Holiday Breakfast at IHOP

Once upon a time
on some patriotic national holiday
our family went out to breakfast
at IHOP.
The restaurant was decorated
with Red, White and Blue banners
and flags and stars
and pictures of
all of the presidents of the United States.

It was a long time ago.
I'm pretty sure the last picture
on display was President Clinton.

Our family had very little money,
and we didn't eat out often
so this was something unusual
and fun to do.
Our children were still pretty young,
could probably eat off of the kids menu,
and we had also discovered that
eating out for breakfast
was cheaper than eating out
for lunch or dinner.
The kids were very excited.
This was a splurge
but it was worth it and
we all enjoyed ourselves.

Since that time
any patriotic national holiday that arrives
one of our children (usually the eldest son)
insists that this is the national holiday
when we go out to breakfast
to celebrate.
Every once in a while we agree
and we go.

Things have changed in our household.
We have a little more discretionary money
and children who are no longer young.
Some that no longer live at home,
and some that have money of their own.
Eating out in our family is unfortunately
no longer an unusual occurrence.
It happens way too often,
but if it means I don't have to cook
or listen to family members complain
about my meal choices
I am more than willing to succumb
to the pressure and eat out.

A couple of days ago Son #1 said
"Are we going out to breakfast
on Labor Day?
You know it's a family tradition."
Well, although we eat out often
and had just been out
for my birthday when he asked,
I thought, "You know, we haven't been
out for breakfast in a while.
I'll surprise him and say yes."

My plan was that the hubby and I
and the two children
that reside in our home
would go to IHOP for breakfast.
It would be fun and
and somewhat within our budget.

The boys wouldn't have it.
It is a FAMILY tradition
and the girls should be invited.
I was under the impression that
the oldest daughter was involved
in a family reunion with her in-laws
for the entire Labor Day weekend
so I said she should not be invited.
I didn't want her to feel left out.

We picked up Daughter #2
and went to IHOP.
We squished into a booth
and were being a cozy family
enjoying a family tradition of sorts.
The daughter asks if her sister was invited.
I explain that she is reunioning with the hubby.
Time passes as the boys entertain themselves
throwing straw wrappers at each other
and we chit chat.
The daughter comments,
"The reunion ended yesterday.
She is very upset that
SHE wasn't invited to our FAMILY outing."

Don't you love cell phones
and text messaging
and being able to communicate
where ever and when ever you need to.
Even during a FAMILY breakfast and
especially when it's an
opportunity to get your mother in trouble
with one of your siblings,
which seems to be #1 on my kids list
of fun things to do this week.

Whoops!
That's strike #2
on my good mom chart
in the past couple of days
with the eldest.
She is already convinced that
I said she was my Stupidest child
thanks to child #4.
Which in my own defense
I did not say or even think.
I'm in even more trouble
with her now.

Why is it that sometimes
when we do things with
the best of intentions
they seem to backfire
and blow up in our face?

Happy Holiday at IHOP.

Today I am thankful for

Forgiveness.
3 day weekends where you have time to have fun and accomplish stuff too.
Individuals who have been an influence for good in the lives of my children. Thank you Bro. Stewart.

The new thing I learned today was when your son tells you he is going to let his sister cut his hair you should try harder to discourage him, even though you are pretty sure he isn't going to listen to you , because when it turns out bad, in his opinion, you are going to be the one who gets the blame. Also you should always make sure to ask if picture day at school is coming up any time soon.

PHone PHrustrations!

Isn't it interesting how when things in our lives work right we hardly even notice them, but when they quit working they become so noticeable? Apparently on Saturday our home phone ceased to function correctly. Usually we figure out that we have a problem when the Internet won't connect, but for some reason the DSL continued to work. My mom and sister spent all day calling me, wondering where I was and I spent all day wondering why they didn't call. Finally, in the evening I called them on my cell phone and discovered that something was wrong with my phone. We have a portable phone with one hook up but three bases and three hand sets. One of the bases got ran over by the vacuum cleaner and one of the phones has disappeared, but we still have two. Unfortunately the handsets get left off of the bases and then they run out of battery or get under the couch cushions and accidentally get turned on when someone sits on them. In other words, I felt like there was probably a problem with the phone this time and I couldn't blame the failure on the stupid phone company and there inept ability to repair the phone line adequately a month ago. On Monday I went to Target and bought a new phone. Another one with one hook up, three handsets, three bases - $59.99 on sale. I took it home and low and behold the phone still had no dial tone. I decided perhaps it was time to contact the phone company. Since this kind of thing is what I have a hubby for I immediately called him and asked him to call and request a repair. Being the wonderful, loving man that he is he did it without complaint, later in the evening after he got home from work. Of course, when you call any business now you do not actually get to talk to a person. You get to carry on a conversation with a voice that asks you random questions and then tells you to speak your answer into the phone, but when you speak the voice starts talking again so the voice doesn't understand what you say. The first thing you usually hear upon calling Qwest is "For some reason, we are experiencing a high number of repair calls and there may be a delay in your service". This is a polite way of saying, our repairmen are mostly a bunch of idiots who don't know what they are doing and therefore we have to keep repairing the same mistakes that we supposedly fixed last month and so we have quite a backlog. Eventually, hubby got a repair scheduled for sometime on July 1st, the next day. Hooray! The repairman arrived in the late afternoon (after driving up and down the street for about 20 minutes) and wasn't at all deterred by the vicious attack dog (Poky) who met him at the door with me. After about an hour and a half we receive a call from him that our phone is now working. I always find this humorous because of course it is working, you are calling me on it. At the same moment, the son and I were trying to sign on to the Internet to work on some health. Three tries and no connection. I check the modem box - flashing lights everywhere. STOP that repairman! Too late, there he goes off down the street. Perhaps everything just needs reset. Unplug, unconnect, turn off, re-plug, re-connect, turn on - same results. Once again I call the hubby, he calls the phone company, try these things when you get home, we'll send someone out tomorrow. Tomorrow, July 2, arrives. About 10:00 I receive a phone call with a "message concerning our phone repair." The repair has been completed and everything is working now. If we have any more problems please call this number. I run to my bedroom to check. Still flashing lights. Perhaps everything just needs reset. Unplug, unconnect, turn off, re-plug, re-connect, turn on - same results. Good thing I wrote down that number! I call the phone company. (Hubby is trying to work and I am capable of talking on the phone once in a while.) After speaking to the voice and pushing a multitude of buttons and listening to how valuable I am to Qwest and a sales pitch for every item they could possibly sell me I get to talk to a real, live person. I ask "Was the repair call I receive regarding the old repair or the new repair?" Who knows. I explain the situation and the real person says hold on while I test the line. More sales pitch and valuable person propaganda. The line appears to be working fine. It must be something to do with the DSL line. Let me connect you with the Internet repair department. More of the valuable customer spill and information on how to sign on to the Internet and get help at their website. I would love to sign on to the Internet and I would definitely love to get help. Now I decide to do a hand off to the eldest son to discuss the technical aspects of the problem because that's what I have sons for and I'm tired of listening to the same message over again. This was a very good decision since the son gets to run around the house and stand on his head and connect and unconnect cables for the next 20 minutes. The final determination is that we need a new modem because apparently ours is fried. I get the phone back to discuss the financial portion of the deal. I can get the modem from them for the low price of $59.99 (think I already spent that amount on this problem this week). I query why we need to purchase the modem from them. The original modem didn't come from them. I receive a lengthy lesson on car repair and how important it is to use parts from the maker and not facsimiles thereof. I see. "How long will it take to arrive?" "3 to 5 business days." Hum, not good. We have health to do and we are going out of town on the 4th. I express my concern. "Oh, I am so glad you told me about your concern. You can just go to Best Buy and buy a modem right now." How convenient. I would have liked to know that 15 minutes ago at the beginning of this discussion. That is what I will do. I get off the phone and eldest son says, "I don't think it's the modem. We had a brand new modem (that we bought when we bought the original one and thought we needed two but really only needed one and so never used) and I tried it too with the Internet tech guy and it didn't work either. He said it must be bad too, but I don't see how it could be since it's brand new." Interesting twist. This is the same modem that I will get in my hot car and drive to Best Buy to purchase. I don't really want to do that if it isn't going to fix the problem. I know. I will call the phone company again and see what they suggest. What a good idea! At least I'll try a new phone number. More voices, more buttons, more valuable customer garbage then finally a real person. I explain my situation. "Hold on and I will check your line to see if it's working." "It's working. I'm talking to you on it." "It will just take a couple of minutes. Let me check it." Now I get -upgrade to a faster Internet speed and get 2 months free. I should be getting something free since I'm not getting what I'm paying for! Real person comes back on "It appears the line is working fine. Let me connect you to the DSL department." Been there, done that, but sure let's do it again. I wish the phone company just had elevator music when they put you on hold. DSL person, "Have you...?" "Yes." "Have you...?" "Yes." and so on and so on and so on. "I need to test your line to see if it is working correctly. You need to hang up and I'll call you back in about 2 minutes." Great. No body's thought to test the line before. Half an hour later. "The line seems to be working fine. I have one of our computer specialists on the other line. I am going to bring him on and he is going to help you try one more thing. Here he is." "Thanks." "I'm going to stand on my head and count to 200 and hit this box with a ding dong wrapper and see if that helps. I need you to unplug your modem and I'll tell you when to plug it back in." In case you haven't guessed that's not what he really said, but what he actually did worked just as well as I think that would have. "Plug the modem back in." and we'll carry on some casual conversation while we wait to see if anything happens. "Umm, nothing. Well, it's possible that something didn't get hooked back up correctly after the repair yesterday. I will put in an order for a repairman to come out. He can be there very late tomorrow. Is that OK?" "I guess it will have to be. We are getting ready to leave town and my son has an online class he needs to work on before we go but I guess we can go to the library to work on it." "Well, actually you need to be home to greet the repairman tomorrow and although I don't think he will get there until late he may be there early so you will need to be there." "O.K." X-nay on the library-a. "By the way, what happened to the repairman that my husband scheduled to come out today? Did he come?" "Let me check. No, apparently no order was ever submitted on that call." "Perhaps I could get the repairman there in the morning tomorrow.How about between 9:00 and 1:00." Just lovely. I know this story has dragged on long enough and obviously my computer is once again working since I am posting a blog. The repairman came about 11:00 and "completed a very easy repair." Apparently there are two connections in the box out in the alley. One for the phone and one for the Internet. Somehow the Internet one was left unplugged following the first repair. Imagine that. I am so glad I am one of Qwest's valuable customers and I get to enjoy their company on such a regular basis. Does anyone have a new phone carrier recommendation? By the way. We now have 5 working land line phones, 4 cell phones, and a "fast enough" DSL connection and no one wants to communicate with me. What's with that! The son did get some health done though so that is a plus. I am grateful today for Phones and computers - that all work at the moment. A blog - where I can vent and feel better. Vacation - that I get to go on tomorrow!

Ant Island

For the past few mornings this is what I have seen in the cat's water dish when I have gone outside. It took me a while to figure out what it was, until I noticed that it was moving. It is actually a pile of about 100 ants climbing on top of each other trying not to drown. Apparently the ants in our yard get a little dehydrated while they are carrying off the cat food and have decided to try to collect water as well. As you can see, it hasn't been that successful of an attempt. My hubby informed me that an ant will actually sacrifice its life to build a bridge to cross water if it means that his companions will be able to cross safely. The bridge building endeavor seems to fall apart about a quarter of the way across the bowl. I think ants are pretty interesting creatures. It amazes me how they can be so small and still carry relatively large objects, such as cat food. It's also unbelievable to me how quickly one ant can let hundreds of ants know when they have located a food source. They have that communication thing down without the help of computers or cell phones. Talking about ants has reminded me of a funny story. At least it's funny now. A few years ago, about this same time of the year, a group of ants decided they wanted to invade my house. Every day I would find them crawling under my front door and into my abode. I would spray them with ant spray and they would be gone until the next morning. This went on for a few days and I was getting pretty tired of it. One morning, in my frustration, I grabbed the ant spray and really went after them. However, something didn't look quite right. In my haste, I had grabbed the PAM cooking spray and thoroughly coated my entry way floor. What a Mess! I guess it could have been worse. I could have coated my cake pan with ant spray. Here's my list of things I'm thankful for today. Water - I'm glad that I have water that comes out of my tap and I can just turn it on and get some anytime I want. I'd probably drink a lot less if I had to risk my life every time I tried to get a drink. Crock pots -I love my crock pot. It is so fun to put a whole bunch of raw food in a pot and ignore it for 8 hours and have dinner when you open it. Way cool!Sons - that are willing to happily go haul chairs from the church and set them up for a party the ward is having tomorrow at a member's home. Sometimes they are so agreeable and I love it.

The Communication Age

I think it is interesting that we live in a day and age with so many advances which make communication easier and yet I seem to have a harder time than ever communicating. My sons left the house today at 11:30 to go to lunch with the sister, the roommate and the girlfriend or is that the girlfriend and her roommates, or perhaps the sister and her roommates, or maybe the adopted sister, the sister, and the roommate or just the girls... At 3:00 I queried, via a text message, if they were coming home anytime soon. 10 texts later I still didn't have an answer to my original question. I don't really care if my kids aren't at home. However, the number 2 son had promised me he would use some time this afternoon to do online Health and I was curious who to plan on for dinner. Apparently the two sons had parted company and no decision could be made until they talked to each other which I guess was impossible to do until they reconnected. Why do we all have cell phones? (The answer to that question today was so the hubby could forget his at home and call and offer to treat me to $1.00 Arbys roast beef sandwiches for lunch if I would bring it to him. Pretty good reason, in my opinion, but probably not the original, intended purpose.) When it got to be 5:00 and I still hadn't heard from the sons I decided this would be a good night to worry about myself and let them do the same. The hubby came home and was willing to use his Chili's gift card (that he got from work a long time ago) and my movie gift card for a wild night on the town (a late anniversary celebration). We'd show those non-communicative boys! We were just finishing up dinner about 7:00 when I received a phone call from the youngest wondering where we were and informing me that I needed to be home before 9:00 so he wouldn't be home alone when his brother went on a double date. Gee whiz, plans I knew nothing about! I wasn't very nice and told him I'd think about it and if we didn't make it home to lock the doors and turn on all the lights. After I let him stew for a few minutes I called back and asked if he wanted us to pick him up to go to the movie with us. No, they had it all figured out and he was going with his brother since they were all going to the girl's apartment to play games and the sister and the roommate would be there too. Aw, more information - this communication thing is getting easier. We went to see "Get Smart" and I enjoyed it a lot although I wouldn't recommend drinking 5 tall glasses of water right before seeing it if you have difficulty laughing and controlling your bladder at the same time. I just wish they could make a movie without throwing in the non-essential hand gestures or cuss words here and there. It would have been a better movie, in my opinion, without them. The movie made me want to find a collection of the old TV series and watch it again. I remember being thoroughly entertained by the show as a kid. Can you believe my 23 year old daughter didn't even know the movie was based on a TV series? When we got out of the movie I called the young one and asked if he wanted to be picked up. Yes, he did, but not for half an hour. This "forced" the hubby and I to dig through the change in the ashtray in the van and stop at McDonalds for an ice cream cone. 15 minutes later another phone call informed us that he had changed his mind and he was staying. We took a rather scenic, long trip home through all the road construction. Apparently, I retire to my house too early in the evening. Who would have known there is so much activity on the roads at 10:15 at night. I guess these road construction workers know how to beat the Arizona heat. I definitely had a fun evening, however impromptu. This non-communication thing has its perks, along with its frustrations. My oldest daughter and I decided today that we need to use our blogs in a more productive way. We decided that we could use them as a gratitude journal to record things we are thankful for. I noticed she fulfilled her part of the bargain so I guess it is time for me to step up to the plate. Today I am grateful for Gift cards - one of the greatest inventions ever created. How fun is it to get something or go somewhere for free?! Light bulbs - and a son to install them for me so I don't have to. These were the big, long fluorescent ones that are a pain to put in and I always seem to manage to crack the plastic covers while I am at it. Thanks son! You know who you are. Let there be light! Clouds - it is amazing to me how a change in the weather can lift my spirits. Today the sun that usually shines brightly down on my bed in the late afternoon was a beautiful orange shade thanks to the smoke filled clouds on the horizon. Sorry to those people who had to evacuate their homes because of the smoke, but the clouds made the evening sky absolutely beautiful. and last of all a CELEBRATION - my son-in-law passed the written part of his test to receive his pilot's license today. CONGRATULATIONS! Way to Go!

Information for Inquiring minds

Today we all went to church here in Carlsbad. We were a little surprised when we started reading the bulletin and learned that it was Fast Sunday, since we had all had Fast and Testimony meeting last week on the first Sunday of the month. We wondered if we had run across an apostate group of church members, but we quickly discovered that their stake had had stake conference last week so Fast Sunday had been pushed back a week. I always appreciate how similar LDS church meetings are regardless of what part of the country you are in. The important things are done the same, you recognize the personalities bearing their testimonies - they just look a little different and have different names. It's easy to feel at home. Many of the testimonies born today referred to the tragic death of a child in the ward. It was obvious that this experience had touched each of the ward members as well as the community. Of course, possessing the inquiring mind that I have I was very curious and wanted to know what more details. Apparently I passed this trait on to my daughter because as soon as we got back to the condo we both headed to the computer to google the name and get the rest of the story. It is amazing to me how easily accessible information is in today's world. In a matter of moments we found several newspaper articles and learned that the little boy was 2 years old and had run in front of his neighbor's car and been hit. It was very sad, but from what we heard at church many positive things have happened as a result of this accident. The counselor in the bishopric shared how the bishopric had been praying about some concerns they had about their ward and then tied in how this experience had helped to alleviate all of the problems that they were focusing on. I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for each one of us and I am looking forward to the day when I will finally understand and see the obvious wisdom in his plan for myself and those around me. Until then I will just try to have faith and strive to learn what it is I am suppose to be learning as these members of the church seem to be doing.