Mothers Institute

The past little while I've been attending an Institute class for mothers, and it has been great! We meet tuesdays at 11am, and go over general conference talks. The kids play in the back of the room with nursery toys and us moms are able to have adult interactions. I've really enjoyed our little tuesday class.

This week however....

Our tuesday class was canceled and we were invited to join the wednesday class.

Oh.

My.

Gosh.

I could not hear a thing! This class had way more people, and older, louder children. The poor lady behind me probably felt so uncomfortable as I looked back to make sure my child was still alive every 30 seconds.  A few of the girls from my tuesday group left, and towards the end I was wishing I had too. I'm not saying the lesson wasn't good, it was great, but there was just too much chaos to enjoy it.

Oh, and did I mention I was called Dani the entire time? Pretty sure that's not my name, and I dont think there is even a Dani in our usual class. I was sitting next to another sister from my ward, and when we sat down our instructor said "Oh good you're here! I was worried about you two!" ...confused looks at each other.... " Have you talked to Heidi?" .."Nope" ....I dont even know who Heidi is...either do I...

Whatever, Elizabeth, Dani, its all the same right? Its only the wednesday class that will think my name is Dani.


Then towards the end, James came up to me and sat on my lap, and a wednesday sister asked "Is he yours?" 
"Yep, he's mine"
"I think he's got a girl friend, he's been following my daughter around the whole time"
fake chuckle..."Ohhhh well he likes little girls"
"How old is he?"
"18 months"
"Oh! She's barely two!"
"Oh, cool"

And the conversation ended there, with me thinking...

 heck to the no! My child does not and will not have a girl friend for many many years!

I know some people think its cute when little kids have "boy friends" or "girl friends" but I dont think it is so cute. I want my boys to think girls have cooties for a long long time.

So after this woman tried to pimp out her daughter to my son, she proceeded to grab him in her arms after class and give him a big ol' kiss on his head!!

What the heck?!

Who kisses stranger's children?!

Well after this weird awkward class I am vowing never ever to go to a wednesday class again. We will stick with our tuesdays where James can play with trucks and other boys and where there aren't any other mothers trying to set up my son with their daughter. Also I can actually hear and participate in the lesson, which is why I'm going in the first place.

2 am-ish

It's about 1:30 in the morning and I'm still up.
Yesterday?(Friday) was a great day, I woke up, went for my walk with James, went about my usual daily to do list, laundry etc. Then watched the Utah State v BYU game while Matt went up to Romney with his parents. (James was grumpy so we decided against bringing him that time) Utah State won, which was wonderful because I'd have a happy husband all weekend. Those of you married to sports fanatics know exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway I thought it was a great start to a great weekend.


Today or yesterday as I guess it would technically be now didn't start off so great. I was exhausted and didn't want to get up, so I overslept and missed most of the morning session of general conference. How am I able to sleep in that late? Well my child was up till the wee hours of the night because we went out to dinner after the game which made him hyper because he loves to see his Aunt Katie and Grandma and Grandpa Morrissey. Anyway, nothing really awful happened today, I was just exhausted and James was being uber sensitive all day, crying hysterically. When he cries like that I can't hear a thing so there went the afternoon session.

After crying for what seemed an eternity, he fell asleep, and didn't get up until 8:30...yep I blew it. I should have woken him up, but I was just enjoying the peace. He's back asleep again, as he should be for goodness sake it's 1:40, and now I can't get myself to climb up those stairs and crawl into bed because then it will be tomorrow and we'll have to do it all over again!

Poor little guy has been sick off and on all week, and I know its all because of those darn molars coming down. When I was pregnant I would read about babies born with teeth and I thought,"How awful!" now I'm thinking that's the way everyone should be born!

So here's to hoping tomorrow will be better.

Ps if you're wondering why I'm so tired....no I'm not pregnant.

I am Woman....

...and I want Chocolate! Mmmmmmm

Chocolate Ricotta Icebox Cake

Sweet and Salty Cake

Chocolate Meringue Cake

Peanut Butter Whoppie Pies

Don't these look delish?! Pretty sure they do.

The only problem is, that by the time I make sure I have all the ingredients,

 go to the store to get the missing ones,

then make one of these yummy looking chocolate wonders...

I no longer want to eat it.

Instead I want this....

Nachos Supremo

One, Two, Three's and a Shopping Cart

Here are a few picture I took of James counting to 3

He jumped on every 3, but my camera was too slow to catch it so

I have little fits of laughter everytime I look at these...

...James does not like to sit in any high chair, booster, or grocery cart

when I do put him in one, a grocery cart this instance

he waits for me to stop the cart, stands up and jumps on me

and because I dont want him to smash his head on the floor

I catch him

he then wiggles his way to the ground

well tonight we tried something new

letting him push the cart

Success!!

Oh Boy...

"He's pretty wild isn't he?"
is what a family Matt home-taught tonight asked.
Yes...
Yes he is.
James' favorite activities include:

• Counting 1, 2, 3 then running as fast as he can across the room only to do it again going the opposite direction when he runs out of room.
• Jumping off the couch, also counting 1,2,3
• Throwing his food on the floor when he's full
• Opening the dishwasher and "unloading" it
• Pulling all our shoes out of the closet, then throwing said shoes down the stairs
• Climbing on the computer desk, opening programs I didn't even know we had, and freezing the computer using only the keyboard
• Pulling out all the contents of the bookshelf
• Standing by the front door saying "bye, bye, bye, bye, bye" and waving his tiny little hands
• When outside, he loves to run into the parking lot, hijack the neighbor children's toys, and try to pet the horses behind the covered parking
• Being an escape artist at any store,  giggling as if there weren't anything better than running away from Mommy and Daddy

Yes I have a wild child and every day is a new adventure with him.
It's amazing how fast he's growing up.
I wish I could just keep him this size forever.

James and Daddy

James in his new favorite spot

On a lighter note...

James can count "two, twee, fo!"

Matt has an intership/job as a Graduate Assistant and will be working to put together "E Week", here's an article about last year's E Week to get a better understanding. Matt will be in charge of finding sponsors and recruiting participants for the "Elevator Pitch" competition, as well as other things. We're pretty excited about this opportunity for him!

I won a sweet Ustate hat at the coaches show last thursday, YAY Me! lol

Saturday was the 1st home football game for Utah State. We played the ISU Bengals. Matt's parents and his brother Mike and his 3 boys came. Had a great time!

Here's us pre-game, we try to get there an hour before to get a good seat. The student section was completely full, so we ended up moving 3 times so the little guys could see.

All in all, a good day, and a great weekend.

What's on my mind

I never considered myself to be racist. I've never looked at someones race, or religion and thought,
"Oh because they look or believe a certain way, they must be >fill in the blank<." So to me, when people have a problem with people that are different from them, I just have to shake my head because I just don't understand it.
 I often get the question "Where would you like to end up?" Often times my answer is California, which is usually followed by ...

" Oh I would never want to raise my kids there because..."

A: There's too many Mexicans

B:There aren't very many members of the church

C: California is too liberal

D: the crime rate is too high

or

E: It's so expensive

I would consider 2 out of those 5 answers legitimate. I don't want to raise my kids where they would be too sheltered. I want them to have friends that aren't all blonde haired and blue eyed. I want them to have friends that are of all religions, and have a respect for that. I DO NOT want my children to fear people that are different from them.

 As Yoda would say

 “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Now, I don't have to end up in California. San Diego is just my ideal location laugh out loud.

In reality we'll end up wherever Matt gets a good job, and I'm just fine with that.

I was emailing my little brother who is on a mission speaking mandarin in New York, and he told me something that made me just want to fly out there and give him the biggest hug in the world.

 He wrote,

"Later that evening we ran into a guy who was captured by the Taliban for7 months because he protected an American - he was a new york times reporter. Tahir Ruddin or something. He thought our church was great because we had polygamy - he has two wives. I love meeting Muslims. We both realize we're not trying to convert each other so it's easy to just have a friendly conversations like civilized people."

(To read my brother's emails home, check out the blog i set up for him, http://elderbenjamineddynynys.blogspot.com/)

Ben's comment came at a time when I'd been hearing a lot of complete crap about Muslims with the whole mosque ordeal and the anniversary of 9/11. Even today an article on my home page was about

Muslims face growing bias in the workplace. So, when I wrote back to Ben I told him of all this, and how I was so glad that he had a good view of Muslims. This week when he wrote back to me, he included an article from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' website " A Latter-Day Saint Perspective on Muhammad"  I encourage all of you to read this. I thought it was a great article and really enjoyed it.

"Elder Russell M. Nelson quoted a public statement issued by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in October 1992, calling upon “all people everywhere to re-commit themselves to the time-honored ideals of tolerance and mutual respect. We sincerely believe that as we acknowledge one another with consideration and compassion we will discover that we can all peacefully coexist despite our deepest differences.” He then added: “That pronouncement is a contemporary confirmation of the Prophet Joseph’s earlier entreaty for tolerance. Unitedly we may respond. Together we may stand, intolerant of transgression but tolerant of neighbors with differences they hold sacred. Our brothers and sisters throughout the world are all children of God.”"

With that, I've said what I need to say. I'll try to blog about something a little lighter next time :)