Last Days of School

Trevor successfully was "promoted" from 8th grade on Thursday and is now a high school freshman.   On  Saturday he had basketball tryouts, and on Thursday he has volleyball tryouts.  Nothing like giving  these poor kids (or moms) a summer vacation. 

Branden finished 5th grade on Friday, but he gets to stay at his elementary school next year and be the "big man on campus" (literally) as a 6th grader.  He had the option of going to middle school for 6th grade, but wanted to stay with friends, be in junior olympics, and run for president.

 

On Friday and Saturday we had an amazing stake youth conference that Kelsie and Trevor participated in.  It was so much fun for me to be there and see all the great youth in our stake, but I am still recovering from it.

 Today was the first day of summer vacation.  My favorite part so far was staying in bed while Chris got up to go to work.  That may sound really mean, but he rarely gets up before me during the school year, and it was so nice to stay in bed...until I had to drive Trevor to basketball, go grocery shopping and start some laundry. 

FREE FOOD

Since I had so many people who were interested in my Free Ben and Jerry's post, I decided to give plenty of notice for Free Hot Dog on  a Stick Night.  I know it's not as good as Ben and Jerry's, but it's the only time I take my kid's to Hot Dog on a Stick.  Anyway, Friday June 13th between 5:00-8:00 PM is when you can get your Free Hot Dog on a Stick!  

No Life

I had a voice message on my phone last week.  It was from my mom.  The message was something to the effect of  "Hi Lori, this is Mom.  I'm in my car and I saw something that made me think of you.  There's a  car in front of me with a license plate holder that says 'I have no life. My kids play ball.' Have a nice day."  OK.  So now my mom is calling to tell me I have no life.  Are you not reading my blog Mom?  So maybe it's not the most fascinating blog, but I haven't even blogged about sports yet. (Go Lakers!)  I've been too busy sewing, ironing, cleaning out the office and watching you tube.

Charlie Bit Me

I haven't blogged much about Kelsie because she's 16.  Enough said.  She is obsessed right now with this U-tube video and she actually said I could put it on my blog.  (The title might be a little too close to home for you, Kaye.)  She is often heard walking around the house talking in an English accent quoting soundbites from the video.  I don't see what she thinks is so entertaining about it, but check out "Charlie Bit Me."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM

I prefer the "Buhlud" youtube video

www.youtube.comwatch?v=Q9yAkBSrMk0&feature=related

Pancakes

Branden LOVES pancakes.  He loves to eat pancakes and he loves to make pancakes.  I often find him making a batch of pancakes and eating the whole batch himself.  On Sunday he made pancakes, and I was very impressed with the presentation of this batch of pancakes.  Look out Wolfgang Puck!   

Ironing Movie Review

I HATE ironing.  It may be from some terrible childhood experience of having to iron my dad's shirts all the time. Or perhaps the time the iron fell on my foot and I couldn't walk for a week. Perhaps it could be the fact that you iron something and then sit down or even put on a seatbelt and it is wrinkled again.  Who knows, why, but I really don't like ironing.  I don't know why I iron all of Chris's shirts.  He is very capable of doing it himself, it's just one of the FEW things that I actually do for him.  But I don't like it.  I wait until he is almost completely out of clothes to wear to work until I realize I need to iron again.  I know there are easier ways to have non-wrinkly shirts--but I don't hang things up as soon as the dryer stops.  I iron.  To help me with this chore, I've developed movie ironing.  I will rent a chick flick that I haven't seen and will probably never get to see, and watch the movie while I am ironing.  It helps take my mind off of ironing, and usually when the movie is over I'm about done ironing. 

For your reading pleasure, I've decided to give movie reviews of what I've watched while ironing.  Today's movie was "Bella." I had never heard of it before but it was a #1 rated film by Yahoo!, The New York Times Readers Poll and Fandago.  CNN said it is "Powerful and moving.  A true inspiration."  Seemed like it would be a good ironing movie for the day.  The best part of watching this as an ironing movie was it was kind of slow.  You don't want too much adventure while ironing, because you do have to iron.  It was a little depressing, which is fine for a chick flick, sometimes you need that.  The actor, Eduardo Verastegui, was a pleasure to watch.

The worst thing about this ironing movie was it had some subtitles.  It's hard to read all the subtitles if  you're supposed to be ironing, because you have to stop ironing to follow along with the subtitles, so it wasn't the best movie to watch while ironing.  The movie was good, but fairly predictible.  I would give it **1/2 out of ****.  (those are supposed to be stars.

Merit Badges

Woo-hoo!  Branden earned his first two official Boy Scout Merit Badges.  We had a stake Merit Badge day, and being the experienced Boy Scout mother that I am, I signed Branden up for two Eagle merit badges.  No fun merit badges for him!  He was able to complete both Citizenship in the World and Citizenship in the Nation.   This brings me to one of my favorite new finds.  Translucent thread.  Merit badges are a PAIN to sew on.  They are so thick that if you sew them by hand you end up with huge indentations on your fingers from pushing the needle so hard (I know that's what thimbles are for, but come on, who has a thimble?)  I would rather sew them with my machine, but every merit badge and patch is a different color and I hated having to change my thread and bobbin with each badge--until I found translucent thread.  It's clear, so you can use it to sew on everything and it won't stand out.  I don't even have to sew neatly because you can't see the stitches.  I finally sewed Trevor's 20-something merit badges onto his sash and it only took me about 30 minutes.  So to all you readers with scouting boys my helpful hint of the day is translucent thread.