Today, I did a bunch of stuff. I mean... a whole bunch of stuff. A whole of out-of-the-ordinary-stuff. I'll tell you about it right now, because I know that's why you're here. Because you love getting the latest, the nitty gritty, the... scoop, shall we say, on my life.
I woke up at 7:13. (This was not my plan. My plan was to sleep until 8:30. I'd set an alarm to make sure I woke up at 8:30, and I woke up on my own at 7:13. Some days living in this body makes me want to scream, I tell you.)
I went to church with my brothers (well, half of them). Spencer and Brea blessed their baby while her family was still in town. I was lucky enough to sit with Kirk's family - which translates into a whole lot of fun me. And their kids. During Sacrament Meeting alone, I:
Learned the "proper way" to play the little piggies game (apparently there should be tickling and/or shrieking "wee, wee, wee... all the way home" - heaven knows how I got to be this age without that little knowledge gem).
Explained (repeatedly) to Russell (who is 5) that a blessing is a kind of prayer, and we should fold our arms, close our eyes and not talk out loud during said blessing.
Played "hide the skittle" with the same skittles so many times that the S got rubbed off - and the grody little kids that are my nephews still ate them.
After church, we headed over to Spence and Brea's, where I ate the following (until I thought I was going to die):
Biscuits &
Red-Eye Gravy (a full plate of it - because I'm an Evans and that's how we roll)
Roughly 3 lbs of turkey (I only wish I was kidding - really, I probably ate 3 lbs)
Cranberry dressing
Cranberry salad (hey, I love me some cranberry... don't mock me)
Mashed potatoes & gravy
1/4 pan of Coconut Cream Pie (again, I only wish I was kidding - Seth served me... bless him)
The Most Delicious Corn Side Dish of All Time (yeah, it deserves caps, like a proper noun - it was that good)
Pecan Pie slathered in Belly Full of Goodness (what Spencer calls his home-made whipped cream)
I ate all of this within a 45 minute time-frame, no less. It was pretty insane... (By which I mean: disgusting. But Kirk was eating, and then Spencer was eating, and then I just had to join in. "Mom, the brothers made me..." - Do you think that excuse would fly in this scenario?
After eating, I:
Looked at Seth's dinosaur book for what seemed like eternity. (Not that I'm complaining. The dinos are pretty cool, and it's awesome that he knows what they all are. But the pics of the carnivores tearing into other animals get to me after a while. I know, I'm such a sissy.)
Actually pulled a muscle in my neck, holding Kirk (my nephew, not my brother - no worries) down while I forcibly kissed him. (And before you start to feel sorry for him, trust me, the kid asked for it - literally.)
Ruined mashed potatoes forever for my niece, Hazel. I gave her coconut cream pie (because I had enough and to spare, see above) and she wouldn't eat anything good/wholesome off her parents' forks after that. (It's good to know my role as Aunt Laurie, aka: The Never Ending Source of Sugary Treats is in full force with her, and she's only 15 months old.)
Held Russell or had him clinging to my left leg (literally) for hours on end. (Odd, for a 5 year old boy, but adorable.)
Played basketball with Connor, who explained to me that in order to make a basket, you have to kiss the basketball 3 times in a row, and then shoot. (And I'll be darned if he wasn't right. Every time I kissed the ball, it went through the hoop. How funny is that?) Con is hilar. He was so into kissing the basketball that he started calling it "my female" (not girlfriend, mind you, but female). He also asked me when I was ever gonna get a wife. I kindly explained that I'm looking to be a wife, thankyouverymuch, not have one - and advised him I was more than happy to have him help me in the quest to finding someone to wife me. He just nodded, which I'm taking as an acceptance of responsibility in finding me a husband. This should be interesting...
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After a good 6 or so hours of good times with my immediate family, I headed out the door to drive to Scottsdale and meet my cousin Doug and his family for dinner. As I pulled out of Spencer's neighborhood, I had the most bizarre desire to push the button and open the sunroof on my car. (I'm gonna come clean right now and tell you that the sunroof in my car hasn't worked for at least 5 years. Oh, and the sky was cloudy and looked like rain was coming. I don't know what I was thinking.) As I pushed the button to open the sunroof, I heard/felt a mechanical click and thought, "Gosh, that's weird. This thing hasn't opened in years!". And did I stop pushing the button? No. (Again, let me say... I don't know what I was thinking.) As the window was open half way, it kind of stuck and I thought "I don't know why this is working, when it hasn't in 5 years. I should probably close this right now." So I tried to close it - and it wouldn't budge. At which point, I thought "Huh... maybe I have to open it all the way to close it. I can't believe I can't remember how to work this thing, it's been so long!" (In retrospect, I can't believe that I thought opening the window all the way was the ticket to salvation. I. Am. An. Idiot.) Anyway... I opened the sunroof - all the way - and then tried to close it. And of course, I just got a dead click sound. And by now, I was on the freeway, cruising along at 70 mph, with a windstorm happening inside my car, cursing my own stupidity for opening a window that I couldn't close. (Honestly. What kind of idiot 35 yr old opens a window that she KNOWS good and well has been broken for years? Uh... this kind of idiot 35 yr old. Good grief.) But I wasn't worried. Yet. Oh, no. I was thinking that I'd just meet Doug for dinner, leave my car under covered parking in my complex that night, and then take it to a mechanic and/or a window guy Monday morning and have it fixed. That was a great thought. Until it started to rain - in my car. (Yeah. It. Rained. In. My. Car.) I kept driving, coming up with scenarios in which I could meet Doug for dinner and then take my car home (for example: I keep a blanket in my trunk that I figured I could spread across my front seats so my chair wouldn't get soaked while I was in, eating dinner) ... but after a good 10 minutes of sprinkles, it started to rain in earnest, and I knew I needed to cancel my dinner plans, act like a grownup and just go home and get someone to help me close the hole that I'd opened up in the roof of my car. So I called Doug and left a 3 minute long (somewhat hysterical) message detailing the reason that I had to bail on dinner (namely: I am his idiot cousin who had opened a window in the roof of her car that would not close and now had rain streaming into her car). He called back 4 minutes later (keep in mind, he had to listen to a 3 minute long message before he could call me back), laughing, and telling me that I should go home and "get that taken care of" and we'd have to catch up the next time one of us was in the other's state.
I was bummed.
And wet.
And cold.
And amused, amazingly enough.
I called home to tell my sister, and we laughed good and hard at my idiocy, while I held my phone in my left hand - under my hair - away from the gaping hole in the roof of my car that was letting the rainwater in. We laughed hard as we made up a whole new set of lyrics to "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head". (Yeah, don't look for us to be winning any awards for our lyrical prowess, but we sure were laughing.) After a good 10 minutes of some pretty good rain, I drove out of the rainy spot and then it was just cold and windy in my car. (But hey, cold and windy is better than cold, windy and wet, right?)
After a nice and breezy 70 minute drive home, I was pulling off the freeway and wondering what in the world I was gonna do about my sunroof, aka: the big, gaping hole in the top of my car (leave it to me, to open that window and not be able to close it on one of the approximately 4 days a year that it rains here in The Valley of the Sun), when I tried the button that should have been making it close for lo these many miles... and voila! There was a creak, and a lurch, and the mechanics engaged and.... MY SUNROOF CLOSED. On its own, with no help from a mechanic and/or window repair man. And so I prayed. I prayed a great and mighty prayer of thanksgiving. And then I laughed - again.
Honestly, what a day. I think I'll go to bed now...