7 Quick Takes about Photoshop Fails, Bribery for Cranes, and Taking Toilet Paper Requests Very Literally

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

As you all know, I do 99% of my Christmas shopping on Amazon and let me tell you, I saw some funny things while shopping.

I had to keep it all under wraps until Christmas because my kids read my blog and I didn't want to spoil any surprises, so now I can share it all with you.

While I was researching Pack 'n Plays for the baby, I came across this one that didn't seem to contain a child too well:

Yeah, I know there's a zipper on there. My kids would still be out of there faster than you can say "prison riot."

—2—

Then I was looking for lava lamps to furnish my creepy uncle's 1970s van for my son to watch while he falls asleep.

We ended up buying him something else, but the product images had me sorely tempted.

Take this one, for instance. I imagine the conversation beforehand going something like this:

Designer: I've got the perfect product image for those video game controllers you wanted, Boss!
Boss: What are you talking about? I asked for an image for the lava lamp!
Designer: Oh...
Boss: And I need it by tomorrow morning! You'd better come up with something fast.
Designer: Ummmm...

And just in case you're not a pair of conjoined twins who enjoy gaming together after a long day at the office, you can alternatively get the family version:

Mom: "This lava lamp is the perfect complement to our freakishly austere white living room."
Girl: "I love it, Mom! Can I touch it?"
Mom: "NO, YOU'LL MAKE A MESS!!!"

—3—

The Hot Wheels bath ramp we got was a big hit with the 2-year-old (we followed the advice of one reviewer and got a color change car to use with it and successfully blew his mind) but I was not impressed with the product image. This wasn't just on Amazon, it was on the box itself!

What this picture says to me: we couldn't find an actual kid willing to play with this thing.

That kid isn't in the bathtub. That dad isn't in the bathroom. I'm pretty sure that water isn't even water, and the tub isn't real, either. It's like I'm in the matrix. Everything I thought I knew is a lie.

—4—

We've mostly been hanging out at home, playing with each other and our new toys this week, but we did do something constructive, too.

My 10-year-old is folding 1,000 origami cranes to donate to an organization called Cranes for Cancer and let me tell you, it is slow going. On Monday after dinner she taught the rest of the family to make cranes and then I posed a challenge:  if we collectively folded 100 of them before we watch The B.F.G. tonight, we'll have a treat during the movie.

They were done by Wednesday at 10 AM. 

I can't say my contribution was huge, but I do think I may have beaten the world record for cranes made while nursing, in case that's a thing.

—5—

One thing I forgot to mention to wrinkly old me in my Letter to My Future Self about This Christmas was that Phillip went to the dollar store to get stocking stuffers and brought home "Goofy String."

That's right. It's not 'silly,' it's 'goofy.' So no copyright infringement there, thank goodness!

Yep, just covering allllll the legal bases.

The canisters didn't last long but the kids certainly had fun with them in the driveway.

My favorite thing about this picture is how Phillip is basically using the 2-year-old as a gun.

—6—

Generally speaking, the kids are reasonably well-behaved when we sit down to read scriptures as a family before bed at night.

I'm not sure if it was the Christmas sugar high or the novelty of being home from school for a whole week, but one night they were having a particularly hard time settling down and focusing. After several false starts we managed to finally start reading when my 5 year-old tried to tell me a joke.

"Knock, knock."

"After scriptures," I said, not looking up.

Undaunted, she asked, "After scriptures who?"

—7—

And here's what happens when you notice that the bathroom is out of toilet paper and you ask a child to "please put some toilet paper in the bathroom."

They take you very, very literally.

To be fair, I didn't explicitly say "please refill the holder" or even "please put the extra rolls under the sink instead of leaving them on display in the middle of the room."

It's the subtle nuances of language that make parents tear their hair out, really.

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Letter to My Future Self about This Christmas

Dear Old Jenny,

This is your younger self. I know you're busy in the old folks' home looking for your misplaced walker/oxygen tank/pants and complaining about the temperature of the room, but I thought I should write to you anyway.

You already have a memory like a goldfish at age 34 and it's probably not getting any better, so in case you forgot, I wanted to remind you of a few things about Christmas 2016.

This was the year when the kids made cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve without your supervision, and they somehow turned out so flat and brittle the only way to salvage them was to crumble them up in a bowl and leave a note instructing Santa to add milk and eat them like cereal.

I'm sure Santa dreads coming to our house since we insist on baking for him every year.

This was the year when you just did not have the time or energy to make a coordinating stocking for the baby, so we hung up one of Phillip's socks and filled it out with a new tube of diaper rash cream.

(In all fairness, the baby was way too young to know or care, and it was a Christmas sock with a picture of a penguin on it.)

This was the year when you and Phillip basically exchanged spatulas, both of you having secretly bought a new one and snuck it into each other's stockings. There was something very Gift of the Magi about the whole thing.

This was the year you herded all the kids downstairs on Christmas Eve (wrapped in blankets, because you STILL hadn't finished the basement) to drink egg nog, watch a nativity video, and listen to a Christmas carol playlist Phillip put together. At one point the 2-year-old put his head on your shoulder and said "I lug you!" You weren't totally sure what he meant but he looked happy so you decided to assume it was a mashup of 'love' and 'hug.'

This was the year you and Phillip spent a combined total of 8 hours wrapping presents. Since accepting that you're sloppy gift wrappers a few years ago, the two of you have gotten decidedly worse.

This was the year you woke up on Christmas morning to find your 2-year-old under the Christmas tree playing with his gift from Santa, even though the other kids were under explicit instructions not to take him out of his crib and let him loose down there without you.

And then when you tried to recreate the magical moment on film he was busy stewing about getting in trouble earlier for throwing something and wouldn't cooperate. The best you could get out of him was a gruff "Don't want this." Even though you caught him playing with it later.

This was the year we all got sick. You couldn't take anything good because you were still nursing, and you were so congested you could barely hear. As your 5-year-old put it, "My ears aren't working!!"

This was the year you learned you'll do things for love that you thought you'd never do, like buy an architecture set of 1,210 clear Legos (hopefully, the 12-year-old recipient knows better than to leave them scattered on the floor like a scene from one of your worst nightmares.)

This was the year you surveyed the wrapping paper carnage and the noise that comes with 6 kids opening, sharing, fighting over, and playing with their gifts and remembered that every good thing in your life is here, either directly or indirectly, because of Jesus Christ.

By now, future self, I've probably made you late for bingo or a colonoscopy or possibly both, but I wanted to remind you what Christmas 2016 was like. Just something to smile about today while you're driving down the freeway 20 miles under the speed limit with your blinker on.

Love,
Young Jenny

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2016 in 12 Photos

Deep breath. It's almost 2017!

For a lot of people, including us sometimes, 2016 was a difficult year. But it was also one that we'll never forget.

In January we discovered that when you decide to do major reorganizing at home, it looks worse before it looks better. Like, way worse. We also spent a billion hours shopping for a trash can, decided not to find out the gender of the baby we were expecting (at least I didn't, Phillip wanted to know and kept it a secret) and got considered framing a written apology from the Department of Transportation.

When I wasn't driving my kids all over town, I was stuck inside with them because it was too cold to go out. I confirmed that we are not pet people with a frog named Kermit and I was on trend for the first time in my life because of a generous friend and some borrowed maternity clothes. Phillip and I continued the Great Home Reorganization and found a random Celine Dion CD in the basement that we both solemnly swear never belonged to either of us.

This was the month my little kids drew on EVERYTHING, including my portrait on the toilet seat. I blame third trimester exhaustion. With the warmer weather we started getting back out into nature and ruining the outdoors for everyone else, and I discovered a new favorite picture book. And I got a smartphone, which was an amazing development for someone who just figured out what Uber was.

In April I was huge, exhausted, huge, ready to have the baby, and huge. In fact, I took a lot of satisfaction in outweighing my husband (it was less thrilling to still weigh more than him after the baby was born, but I digress.) My 4th grader started playing the recorder at school. And after 2 years, I was finally able to write about my traumatic C-section experience with Baby #5.

May is the month where the heat really got turned up in our family. Phillip got a new job and we had a baby, and I didn't even miss a 7 Quick Takes post. I did take a little time off though, and some of the funniest bloggers I know guest posted for me. On my birthday, I turned 34 and got a new desk chair that is apparently not good for nudists (or so I'm told.)

We barely hung on through the last few weeks of the school year in June. We were literally holding it all together with safety pins and a prayer. Phillip and I celebrated our anniversary and I shared the 13 funniest moments from our 13 years of marriage. I also learned how to magically disappear poop stains from baby clothes. I'm almost as thrilled to know this trick as I am sad that I didn't know it for the first 12 years of having babies.

In July we flew the whole circus to Utah to see Phillip's family for a few weeks. We played with sparklers, had a family reunion, and went on a belated anniversary date to a hotel that may or may not have had snot in the hot tub. There were road races, birthday parties, and oh yeah, one of my kids peed on me at Phillip's boss's house.

I don't know what my family is going to give me a hard time about, now that I've finished these blasted stepping stones that I started making in 2013. We went to Six Flags, got slightly wet going camping, and had a good laugh over all the bizarre search terms that lead people to Unremarkable Files.

The kids started school again and thank goodness for the toddler to warn us when the bus is coming in the morning. I interviewed myself when the blog turned 2, and later that same month I was interviewed by a reporter like a normal person for the Toronto Star.

In October I inadvertently ruined my son's class photo on picture day, made it alive out of Wal-Mart, and worried over the fate of preschool arts and crafts when I bought tubeless toilet paper for the first time. We also took an ill-fated trip to the open house of the newly-built Mormon temple in Hartford, Connecticut.

Spurred on by a book I read, I went crazy and started de-junking the house in November. The kids' rooms looked like something out of an Ikea catalog for the rest of the month. I spent a day melting a giant block of ice in my refrigerator with a hair dryer and the cold weather gave the baby an eczema flare-up so terrible I started putting Crisco on him. And by popular request, I wrote a blog post on all the weird things moms find in the bathroom. Please say it isn't just me.

Things were still looking pretty pathetic in the snowfall department, as evidenced by the fact that my kids were making driveway angels in 1/8" of snow. Unremarkable Files' Facebook page hit 2,000 likes. And I discovered the secret to a stress-free Christmas season: get so sick you don't even care anymore. I can't say I'd recommend it, but it did work.


Unpacking an entire year in just one post like this makes me understand why I am so thoroughly exhausted. Life is good, and even when it's not, the annoying and disastrous parts usually make really good stories.

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7 Quick Takes about Not Offending Anybody, How the King James Version Sounds to a Preschooler, and the Amazon.com Warehouse In the Bedroom

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

On Monday, my daughter came home and told me she'd signed up to bring 2 dozen cookies to school.

"Sure, what's the occasion?" I asked.

"We're having a winter solstice party."

Ah, like the winter solstice parties of my youth. Filled with... um... uh... oh that's right, nobody celebrates winter solstice!

"What the heck is a winter solstice party?!" I yelled.

She shrugged. "The teacher said we can't call it a holiday party, so we call it a winter solstice party so no one is offended."

Oh, for the love of Tina Turner. I thought the entire point of saying 'happy holidays' was so that we didn't offend anyone.

Anyway, the point is moot because I'm offended by being asked to bake. So it didn't even work.

Look at me, all full of winter solstice spirit!

—2—

In our family scriptures at night, we started reading the story of Jesus' birth from Matthew. Matthew begins by giving the genealogy of Joseph, a.k.a. an entire page of "So-and-so begat So-and-so." That's thirty-nine 'begat's in all.

We slogged through it, read the rest of the chapter and discussed it a little bit, and at the end the 5-year-old asked, "So why did everybody forget everyone?"

—3—

One of my girls is allergic to peanuts, and we go back to the allergist every year to keep tabs on it.

The allergist mentioned that next year their clinic was starting to offer oral immunotherapy (OIT) and said my daughter would be a good candidate. He encouraged us to look into it and call the office if it's something we were interested in.

Basically, it's a new experimental therapy designed to desensitize kids to their allergens by giving them ever-increasing small doses of them over time.

With life being what it is, I haven't had one single minute to even sit down and research it, but I thought I'd pose it to you guys. Have you ever heard of OIT? Or know anyone who's done it?

—4—

We almost made it to Christmas without getting sick, but over the last few weeks we've been passing something around in our house and someone has been stuffy, achy, and tired every day.

As a result, all of the presents are still unwrapped, the kids are glued to the iPad all day long while I lay there moaning, and one of my daughters lost a shoe days ago and has just been wearing snow boots to school because I've been too tired to find them or take her shopping.

The baby is also at the delightful age where you can't tell whether he's having a grand mal seizure or just trying to get away from the tissue when I make a move to wipe his nose.

—5—

When Phillip took his new job in May, I didn't realize that he was going to be going on a trip every month. They're not long, sometimes just a few days, but just the fact that they happen so often is starting to really irritate me.

He left me again earlier this week. Right when I was sick. On the week of Christmas.

Every time he goes on a trip I get more irate, but I think after this he's scared I'm going to stab him the next time he tells me about more work travel.

And perhaps he's right to be afraid.

—6—

Speaking of presents...

Guess who does all their shopping at Amazon?

When the first Amazon packages started to arrive, I just told one of the kids to toss them in my and Phillip's room. And the stack kept growing until we could hardly get to the bed.

In the back of my mind I logically know that at some point before Sunday, we've got to wrap all of these things.

But honestly the pile has gotten so big it doesn't even stress me out anymore, I just start cackling at the sight of it. Which then causes me to hack up a lung, pop some more ibuprofen, and go back to bed.

—7—

And lastly, merry Christmas from this Harry Potter hedgehog.

As I write this, it occurs to me that this would be a way cuter Elf on a Shelf. Feel free to use for next year.

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16 Best Posts of 2016

My mother-in-law says that every mom needs one "un-doable," and for me, it's writing. Almost everything else I do as a mom is eventually undone: right now the floor is as dirty as ever, the windows as smudged as always, and the laundry pile is teetering ever-higher.

But every December I can still look over what I've written and say, "Aha! Evidence that I did, in fact, do something over the last 365 days!" These are my 16 favorite pieces of writing from 2016... is your favorite one here?

#1:

No One Cares About Your Messy House

April 13, 2016

Sure, you can't see the because of all the scattered toys and there's a pair of preschooler-sized underwear of questionable cleanliness in the corner, but I have two words for you: So. What.

#2:

20 Indoor Activities When You're Stuck Inside With Kids

February 8, 2016

 A sarcastic look at what to do when trapped at home with a houseful of stir-crazy kids. (Spoiler alert: Contains no useful information.)

#3:

Things You Find in The Bathroom Once You Have Kids

November 16, 2016

Your bathroom used to be the most boring room of the house. Then you had kids, and now you never know what you're going to find in there...

#4:

13 Funniest Marriage Moments

June 20, 2016

Sometimes you've just got to laugh, especially if the last 13 years of your marriage have been filled with moments like these.

#5:

Why I Don't Care Anymore about Being the Fun Mom

October 31, 2016

I thought the best way to keep my kids safe was to make my house into the cool house where they always wanted to hang out with their friends. I was wrong.

#6:

Realistic Virtue Names for Your Baby

October 19, 2016

Charity and Grace are nice, but let's do ourselves a favor and call a spade a spade, okay?

#7:

A Preschooler's Guide to Visiting a Port-a-Potty in 8 Simple Steps

August 1, 2016

Summertime means outdoor fun, but unfortunately for the parents it also means more trips to the Port-a-Potty with your preschooler than you'd like to make in a lifetime.

#8:

19 Things All Moms Know

September 19, 2016

Motherhood comes with messy buns, a gigantic purse filled with Cheerio dust, and these 19 hilarious truths that literally all moms know.

#9:

To the Mom of the Boy Wearing Mismatched Pajamas at the Library

August 3, 2016

Sometimes, we don't have it all together. It's okay, Mama.

#10:

Thoughts after the First Baby vs. the Fourth Baby (and Beyond)

August 25, 2016

Around Baby #4, a switch flips: you are now an expert at parenting babies, and everything changes. 

#11:
20 Things Motherhood Has Forced Me to Say

August 22, 2016

As a mom, you find things coming out of your mouth that you never dreamed would be necessary to say out loud.

#12:
My Natural Hospital VBAC after Placenta Previa

June 1, 2016

From the moment my fifth child was born via C-section due to placenta previa, I knew that if we had a sixth child I wanted to try for a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean.) Here's what happened.

#13:
9 More Signs Your Kids Read Way Too Much

April 27, 2016

Is it possible for kids to read too much? If you have a bookworm kid, you know that the struggle is real!

#14:
How Motherhood Is Just Like Being In the Mafia

April 20, 2016

Goodfellas. The Godfather. The Sopranos. Believe it or not, their family business is a lot more like ours than you'd think.

#15:
Funny Stock Photos That Have No Clue What Babies Are Actually Like

March 23, 2016

Ever see those perfect baby photos in magazines and wonder what they're missing? Their hilarious captions, of course.

#16:
In Me Ye Shall Have Peace (and Other Scriptures I'm Bad At)

February 22, 2016

Here's how you can find peace when it feels like you don't have any, from a Mormon who admittedly doesn't have all the answers.

Enjoy, share, and comment on your favorites! And tell me, what's YOUR "un-doable?"

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6 Funny Christmas Stock Photos about Parenting During the Holidays

When you have kids, reality rarely matches your expectations. Especially on Christmas.

You picture an idyllic afternoon of baking sugar cookies together; in reality your toddler spends most of it dumping flour all over his pants.

You picture a leisurely drive looking at Christmas lights; in reality someone's always groaning in the backseat that they're bored, too hot, too cold, or someone else farted at them.

I blame Christmas stock photos.

After getting such a great response from you when I corrected some silly baby stock photos, I thought I'd do it again with funny holiday stock photos. Which one is your favorite?

1. You know that line about not being able to have nice things?

2. Pinpointing the exact moment of the mall Santa's nervous breakdown.

3. It'll all be worth it in the morning, right?

4. Santa's little helper.

5. Family pictures: not for the faint of heart.

6. Kids are so patient and well-behaved.

7. Parents do weird things to their babies around the holidays.

Don't forget to share by clicking on the buttons below, and have a merry Christmas! Or die trying, anyway.

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7 Quick Takes about Being Bad at Shopping, Orphaned Dogs Who Are Just Misunderstood, and How to Talk in Ancient Rome

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Thanks to everybody for voting on what we should wear for family pictures; the winner was Palette A!

The winning outfits: thank goodness we have you all to dress us.

I'm looking forward to picking up the pictures when they're ready. The photographer got all the kids to smile by simply yelling "farts!" before taking the shot. Kids are so predictable.

—2—

My kids absolutely love having some proper snow so they can go sledding now (we've got several places in our yard that make for decent sled hills).

They love it, but they're also under the impression that they need hot chocolate 3-4 times a day after every time they go play outside. Yet another reason why I'm not into "yes" parenting.

—3—

After dropping my daughter at preschool, I had some time to kill and decided to do some window shopping for Christmas. (This is really bizarre for me, since the last time I stepped in a store without a definite purpose for being there was in 1998.)

As I was wandering through the aisles at K-mart I saw a blue-and-white striped changing table pad cover and briefly considered getting it, since ours is a pink hand-me-down and the baby is a boy.

After a few moments of deliberation, I realized that not only did we not need a new one, but I actively didn't want one. Like, if they were giving them out for free at the door, I wouldn't have taken one. Our perfectly serviceable pink cover will stay right where it is, thank you very much.

Then I tried on some clothes, put them back on the rack, and left the store with a tub of Eucerin and nothing else. My takeaway from this experience is that I don't care for shopping.

—4—

I've been putting off making this announcement, but Phillip got a TV. 

We'll just be using it for movies (we don't have cable or network stations) so we still don't technically have a TV, at least not in the traditional sense. But I'm still adjusting. For one thing, it's so huge I feel ridiculous watching it. I live in an IMAX theater now.

At 55" I'm told it's not that big (even though it totally is.) I suppose it seems more that way to me because for the last 7 months we've spent family movies nights crammed around my 14" laptop screen. (We used to use Phillip's big computer monitor but we had to give it back when he changed jobs in May.)

It's quite a shocking change.

—5—

I've read Go, Dog. Go! at least a million times, but the other day my 5-year-old made an interesting observation.

"Why does he have a collar but she doesn't?" she asked as we got to the obnoxious 'Do you like my hat?' pages.

"You know, I've never noticed that before. I'm not sure," I told her.

"Is it because someone adopted him, but she doesn't belong to anyone?"

And then you feel like a jerk for dismissing that poor pink poodle as a vain and silly dog, when really she's just an orphan desperately seeking acceptance!

And then you think about how she's just a dog and you're anthropomorphizing and she's not even a real dog, just a fictional one.

And then you realize that if a picture book about cartoon dogs triggers such a complex emotional analysis, you probably need to get out more and/or read a real book meant for grown-ups.

—6—

My 7th grader debated taking French or Latin as her required foreign language in school this year, and ultimately chose French because she thought it would be more useful than a dead ancient Roman language.

But on the side she's been doing a self-guided study of Latin, and she told me the other day she's learning a lot.

"Like what?" I asked.

"I can say 'The slave fell into the fish pond.'"

I think she made the right call on French being the more practical language.

—7—

Last year I actually listened to the lyrics of Baby It's Cold Outside for the first time and honestly, I'm not a fan. At best it's pushy and stereotypes both men and women, and I personally find it a little creepy.

I mentioned it on Facebook:

and a reader directed me to this video, which is one of my favorite things on YouTube now.

I died when he offered to take her to The Cheesecake Factory. How sweet and funny is this?


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