My student just sent me this picture

From left to right we are: 1) A Palm Tree 2) Aphrodite 3) A Pumpkin.

If I can ever figure out how to transfer pictures from Steve's Camera, I'll post my kids in their costumes cause they're adorable.

Sam the Lyricist

My three year old made up these hilarious alternative words to Twinkle Twinkle:

Twinkle Twinkle BIG BIG star
How I wonder what you ATE
Up above the world so LOW
Like a Rocket SLOW SLOW SLOW
Twinkle Twinkle BIG BIG star
How I wonder what you ATE

I might have a parasite

Stomach flu just won't die. So I go to see the doctor man. Who suggests that there might be a protozoan cause to my... uh... problems.

So I google this protozoan parasite thing he says I might have. Three big outbreaks have occurred recently:

1) in North Wales
2) in Utah County
3) at my BFF's house

Apparently, I'm the vector.

Well, I've always wanted to be *someone.*

Some of you are still confused

Even after my clarification post, I've gotten a few concerned emails from people thinking that I've *lost* twenty pounds. So I just want to clarify again. No 20 pound loss. The scale literally had the number 20 on it. So I weigh less than... my one year old?

I think something was bent inside the scale, so the spring won't let the dial go past the number 20.

So I threw the scale away this morning.

So: yes, my diet is officially over. No, it is not because I reached my goal weight. It is because I am too cheap to buy a new scale.

Before the twenty pound incident, my last known weight was 167. That was more than a month ago. Who even KNOWS how much I weigh today. (I will bet money that it is *not* 147, though. :-)

Summary:

240: how much I weighed when I delivered Lily more than 18 months ago
167: how much I weighed last time my scale wasn't crazy
163: how much I weighed before I got pregnant
77: how many pounds I gained during pregnancy
73: how many pounds I know I've lost in the last 18 months

diet: OVER

the end.

In case that last post was confusing

the number on the scale was literally 20. just a 2 and a 0. making me... dead?

sam lately will tell me about stuff that happened and he'll end it with, "and then I died."

guess it's running in the family.

This morning's weigh in

20 pounds.

so, uh, either the stomach flu is disturbingly effective, or my scale is broken.

and since I'm too cheap to buy another scale, I'm declaring my diet officially OVER.

halleluia.

Stomach Flu. Again.

Cause I love having it SOOO much?! Is this like, the YEAR of stomach flu?!

crap, crap, crap.

uh...

yeah, literally, I guess.

Story Time!

After dinner tonight, Sam was in a storytelling mood. It was actually the first time that I remember him being in this mood in his entire, three-year-old, life. And it was friggin adorable.

He told us three stories in all. The first story was about a boy who gets eaten by a dragon. (Don't worry, the boy made so much noise in the dragon's stomach that the dragon spit him out and the boy ran away.) The third story was about how SpongeBob saved Mr. Krabs from the evil Jelly Fish. The second story, I'll share below in it's adorable fullness. (Pictures added by me.)

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The Tall Man and the Ghost

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Once upon a time there lived the tallest man in the whole world.

He was very, very tall.

But then, one day, he met a ghost!

The very tall man took the ghost and put him in the sink. But that didn't make him go away. So the tall man took the ghost and put him in the water drawer. But that didn't go away. So the tall man got a jar of water:

The ghost tried to run away. He made himself look like a little boy! But he wasn't a little boy! He was a ghost!

But it's okay because the tallest man took the ghost and put him in the jar.

The End.

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Whaddya' think? Personally, the story made me get all weepy. Yay for adorable little storytelling boys!

More Extra Credit!

I say the extra credit thing because sometimes I wonder if any of my students read this blog. (It's not the easiest to find, but there's a link on my facebook page and some of them have added me as a "friend.") Nothing sauces out the students like offering extra credit.

Here's today's puzzle:

Tarantula Ballad Ruled

What's THAT?!

We've gotta new addition to the family!

Not mine. (Thank goodness.)(Wait...Did I say that out loud?)

My sister had a baby. Seven pounds and some change. Born at 3AM on October 11. Kinda hard labor from what I hear.

His name is Benjamin Johnson and I think he's purty cute.

some Welsh pictures

This is my school:

This is the library at my school (The faint images of people are Emma and Amy):

This is the hallway at my school (betcha didn't realize I was going to Hogworts, huh?):

There is soooooooo much shopping in Bangor:

This is a sheep I chased:

Annotated Answers to the Super Quiz!

1) It's okay that you don't speak Welsh because everyone in Wales also speaks English.

This is false, false, false. Yes, it is true that only 20% of people in Wales speak Welsh as their primary language. HOWEVER, in certain northern parts of Wales near Snowdonia--AKA where I was the whole time--Welsh is spoken primarily. A lot of people don't even speak English. A lot of the signs aren't even in English. You walk around all confused because you expected to be able to understand what was going on and you DON'T. And then, to make things worse, every now and then people speaking Welsh throw in an English phrase here and there and your ears perk up and you think that you'll be able to understand *something* but you don't understand *anything* and you're just even more confused. All very disconcerting.

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2) Old Welsh men break into opera songs a lot.

True. At least for me. I ate lunch with a delightful old (70 or 80 years is my guess) man named Alan who barely spoke English and kept slipping into Welsh. He told me not to tell my husband about our lunch so Steve wouldn't get jealous. He also kept breaking into opera and kept trying to get me to sing, too.

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3) The Welsh are very anti-American.

False. They're so relieved that you're not English that they fawn all over you.
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4) But the Welsh really love the English, so if you're an American, you should consider putting on a fake London accent so they'll be nicer to you.

False. They hate the English. Don't know enough history to understand it, but it sure does come in handy when you're a stranded American girl! Yay for the Welsh!
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4) KFC is very popular in Wales. So is Subway (the restaurant, not the mode of transportation).

True.
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5) But, really, there is so much good food in Wales that why would you ever want to go to KFC?

FALSE, FALSE, FALSE. My favorite food in Wales is this nasty pastry thing that has a semi-gelatinous meat paste in the middle. Welsh cakes (kinda like flat scones) are pretty nice, though.
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6) BYU is totally right to be all proud of its dress code, because immodest dressing is a big problem at the University of Wales.

Immodest dress? Uh, not a problem in Wales. Cause it's friggin freezing. I actually didn't realize it, though, until I was at this kegger/wine tasting thing and everyone got to the point of drunk where they started showing each other their tattoos. And EVeryone had tattoos. (Except me.) It totally surprised me because I hadn't seen tattoos on anyone at all. And then I realized that it was so friggin cold that everyone's skin was always covered from just below their chin down to their toes. (I call the Welsh style of dress "bag-lady chic.") If they were to have a tattoo where I could see, it would have to be on their nose. So, uh, no. Immodesty is not a Welsh problem.
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7) Oh, and students at the University of Wales drink a lot of alcohol. Mostly really cold wine in plastic cups and not the hard stuff, though. And they like to drink with Twix candy bars on the side.

True.
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8) Wales and England are basically the same country.

ha! wanna get beat up? tell someone this in Wales. False, false, false.
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9) It's really easy to get to Bangor, Wales, from London. All you do is hop on a train.

False. More like six trains. Depends on which tube lines are down that day. And beware, some of the trains are really full so you end up sitting on top of your suitcase in front of the stinky train toilet. Makes lunch yummy.
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10) Welsh hotel owners might not call you back when you try to make a reservation, but that's because Welsh people prefer to do all business face to face.

False. Welsh hotel owners don't call you because they're FULL. Everyone in the whole town is full. And you find this out at nine at night when you're exhausted and you have no place to stay. And then random strangers are so upset at the sight of a cute little homeless American girl that they all get on their cell phones and start calling everyone they know. And then they invite you to stay at their house and you're just about to when a random hotel calls to say they just had a cancellation. So you go there. But you're all weepy because random strangers were just so amazingly sweet to you. And you have jet lag, which makes the weepies turn into full on sobbing. And that's kinda hard to explain to the taxi cab driver, so you just leave him a big tip. And then he's all happy because he likes Americans because they tip and so he forgives the weeping.
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11) No professor at the University of Wales would EVER have an affair with one of their tutees.

False. Apparently, this happens so often it's a cliche. _______________________________________________________
12) When you fly to Wales and you get bumped up to Business Class because you have the best father in law EVER, there is this secret room they let you in at the airport that has a buffet of food and a full bar and massage chairs and showers and places to plug in your laptop and a bunch of other stuff that should probably be kept secret so that the proletariat masses don't revolt.

True. The room would astound you, people. Seriously.
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13) It takes three days to get to Wales.

True. I guess it's possible to get there faster, but that's how long it took me.
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14) They totally understand the concept of chastity in Wales.

False. When they found out I'd actually lived the Mormon chastity rules they were silent for approximately 1.5 minutes. They kept trying to speak and then couldn't. Finally a stuttering dude from Scotland said, "Well, I guess tha's kinna sweet." Apparently, they didn't realize someone like me could exist. It was actually really nice to feel all conservative and provincial for once. At BYU I always feel like a psycho-liberal-heretic who's inches away from being thrown out. Yay for racy European cultures!
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15) The best place to get food in Bangor is at the grocery store.

True. That's where I met Alan.
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16) Jet lag is a b*&^% and can make you literally vomit.

True. BLECH. (Literally.)


Barb's the winner cause most of you lovies were too lazy to comment. Love you all anyway, though.

Yay for being back!!!!

Wales! The Super Quiz!

All of the following statements are either true or false. Please post your answers in the comments section. I'm not going to promise a prize for the winner, cause I can't think of anything that good, honestly; but if you guys can think of something I want to give, then I totally will give a prize.

1) It's okay that you don't speak Welsh because everyone in Wales also speaks English.

2) Old Welsh men break into opera songs a lot.

3) The Welsh are very anti-American.

4) But the Welsh really love the English, so if you're an American, you should consider putting on a fake London accent so they'll be nicer to you.

4) KFC is very popular in Wales. So is Subway (the restaurant, not the mode of transportation).

5) But, really, there is so much good food in Wales that why would you ever want to go to KFC?

6) BYU is totally right to be all proud of its dress code, because immodest dressing is a big problem at the University of Wales.

7) Oh, and students at the University of Wales drink a lot of alcohol. Mostly really cold wine in plastic cups and not the hard stuff, though. And they like to drink with Twix candy bars on the side.

8) Wales and England are basically the same country.

9) It's really easy to get to Bangor, Wales, from London. All you do is hop on a train.

10) Welsh hotel owners might not call you back when you try to make a reservation, but that's because Welsh people prefer to do all business face to face.

11) No professor at the University of Wales would EVER have an affair with one of their tutees.

12) When you fly to Wales and you get bumped up to Business Class because you have the best father in law EVER, there is this secret room they let you in at the airport that has a buffet of food and a full bar and massage chairs and showers and places to plug in your laptop and a bunch of other stuff that should probably be kept secret so that the proletariat masses don't revolt.

13) It takes three days to get to Wales.

14) They totally understand the concept of chastity in Wales.

15) The best place to get food in Bangor is at the grocery store.

16) Jet lag is a b*&^% and can make you literally vomit.

Okay, I think that's enough for now.

Yay for being back!

Only $279,250 to go!

Good news posted here:
http://arts.utah.gov/funding/competitions/writing_competition/index.html