What *not* to do when going out of town.

1. Lose your driver's license.
2. Then realize, after tearing up the house with no luck, that you can't find your social security card either.
3. Spend another half of the day (that was set aside for packing) looking for other non-photo ID and/or driver's license, while waiting on the phone in several different queues trying to speak to airport* & DMV personnel. I think the most I waited on hold was over 45 minutes, but had at least three half-hour waits before getting to speak to human beings.
5. Drive all the way down to the DMV with three rambunctious little boys, without cash, debit, or checkbook, intending to pay the $22 fee to get a replacement license. They don't take credit card, the only form of payment you bring.**

(HELLO, shouldn't everywhere take credit? I pay my card off every month. Why should I be penalized for people who don't pay their CC bills? )


Despite Murphy's law today keeping me from any real plans to pack and leave early, there were some perks:

1) I got a really cute (IMO) haircut yesterday, and it's my opinion that matters, so, yay!
2) I found an inexpensive plane ticket so I can fly from Utah to Chicago during my trip, and go visit Katie (my sister, hubby, and new baby Abigail) & Shelly (cousin, hubby, kids, and brand new twins) in Iowa and Illinois. My mommy will watch my kiddos so I can fly out and back without Rob having to take any extra days off of work.
3) I learned my nephew Spencer wants to get baptized, and we get to attend his baptism on Jan. 3rd. : )
4) *I learned that an airport will accept a temporary license (no photo) with another form of ID like my birth certificate. Phew! But note to self to get a copy of my social security card and keep it on file!
5) **At the DMV today, two complete strangers offered to pay my fee rather than seeing me drive all the way home w/ my little boys to get my checkbook. Talk about a heartwarming Christmas experience of selfless people serving others. Of course I insisted on getting a gal's address so I can reimburse her, but it still blows me away that she tried to just offer me the money to save me the hassle of trying to drive home and back before the DMV closed.

Hippopotamuses

For all of you sneaky people out there who have known about this song for ages and never told me about it, I just discovered it this week because it has played a few times on our favorite christmas radio station. I *love* it! Ha ha ha ha! Typed the song title into the youtube search engine, and voila.

An Announcement

UPDATED 12/12/08: By the way, for any of you who don't know who's baby pics I'm posting on my blog (i.e. my friends who haven't met my family), Katie is my sister. Ben is her husband, and Abigail is their first baby, and Nana's (my mom) 2nd female grandchild. Very, very fun!

If you click on Abigail's full name further down in this post, it is a link to Katie & Ben's blog, and you can see a pic of my sister and her Mr. And more pics of Abigail.

UPDATED: New pics of beautiful Abigail. Isn't my new niece precious?


Abigail Elisabeth Knoll arrived last night in Iowa, to two very proud parents, Katie & Ben Knoll. Congratulations on your new alarm clock, you two!

{Laissez-faire}* n. A term used...

...to describe a policy of allowing events to take their own course with minimal intervention.




























Jeffrey and Bryce were undeterred by my procrastination to put up the tree.

If you could bottle the enthusiasm and energy of my boys as they gathered, assembled, & decorated our christmas tree tonight, we would not need prozac.
I did not bring in a single box from the garage. They found them, brought them all in, opened them all (oh the glee in their countenances!), and set to work attaching all the branches, checking the light strands, and so on. My only contribution was turning on a Burl Ives christmas CD, which only heightened their enjoyment of the process.
We stopped them for the scriptures, song, and prayer part of FHE, and then let them continue their project.
The tree looks awful (in my humble, artistic opinion), but oh, the memories they made tonight! I love it. How I love my boys!

And the creme de la creme was the allegory Bryce announced with "aha" eyes: "Oh, mom! The star is at the very top, looking down on the tree. The star is God. And all the ornaments are God's children. He's watching over us!" He also decided on his own an hour earlier that he is going to take his Book of Mormon for book share on Wednesday.
Ahhhh, the warm fuzzy moments.





*I have no idea how to pronounce this.
I wish Karolyn were here and could tell me; Shelly can. I don't think it's coincidence, though, that it looks like the english word "lazy." I was SO lazy tonight.