Speak Spanish.

Speak Spanish.

I took 6 years of Spanish in the course of my education and know enough to communicate in the language.

About three of four times a year the opportunity presents itself to use this aquired knowledge. Every time I shy away from it.

Case in point. Last week a spanish-speaking man rang my doorbell and handed me a paper with directions written in spanish. I could see he was supposed to install granite at an address on a different street with the same number coordinates as mine. I knew how to give him basic directions in Spanish but he waved his co-worker out of the car who I could see knew a little English. The directions came to me first in Spanish. But did I use the Spanish? No, I translated it in my head first to English and made lots of hand motions to give them the directions. What an idiot.


Next on my life-long to-do list? Embrace those Spanish-speaking opportunities. No matter how idiot I sound, I can't look more idiodic than I did giving those directions with big wild arm gestures.

Go to splash park.

Go to splash park.


Our neighborhood has the coolest little splash park that my kids LOVE. I loved it too last year mostly because it was a good excuse to be outside in a bathing suit (to get a tan, not to show off my awesome Mom-bod). But this year everyone seems to be showing up fully-clothed. I am working up the courage to try to change that.


The 100-degree heat sent us over last week. Here is the abbreviated portfolio of the afternoon :










Love these guys.

Declare "Friday Night Blackouts".

Declare "Friday Night Blackouts".

Pretty much all power in the city and neighboring city went out yesterday afternoon and stayed out until 10pm.

When the kids came running in complaining their TV was off, my first reaction was panic.

But them something really great happened. First, I realized I would not be able to cook dinner. Such a shame. With that stress off my back, I began picking up the house. Then the most amazing thing happened--the kids started helping.

I had no emails calling to me to come sit down and take a break at the computer. I had no guilt over failing to work on my website or getting anything listed on eBay. Soon, the house was clean and without computers and air conditioners and TV, it was quiet. I was in a little bit of heaven.

Then it got hot. Really hot. And it didn't feel so much like heaven anymore. So we went out to dinner.

I came home to lights, cool air, and a clean house without any dinner dishes. I think I am going to call the power company and see what we can do to to schedule a blackout every Friday night (but only until 10pm).

Go to Book Club.

Go to book club.

This is our book club. What a fun bunch of hot chicks, huh?

Susannah had the novel idea (no pun intended) of holding book club this month at her vacation home in St. George and extending our typical 4-hour time slot away from husbands and kids into about 4-days.

Jake, for some reason, wasn't as excited about it as I was, but I sure thought it was a great idea.

While we do actually read a book and discuss it every month (ok FINE I never finished "These is my Words" but I read them most months, I promise), we realized our common interests are much more broad and thought, why limit ourselves to books? So we decided to re-name it simply "club".

Future excursion plans include a self-defense class, tennis lessons, definitely more Dance Dance Revolution (including the husbands next time), and bowling. I don't think everyone was crazy about my "tap-dancing book" idea as our bowling team logo, but they'll warm to the idea.

Emily is going to learn to play the fiddle and I think Val and Nat should learn drums and keyboard. I would fight Sue for rights to the guitar and win, and Sue proved she would definitely, definitley be awesome at lead vocals. And any dance choreography.

Clearly, I had a great time. Can't wait for the next one.