In honor of Auld Lang Syne

I know I haven't blogged in too long when Jessie notices my lack of witty anecdotes. I did tell you I would be slacking off. And between a wonderful Christmas, the whole family down with colds, and a few other personal family matters, I didn't have the time or heart to be blogging. But I can't let the calender roll over to 2011 without registering my existence in the virtual world. So, for your pleasure, here is Cami's Annual New Year's Thoughts of Importance! Otherwise known as my fake New Year's Resolution list. I thought about actually making *gasp* real resolutions, but dismissed that idea on the grounds that it would make me accountable and perhaps inspire actual change. Ugh. So instead, I have decided to make a list of the top ten things I resolve NOT to do this year. It's so much easier than being proactive and accomplishing things.

Unresolved:

1. I will not learn Spanish. I've been meaning to learn Spanish ever since I married Jessie so that someday we can serve a mission together to parts Spanish speaking. Except for the first few months when I learned to say "sinners can repent and see the light" and "my husband is handsome", I have not learned any Spanish. I will now assuage my guilt by committing to make no organized effort to become proficient this year.

2. I will not travel to Boston in the fall. You laugh, but I actually wanted to do this. Jessie and I had big plans. Then we decided that an appendectomy, a new baby, a new dishwasher, student loans, a van, and food all rank above airline tickets on the list of things we wish to pay for. So flying to Boston in the fall might be driving to Denver in the summer. Same thing.

3. I will not try to be fashionable. I tried a few times this year. I felt proud until I realized a) most of the fashions nowadays do not flatter post pregnant bodies and b) I have no idea what is fashionable nowadays. So I will stick to trying not to look dorky. And not wearing mom jeans.

4. I will not have dinner on the table every single night when Jessie gets home from work. Most nights, maybe. Every night is too much pressure. And when I don't have dinner ready or at least planned when he walks through the door, I feel guilt. So it's time to do something about that. Either way, I'm not going to make dinner every night. This way I can feel like I'm furthering my goals and becoming wiser. Score.

5. I will not let Jessie beat me at Scrabble. We play together on the iphone and ipad. Jessie is getting better and better, but remains bitter that he hasn't beaten me yet. I intend to keep it this way. Unless he beats me. In which case I let him to keep our marriage intact and boost his self-confidence.

6. I will not eat snails. This should be pretty easy to do since I have never eaten them in my life, and there is not a lot of peer pressure to do so in my neck of the woods. I just wanted to add it to the list to boost my success rate.

7. I will not start a band. My neighbors will appreciate this gesture of goodwill and harmony.

8. I will not try to cut my own hair. I may or may not have done this in the past week in an attempt to save money, under the mistaken assumption that it is easy to "just trim" hair. Turns out this is false if you are doing it to yourself and have zero hair cutting experience. On an unrelated note, I really need to visit a salon.

9. I will not pick any 16 over 1 upsets for March Madness, no matter how much Jessie attempts to convince me there is a first time for everything and optimistically and fool-heartedly makes this rookie mistake in his own bracket.

10. I will not apologize at the start of every blog for not blogging a week. Hopefully this will be a combination of the fact that I am blogging more than once a month and that I have accepted that those who read my blog are acquainted with my habits and used to my flakiness.

So there it is. My firm resolve to be passive and unproductive this year in the name of improvement and progression. Hopefully you'll all be as lucky in accomplishing your goals and aspirations. Happy New Year, everyone. You'll excuse me now, as I really need to take a nap now. Wake me when it's midnight.

My weekly update on our coolness and other amazing details.

So I always have really good excuses for not blogging for forever. Which makes me really cool. This time it is an infection that knocked me out for a weekend, a constipated baby, and general busyness doing Christmas shopping, seeing family, and other cool stuff like that. And since it's almost Christmas, I'll probably slack off some more in the coming weeks. Hooray for slackers (and my house shows it too. For all the same excuses, my house is kind of a mess. But for that one I also throw in the whole new baby excuse.)

Anyway, now that we're done with the requisite apologizing, we can discuss cool things. Like Madeline. Madeline is cool this week because she has reached new heights of defiance in public places. I keep thinking we've reached the threshold, but then she continues to amaze me. I knew my daughter had special talents. We spent half of sacrament meeting last week in an empty classroom throwing tantrums on the floor, part walking in and out of the chapel and screaming, and a small portion in another empty classroom having a long lesson about reverence and showing respect to Heavenly Father. Which she promptly forgot entirely when we tried to reenter the chapel for the closing prayer. We also spent a fair amount of time this week putting on a show for local shoppers in various retail locales. I'm sure they were amused by our game of tag through the stores, the kicking and screaming on the floor, and the parts where I gave up trying to control her and let her rip apart the toy displays. I'm a little tired of being THAT mother in the store. That you are either laughing at, judging, or pitying. Depending on your experience with young children.

But in other news, my other progeny continues to give me hope for the rising generation and counter Madeline's attempts to stop our family growth at two. Other than the whole constipation thing, which is really rather sad, she continues to be a dream. Last night she actually slept for seven and a half hours. She usually sleeps for five or six anyway. Go ahead, hate me. I would feel guilty, but I feel like it's a compensatory gift for enduring Madeline's first six months of life. Or something. I probably don't deserve it at all, but let's not analyze it, lest we kill a good thing. And in other good news for my sanity, I'm done with my Christmas shopping and feeling great. (Wow, I'm a braggart today, huh?) So life, overall, is pretty festive and awesome. Hope you are half as cool as us over here in Warnerville. (Kidding. Totally kidding. I'm just feeling annoyingly chipper today, apparently. Long naps and brownies will do that to you.)

Milestones and merriment

Well, we've officially made it to one month. The hormonal mother inside me cringes to write that. Because Kimberly is much better at eating than Madeline was, she's chunking up a lot faster. (My baby has rolls of leg fat! Hallelujah!) But this means she's not a tiny newborn anymore, and that makes me sort of want to cry. But I am cheered by the fact that she's now more alert, and therefore more fun to play with. We have wars sticking our tongues out at each other. And somehow with all the poking and prodding and dumping her sister out of her bouncer chair, Madeline earned the first smiles of Kimberly's life that I'm fairly certain were not motivated by gas. Which I think is not really fair, but since I am unwilling to hit the baby in order to keep up in the popularity contest, I've resigned myself to the fact that Madeline will always be cooler than Mom to her little sister.

Life has actually been pretty busy, even with a newborn. We're gearing up for Christmas. we managed to motivate ourselves enough to make Christmas cookies, although we haven't yet summoned up the energy to deliver them. Maybe some of our neighbors will get some before I eat them all and blame the extra weight on the baby. Madeline has helped wrapped some presents (sorry to anyone who gets presents from us), and we made a Christmas chain to count down to the joyous day. And Madeline learned to say "ho, ho, ho". So pretty much we're a festive bunch around here.

Why Jessie is cooler than the rest of us.

So tonight was Jessie's work party. Since he now works for a real company, it was a swanky affair at UVU, complete with some delectable prime rib and John Schmidt. But the best part is that his company gives out really awesome raffle prizes, like four big screen televisions, x-boxes, stereo systems, gift cards to restaurants, ski passes, and other cool stuff. Since Jessie has insane luck when it comes to winning things, we were somewhat optimistic about our chances. Which led to a conversation on the way to the party about who got to keep any cool prizes. I told Jessie that since he already got an iphone, tons of free shirts, a nice backpack, a jacket, and other swag from work, that anything less cool than an iphone that he managed to score would be given to me. The poor wife who doesn't get free stuff. He agreed, with the stipulation that if he won an ipad, he got to keep it.

Guess who won an ipad.

Punk.

On the bright side, I'll probably get to use it all the time anyway. If I can keep it away from Madeline and her rabid desire to watch Sesame Street on Youtube.