—1—
During general conference last month, we tried something new: everyone wrote questions to stump each other while listening to the talks (i.e: "What Christlike attribute did Elder Caussé talk about?" or "What was the name of the airport in Elder Stevenson's story?")
(It wasn't my original idea, it was inspired by this post from The Red-Headed Hostess.)
This week we decided to finally play our trivia game. We divided the family into two teams. It was open notes, so anyone who wrote things down was a huge advantage to their team, especially because conference was a month ago (huge shout-out to ME here because I was the only one who took any.)
Here are the team names the kids chose:
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| Team #1: E'rebody Hit the Sea Lion (Ar Ahr Ar) Team #2: The Better Team |
I didn't know this, but "e'rebody hit the sea lion" isn't just something my kids made up. It's hard to believe, but Gen Z has invented a new fad dumber than my generation planking in 2008. You can see here for an explanation, but it won't explain very much. It makes no sense.
—2—
The 10-year-old stayed home on Monday with an upset stomach. He claimed that it didn't feel like he was going to throw up, that it just felt "weird" off and on, and he seemed okay most of the day.
Being tired myself, I welcomed the excuse to lie around doing nothing with him, but by lunchtime I looked around at the messy house and said, "Wow, I've got to do something today. Do you have any idea of how many things I haven't done today?
"There's an infinite number of things you didn't do today," he agreed.
"Exactly!"
"But there's always an infinite number of thing you didn't do," answered, like a freaking Greek philosopher.
I waved his words away and started filling a sink with dishwater. "But today they're infinite-er."
He's right, though, and the fact that no matter how much or how little I accomplish there are still infinity tasks left to do makes me feel better and worse at the same time.
—3—
Remember the 10-year-old's claims that "I don't feel like I'm going to throw up"? Lies.
That night, he vomited in his upper bunk and all the way down the hallway into the bathroom. I know I like to hyperbolize on this blog but I'm being dead serious when I say that in 21 years of motherhood I've never seen carnage like this from the stomach flu. We threw away a mattress.
The 21-year-old is home from school and keeps college hours, so she was still awake and heard it all go down. I would not have blamed her at all if she'd immediately gotten in the car and driven to a hotel, then called me to go clean up the mess, but do you know what she did? She got her little brother cleaned up, stripped his bedding, and mopped the floor before waking me to help her finish and get him back to sleep.
My daughter is only home for a short while, actually, between the end of her school year and leaving for a summer internship abroad. I'm pretty sure this was not on her "Restful 2-Week Break" vision board.
—4—
On an unrelated note: even if you think your kids know they can't throw soiled bedding in the washing machine without removing the solid chunks of vomit first, TELL THEM AGAIN.
—5—
Phillip said he saw someone with a live bird on their shoulder at the grocery store. Every now and then, she'd reach up to pet it and give it a neck scratch. The kids had so many questions when he came home and told us about it.
What kind of bird? He didn't know. Smaller than a parrot but larger than a parakeet.
Was it on a leash or a harness? No. It just sat there like the bird of a pirate.
Did it poop in the store? Not that he saw.
It's possible that the bird was trained to defecate on command. I once went to a playdate at a house with a bird who was trained with a special potty word. "What's the word?" I asked, curious. The other mom looked at me, dead serious, and whispered, "I can't tell you."
That was years ago and I still think about it.
—6—
At church, I was recently called as the Valiant activity leader for the boys ages 8-11. It's super-fun. I work with two other capable and dependable women, and we only have to plan something twice a month (for the last 3 years I was with the teenagers, and their relentless cycle of weekly activities feels a little like waterboarding after a while.) We met this Tuesday, and one of the women I work with is from Mexico, so of course we did a Cinco de Mayo activity.
She taught the kids to make pinatas, then the other woman (who is from Costa Rica) taught them the colors in Spanish and wore them out with a color relay game, and then we had horchata and nachos.
I made a pinata, too:
However, I forgot to put candy in it before sealing it up, which was a huge disappointment to my other kids after I brought it home and they begged me to let them break it open.
—7—
Facebook thought I would be interested in this:
Sounds tempting, but unfortunately I'll be in church at noon, which could be pretty awkward.
Happy Mother's Day!
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