Parenting 505

"A sweet and obedient child will enroll a father or mother only in Parenting 101.If you are blessed with a child who tests your patience to the nth degree, you will be enrolled in Parenting 505. Rather than wonder what you might have done wrong in the pre-mortal life to be so deserving, you might consider the more challenging child a blessing and opportunity to become more godlike yourself. With which child will your patience, long-suffering, and other Christlike virtues most likely be tested, developed, and refined? Could it be possible that you need this child as much as this child needs you?"

-Elder Lynn G. Robbins

Thank you Raising Rubies because I needed this.

Blog diet

Starting tomorrow, I'm going on a blog diet.


Cold turkey.


I need to get some things in order. Like going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up before my kids in the morning. Maybe then I'll finally start that exercise routine I keep dreaming about. Or deep clean my house.


It will be painful, at least I think it will be. I've never tried dieting before but this will whip me into shape - in hopefully more ways than one. Of course deciding I need a diet wasn't that hard of a decision after I downloaded a couple of video files for an event this weekend and blew through 90% of our Internet plan in about 15 minutes, and a certain member of our household who pays the bills wasn't exactly thrilled at my stupidity.


Wish me luck 'cause tomorrow is going to come fast and early.

Baby Animal Days

As per tradition, we ventured up to the American West Heritage Center (Jensen Historical Farm for us old foggies) for Baby Animals Day and the USU Spring Football Game. 

Too bad Jeff missed the one event he'd been looking forward to for months! Polaris really needs to update their instructions for their ATV winch systems... or as I innocently called it a wench. I'm not kidding when I say the instructions were less than stellar. Do not immerse your "wench" in water. Take your time. And my personal favorite, "ews the remaining screws." Yes, people, somewhere in the world "use" is actually spelled "ews." You can see why Jeff and my Dad missed the game. But no worries. The kids and I stopped by Locker 42 to pick up new Aggie gear with USU's new logo, also unveiled today at the game. And Jeff and my Dad enjoyed a long ride on the ATVs.

If you've read my blog, you'll know I never go to the "real" Baby Animal Days celebration. I wait until the last week in April to go because they still have all the baby animals out, pony rides, and the train but with minimal crowds. It's perfect year after year.

I will not give up asking, even if I know the answer is still no. Dad, can I please, please, please have a calf?

Look at that face! How could my Dad have told me no?

Pearl was great this year! Usually she's the one timid and crying about having to get too close to all the animals but this time it was Cole who was the whimp. 

This poor baby chick. Although he fared better than the ducklings when another group of kids came over and literally grabbed them by their tail feathers and beaks!

Not that I can blame him after the "goat incident."

Alfred Hitchcock's unknown thriller, "Attack of the Goats!"

I have scarred my child for life.

Note to self. The rule that you NEVER ask a woman if she is pregnant also applies to goats. She was a month past delivery with twins!

My children have a serious addiction to popcorn.

Pony rides! Did I mention we only had to wait in line maybe five minutes? And we could ride them as many times as we wanted? Cole was kind of scared so I basically held him on the saddle until the pony started to walk. Then he realized it was fun. Plus, he was pumped to get to wear a "hat" as he called the helmet.

Ruby was less than pleased when the pony rides were over. Emily is a good mom to keep a smile on her face as she dragged her screaming child home!

Every kid loves the train. And with zero crowd to deal with, the kids got to just stay in it round after round after round. You'd think they love timeout since they call it "the jail."

I saw this really cool old window and some lilacs overhanging nearby. The pictures aren't great, but Cole was still traumatized from the goat attack and getting forced to touch a duckling so I didn't have much time to work with.

This is the exact spot that Pearl requested her picture be taken at.

Does anyone else have a slight fear of chickens? They're kind of creepy. And a whole hen house of them stinks!

 

 More farm animals.

White peacock greeting us as we got there.

Baby goats just for my sister... she tries to sneak one home every year.

Ruby was so excited to show me this rabbit.

Emily and a baby duckling.

 

Ruby

 

Who doesn't love a piggy tail?

Are you sure I can't keep him, Dad?

 

Maybe Atlanta isn't so bad after all

Don't let the title of this post fool you. I still hate Atlanta.

Seconds after posting why I hate Atlanta, I realized I had forgotten my toothbrush. And it was embarrassingly late so I didn't dare call the front desk. Plus, that would have meant I had to get dressed, or at minimum put a bra on, to go get one.

But I will give my violence and injury prevention colleagues credit. They put together a good conference.

And one of my professional dreams come true! I got to meet Andy Goodman!!!! He is my inspiration for all the storytelling projects I've tried. Like my poor underutilized Utah Health Story Bank which I feel is one of my "failures" from about five years ago, yet nationally is still recognized as innovative. Or our touching Teen Memoriams. It sounds corny, but after reading his book, "Storytelling as Best Practice" probably six years ago, I made it a secret wish to meet the man. Then last month, I happened to read one of those "chain mail" emails about some webinar and low and behold, he was the presenter. And the webinar was FREE! I immediately cleared my schedule to watch and was blown away, even being thousands of miles away and watching it via computer.

I knew the conference was having a special workshop on storytelling but I didn't realize Andy Goodman, my hero of storytelling, was the honored guest! I nearly fell out of my chair with giggles of delight when I found out. My poor colleagues had me whispering in their ears all morning about how excited I was and that Atlanta wasn't so bad anymore. He did not disappoint!

Andy Goodman

 

Before the session started, I rushed over to him like a giddy school girl. After telling him I was from Utah, he said something like, "Oh Utah has a story bank." OH MY!!! That was me! Then he got a big grin on his face and almost seemed impressed to meet the visionary behind that project. After six hours of learning why public health needs to tell our stories and practicing how to do so, I feel like I'm floating in the stars! I felt so recharged and so excited to go back home and push the idea of storytelling to my colleagues that I didn't want it the day to end. And now that I've met him in person and head him speak in person (amazing speaker!), I can really advocate to our public health associations that he HAS to come to Utah! Eek! Can you tell how excited I was/still am with all the exclamation points!!!!

Oh, and go Utah! We won the Innovative Initiative Award for integration of accidental drug overdoses deaths into the Utah Violent Death Reporting System. I knew we were one of four finalists for the award, but when they read our name, I was pretty surprised. It was kind of awkward accepting it, when all I did was tear apart Anna's original submission. She's the one who really deserves the award. But we smiled and thanked everyone back home who worked on the project. We were like celebrities for the rest of the conference... with everyone congratulating us and all but asking for our autographs.

Lori Haskett (Safe States Alliance President), me, Whitney, and Catherine