hot dog fingers!

Last Monday, my ward played Ultimate Frisbee for FHE. Now, anyone who knows me knows that this was not something in which I participated. I, however, am on the FHE committee, so I feel like I need to go every week, unless there is something huge that I can't get out of, so I went, dubbing myself the official photographer.

Well, I failed at taking pictures because the action was too far away and it was dark, so Jessica and I just talked while everyone else played (Jessica wanted to play, but right when we started, she hurt her ankle again, poor girl). So we stood by the food (the fruity pebble-style rice crispy treats and the veggie tray that I was in charge of bringing) and talked and told everyone else to eat them.

So there we were, talking and advertising the lovely treats, when we notice that nobody is playing anymore. They were all just wandering around looking at the ground: a few of them had phones out shining them at the ground.
"Did you lose the frisbee or something? If so, that's really impressive, since it's a light-up frisbee."
"Jonathan lost his key."
So Jessica and I join the effort at wonder around the retention basin in the dark looking for a key. Not a set of keys, or even a key on a chain, but one singular key. Several times I hear Raymond say "why don't we form a line and walk from one end to the other?" but nobody listens to him, so I told him to be louder, but he decided to be snarky instead. So when Blake had everyone form a line so we could walk from one end of the basin to the other, Raymond muttered under his breath, so that only I could hear him, "Gee, that's a good idea. Why didn't I think of that?" Totes snarky.

So we line up. Every other person has a flashlight/cellular phone device to provide as much light as possible. We started walking and Blake decided that we needed a code word so that if someone found it they could yell that out instead of saying "I found it!" Why this makes sense to him, I'll probably never know, but whatever. His code word was "hot dog fingers." Yeah... weird. So we're going along and suddenly Blake Yells "HOT DOG FINGERS!" so we all stop looking and get excited and look toward him. "just kidding." Thanks, Blake. Well, by the time we're about half-way through the basin, our dear friend Blake has become very invested in finding this key, so he starts offering free Golden Spoon to whomever finds the key. Jessica then yells "Hot dog fingers!" After she let everyone complain about not winning the trip to golden spoon, she reveals that she just wanted to yell "hot dog fingers" really loudly at 9 PM in the middle of a retention basin in a fairly nice neighborhood and see what happened. All that happened is that a bunch of YSAs stopped looking for a key and whined about not winning golden spoon. And the search continued. We're approaching the end of the retention basin. We're losing hope. I hear Wendy say "You know, it would probably be more effective if we prayed to find it." A couple people scoff (seriously, there was scoffing), but I thought it was a good idea. So I'm still walking in my little section of the basin, the last one to maintain the life effort. I will not give up hope. I reach the point where the basin starts to go up to meet the level of the street and, because I was watching the game, I am pretty sure that Jonathan did not go up there, so I turn around. I'm walking back to where everyone else is eating (and loving) my treats when I walk past Wendy as she says, "Here, I found it."

Prayer works.

I Love My Kids...

Thursday was one of the most amusing days I've had in a while. I got to work and my teacher looked at me and said, "Miss Shumway, I have to tell you a story or I'm going to burst." So we took the kids to the computer lab and got headphones on all of them so they couldn't hear the story, and this is what she said:

"Last night I had my conference with Angel's family. His brother and sister were both there with Mom. We were just talking when Mom asked each of them what they want to be when they grow up. Christopher said he wants to be a police man. Aliah said that she wants to be a doctor. What did our little Angel say?
'I want to be an underwear model.'"

SERIOUSLY?!?! What kinder kid knows that that's even an option?!

Well, the day progressed and nothing particularly exciting happened, then after lunch I was sitting with Alicia making her card to give to our librarian who just had brain surgery (seriously). Alicia is one of my highest kids, so I told her to write whatever she wanted to write on the inside. This is what happened:


Translation: "Miss Palson is crazy. We are stuck with this crazy teacher."

On the other side of the card it says "come wil son," which is a mixture of "get well soon" and "come back soon," but we aren't sure what she was going for exactly.

Now, my teacher is amazing, and definitely not crazy, so why did precious little Alicia write this in her card? The previous day one of the kids had asked what to write and Miss Palson said something under her breath that was along the lines of "They're making me crazy," and Alicia heard and remembered it. Then wrote it. The only things I helped her spell were "with" and "this." Yeah, my kids are smart.

Only a few minutes after the card incident, the class was doing quiet work, and we had some music playing. It was not overly-rambunctious music, but it wasn't falling asleep music either. It was just normal kinder music. Miss Palson tells me to look up and what do I see?
Alejandro and Ruben in closed dance position, swaying to the music like two little Mormon kids at a Saturday night dance. It was hilarious. Then I kept watching and what does Alejandro do? He leads Ruben in an underarm turn. Amazing.

I love my kids.

Totes.

We forgot...

Here's a lovely little story for you: very common around my parents' house.

I was talking to my mom and she started leaving the room, so I started talking louder. Within just moments, I realized that she had probably traveled too far to be able to hear me anymore because 1.) their house is really loud, 2.) for some reason my mom just has a hard time hearing words that are coming out of people's mouths, and 3.) my voice doesn't carry very well.

I didn't know where Mom had went in the house though, so I got up and started walking toward the TV room to see if she was in there. As I got to the kitchen, Cameron came in. I told him, "I think Mom left while I was talking to her again."

He just kinda laughed and replied with:

"I think we just forget sometimes."

"What do you forget? That I exist?"

"No. That you're talking to us."

And people wonder why I have middle-child syndrome. I talk to people and they just forget to listen--they forget that I'm talking.

Wow. I just realized that this sound a little bitter. It's really not. Cameron and I were laughing when we had this little conversation. It's a funny, laughing thing. Promise.

five, four, three, open sesame

Happy New Year!

Sorry, I couldn't help it, but I'd be willing to wager that most of you don't get the title anyway, so it really doesn't matter.

Umm, I know I just posted stuff a few days ago, but I couldn't turn down the chance to use that title that is wasted on the general populous, so I'm going to tell you all about my new year's eve adventures.

Ok, so I was aware of five activities to which I could have gone:
Dance at the tri stake center
Dance at the Red Mountain Institute Building
Masquerade dance somewhere in downtown Mesa
F1 Racing somewhere in Phoenix
Ice Skating at Polar Ice

Ok, you know me, do you think I wanted to go to polar ice or the racing thing? If you guessed "No," you can go ahead and give yourself a chocolate, because you're correct. I wanted to go to the dance at the tri stake center because it was only $2 and it's super close to my house, so Emalie and I carpooled and got there at 10:01, I remember because it's one of my favorite minutes. As soon as we sat down, a slow song came on and these two guys came up and asked us to dance. We decided that it was going to be a good evening.
Well, it turns out that from 10:01 to 1:00 (when the dance ended) there were only 3 slow songs played. It was kinda totally lame. The DJ would make a really good DJ for a club, but not so much for an LDS dance. Anyway, once Lowell showed up and I had someone to dance with to all the fast stuff they were playing, it was fun. He's all sorts of hyper now that he's not burned out from working like 100 hours a week for almost 3 years. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up with him. Seriously.

After the dance, Emalie's friend Jolene invited us to go to her YSA advisers' house. We got there and everyone was playing guitar hero, and I'm still waiting for Musical Theatre guitar hero to come out, so I decided to go off with Emalie and Jolene and just talk. Some time around 3 we left to go home, Jolene with us because her car is being wonky so she needed a ride.

Instead of going home, we decided to go on an adventure. We went to the rez and Emalie took us to an old creepy graveyard. We were going to get out and take pictures, but then decided that that would be a bad choice, but it totally reminded me of something The Gifted Girls would do.

Then we went back to Emalie's house and took her dog for a walk. We just went around her neighborhood, but we talked about things that so many people are uncomfortable talking about. It was so much fun. After walking and talking for a while, we found ourselves back at Emalie's house. Now it was time to go home.

I don't know what time I got home, but I got a text that I was awake enough to read and remember reading at 5:01 AM. I crashed shortly after that.

So, that was my New Year's Eve, and the first few hours of 2009. It was totes enjoyable.
This is going to be a good year.

I also just put the pictures from December on my computer, so I'll have to upload them soon, but I need to go watch Monk right now, so toodles!

luv ya!

PS. I fixed the links from my last post, so now you should all go visit them.
totes.