In like a Lion, out like a Lamb

I realize that that is the "saying" for March. I like to think of the end of February as March because March is closer to spring. Plus, it's been so nice lately, I've been wearing sandals so it's kind of hard for me to believe that it's still winter.

In my mind it is already spring, so when all that good stuff is taken away from me, I feel a little confused. When I woke up this morning, it was nice and bright outside, so I opened the curtains:

What the coldness?

Not exactly what I wanted to see, but I suppose it will have to do for today...as long as it is gone soon. Snow simply isn't very welcome in my life. I mean, we live by the mountains. Why doesn't it stay up there? I don't care if the mountains are cold and snowy.

Anyway, our confusion about months doesn't end there. For some reason, Andrew and I were talking about the "sayings" for months. We had just finished March and were moving on to April and May (which have to share a saying). Andrew said, "April flowers bring May...wait a minute. What do April flowers bring in May?"

I think he's also hoping for an early spring. I had to dash his dreams by clarifying that April showers bring May flowers. Bummer deal, I know...

Some places in the world have flowers all year long and, oh, how I long to live in a place like that!

Ra! Ra! Ra-Ra-Ra!

The bookstore was giving away free basketball tickets if you spent $10. I got 2 tickets with BYU money (sweet deal! I had to buy some things for work), and then 1 more when I got the Valentine's gift for Andrew/Birthday present for Karen. I knew what we could do with 2 tickets (go together), but what would we do with 3?

We went through our options:
-Inviting a couple in our ward (we only have 3 tickets, not 4)
-Inviting (a) parent(s) (again, we only had 3 tickets and inviting only one parent would have been a little odd)
-Josie (into Bollywood, not basketball)
-Emily (she's in pep band in high school, but only to flirt with boys)
-Sarah (I think she's going to be too cool to really hang out with us until I'm visibly pregnant)
-Jacob (available...but we still have other options)
-Patrick (too involved with volleyball. The game started at 8:00 and he gets up at 4 am)
-David (if we were taking him to a basketball game, we'd at least want it to be a double date)
-Throw it away (hello! it's a free ticket! no way!)

So, Jacob won...we invited Jacob to come along. He gladly accepted.

We headed to the game. Jacob wasn't in such a great mood to join us that evening. He wanted $5 to take with him to Idaho. I told him that if he came over and did the dishes everyday for a year that I would give him $5. He changed his mood toward us and settled on just being upset at his "parental units." I'm so glad we'll have 15 years before our child is 15...

Jacob's first attempt at a smile

BYU started the game off right and scored a few baskets as a crowd-starter. That got Jacob excited.

They scored a goal-basket-unit

And the game pretty much just went on from there. I was really glad that it wasn't a football game. Those are so long! I mean, basketball periods are only 20 minutes. I can totally sit through, and pretend to be excited for, 20 minutes. The most exciting moment of the game for me, though, was when the silly kids on a date behind us decided to get up and get snack food.

One of the girls was pretending to hiccup. And it was really getting on my nerves. She would get all into a conversation and decide not to hiccup anymore but the minute the conversation was over, "Hic...hic...hic...hic...hic..." while her date crooned, "Oh, you hiccup so cutely." I almost turned around and said, "Don't encourage her!" or "Oh, Sweetie, do you need some help getting a drink for those?" or simply yelling, "Boo!"

I also had to endure a conversation about lip smacker:

Boy: Oh, you use lip smackers?!?
Girl: Yeah, why?
Boy: I love the taste of lip smackers. Ever since junior high, I just have loved lip smackers.
Girl: Really?
Boy: Yeah, what kind is that?
Girl: Gives him the chap stick, when all he really wanted to do was pull some moves.
Boy: That's one of my favorite kinds.

Awwwww...how cute. Too bad he's only 18 and will be going on a mission soon. Yuck.

Believe me, I tried to ignore them the best I could...but it was all so pathetic...

Right before the half-time show, Jacob got up to get a drink. He was gone for not even a minute. He gets back and I was like, "That was fast. Did you even get that drink?" Jacob said, "Oh, I got bored and stopped looking." Ri-ight...later he asked Andrew what I said and clarified that he really did get a drink.

Us during half-time
(one of the better self portraits of about 10)

All in all it was a pretty fun hour and a half. Our team stayed ahead the whole time, but not so ahead that it was boring...it was just right.

Here's some of the action (if you can see it--I told you: the tickets were free):

Half-time show

With four minutes and thirty-five seconds left in the game, the we got up and walked out of the Marriott center. It took us less than two minutes to speed-walk to our car and beat all the traffic off campus. We already knew our team would win...and so it wasn't a surprise when Andrew turned on the radio and it announced that BYU won 76-67.

So, we all had a great time together, bonded, and earned bragging rights. Jacob even warmed up and forgot to mention us giving him $5 when we dropped him off at home (we didn't give him $5...ha, ha).

Jacob, not in a bad mood anymore

Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Pancakes

We celebrated the eve of lent with a nice batch of pancakes. It took us awhile to get the pancakes since IHOP was offering free pancakes in honor of "National Pancake Day," which we actually celebrate twice: once 40 days before Easter and once sometime in September. Anyway, not a lot of people can resist free pancakes and after waiting in line for an hour we decided that we could just go home and make our own pancakes.

So, that's what we did.

We had pancakes, homemade syrup, and bananas. Yum.

Andrew pretending he's going to eat all those pancakes

Andrew has even already started to spoil the baby...he made two little baby pancakes just for the baby, which I had to eat, of course.

Note the semi-small one, and then the little speck. I ate those. And more.

Andrew and I also discussed everything we know about pancakes, Catholics, Anglicans, and Russian Orthodox, which boiled down to be "not a lot." Anglicans eat them as a last hurrah before they start their fast, during which eggs, sugar, anything fancy is out. Russians however, only eat pancakes during lent...unless they are like the family that I lived with, in which case they are probably quite un-orthodox Orthodox.

Ahhh...pancakes, sour cream, and granulated sugar. If you were lucky: sweetened condensed milk. But oh, so many types of pancakes: blin, crepes, olaties...pure yumminess!

When I was in Russia, I also got to go to a hxram, a Russian Orthodox Temple, with some missionaries for a traditional Easter celebration. I've never been around so many people passing around candles before in my life. Anyway, at a certain time (I think it was around midnight), the priests/everyone who thought to bring Easter bread with them takes it out signaling the end of the fast (because the bread is leaven...which you aren't supposed to eat during the fast).

The bread, kulich, is pretty good, I guess...I mean, the leftovers got old, but leftovers tend to do that. It's kind of like hot-cross buns, only a little different. Just a dry bread, sometimes with raisins, sometimes without, and it has a glaze on top.

So, hurray for pancakes! Hurray for Easter--which is really coming up a whole lot faster than I've been expecting it to, which I'm really glad for since that means spring is coming, too!

Heiss family portrait, with a pancake

Jake's Corner and the Pussy Cat

For Family Home Evening on Monday, Andrew and I joined my family in going to a local theater to see a local play written by a local, that my Uncle Bruce (who resides locally) starred in. I suppose you could say it's a local thing.

My family has been going to the Valley Center Playhouse for a while, ever since I was a little girl. We'd come down to visit in the summers and Uncle Bruce would always be acting in one play or another at the good ol' VCP. So, we'd go and watch him in the play.

Anyway, before the play, we had dinner at my parent's house. Josie wanted me to see something on her computer so we went downstairs, and what should I see on her computer monitor but Lahki taking a nap (hurray for those old box-type monitors).

I just thought it was so cute that I had to take some pictures (Josie was quick to point out that there is already a picture of Lahki on the monitor on her MySpace page, but I haven't really looked at her page that much. It's an orange typeface on a pink background. Yuck!)


Another one of Lahki's favorite places to sit is on the heater vent. She's a woman after my own heart, although I would draw the line at sitting on the monitor. That's just a little bit strange for a full grown woman, but I do so enjoy the heater vents.

Zzzzzzz....

Anyway, Uncle Bruce's play, Jake's Corner, was really pretty good with quite a bit of audience participation. Andrew even got hit on by one of the flappers (she wiggled her feather boa in his face while singing), who wasn't even scared off that his wife was sitting next to him holding his hand.

Smooth Move

This is a virtual tour of the Periodicals Room in the Harold B. Lee Library, level 2. If you rotate around so that you are facing a row of chairs lined up along a glass wall, you can see just how big the panes of glass are. They're pretty much huge.

In case you couldn't view the tour, here's the shot:

Today one of those shattered and rained down on us in Special Collections (we're on level 1).

There was glass everywhere. I'm not even sure how it is possible for it to shatter since the glass is super thick--kind of makes me nervous about airplanes. I mean, this glass was a good 1/2 inch thick or more and there were no sudden altitude/cabin pressure/turbulance changes in the library to force the glass to do this. Must have been a faulty pane or something.

So, there's caution tape up all over the place and people scurrying around to clean up the glass. It's pretty cool, I guess.

Unfortunately, I missed all the excitement because I'm stuck in the back with all the books. Apparently it just shattered, but stayed in tact, so the custodial crew came and made a "controlled" mess in our area so that it didn't explode all over the place.

Pretty cool. I'm sure we'll read about it in the Daily Universe in the next few days.

K-I-S-S-somethin'-somethin'-T!

My cousin Elizabeth is leaving on Thursday to go teach English in China. This is what I did in Voronezh, Russia, and what our cousin Heather did in both Perm and St. Pete's. It's kind of a family thing.

Anyway, Elizabeth came over at the behest of my dear cousin Andrew, who we saw at Wal-Mart putting away shopping carts. We weren't putting away shopping carts. He was. He works there. So we chatted with him for a bit and I mentioned that I've been meaning to drop by and see Elizabeth before she leaves. He then mentioned that she'd probably like that plus, her fiance was in town for the weekend so it would be a good time to see if he was good enough for her.

On our drive home from Wales, who should phone, but Elizabeth. She said that Andrew (her brother, not my husband) had told her that I wanted to get together before she left, and since her fiance was in town, I could meet him! I said that was a great idea. So, we made plans for them to come over to our house (since I would be doing the fireside thing until 8:30).

*****

I've been thinking all day about how weird it is that she is old enough to do all these things. I mean, she's attending BYU-I, she's going to China all by herself, and she's engaged. Quite impossible considering we played Barbies together.

Then I thought how I'm graduated from BYU, went to Russia all by myself, got married, and am now on my way to motherhood and I thought how quite impossible it is that I'm old enough to have done all that considering I used to play Barbies with Elizabeth.

Anyway, Elizabeth and her fiance, Cody, came over this evening around 9:00. We chatted, played some games, and sized Cody up. We decided that he's pretty cool. We gave them our blessing (for all that it's worth).

I also took their picture so that everyone in our family who hasn't met Cody can see him. They are going to be engaged for awhile and I don't think wedding announcements will be going out until after Elizabeth returns from China (in June), so that means no engagement shots yet, but at least you can get a good look at him.

Elizabeth and Cody sitting in a tree K-I-S-S.....

Here's the low-down on Cody:
-Studying Criminal Justice
-Wants to become a Police Officer, aspires to work for the Federal Government with Homeland Security intimidating people like Andrew
-Served in Texas (Houston?)
-Didn't apostatize when Lord of the Rings came out of his mission and he was forced to walk past a movie theater showing LotR every day without ever watching it
-From Kentucky
-Has relatives in Kaysville, UT, or somewhere (Elizabeth met those relatives, and his father who came out for Christmas)
-Likes fortune cookies

They only stayed for like an hour, so I'm sure that there's a lot more to know about him, but that's pretty much what I know. He seems really cool though. I'm glad that Elizabeth found someone for her.

The History of Italian food in Wales

After staying up until midnight talking to my sister on the phone, and then finishing up a few things around the house, Andrew and I went to bed with a deep, dark cloud looming over our heads. That deep, dark cloud was that we had to get up early in the morning but were going to bed so late (not a good way to become healthy, wealthy, or wise).

At 6:21 am, the alarm clock went off. Ugh...Andrew hit snooze. Our snooze button lasts for 9 minutes before it goes off again, which is why our clock was set to 6:21. That allows 1 snooze before we absolutely must get out of bed. But, that 1 snooze was not quite enough, so Andrew hit it again at 6:30. And then again at 6:39.

I am always paranoid that he is going to turn off the alarm instead of hitting snooze and that we'll both fall asleep again and not be able to get our day started so I can't really sleep during the snooze time. But this morning I kind of dozed off...when I woke up again, I could see that dawn was approaching, which is good since that means that spring is coming, but also bad because it meant that I had slept long enough for the darkness to become light-ish.

I rolled over to see what time it was (it was 6:47), and just as I rolled over, Andrew burst out laughing.

"What?" I asked, a little grumpy that he wouldn't get out of bed and shower. I didn't have to get out of bed, see, because I had showered on Saturday, the day we get ready for Sunday.

"You're so stupid!" Andrew replied.

"Excuse me?" I demanded.

"Yeah..." he said and then started snickering again.

"Andrew," I said, "I think you're still sleeping."

"No," he insisted, "We're not. You just asked me to do the stupidest thing."

"No, Andrew," I insisted firmer than he did, "We've been sleeping and apparently you've been dreaming."

"No," Andrew clarified, "We've been talking. You just asked me to research the history of Italian food in Wales. That's so stupid. They don't have Italian food in Wales. Wales is a Welsh towning community."

With that last sentence, I knew that Andrew was still asleep.

"Andrew!" I said, while shaking him, "Think about what you just said."

"What? Huh? Stop. What?" He asked, confused.

"You just said, 'Wales is a Welsh towning community.' That makes no sense."

"Oh," he said, "That was weird. I dreamt that we were laying in bed talking and you asked me to research the history of Italian food in Wales. That's so stupid. They don't have..."

"I know, Andrew," I said, "You were talking in your sleep."

And with that marvelous start to our day, we proceeded to get ready to depart for...Wales, actually. His dream kind of made sense since we were going to Wales for a family party at his Aunt Dorothy's place because his cousin Michelle is leaving for England for a mission. And, since all I crave is tomato-based foods, it makes sense that he would dream about me researching the history of Italian food in Wales, right?

Probably not.

Anyway, we were right ready to go by 7:30 am and, after his family met us at our house so we could take Emily in our car so that there would be room for both Richard and Diana in the van, we followed them through booming Sanpete County, which isn't really booming, really. I am pretty sure they have more cows than people. It's still a nice county, there's just no one there.

*****

So, we get to Aunt Dorothy's house and I immediately get attacked by a vicious and ferocious puppy. It was muddy and I was wearing a white skirt so this really was quite a dilemma. Luckily, I fended it off with my purse until Katherine came to rescue me (Andrew was carrying a big cooler into the house so he was excused). Oh, by the way, we later found out (after the dog, who is the neighbor's, followed someone into the house) that it has a biting problem, so it really was vicious and ferocious.

Anyway, then we walked to church and I collected enough burning barrel smoke in my hair to make me feel embarrassed, even though I'm sure everyone else smelled exactly the same way.

Michelle gave a good talk about preparing to be a missionary...

After church we went back over to Aunt Dorothy's (Andrew and I ran all the way home trying to race the van, carrying a sick Sarah, and almost got attacked by that puppy again. Luckily the puppy was too distracted by everyone else that he didn't notice me and my white skirt).

We had a wonderful lunch and some nice visits...and I held Andrew's cousin's baby who is only a month old and is just an angel. It's official. We want one.

*****

After I surrendered the baby (the stars are there because a long period of time elapsed before I would let the baby out of my arms), Andrew and I herded all the "kids" into the mini-van and drove home, leaving our car for Karen so that she could visit with her sisters without the "kids," the youngest being 15 and the oldest being 22, so I'm not sure they are really "kids" anymore.

We would have pictures to put up because we actually got the camera all ready to go this morning. Unfortunately when we came home it was waiting on the couch, looking rather dejected, if you ask me.

Luckily, Aunt Lynnea had her camera and was snapping away so the event was recorded digitally...oh, and Andrew also took quite a few pictures with Sarah's cell phone (mostly of his tongue).

*****

As soon as we got home, we settled in for a long afternoon's nap. We didn't wake up until Karen came to the door to exchange keys with us. It's a good thing she came to the door, too, because we were both so tired we would have slept clear until tomorrow.

Instead I got up with enough time to eat a little something and then run over to the stake center and prepare for a primary "Faith in God" fireside. I think it went over fairly well. Man, I was tired afterwards though.

For a treat we had brownies which meant that there were smashed crumbs all over the gym floor (luckily it's hardwood!) so we had to scrape it all off. Even though I'm not that much bigger than I used to be, it definitely was not very much fun to be bending over doing that for an hour (yes, an hour) while being 4.5 months pregnant and wearing a skirt. I was glad when we all agreed the floor was clean. Sunday, a day of rest?

Why is it still there?

Andrew and I like to go for walks around our neighborhood and critique the houses and decide what features we want to have in our dream home. This is even more fun when it's spring and all the lovely flowers are out. We're just starting spring now (I hope), so while I was airing out our house, Andrew and I went for a walk with a specific purpose in mind:

To capture on film (or in our case, memory card) the biggest wasp nest in our neighbourhood. It has been up in that tree the whole time that we've lived here. Every winter (the whole 2 of them) when the wasp nest becomes clearly visible, I think to myself, Surely, they are going to take that down this year! It's huge!


I mean, you can't see it after the leaves open up for the year...not at all. But that's when it's the most dangerous. I mean, here are unsuspecting pedestrians walking underneath the tree when all of a sudden they get attacked by an angry swarm of wasps.

It really is at least as big as a volleyball. I was going to try to get some better shots, but the family (who we don't know) were all out on the lawn and we didn't want to draw too much attention to ourselves. Maybe I'll get some better pictures later on...

Triominoes Trial

To celebrate our newly clean fridge, and to cheer me up from watching Cast Away (my mom, sister, and brother came over to watch it), Andrew and I broke out Triominoes. We had a pretty fun time. I won two rounds pretty easily...but then Andrew caught on. He won one game and then we decided to play just one more.

This last game went on for quite a long while. We each had just one piece that we couldn't get rid of the entire game. It was rather frustrating. Andrew had to think hard.

Traditional Thinking Pose #1

Traditional Thinking Pose #2

In the end we decided to call it a draw--we both had two pieces and neither of us could play either one--so we counted up our points. I won by 1 point (I had the 4-2-5 and 4-4-4. Andrew had the 4-4-1 and 5-5-5).


After looking at each other's pieces for a while, we still couldn't see anywhere they fit on the board. We decided it was time to go to bed (it is after midnight, after all), so Andrew's in the kitchen tidying up (old habits die hard--he still is in the "Nancy won't enter kitchen" mode) and I am passing the challenge on to you.

If you find anything that works, I'll be very impressed!

Spring Cleaning (take one)

For the past, oh, I don't know, two months or so, I have been complaining to Andrew about a smell in our kitchen. For about a week I would not even enter the kitchen. Andrew would bring me cereal in the morning and make my lunch for me. When we came home from work he would make dinner and then do the dishes because I just couldn't stand to be in there.

He chalked it up to my "pregnancy nose." He chalks just about anything up to "pregnancy" something or other. Pregnancy brain, pregnancy mood, pregnancy hair, pregnancy fingernails, pregnancy eyeballs, pregnancy feet...anything I complain about he blames on the baby. Poor little thing. The nose thing though is actually kind of my sister Kelli's doing. The first thing she asked me when we announced our pregnancy was if my sense of smell had sharpened.

Apparently it has...and the smell in the kitchen was too much for me. Eventually Andrew got sick and tired of doing everything for me.

"Honey, I'm thirsty...will you get me some water?"
"Honey, it would be really great to have some ketchup with this..."
"Honey, will you pretty, pretty please make me a snack in the wee hours of the morning when I wake up starving and you don't? Please...oh, come on..."

So, a while ago, he did a thorough cleaning of the kitchen. He even used wood polish on the cabinets. When he was done, everything smelled of wood polish for a while (orange scent!) so I could venture into the kitchen again...but that only lasted for so long.

About a week ago, I started complaining about the smell again. But since Andrew thought I was crazy and no one else seemed to be able to smell it, I just chalked it up to "pregnancy nose" and decided not to be a wimp about it anymore.

*****

Yesterday, though, I realized what that horrible smell was.

On Wednesday, Andrew and I decorated cupcakes in order to take them over to the ladies we home teach. Unfortunately, it was too late by the time we got around to that and decided that a post-Valentine's Day treat is better than no Valentine's Day treat at all...so we went to bed. I left Andrew in the kitchen to clean up (as I am still prone to do because I really can't stand to be in there...it almost makes me gag).

Andrew cleaned up, and put the cupcakes in the fridge but didn't cover them up.

When we got home from work the next day (that would be yesterday), I checked the cupcakes. They were kind of dried out...so they weren't really suitable to deliver as gifts. I started to decorate some fresher ones so that we could take those over, and while doing this popped one of the dry, crusty ones into my mouth.

Mistake!

I ran into the living room with the half-chewed cupcake still in my mouth, "Mhis mamse mike muh smwew!" I kind of sprayed some cupcakes out on that last "s."

"What?" Andrew, rightly, asked (speaking with your mouth full is rather rude).

I ran back into the kitchen and spat the cupcake out.

"This tastes like the smell!" I hollered back, "It tastes like the fridge. Try one!"

Andrew tried one. He had the same reaction I did, only he didn't try to communicate before spitting it out. (Why people do that, I'll never know... "Hey, this is truly disgusting. Try one!" "Yeah, okay! Pass them over!")

The smell that had been haunting me was, as Andrew calls it, "the traditional 'old fridge' smell."

I went over to the fridge right away and started rooting around. I found an orange in a grocery bag that had...well...just too gross. I promptly emptied it, and the cupcakes, and a few other fruits that were past their prime into the garbage can and put it outside.

*****

Today after we were done with all our errands, we cleaned the fridge! Sadly, that is about as exciting as my life gets--but I have never been so excited to clean a fridge! I think that the smell is really going away...

All our food on the counter (including the Martinelli we forgot to drink for V-day)
Andrew scrubbed the shelves and drawers...
While I scrubbed down the interior (what team work!)
Oh, how it sparkles
And then we put all of our food back in

So, now you all know exactly what we eat: yogurt, pickles, eggs, milk, apples, jam, cheese, tortilla shells and potatoes. That's pretty much all we have in our fridge.

You also know what we no longer have in our fridge: rotten oranges, cupcakes tasting of "old fridge," and a putrid smell.