Office visits.

McCall had a hair appointment yesterday and asked if it would be okay for Libby to come visit me at the office for a bit.  "I'll bring her with lunch and her backpack filled with activities.  Hopefully she'll be good and keep herself busy so you can still get your work done."

Oh she kept herself busy alright.  But she paid little attention to her backpack or lunch.  It was all about the office ..... and using Grammie's pens, and seeing what was in Grammie's fridge ...

And pushing the button on the UPS label printer to get more and more stickers!!!

The bathroom was a lot of fun too ...

I had (what I thought was) a brilliant idea to listen to Pandora on my computer.  I created a new station called "Disney Children" and it was fabulous!!!  Libby loved guessing what Disney movie the song was from. But she also wanted to see the picture they show while the song is playing .... not really conducive to me getting any work done on the computer.  But that was okay, because I needed to count out elastic strings in bundles of 50.  I thought that would be a tedious task I could do while Libby colored - and roamed ....

Not so much.  She LOOOOVED the elastic strings and wanted to pet them, and count them, and hold them and have some of her own too.  I had a friend text me and suggest that we watch something on YouTube.  That turned out to be an even more brilliant idea. 

When McCall got back, she took one step into the office and said, "OH NO."

Good thing the boss didn't pay an unexpected visit today ... smile. I sure love that little girl. 

 

LP Sightings.

Most of you know by now how much I obsess over license plates.  I was driving back from lunch one day and pulled up behind this plate at a stop sign:  GOODTMS.  Loved it. There were a few cars ahead of that one so I was really tempted to get out of my car and ask the guy if I could get a picture of his license plate.  I wasn't fast enough.  The cars in front of him pulled out, and then he scooted out quickly behind them.  (The chase was on for me to get that picture.)

He drove past my office complex, where I would normally have turned into the parking lot, but I decided to just keep on driving behind him.  I figured I would follow him for a few more minutes and hope to get behind him at another stoplight, long enough to get a good picture.  I took this one with my phone and knew it wouldn't be that great, so I continued to hold my phone up - taking shot after shot.

Several blocks later, the corvette turned down a road by our Costco and I thought, Oh perfect!  He'll get out and I can get a good picture when he goes into the store.  But he didn't go into Costco.  He drove further down the road and turned into the parking lot of a Zion's Bank and I thought, Oh perfect!  I'll take a picture after he goes into the bank.  But he didn't get out of his car.  In fact, he pulled into a parking space, I pulled up right next to him and noticed that he was on his cell phone. He just sat there, talking.

Now, I totally would have gotten out and asked him if I could take a picture of his plate (which I have done) but I didn't want to be rude and interrupt his phone call, so I just sat in my car and waited.  Then, so as to not look too conspicuous, I grabbed my McDonald's bag (remember I was coming back from lunch) on the seat next to me, and decided to eat my lunch - all the while glancing at the guy next to me, waiting for him to get off his phone and/or walk into the bank. Neither of which he did.  Sigh.  Now what?

I had eaten my lunch and the guy was still on his phone.  Then I had the thought that as long as I was at the bank, I would go in and get some temporary checks (I was needing some temporary checks anyway).  That way the guy wouldn't think I was some crazy lunatic following him for some unbeknownst reason.

I got out, walked into the bank, and the guy drove away.

He totally DID think I was a crazy lunatic who was following him for some unbeknownst reason. (Do you think I fooled him when I got out of my car and walked into the bank though???)

Clearly, the worst case of my LP stalking yet ... dang.

Here are some more of my recent creative plate sightings:

(Maybe OCDGIRL applies to this SNZYGMA ... smile.)

Sibley.

School is already back in session for some kids around here ... this is my niece, Sibley.  I saw it on my sister Courtney's Facebook page and could hardly stand how cute it is!  Oh my - JUNIOR HIGH.  Probably the hardest transition a child will ever make in his educational career, wouldn't you agree?

It's the whole "middle-ness" of junior high school that makes it hard.  Where you just aren't quite sure what is going on ... with anything, really.  Your hair, your clothes, your friends, puberty.  Are you still considered just a kid?  A "tween"?  Are you cute enough?  Are you cool enough?  Will the kids make fun of you?  Will you find someone to sit with at lunch?  Will the homework be too much?  Etc.etc.etc.

I remember when my little Haley started junior high school ... tears flowed, sobs ensued, she clutched me mercilessly ... she didn't want me to leave her there.  (It was the first day of kindergarten all over again.  That poor little girl has such anxiety about anything that is new to her.  Hard to believe since she is my singer, dancer, cheerleader, entertainer girl.  But if it's a first time for anything - big time anxiety.)  I think it was a whole week before Haley could just go to class without first spending some time with Charlene, the attendance office lady. Charlene would let Haley assist her for a little while in the office, calm her nerves down, give her a little pep talk and then when Haley felt like her breathing was regulated, she would venture off to her classroom.  It was really that bad.)

Elliott had a hard time in middle school too. All three years of it.  Darn those bullies!  I'm just glad that kids tend to grow up a little by the time they reach high school and get in their own space of drama instead of creating so much of it for someone else.

Here is what Courtney wrote about Sibley:

She survived! Today she didn't die. Today she didn't forget her locker combination. Today she didn't get lost. Today her teachers weren't mean. Today no one said her hair was "puffy." The manic tears this morning were in vain, being a seventh grader turned out to be pretty great. (I told her...momma's always right!) 

(Looks like it might be an okay year after all. Go Sibs!)

Photo strips.

Every so often, I find these photo strips in random places - like up on the sun visors in my girls' cars,  up on their bulletin boards, being used as book marks, etc.  I found these three strips the other day in a pile of papers by my bed .... it was 1994.

Cracked.Me.Up.

Clogs, specifically Dansko.

Yes, I know I have already done a post about how much I LOVE the Sundance catalog .... I mostly just "window shop" and wish I could afford some of the outfits (they're seriously out of control expensive).  Truth be told - it isn't really all that tempting since I am SO far from the size of the catalog models. The outfits wouldn't look nearly as cute on me.

I do absolutely ADORE the cover of this last catalog I got.  The carnival setting, the cute girl - and everything she is wearing from head to toe.  Love, love, love.

As I flipped through the pages, I noticed another model's shoes (below), which are dansko clogs.  Have I mentioned that dansko clogs are pretty much my uniform shoes all winter long?  They are, truly.

I had to have them.

My sister, Spring, had a pair of clogs that she wore all the time - for years and years and years.  She used to say, "I know they look uncomfortable, but they are really SO comfortable!"  And I thought: How can walking (basically) on wood blocks in your bare feet (socks totally optional with clogs) possibly be comfortable?  She told me they cost about $120.00 but were soooooo worth the money.  Spring is a shoe girl.  She spends all kinds of money on shoes for herself, her husband and even her (little) kids.  I am so not a shoe girl.  (I gave birth to one, but I'm not one myself.)  I couldn't see spending that kind of money on a pair of clogs.

But theeeeeeen ..... a few years later, I was up in Deer Valley with a girlfriend.  We stopped into a really awesome, expensive boutique in town and they had dansko clogs on sale. Unheard of.  I tried on a pair in black and they were only $55.00.  How could I not get them?

I wore those darn clogs just about every day, all winter long for the next five years or so, before I decided it was time to get another pair in brown, which I did pay full price for because I came to agree with Spring - they are soooooo worth the money.  I have worn those brown clogs just about every other day (the other day being the black pair) during the winter months for another five years.  The brown pair still looks pretty good - the black pair, not so much.  But those puppies were so worth the money and I have certainly got my money's worth, and then some, out of them.

SO ... there they were.  Mustard yellow, floral dansko clogs. How cute are they?

$135.00 - plus tax - plus $17.95 shipping.
OUCH.

Last summer, when my sisters and I took our trip to New York to visit our parents, we were in a little shop in the village owned by a good family friend, Shirley.  Shirley has a shoe section with more dansko shoes than I have ever seen gathered in one location. Since we were offered the "friends and family" discount, my sister Leslie and I both decided to get a pair of dansko sandals.  (And then Leslie decided to buy two more - she had since been converted to the comfort and durability of the black dansko clog as well; our uniform shoe, or MOM shoe, as my girls call them - completely unattractive to the opposite sex, I'm sure, but hey, we're over 50 and it is so much more about comfort now anyway.)

I called Leslie and asked her if the store up at Sundance had clothes and shoes too.  I figured that way, if they did, I could just drive up there and save the shipping charges.  I described them to Leslie and she immediately said, "Shoot.  Maybe I have to get a pair too."

Leslie also had the idea to give our New York friend a call to see if she had them, assuming, of course, that we could get the same friends and family discount and we'd have our mom go pick them up and she could bring them out with her in the fall, thus saving us the shipping charges.  While Leslie was in the process of trying to negotiate the whole plan of attack with our mom and with one of the shop workers who didn't have a clue of who she was, I got a picture text message from my daughter, Sophie:

$80 Nordstrom Rack, they're your size, I have them in my hand!

(Better than friends and family discount.)

Such a sweet, sweet, happy little thing.

Let freedom ring!

So, yes, absolutely, my post about the 4th of July is a little late in coming .... (don't let me get started on the amount of time it takes to download pics and create collages in the "new and improved" .... just don't let me.)  We really do LOVE the 4th of July Celebration in our little local town of Sandy City, Utah.  The festivities are always so much fun and the people watching is COMPLETELY entertaining.

... truth be told, I'm completely entertained by my own little group of "people".
 

Libby, lovin' on that parade taffy ... lots and LOTS of parade taffy.

Pretty sure that some people watching was focused in our direction too... 

these two dancing queens were a hoot HIT!

And I will admit, celebrating Independence Day meant a lot more to me this year.  As I watched Libby prance around with her flags, playing with her cousin, Isabel .... their baby brothers sitting on their mommy's laps all day, I got a little teary eyed ... because their daddies, Jared and Josh, are both currently deployed for the next 12 months, serving our country, fighting for our freedom - that on most days, I think we take for granted.  But that day, I didn't.

So here is a big fat THANK YOU to the troops,

and a special thank you to these two brothers ....

We love you guys!

Jef with one F.

If you watch the Bachelor or Bachelorette shows, you already know that the last couple of seasons have had contestants (is that what you call them?) from Utah.  Turns out the contestants you love to hate were the ones that were from Utah (remember Michelle and Bentley?).  Not cool for those of us who live in Utah.  They didn't paint a very good image.  But then along came Jef with one F.

In case you don't know who Jef is, he was one of the bachelors vying for Beautiful, Barbie, Bachelorette Emily's hand in marriage this past season.  He made a really great impression from the get go, riding in on a skateboard.  Emily said she was immediately smitten.  She thought he seemed a little edgy and she liked that.  

Well, this local guy made us all proud because he was truly so sweet, so charming, said the most beautiful things to Emily, and was a hit with her little girl, Ricki.

In the end ... Jef got the girl.  It was really, really precious.  After he made the proposal, and got up off his knee, Jef kissed her and then Emily said something to him.  I didn't catch it the first time around, so I backed up my tivo so I could hear what she said.  She told him, "We're going to make this work."   LOVE that.

They are so adorable together and seem genuinely happy, which, granted, is how most couples start out, but I'm hoping for the best for them.  And I'm hoping for a Jef/Emily sighting of my own sometime... the guy gets around! 

Jef with my niece, Lindsay  - sighting at a Blogger event,

Pleasant Grove, Utah

Jef with Chloe's friend, Thomas - sighting at Sugarhouse Park, 4th of July,

Salt Lake City, Utah

Jef with my nephew, Jordan - sighting during lunch at Costa Vida,

Pleasant Grove, Utah

Carnival fun.

Steel Days in American Fork ... SO.MUCH.FUN.

Pooh.

 

So in the midst of my not doing any posts on my blog for a really long time-time, my mother had said to me, "You know what I really liked, Polly?  I really liked it when you would do your posts about random things (although I'm not sure that she used the word random because I don't recall my mom ever using that word) ... like cotton balls.  That was fun."

I liked that too.  Could I really have gone through all of the random little things on my original happy little things list?!  I wonder where that list is so I can check ....

BUT. Speaking of random ... I was on my way to work the other day and sitting all by his lonesome, on a post, out by a muddy wash, not even near anyone's yard at all was Pooh and his Buzz Lightyear kite.

Talk about a happy little sighting.  Silly little bear.

"What day is it?" asked Pooh.

"It's today," squeaked Piglet.

"My favorite day," said Pooh.

Cups, cups, and more cups.

You know, kitchen items really could put the toy companies out of business.

And, yes ... I have had some of those tupperware cups 
for a really, really long time.

The BLAZE.

I ran into my friend, Shelly, a couple of weeks ago at a wedding reception and she said, "Polly!!?  You haven't been blogging and I don't know what's going on with you anymore!!!"

My friend, Delanie, came and stayed with me for a week last month and said, "P-Dove, I just started looking at your blog again and I check every night for a new post.  No offense, but we are tired of seeing the twins' graduation announcement.  You need to post something new!"


And then several days ago, my friend Diane called me and said, "It's June 30th."


I wasn't sure of the significance of it being June 30th so I had to ask her.  She said, "You need to do a blog post today.  If you don't, it will be the first time since you started your blog that you have gone a whole month without even one post."  She said, "Just do something, anything, so you don't miss a month!"  (Bless her cute little heart.)

You know how we all have our "stories?"  And sometimes we can tend to get a little wrapped up in our stories?  And then our stories end up just being excuses or rationalizations or justifications?!  Well, my story about why I haven't been blogging stems from the fact that I don't like the changes that were made on blogger and (especially) over at photobucket.

A couple of my more recent posts have had lots and lots of pictures.  And while I love taking lots and lots of pictures, I have preferred to condense them somewhat by making several of them into a collage.  With the changes in photobucket, I hadn't been able to figure out how to do a collage and it was making me just a little bit crazy.

I had been downloading pictures of my daughter, Haley, to do a post about the Utah Blaze (our team for the AFL - Arena Football League).  And since the Blaze game was super exciting for us, and super fun that Haley is one of their cheerleaders, naturally I took about 665 pictures.  How do you condense 665 pictures into a post without the help of a collage?!  That was my challenge.

But Diane, having heard my frustration, did a little investigating and called me back over this past weekend with a secret tip on how to find a place to do a collage so that I could get a move on with my blog.  (Again, bless that girl's little heart ... thanks Di.)

So this is my long awaited (for me and Haley anyway) post about the Utah Blaze and my Utah Blaze dancer!

If a picture says a thousand words, I will spare you any further commentary.  Suffice it to say, I am a proud momma and we LOVE BLAZE GAMES!!!!





At one of the games, the cheerleaders had family members join them for a Michael Jackson tribute dance. Haley asked Elliott to be her partner.

That's Elliott out on the field, arms outstretched, doing his best MJ stance ... gotta love it.



The teams say a prayer together after the game ... Love that too.