1 Million Tacos

I've never played the lottery. I cant justify buying a ticket at the gas station when there is a bag of Reese's Pieces right next to the register for the same price.
In any situation, I always pick the Reese's Pieces.
Even after I gave birth to my children, if there happened to be one nurse handing me my newborn and another nurse handing me a family sized bag of Reese's Pieces, I would instinctively reach for the candy.

Then I'd probably try to breastfeed it. 

With all the Powerball hype a month ago, I was thinking about how cool it would be to win a big chunk of money.

I'm sure most people have thought about this.

Let's say, hypothetically, I won a million dollars.

Let's say I was not allowed to do anything responsible with it. No investing, no saving, no donations to charity.
In no particular order, here's what I'd do:


I would buy a huge white rapist van because those things are fun to drive.

Buy a human sized net to keep in the van.

When I go to Walmart and I would buy whatever food I wanted, even if it wasn't on sale..... especially if it wasn't on sale.


I would wait until my kids were older then take them on a trip around the world.
I would visit:
Everest base camp in Nepal
Sri Lanka
Morrocco
Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Amsterdam
Dresden
Petra
The Maldives
And all the other cool places I could think of including Tijuana, Mexico.

I would buy a bed so I could be a real adult. My Mattress on the floor reminds me of a college apartment. My mattress is one of the best things in my life and it deserves better than that.

I would buy a lifetime subscription to National Geographic.

I would buy a lifetime pass for Jared and I to Brighton Ski Resort and by "lifetime pass" I mean a buttload of marijuana since all the lifties can be easily bribed with a joint, which is cheaper than the actual ski pass since I am a shrewd, but diplomatic, negotiator.

I would build a padded room to store my children in. The pads would be high quality and plastic covered so I could hose the place down after any body fluid accidents. There would also be a drain in the middle.

I could think of a million other things to buy too, but let's be honest....

We all know I would totally end up spending all the money on 1 million tacos from taco bell.

Stink Tyler

Tyler stinks.

I know humans can smell pretty gross in general but I had no idea a baby poop could reach this magnitude of stink.

Even when he was a newborn and breast fed his poop was pretty unpleasant, which was weird because generally breast fed babies dumps don't really smell like anything.

EVERYONE who has ever babysat him comments on how foul his dirty diapers are. For real. T-bags poop is so vile that people take the time to comment on it.

Tyler's stench made my friend Marianne so grossed out she messed up her song on the piano.
It is not normal.

Something is genetically wrong with his insides. His guts have to be rotten.

When he poops Ryan feels the need to vividly describe how offensive the poop is.

Some especially creative descriptions include:

Hey MOOOOOOOMMMMM! Tyler smells like

• dead lizards are in his butt
• rotten turkey
• old maple syrup
• 1000 rotten eggs
• someone put dog poop in his diaper
• two hamsters killed each other in a fight
• a long neck dinosaur poop
• potato-ish

Now my brain can imagine what dead hamsters smell like and I can't ever forget that.

Changing his diaper is the low point of my day.

Have you ever literally felt a smile drop off your face? I don't mean like you lose your train of thought then realize your frowning. I mean like you have an innocent happy smile then something happens and that smile is dragged down by pure disappointment.

That's what happens to me every time I realize Tyler destroyed his diaper. That also happens every time I have to change the diaper genie sausage.

He found a Stink Bug in the garage and made friends with it.

I let him play with it because if the bug sprayed him, it would probably be a scent improvement.

And recently he started trying to eat his boogers. So that's exciting.

Book Shelf

If I was marrying for handy-ness, I hit the jackpot.

Not only is my husband incredibly handsome, strong, taller than me, smart, and supportive of me being at stay-at-home-mom, he also makes regular vagina jokes even though it makes him blush every time.
He is awesome and also is hand-ier than the handy-est handy-man. And he's good in the sack.
Also, he cooks.

I know, I'm lucky. shut up.

One of my life goals is to have an amazing set of bookshelves, because the best thing next to perky tits or Taco Bell is a custom-built book holder.

My front room looked like this for almost a year:

All those boxes were full of books.
I knew we had to do something with that space but I didn't want some super fancy living room that we would never use.

Those would be wayyyyyyyyy to fancy for me.

I also didn't want to throw a couple of comfy couches in there in case of surprise company.
Comfy couches would definitely send the wrong message I'm trying to put out.
I hate when people come to my house uninvited because I'm socially retarded and don't wear pants most of the time.

I don't want anyone thinking they are welcome here.
(Except Gayle Lassen and Jared's Grandma, Annette. Gayle and Annette are the only ones allowed to show up whenever they want because they are awesome and I adore them.)(Oh, and maybe Kelly Rex because she's pretty to look at and always brought food. Christie too for the same reasons, even if the food she brings is only for her son since it's in her tits and its breast milk.)

I figured I needed a place for my books and since all the boxes were already in that room we might as well build a bookcase there.

Jared built the entire thing by himself because he is a man.

There is no seating in there because we hate people, but also because we are cheap.

I want some awesome Stickley chairs in there.

And a huge over-sized reading chair would be rad too.

 I am hoping by the time I am 75, I'll be able to afford them.

Until then, I'm pretty stoked about my books being accessible and that I can put weird random crap on all the shelves.

But for real, how rad is this Saber tooth tiger skull?

Ryan is especially excited that he can display his rock collection.
Don't tell him I just bought them at a museum gift shop and buried them in the dirt for him to find. He thinks he's Indiana Jones.

It's a good thing Jared is finished with the book shelves so he can start working on the 126 other projects I have planned for him.

Floor Disaster

After the December Hawaii trip we were ready to come home, sleep in our own bed, and lock the kids back in their cages.

Our flight back home departed at 9:30pm so we didn't get home to Utah until 7am. We were tired.

Poor me. I was feeling sorry for myself after a long night of travel even though I had just spent a week in paradise.
That's when the universe slapped me in the face with some reality. Being sad about a plane ride when you just spent a week in Hawaii is a stupid thing to be sad about.

You know what is a good reason to be sad?
When your dishwasher leaked the whole time you were out of town and now you have water damage everywhere.

 Our wood floor was saturated and part of our carpet was soaked and black from mold.

We had to call in some disaster clean up crew to dry the floors out. Loud machines covered our floor for 4 days.

Ryan and Tyler thought all the machines were an obstacle course. They loved it until Ryan tripped and cut his upper lip.

Seig Heil Ryan.


It's not a total loss though. The floor looks fine, insurance paid for everything, and I get new carpet and a new floor.

So actually, thanks universe.

Worst Kid Ever

Cryin Ryan is actually a really nice kid.
He is friendly, kind, thoughtful, happy, helpful, and hilarious.

I rarely have to punish him, but when I do he takes it very seriously.
Usually I just have a quick logical talk with him and he understands why he's getting in trouble.
Sometimes I yell.

I only put him in time out about once every couple of months.
I really don't believe in hitting kids, so he never gets spanked.

Generally a  quick threat of "Do we need to have a talk?" is all he needs to modify his behavior.

(Titty Monkey Tyler is a whole different animal, that I don't like to think about.)

When Ryan knows he's done something wrong he hurries and does one of the following:

• Says "Sorry mom! I'll go to time out", and then sits in the corner until he realizes I didn't put him there and he can get out whenever he wants. 

• Tells me, "Sorry my prettiest sweetie precious mom! You are my best! You are the nicest mom I ever had in the entire universe!" Then I can't be mad at him because he's telling the truth. 

• He will fold his arms, bows his head, and says a quick prayer. "Dear God, please let mommy be nice and in a good mood so her does not get mad at me. Amen." Then he immediately asks me if I'm still mad. 

• Says, "Hey mom! I have a good idea! Let's all be happy and be friends and then you don't have to get mad at me! I will cuddle you!"

• Runs and hides behind the couch, in the closet, or under blankets on his bed. 

When none of his tricks work and he gets yelled at Ryan hates it. He can't handle anyone being mad at him.

He has a Kindle Fire and like to play a dinosaur game on it. He got mad at the game and threw his kindle in the trash can.
I got pretty mad at him and took the tablet away.
He ran to his room crying.

I heard him saying, "I'm so bad! I'm the worst kid ever! I make mistakes all the time! I am the worstest!"

My heart broke for him... so I video taped it and put it on my blog.

Kinda sad, but a lot funny.

Gosh, I adore that little kid.

He's the best.

Awesome Antique Shop

Dude.

 Anthony's Fine Art and Antiques 

This place is absolutely incredible.
I'm slightly obsessed with old houses and I drove by this awesome looking old mansion in downtown Salt Lake City.

Winters in Utah can get tedious and I don't do well sitting at home all day doing kid crafts. I jump at any opportunity to do something different as long as it doesn't involve the police or stripping. Anyway, I drove past the mansion and saw it was an antique shop so I immediately parked and skipped up to the door with my two kids in tow.

You have to ring the doorbell to get in. A portly yet distinguished looking man answers the door.
I pretended to be interested in antiques and asked him if he had any early American double-handed saw blades.

He said the shop carried much higher end pieces, not poor people saw blades.

I asked if I could creep around anyway. He looked at me a little weird and told me to watch my kids carefully.

The older man and another staff guy were actually amazingly nice, answered Ryan's questions and showed us some of the more interesting things they had in stock.


I will say that my kids are actually awesome in public. Ryan didn't touch anything and I hog-tied Tyler to my hip. 

I had to sneak and take pictures since no photography was allowed.

Initially I just wanted to see the inside of the mansion but THIS SHOP HAD SOME OF THE MOST AMAZING ANTIQUES I HAVE EVER SEEN. Real suits of armor, a gigantic wooden telescope, hand-carved grandfather clocks, real fossils from Morocco, and a lot of naked people statues.
And if there is one thing I love, it's naked people statues.
It's like porn for classy people.

It was like walking through a museum of amazing things you could get up close to, touch, and dream of being able to afford one day never.

Only a few pieces had price tags, and those that did were crazy. There was a  $125,000.00 Louis XV Style Piano from 1883. A silent film star's diamond earrings for $18,500.
They had huge stained glass windows made for a chapel in Belgium in 1850 for $400,000.

After seeing how expensive everything was I couldn't believe they let my kids in there.

I actually wrote them a Thank You card afterwards, because I'm sure they knew my tacky self would never buy something there, and it was a huge liability to let two runny nosed kids walk around.

Seriously though, if you live in Utah and you like free museums, you HAVE to go here..... and totally bring your kids.