All Partied Out

I love throwing parties. I love cooking for people, and entertaining, and visiting with them. I even like just sitting back and watching them enjoy themselves. If everyone leaves happy, I am pleased with my success.

Last night I helped my ward Relief Society have another successful party: our Mother-Daughter Night. We had a pasta bar with salad and breadsticks; and for dessert: chocolate cake with strawberries and cream. We had a short, but cute program: The younger girls did a short, little dance, and then there was an equally short fashion show followed by a very short spoken program. We had crafty-things to do: making bracelets and bath salts. Some of the ladies came in dress-ups. There was a lot of mingling and visiting—among about 70 people, and I think everyone really enjoyed themselves. It was a nice night.

But the planning of it, even though I was working with other people (or maybe because I was), was . . . mildly stressful. Planning began immediately after Easter (party one in this series). Then, the Mother-Daughter thing followed hard on the heels of Mother's Day (party two). And now I'm planning a birthday party for Kaylie this weekend (three) and a baby shower for my sister-in-law Becky for next weekend (four). I get a one-week break, and then it will be Kaylie's baptism (five) the following week, on June 6. I will get a short breather before the three parties of Father's Day weekend—Lindsey's birthday is on Father's Day, and Rachel's is the next day.

Yes, I do love planning and throwing parties. And I am still looking forward to the upcoming parties. Truly! But I think maybe, with so much happening in such a short time, I—yes, even I—will be getting just a little partied out.

Mother's Day Surprise!

Last night Bruce said, "I have a goal to get all the Christmas decorations down before Mother's Day."

We have had a large wreath, with a big, red bow, hanging over our garage door since November 25 last year. The bow has been blown by the wind and weather and was getting a little scraggly-looking. The neighbors have noticed: Brother Bennett told Jason, "The next time I come to your house, that wreath had better be down." And Sister Thompson told Lindsey, "Your house is easy to find—it's the one with the Christmas wreath on the garage!"

Neighbors' comments aside, it seemed kind of dumb to still have our Christmas wreath up on the house. So I thought Bruce's goal was terrific! He went out to take care of it, and I got to work in the kitchen and promptly forgot about what he was doing.

After a little while, Bruce came back in the house and said, "Guess what I found?" Something about his countenance made me think it might not be good—I thought maybe he'd found some long-lost, and now moldy or rotten, former treasure in the garage. So I warily asked, "What?"

He found, after he took down the wreath, that there was a nest with two or three baby birds in it! Oh dear. "What should we do?" he asked. Well, we both knew the only thing to do was to put the wreath back up and hope the mother bird would go back to her babies. But before he did that I wanted to go out and see the nest and the babies. (I also figured that before we put the wreath back, I would at least cut the scraggly bow off of it.) As I was going out the front door I saw Abbi slowly moving, in stalking mode. "Abbi!" I said in a menacing voice, and she ran away (and then avoided me for the rest of the night). Bruce held up the wreath for me to see our babies: little, tiny birds with their grown-up feathers coming in. Awwwww!


Then Bruce went back up the ladder to hang up our Mother's Day wreath. Will mama bird come back and keep caring for her babies? Oh, I hope so!

Tee-Hee!

Yesterday, just as Bruce was about to set the table for dinner, Ryan said, "Dad, will you play a game of Simon Says with us?"

That's pretty cute, and Bruce figured he could take a few minutes to play Simon Says with his four youngest kids. So he goes down to the living room, and I hear Ryan say, "Simon says sit on the couch." Bruce and the little girls all sat on the couch. Then Ryan says, "Everybody tickle dad!" And they all pounced on him.

That cracked me up, and Bruce nearly died laughing. The kids all love it when they can dog-pile Dad and tickle him, but this was pretty darn sneaky!

Funny kids!

Oh, Those Talented Britons!

We don't watch TV in our house. We do watch our favorite, carefully-selected movies at home, but real TV . . . nope. This started when we lived in Tennessee and we just couldn't get any signal at all unless we paid for cable. Well, TV wasn't a big enough priority to pay $25 a month when we were "starving students." When we got back to Utah, where the broadcast towers are on the mountain-tops and the signal was better, we were shocked at how stupid and rather depraved TV really was. So we just gave it up.

This means I've never seen any extreme make-overs—of houses or people; I don't know who "survived," or who the next American Idol will be. And I don't really care. But a couple of years ago someone emailed me this link to see Paul Potts on Britain's Got Talent, and I am hooked.

So let me share my little, guilty pleasure. You may have heard of Susan Boyle, who is all over entertainment news these days (and who is my current favorite). But how about Andrew Johnston from last year's competition? I cry almost every time I see these three performances. And I'm really impressed with Julian Smith, too.

Flawless (watch this one full-screen) was awesome—although the camera-operators are idiots (let's see more dancers and less audience reaction); and I get an absolute kick out of the Greek-Irish Dancers, but you probably need to see some "Lord of the Dance" first to really get the full effect of this one.

Then there's the incredible Hollie Steel, Shaheen Jafargholi, and Charlie Green.

So, this is what I do when I surf the net: I either look up new recipes, or I watch those talented Britons.

Enjoy!


p.s. She's not British, and she hasn't been on a talent-search show, but do a Google search on Emily Bear. She is adorable!

Molly Mormon, Incarnate

Have you ever heard of Molly Mormon? That amazing LDS woman who has half a dozen children, and does everything perfectly? Apparently, I am she.

I've never seen myself that way but to hear Bruce tell it, everyone else must. He tells me that other women must be jealous of me. At which I scoff and say, "Yeah, right." And then he says,"Are you kidding?! You're the ward organist, you sing in the choir, you have eight kids, you are a great cook, you wrote a music program and got a stake choir together to perform it, you sew, you bake bread (which, in my opinion, counts as cooking) . . ."

Well, yeah. I sound practically perfect if you say it like that. But do people really see me that way? And if they do, is that really flattering, or is it kind of a drag?

Because I don't know if I'm really cut out to be Molly Mormon.