8:35- Show up at hair appointment.
10:00- Get home from hair appointment (My hair dresser is pretty far from me.)
10:15- Get girls into bath.
10:35-Get girls out of bath and ready for Science Saturday.
11:05- Show up in time for Critter Time. The girls got to pet some cool lizards, snakes, a lizard with no feet, Lilah petted the tarantula, Eden and Mommy passed, a hedgehog and a Chinchilla.
11:35- Science Saturday finally starts, 20 minutes late but it was short.
12:00- Get home, fix girls lunch and get ready for family pictures.
1:50- Show up ten minutes late for family pictures and have to wait.
2:15- Take family pictures and have extra hot hair since I had my hair cut and styled that morning. The girl was nice and we have some cute poses, but the girls were not responding and smiling as well as they have.
3:15ish– Leave and head to the Springs Preserve to get a 15% discount on the family pass, which in the end they just lowered the price and charged us the same as with the discount. I wanted to argue, but didn’t have the heart since we thought we’d be paying the price we paid anyways.
3:45ish to 5:45- Hang out at The Springs Preserve.
6:00- Convince Jon to have Subway for dinner. Go with the intent to just spend $10 on two $5 foot longs but spend $20 because he saw a drink he wanted to try, so we all got drinks. The nice clerk let us know that the cost of the combo was the same as just buying a drink with the sandwich so we actually bought 2 $5 foot long combos and two drinks.
7:10ish- Do a jellybean experiment where for eat color there were two flavors. Once being a gross flavor and the other being a normal flavor. ( It was what they did last week in Science Saturday and Monica gave us some beans to try at home since she likes our girls. It’s a take on Harry Potter and the jelly beans that have different flavors and you never know what you’re going to get.) Yeah, some were really gross and most of the jelly beans we had were the nasty flavor. I’d post pictures or part of the video, but I’m in Linux and have yet learned what to do.
9:00- Get the girls into bed.
10:30 Fall asleep  on the couch.

It was a fun filled day.

On Sunday while I was trying to watch conference our converter box did not want to pick up the channel it was on. So I sat on the couch and tried to listen  from my computer while Lilah talked to me about what I was doing, crocheting, and she chatted about other things and I had to keep reminding her I was listening to conference, even if it was on the computer and not the TV.

Then later in the day my friend called to see if she could come use my sewing machine to put a couple button holes in something, since hers does not sew button holes and my machine, really my mom’s machine but don’t remind her, does.

In the end we decided I’d come over and watch conference there and our girls could play. I know I should make my kids watch conference, but  they only like to listen to the choir sing and then they decide to just bother me and my friend and I have the same philosophy and letting our kids be around but they can still do their own thing as conference is on, until they’re eight.

So supposedly her house wasn’t very clean, but from what I could see it was a lot cleaner than mine and since I’m watching her baby today and tomorrow so she can go make wonderful all natural, and they smell good too, lotions for a craft fair, I feel like I really need to get cleaning. She used my bathroom not too long ago because it’s cleaner than the rec center she works at, and I’m ashamed to say that I think the rec center’s bathroom might have been cleaner, but mostly because grass from the girl’s dead grass heads is everywhere and our bar of soap has left a film and I only go in there to wash their hands and I avoid cleaning bathrooms at all costs.

So I’m cleaning today because it’s the right thing to do and I know I’ll be happier and feel less guilty if people have to use my bathroom.

Also if you’d like to buy some all natural lotions that my friend Sam makes and she has great scents like coconut mango, strawberry, vanilla, or orange, leave a comment and I can privately give you her info to buy some. She doesn’t have a website yet but hopefully we can get her hooked up in the future. It’s $6 for an 8 oz bottle.

Boo!– Our medical deductible is like $1300 for our family this year, it was $500 last year.
Yay!– I just got a letter saying some $900 in tests that my doctor ordered in February and were denied were approved after I appealed it with a doctor’s letter and then a review of medical records! Now we just have to pay 20% of whatever they say, but $180 is a lot nicer than $900.
Boo!– I have a $380 ticket to pay from my accident.
Yay!– The lawyer got them to drop it to a parking citation and thus I have no points.
Yay!– I saved $900 by not switching Gieko. Even though I was in an accident our insurance agent was able to have our company give us a better deal and we will be saving $900 a year. Boo!– The $900 were saving this year was spent on my accident.

Yay!– We have family pictures this Saturday!
Boo!– I have no idea what we’re wearing.
Yay!– I’m getting my hair cut and styled the same day as pictures.
Boo!– Lilah has road rash from falling off the scooter Friday afternoon and I might have to reschedule if it’s not looking better by Friday.
Yay!– Even though Jon didn’t want me to, I bought him new jeans and he’s keeping them. They’re a size 30, and fit him, and his old jeans are a size 34. Now we just need more work pants for him so it doesn’t look like he’s wearing his father’s clothes when he wears the old pants.
Boo!– I haven’t been able to find jeans I like.

Yay!– Lilah’s outside playing and having fun.
Boo!– Eden got hurt and has been crying for 10 minutes now, and it’s hasn’t been “real” crying for the last 8, at least.
Yay!– Eden making herself cry is kinda amusing and making me laugh. I’m a mean mom.

Yay!– My side yard is still clean from Saturday despite the wind.
Boo!– My leg muscles are sore from all the squatting I did when I cleaned my side yard.