7 Quick Takes about Birthday Wishes I Didn't Expect, Rusty Water, and Magic Incantations for the Inflexible

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

Today is my birthday! The kids have a half-day of school and after-school activities, so my plans include picking people up or dropping them off at 11:20, 12:30, 1:00, 3:00, and 4:20. Should be a blast.

Phillip is coming home from work a little early so we can take the 10-year-old to gymnastics together and then go out for dinner and ice cream during his three-hour practice, so I'm not complaining.

Also, my ministering sister from church dropped off the sweetest birthday gift. She made pillows from my dad's shirts after he passed away in February, and finished them in time to give them to me today. She even left the pockets intact to put a picture or a note inside that reminds us of him.

My dad wore plaid button-up shirts almost every day, looking at them reminds us so much of him.

This morning it occurred to me that this was the first year my dad wasn't going to call to wish me a happy birthday, and that was a little sad. But just a couple of hours later the doorbell rang and it kind of felt like God had arranged through my ministering sister for him to send his love on my birthday, after all.

—2—

Most parents put their energy into encouraging their kids to read more, and in fact they believe that there's no such thing as a kid who reads too much. But I beg to differ. 

Mine will read and read and read to the exclusion of anything else, and I want to see them spending more time building, creating, and being active rather than always just consuming. I thought long and hard about how to codify that into a rule that didn't require me to track reading minutes or police anyone, and then I approached the kids with this idea. 

"For the next few days, let's limit reading to entertainment during car rides," I said. "When you're at home, you can play outside, call a friend, or think of something else to do. Books are for vehicles only."

Of course, my 10-year-old who will grow up to be the best lawyer in the world, immediately asked "So can I go sit in the van and read in the garage?" 

—3—

After years of thinking about it, I finally redid our fireplace. I didn't love the ugly red brick of the 80s and 90s that was here when we moved in, but it seemed too expensive to replace and I didn't like the look of painted brick, so that's how it stayed.

However, I found this painting kit that uses five different colors and ends up with a brick-like look (in a better color) when you're done. The $239 price tag made me hold off for over a year, but I finally decided to just do it and bought it back in March. 

It sat there unopened for a while because I was too nervous to use it, so this week I asked Phillip to remove the pellet stove from the fireplace cavity. Then I'd have no choice, there would be a 400-lb stove in the middle of our living room until I finished. (This is how I motivate myself to do most things in my life, I'm not sure if it's a good strategy but it seems to work.)

Before photo includes all the junk we found underneath when we pulled out the pellet stove.

Cleaning the stove and doing all five steps of the painting process took less than a day, and I'm very happy with the way it turned out! 

Color is Twilight Taupe.

The first thing the 14-year-old said when she saw it was, "It looks expensive!" (Truthfully, it was expensive for just five small jars of paint, but it was totally worth it because I wouldn't have been able to choose the right complementary colors or figure out the right method to apply them all to get this result.)

Now we just have to move the stove back, and since it's time to repaint the room anyway I'm going to the store this week to choose a shade that goes better with the fireplace. 

—4—

All of our patio furniture is out now, and we had several beautiful days this week to enjoy sitting outside. I'm particularly enjoying all the birds that come to our feeders. Thanks to the Merlin bird app, I can identify a lot of them by sight and also by sound. 

One day I even got my 12-year-old to sit down with me to use Merlin and he got hooked. He probably knows more about the birds in our yard than I do. Now you can't go outside for 5 minutes without him saying, "Do you hear that? That's a rose-breasted grosbeak." He's an old soul.

—5—

One thing I am not enjoying is that the metal patio chairs we bought (on clearance!) at the end of last season are leaking rusty water on our deck. Good thing we didn't pay very much for them. 

The internet said to clean the rust stains from the deck with a white powder cleaner called Barkeeper's Friend. It worked great at removing the rust... but also left the boards with a whitish film on them which looks worse than the rust stains.

Any tips to get THAT off?

—6—

I went with my 14-year-old to see the Michael Jackson biopic. She wasn't even born when he was alive, so she confessed to me that sometimes she mixes up Michael Jackson with Elvis because they "both lived a long time ago" and were respectively called "The King" and "The King of Pop."

Hopefully having seen the movie will help.

—7—

I wouldn't have predicted this a few years ago, but I've become really passionate about physical mobility. I want to be active and do what I want without pain for as long as possible during the second half of my life (although I find stretching uncomfortable and unenjoyable, so I probably spend more time watching Facebook reels of mobility stretches than actually doing them.) 

I've been doing hip mobility for a month or so, and this week I added in some shoulders. For now I'm just following this guy, but I'm sure as soon as the algorithm figures it out I'll be flooded with more shoulder mobility videos.

Sometimes I do the exercises in this routine using a pole, but I have been known on occasion to just grab the kitchen broom and if it's closer to me, and waving it around rhythmically for 7 or 8 minutes makes me 100% look like a witch casting a spell. 

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7 Quick Takes about Photo Sessions by the Clueless, Mother's Day Strandings, and Getting Notes in My Kids' Love Languages

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

Well, my 17-year-old and his girlfriend went to prom. They were SO CUUUUUUTE. 

Leaving for the dance.

The day of prom was rainy, necessitating a backup plan for taking pictures beforehand, but thanks to one-day shipping on Amazon we ordered a clear umbrella and made the best of it. The pictures actually turned out great.

I think I have an above-average sense for framing a decent photo, but I don't have a nice camera and I don't know anything about photography. So we made it work with my son's smartphone camera and occasionally Googling "prom poses" and directing him and his girlfriend to "do this."

—2—

For Mother's Day, the kids had me make a list of what I'd like to do after church, then they put it all into a schedule and planned the perfect day for me. 

The first thing on my list was "nature walk," so we drove to a hiking trail and spent about an hour meandering through the woods. (I should have specified "nature walk with no fighting or complaining" but I forgot that part, so I guess that was on me. Lesson learned for next time.) 

Unfortunately when we got back to the van, it wouldn't start.

Well, it started, but because of an ongoing sensor issue that we've spent a lot of time and money trying to repair, it wouldn't shift out of 'park' so we were stuck. We Googled for solutions, tried a few temporary fixes from random people on Reddit, and then gave up and called a tow truck.

They said they'd be a few hours so we called a friend to pick us up and bring us home, and by the time we got home there wasn't time for anything else on my Mother's Day schedule. Which is really a perfect metaphor for motherhood in general, so I'd say the day played out exactly like it was supposed to. 

—3—

The 21-year-old left for Japan! She's going to be doing a summer research internship there and we're so thrilled for her. Two of her biggest passions in life are (1) how things work and (2) learning about new languages and cultures, so this is utterly perfect for her.

She texted us when she landed, but we didn't hear from her after that for several days. We figured she was busy and jetlagged, and possibly having difficulties getting her cell phone to work in another country. 

By the third day, I started to get a little concerned, even though I'm generally pretty chill about checking up on the kids (see exhibit A:)

Text to my 17-year-old when he went out last week.

Luckily, that day we heard from her. She texted, and then Phillip and I were able to FaceTime her and hear all about what she's doing so far. Not that I understood much of the research part. But she seemed happy.

—4—

I'm taking a four-week self-defense class right now. I've got two classes left until I become a threat to those around me. Unfortunately my wrist is still recovering slowly from a sprain and that's annoying, but I can mostly participate.

The location for class is the gym in our church, which the kids think is really weird. 

"Wait, wait, wait," said my 12-year-old. "So you're learning to punch people and break their noses... at church?"

My mouth is open because you're supposed to yell "NO!" with every strike.

Among other things, yes.

—5—

I saw a list on the Internet that said "Stop asking 'How was your day?' Ask these questions to get your kids to actually talk."

I've seen questions just like these before, and they have a near-zero success rate. Who knows, though, maybe this list had the magic bullet that would help me find out all about my kid's day! I chose the most promising one and decided to try it: "What's something you keep thinking about today?"

Over the course of the week, I asked three of the kids and their answers were, "What? Me? I don't know," "Uhhh... stuff?" and "Why are you asking me that? What are you doing?"

—6—

My 17-year-old watched a baby duck rescue go down at his high school, right after he finished his AP Calculus exam. (I did not find out about this when I asked him any of the questions on the list, though.) 

Some baby ducks had fallen in a storm drain behind the cafeteria. The police came and it was a whole rescue operation where they pried open the grate, climbed down on a ladder, and deposited the baby ducks in a blue recycling bin to take to wildlife management.

So I don't know, if you're having trouble getting your kids to give you details about their day after school you could always try "Did you see anything interesting in a storm drain today?"

—7—

This is me, every day after my kids leave for school: 

Unlike the lady in the video, though, it's not my husband leaving the mess. It's the four kids who still live at home. Still 100% accurate, though. (When you have a teenage boy, you still even get to make the beard trimming smiley faces.)

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7 Quick Takes about Sea Lions, Unplanned Clean Up Sessions, and Screaming into the Void

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—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:

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. And instead of jumping in the car and booking it to the nearest hotel, do you know what she did? She cleaned up her little brother, stripped his bedding, and mopped the floor by herself 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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7 Quick Takes about Eating Chicken Abroad, Words of Wisdom, and Getting Distracted in the Yard

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

This wasn't the first time I've had to report fraud on one of my credit cards, but it certainly was the weirdest. Usually the unauthorized purchase is an expensive piece of tech from Apple or Google, but this time do you know what it was?

Three separate charges to Kentucky Fried Chicken, ranging from $3 to $10. And three foreign transaction fees of a few cents for each of the KFC orders.

I felt weird about even calling to report the fraud because they were such small and strange charges. But since no one in the house had been out of the country that month it was pretty clear. 

Also, I'm not sure if it was our connection or if the lady I talked to was new, but it took her FOREVER and she kept leaving these really long pauses where I'd eventually go "Um... hello?" to make sure she was still there. The thought went through my head, "Am I somehow being scammed right now?" But eventually she figured it out and it's all good now. No more overseas fast food charges at the moment.

—2—

Before my mom left on Monday, we went to a museum with the 21-year-old. In one gallery, there a big wall of notes where you could leave words of wisdom for future museum visitors.

There were the standard political slogans, religious declarations, and words of encouragement and affirmation, along with a generous smattering of "Max was here" and "Taylor + Kelsey 4-EVA!!!" type notes. Pretty much everything I expected to see. 

But here were a few of my favorites:

"Make sure to love yourself, if you don't who will? I know I sure won't."

"Nobody really NEEDS eyebrows."

"If you are still saying '6, 7' you are not funny and no one likes you. It's over."

We stayed for a little while looking over the notes and as we went to leave, another family walked in. Their elementary schooler looked at the notes wall and then realized he could add one. Running over to the table with pens and blank notes, he announced: "Mom! I'm gonna write 6, 7 on it!"

So... it's not over, apparently. 

—3—

Usually, I don't comment on current events on this blog — especially anything political. And usually, I don't think there's anything funny about attempted violent crime.

But not always.

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Last weekend a shooter tried to break in to the White House correspondents' dinner, and while everyone else dove for cover under tables, one man just continued eating his salad with nonchalant curiosity. 

The article I read about it is behind a paywall, so in case you can't read it, here are some direct quotes from an interview with the man in the video:

"I’m a New Yorker. We live with sirens and activity happening all the time. I wasn’t scared. There are hundreds of Secret Service agents hurtling themselves over tables and chairs, and I wanted to watch... A lot of people said, ‘Why didn’t you get on the floor? Everybody else at your table and in the room was on the floor.’ First of all, I have a bad back. I couldn’t get on the floor, and if I did get on the floor, they’d have to bring in people to get me off the floor. And Number 2, I’m a hygiene freak. There was no freaking way I was getting in my new tux on the dirty Hilton floor. It was not happening."

What a legend.

—4—

We had an arborist come to the house this week to give us suggestions to fix our lawn after the absolute hackjob the power company did when they came through in February to "trim" our trees. They hacked off entire limbs, so many that the arborist predicted those trees will die now.

I could go on, but I won't because it makes me too upset. Right now I'm just trying to be positive, and not think about the fact that I will die before we get trees large enough to replace what they did. IT'S FINE.

Anyway, I've decided that deciding to plant trees is extremely stressful. I'm not good at visualizing, so even simple things like picking a paint color for the wall is really difficult for me, even with a paint sample. Planting trees is like that, but worse. If I don't like how the wall looks, I can re-paint in a couple of days. If I don't like the layout of our furniture I can move the sofa. But you can't shift a sugar maple 3 feet to the left (or change it to a beech tree) if you change your mind later on.

—5—

I often watch my ADHD family members with puzzlement and think, "I must not have ADHD because I don't understand that at all."

Except I think I get it with yard work. 

The other day I went outside with a measuring tape and some cones to mark where we're thinking about planting trees, when I noticed a bush that was getting choked by vines. The next thing I knew, I was out there knee-deep in a pile of brush with 3 different kinds of hedge clippers and my kids were asking where dinner was.

And I still don't know where all the cones should go.

—6—

A while ago, our women's group at church had a service auction. We all offered a service that we could do (free haircut, deliver you a dinner, give you a ride to the airport, whatever). We all got a certain number of points at the beginning and then we bid on the services we wanted with real paddles and everything. 

I offered two hours of help decluttering/organizing an area of your home, and this week the highest bidder contacted me to cash in.

We spent two hours in her basement and got so much accomplished! I was worried that I offended her by constantly suggesting that we throw away, well, everything (because that's what I do.) But she asked if I would come back and help her some more next week, so I must not have. At least not so much that it overpowered how helpful I was.

—7—

We're having ongoing problems with our washing machine, but we're not getting a new one. Phillip can fix just about anything, sometimes it just takes time and requires us to be patient for a few days until he figures it out. 

The 14-year-old daughter does not like this.

"Why can't we just get a washer that works? That's what other people do," she complained.

Well, luckily for her, we're outliers. She's our fourth kid so if we did what other people do, she wouldn't even be here. 

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7 Quick Takes about the Difference Between Boys and Girls, Mysterious Disappearances, and Hairstyles I Know I've Seen Somewhere Before

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

My daughter was taking care of a family friend's two dogs this week. Kira and Dexter (the dogs) stayed at their house, but my daughter went over three times a day to feed, walk, and play with them. 

Sometimes I went along and I could not get over their dynamic. 

Dexter would try to snatch the ball out of Kira's mouth when she had it, so Kira would tilt her head up and start twirling in a circle, like a middle school bully taking a shorter kid's backpack and holding it over their head to taunt them.

—2—

Prom shopping with boys is a totally different experience. As a girl myself, and as a mom of two girls, I've gotten used to shopping for prom taking months, multiple stores, lots of opinions, pictures, and an entourage of friends for opinions and moral support.

I accompanied my 17-year-old to Men's Wearhouse this week and and here was the entire process of finding shoes:

Man at store: Do you want shiny or not shiny?

My son: Not shiny.

Man at store: [checks box on clipboard] Okay, moving on...

We were in and out of there in 45 minutes, and most of that was just waiting for the guy to enter everything into the computer and pay for it.

—3—

It's spring break, and my kids have been good-naturedly at each other's throats all week. Nothing terribly egregious, just constant nitpicking (correcting how they pronounce a word, pointing out the teeniest sliver of a flaw in their logic, stuff like that.) 

It's exhausting.

The other day I was so tired of it that I told them, "From now on, here's the rule: before you open your mouth, ask yourself, Is what I'm about to say going to make them feel like a loved and valued member of the family?  If the answer is 'no,' don't say it."

The 12-year-old immediately asked, "Well, what if they're not?"

I closed my eyes to summon patience while my 9-year-old answered, "It doesn't matter, you've just got to make them FEEL like they are."

For the record, those two are the worst offenders in the house for incessant bickering.

—4—

My mom is here visiting for our spring break, so we've been doing some fun things. One of them was going to an aviation museum. 

My 17-year-old got to try the flight simulator:

The 12- and 9-year-old were disappointed that they weren't old enough for flight simulator, but there was a video plan race game in another part of the museum so they at least got to do something like it. They spent most of the time trying to find the most interesting ways to crash their planes, which is probably why there's an age minimum for the actual flight simulator.

Another thing: I've never seen anyone as passionate about anything as the volunteers at this museum were about planes. 

I asked one of them for his favorite fun fact about something in the museum, and he took us to this one plane and talked our ears off for 20 minutes. He even went and got his iPad to show us pictures that he was putting in a book he's writing about it. 

My 9-year-old asked a different volunteer a question about propellers, so the volunteer grabbed some toys out of the gift shop to demonstrate his answer and told my boys to take them home for free. Those were two guys living their best retirement lives.

—5—

I've been amazed before at the things people will take from the end of the driveway for free, but this one takes the cake.

We've been holding onto a very large fabric-covered ottoman that we never use because it matches the couches in our basement, but just because it came as a set doesn't mean we've entered into a blood oath to keep it as a set (see more ruthless decluttering words of wisdom here and here) so I set it at the end of the driveway and see if maybe someone would take it off our hands.

The ottoman was there all day (no worries, sometimes it takes a little while) and I meant to bring it inside at night but I forgot and then it rained. I was so mad! Now it was useless. I rolled my eyes and made a mental note to haul it to the dump later and pay a disposal fee. 

It disappeared later that afternoon. My best guess is that there's a portal to another dimension at the end of our driveway, because that honestly makes more sense to me than someone taking that soaking wet ottoman.

—6—

I pulled up behind this truck at a stop sign:

Me as a UPS driver.

—7—

Another thing we did with my mom this week is go to an alpaca farm. No one got kicked but we did get to see one of them spit.

Alpacas don't particularly like being petted but maybe 75% of them would tolerate it, especially if we had treats.

The alpacas are currently about three weeks from shearing, so they were SO fuzzy. You could sink your hand about 3 inches into their wool and leave a mark if they would let you touch them.

My favorite picture the 12-year-old has ever taken.

I also thought the windswept blonde mop on top of this guy was hilarious:

Hey, girl.

There was actually a young teenage boy of 14 or 15 on the farm with us, and the two of them had the exact same hairstyle. I was kind of watching his family to see if they noticed the similarity, but none of them appeared to. 

Of course, we parents are masters at disguising our real thoughts about how our kids look in whatever's trending. They'll learn the truth someday when their own kids see their old photos and let them know.

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7 Quick Takes about Being an Unofficial Uber Driver, Pest Management as Entertainment, and Just Bein' a Normal Gal

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

I tried really hard this week to think of interesting Takes. But all I've had going through my head this week is:

Spring sports has started, bringing our family total activity count to:

• Soccer (3 days a week)
• Track (5 days a week)
• Gymnastics (4 days a week, half-hour away)
• 2 piano lessons and a voice lesson (once a week)
• weekly youth activities at church

My 14-year-old also needs rides to and from her after-school job, plus she sure does make a lot of plans for someone who can't drive. The 17-year-old helps out a ton, but even then... it's a lot.

—2—

Look at this cute little jade plant I got for free on a local Buy Nothing Facebook group. One of our houseplants died a slow and agonizing death over the winter, and I'm ready to try again.

I think its predecessor died from lack of light, so now I'm looking at different options for a grow light. Someone online said they use a bug zapper, so I went to look at it out of curiosity and oh, the product image... the whole family is literally lined up with popcorn to watch the bugs die!

Who needs movie night when you can count the electrocuted mosquitoes?

When the stock photo of this happy family was taken, this is probably not the way the photographer thought it would be used.

—3—

A place near me has free concerts occasionally, and this week they had an Irish trio playing traditional music. It's something different and interesting, and it's free, so I was there. Phillip was working from home that day and used his lunch break to come with me.

The performers kept saying "Now we're going to play a jig" and "Now we're going to play a reel" as if that was a distinction I should already know, so I looked it up surreptitiously during the concert and that was my educational nugget for the day.

A jig is in 6/8 time, so if you're listening to a jig you can say "pineapple, pineapple" to the music. And a reel is in 4/4 or 2/4, so if it's a reel you can say "watermelon, watermelon." And if you don't read music and have no clue what I'm talking about, you can ignore everything I said and just enjoy the Celtic fiddling. It's fun.

—4—

While out running errands, I thought of Phillip and send him a quick text that said, "Thanks for being my man."

A few minutes later a friend texted me about throwing a bunch of stuff away so I wrote back "So they finally brought the dumpster?" But I accidentally sent it to Phillip since I was just texting him.

I explained I'd sent it to the wrong person and he asked, "so who is your real man?"

—5—

I saw this in the checkout line at the grocery store and it made me laugh.

Normal person tip: when scheduling your normal day, don't forget to leave time for your photoshoot with People magazine.

Not sure who this is, but... who's going to tell her?

—6—

My kids always get sunburned on the first nice day of spring where they have a soccer game or some extended outdoor activity. It always takes me by surprise, mostly because I'm too busy packing away their winter coats to remind them to start putting on sunscreen. 

Well, I'm very proud to report that the 12-year-old had his first soccer game, and he didn't come home burnt! We remembered the sunscreen this time.

But that was only because his sister got sunburned at her first track meet earlier in the week.

—7—

With the weather getting nicer we're about to bring out our porch swing, but first we want to re-do the porch floor. We've had the supplies sitting in Phillip's workshop since last fall, and he decided that this was the week.

He pried off all the old boards on Tuesday, and then things got really busy and he won't have time to work on it again until Saturday. So this has been the welcoming facade of our home all week:

An effective alternative to one of those novelty door mats that say "GO AWAY."

The forsythia blooms on the wreath go with the yellow caution tape, though, so I think it still looks pretty put together.

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7 Quick Takes about Non-Conforming Eggs, Ferns that Will Absolutely Stress You Out, and Rocking Out to My Educational System

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? 

—1—

Happy Easter! Years ago we learned about pysanky eggs from Ukraine, and it's become an on-again, off-again Easter tradition for our family even though we have 0% Ukranian heritage.

The traditional method involves drawing geometric patterns with a wax-filled stylus and dipping the egg in successive layers of dye, but those intricate patterns are way harder to do than you might think and exceed the attention span of our kids, so we design them however we want. The result is always creative and fun, even if it's also a cultural abomination that would make a Ukranian babusia weep.

The 14-year-old made an Easter scene with the three crosses on the hill where Jesus and the two theives were crucified:

I love how the background somehow looks like papier-mâché.

The 12-year-old made a starry night sky. Not the painting The Starry Night, just a starry night:

The 9-year-old must have been hungry and decorated his with breakfast food:

Scrambled egg on a hard-boiled egg. Very meta.

And here was my egg. The wax came off in some places so the design disappeared in some areas, but we've been doing this for many years and this was probably my favorite egg I've made so far:

And someone, I'm not sure who, colored this egg like a Minion and glued a scrap of a napkin to its head for hair:

Technically, it did use wax because the drawing was in crayon. But this is pushing the boundaries of what a pysanky egg is for sure. 

—2—

Easter weekend was also general conference (click here if you don't know what that is), and the overarching message I picked up this time was: be like Jesus. Fill your heart with charitable feelings, both toward people you like and people you don't. We need it, and the world needs it.

The general conference talks covered a range of topics and this one by Emily Belle Freeman was probably my favorite:

Runners-up included:

• The story about the dog trying to chase two balls at once and getting so overwhelmed that she just gave up and laid down by Dale G. Renlund (ironically, I missed part of the story because I was in the other room frantically trying to do like three things at the same time)
• Talk by David J. Wunderli about the importance of not letting devotion to Jesus Christ slide off of our list of priorities when life gets hard and/or busy (I also liked this because his joke suggestion to his 6-year-old reminds me of something Phillip would do with our kids)

I plan to re-read and re-listen to these talks many times over the next several months, because they're really important messages for me to absorb. And sometimes, I can be a really slow learner. 

—3—

The 17-year-old was telling us that his girlfriend lost her purse, and his 14-year-old sister exclaimed "Oh, no! What was in it?"

"Everything," he answered. "Her whole inventory."

I had to stifle a laugh, because video-game speak in real life is too funny.

—4—

I saw this online:

Interesting. We all know that being in nature is calming, so this sounds like it could be true. 

But I'd like to submit this contrary evidence, some photos of the fern in our upstairs bathroom which stresses me out every time I see it:

This previously thriving fern has been on death's doorstep ever since I brought it inside for the winter, but it's almost warm enough for me to put it outside again so maybe it will pull through. Cross your fingers.

—5—

The algorithm keeps showing me a parrot named Apollo on social media, probably because it knows we also have a pet bird. 

But unlike our parakeet, who gets lost trying to fly back to her cage for a month after we rearrange the living room, Apollo seems really intelligent. He has a huge vocabulary and his owner teaches him to identify all kinds of objects, what they're made of, and what color they are. 

 

But the other day, I thought about how different kinds of animals have a different number of types of cones (photoreceptors) in their eye to detect color. Humans have three types. How many do parrots have? Can Apollo even see all the colors his owner teaches him?

Well, I looked it up and apparently birds have four cone types, so their color vision is actually better than ours. They can also see UV light. 

So basically, from Apollo's perspective, the guy is showing him stuff that looks different but saying they're the same color, so Apollo just sighs, "Fine, dummy. I'll say whatever color you think it is, I just want a pistachio."

—6—

My 14-year-old daughter made the most obscene cookies at a friend's house. 

Just look at it! It has a normal-sized cookie as a garnish, if that tells you anything.

At 6.3 ounces, it weighs the same as a McDonald's Deluxe Quarter Pounder with all the fixings and is way worse for you, considering it's topped with cream cheese frosting instead of lettuce and tomato.

—7—

I'd been using my 21-year-old's Pimsleur subscription to practice my Spanish, but her gift subscription ran out. Listening to the audio lessons has been really helpful, but Pimsleur is expensive so I don't exactly want to pay for it. So I checked my local library.

The good news is that they have it... but only on a set of CDs. I don't even think we own anything that can play a CD. Luckily, our library also has a "library of things" that includes a CD player, so I also borrowed one of those and now I'm all set. 

I'm thinking of throwing it over my shoulder and walking around town this weekend blasting my Pimsleur, like it's 1983 and I just got a brand new cassette single of "Beat It."

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