Pics from CA, Broken Stereotypes, and a Cool Story

Here's a glimpse into some of the fun we had on our recent trip to CA (and some of my random thoughts, of course)...

As per CA stereotype #1, the weather was perfect and gorgeous like it always seems to be (except for when we're trying to have a garage sale).
One of my kids even got nekked in the public fountain...not sure whether that's culturally acceptable in the OC, but we did it anyway. (Well, actually at least for a while she was wearing her brother's hand-me-down, stained, saggy training underwear)

Here she is trying to hand said underwear to older brother

I think we ate outside on the patio for every meal, so nice!
Our friend, Dottie, came to visit and admire my kids, which is a nice change from everyone always seeming to admire my sister's Vizla (dog) and overlook my human children when we are in Southern CA (always happens in Sedona, too).
We went to my hometown Heritage Days Parade. Because of CA stereotype #2 (you have to arrive at least 2 hours early for any event), I tried to convince everyone to go at like 8 am to Save Seats! Sam and I ended up going an hour early and there were like 3 empty lawn chairs set up on the entire block...we had plenty of room to choose from.


CA Stereotype #3--Un-practical, Semi-ridiculous Fashion
Here, I'll zoom in so you can really see...and mind you, it was HOT (almost 90 degrees) that day!

(I guess being in CA brings the paparazzi out in all of us).

CA Stereotype #4--Everything in CA is better-produced than smalltown USA-- more polished, professional, entertainment-y. Yeah, this parade broke that stereotype...Flagstaff's 4th of July Parade blew this one out of the water. So long, huge gaps, no candy, mediocre announcers, etc. We made our kids endure till the very end so we could see our high school band march by, and when it did, we were kind of underwhelmed.

El Dorado Alumni might recognize Wild Bill in front of the band in this picture...he's still doin' his thing!

The best part of the day was hanging out with old Band-Os, Amy and Tricia. We have 5 boys and 2 girls between us...time flies!

We went to a "festible" at the park afterward, and again, I think I like our small-town festibles just as much if not more. Here are Sam and his friend, Andrew standing inside the cowboy's lasso. I couldn't dislodge grumpy Annie from my lap for a better photo. (Annie may have been grumpy because I had just walked off and left her in the busy crowd of people).
Oh, but our festibles don't ever have the massive Titanic slide, so that was pretty cool, except that (true to CA stereotypes) it cost like a million dollars to slide down it twice.
Also true to stereotypes (this one just in general), Grandma said yes to all requests to eat snacks and go on over-priced slides. Thanks, Grandma!
Here's a stereotype that I know isn't true, but I still enjoy seeing it broken..."People in CA are snobby". My parent's neighbors are some of the nicest people I've ever met! They give me hand-me-downs, share toys with us when we come, and even invite my kids to their kids' birthday parties! While we were there, Sam and Evan were invited to the next-door neighbor Connor's reptile birthday party. A Reptile Guy came and did a really fun and interesting presentation (big-city folk have moved beyond clowns and bounce houses for birthday parties).
In this picture, Evan (the littlest kid there) is eagerly volunteering to hold something I thought for sure he would shy away from.




This would have completely embarrassed me as a teenager...the entire birthday party (adults included--and I swear one of the moms is a Real Housewife of Orange County) come out into the front yard to throw water balloons and my dad is hanging out in the back of my van with an old holey jazz band t-shirt of mine on, making faces as he tries to fix something in my car. At least he wasn't wearing his mad-scientist robe over his Donald Duck sweatshirt this time.
Evan is usually one of the littlest kids and yet he has such a cool personality that older kids like hanging out with him and even let him lead the games sometimes.

CA Stereotype #6ish--Everyone in Southern CA cares more about appearances than reality. My friend Carlee broke that stereotype because even though I think she is super stylish and a trend setter and has this amazing line of animal hoodies for kids (zoodies.com) and her husband is a model and actor (mostly extra-work for commercials) and aspiring rockstar, she is so real and unapologetic about life raising 3 boys and the messes and the stresses of running all their businesses out of their home, etc. Here are all 5! of our boys completely destroying her clean tablecloth and she doesn't seem to mind. She even fed a Nutella-covered pretzel to a squirrel that stopped in to visit us.

Here's her hubby in a commercial, just for the fun of it...he sits down on the couch wearing a green shirt about 6 seconds in...


And I couldn't resist putting up this video that her husband made with his band, the Pseudo Rebels.


This little stinker is a girl but she's fearless!



And one of my favorite things I did on this trip was visit with my friend Masha. I met her in Kazakhstan when she was 18 and now she is married and lives in the OC and has a brand new baby girl. She has grown so much and is thankful for her life in CA but still struggles with feeling like an outsider and missing her grandmother (the only real family she had most of her life) back in Kazakhstan. She told me a cool story about how she came to find someone trustworthy to care for her ailing grandmother while she is here in America--when I was in KZ in 2003, I visited Dubai and bought a beautiful silk dress. I wore it out to dinner back in KZ and got black car oil all over it when getting out of a taxi. I took it to a dry cleaner and they asked me if I knew someone who could teach English to their daughter. I gave them Masha's name and she ended up becoming a tutor and then friend of the daughter of the dry-cleaner. The daughter ended up becoming a Christian through Masha (who was learning about the Bible through Jeremy and I and our team), and now works for a ministry in Shymkent and cares for Masha's grandma, a woman who needs Christ's love so much in her life right now!
Seeing Masha was a good reminder that even though people can appear one way in Southern California, there's a lot more beneath the surface than what you necessarily see. And, Masha would agree that despite America's problems and the temptation to be materialistic, America truly is a land of opportunity and freedom. That's one stereotype I hope continues.

Les Mis & Les Kids (and Motorcycles in Mexico)

I recently went on a spur-of-the-moment trip to my parents' house in CA. I went because Jeremy decided to go on a spur-of-the-moment motorcycle trip with his friend, Jason. They went to Mexico, which made a lot of people more nervous than me (I only pretended to be nervous when I heard other people's reactions to their plans)...they even slept on the beach a few times and the only people they ran into on the beach were not banditos, but Japanese fishermen.

But this post is not about their trip (though I will post photos at the bottom), and it's not even about my trip...just my car ride out to CA.

I had planned for the kids to watch DVDs the entire way there and I was going to listen to talk radio or whatever I wanted and all was going to be well and quiet and happy and smooth.

Until I discovered that the DVD player just wouldn't work. Really, I spent a lot of time that I should have been packing messing around with it in desperation...which means that when I finally got around to packing an hour before we were supposed to go, I did the technique where I basically dump every drawer of my kids' dressers into the car and then pile toys and bikes and scooters on top and then throw the contents of the refrigerator into the passenger seat and feel thankful that no other adult is going to be riding in the car because it's really embarrassing to see all my STUFF rolling around.

So, instead of a DVD player, we resorted to playing I Spy and Car Bingo and talking and telling stories and it was actually pretty wonderful. As the sun was setting and I was heading into the Exact Middle of Nowhere (the 3 hours of desert between Needles and Barstow...and I know it's The Exact Middle of Nowhere because I have broken down there, become very sleepy there, and also almost run out of gas there), I was feeling nervous about getting sleepy and driving off the road and crashing and all my STUFF scattering everywhere, not to mention possibly killing my children. So, I decided to do a little music appreciation time with my kids where I took CDs randomly out of the case and put them on and we rocked out to whatever played. We enjoyed some Garth Brooks, No Doubt, Mongolian Nose Singing, and then I put The Original Cast Recording of Les Miserables in the player. I thought the boys would say, "Naaah" as they are accustomed to doing to things I like, but they instantly asked me to turn it up. Here's how the next 2.5 hours went:

Overture & Prologue: I tell Sam and Evan about the characters and the story, about the tragic past of Jean Valjean and the cruel police chief Javert. They like the song about the prisoners ("Look Down").

Act I: I tell them about Fantine and Cosette

We SKIP "Lovely Ladies" (ahem).

(Act I continues:) I keep thinking the boys are asleep but they keep shouting (because I may have had it turned up really loud in my excitement about telling them one of the greatest stories I have ever read and my favorite Broadway musical that I have seen twice on the stage) "Who's singing now?" so I keep telling the story. Sam reminds me of what happened the last time I got excited while playing a CD in the car--it was Prince of Egypt and I was telling them the story of Moses and I got so excited I was going over 80 MPH and got pulled over. I slowed down.

(Still Act I) Annie starts screaming that she needs to go potty and I tell her to go in her diaper because we are in The Exact Middle of Nowhere but she refuses until she cries herself to sleep. Sam sticks with the Les Mis story, Evan's voice sounds sleepy and we lose him in the next song. I am so impressed with Sam's maturity to be following the complex storyline, I almost forget that he is just 6...then, during "Do You Hear the People Sing" he starts to tell me about how they could build the barricade and how they could fight the Clone Troopers and use their missiles, etc. and I remember that he is just 6.

Intermission: Sam melts my heart when he asks me if we can get dressed up and go see Les Mis on Broadway someday.

Act II: I throw some candy at Sam so he'll stay awake with me because I'm having so much fun, I don't really care about his health or sleep at this point.

Two Thirds of the Way Through Act II: We both get really sleepy (which always seems to happen to me during Broadway musicals, no matter how excited I am to see them...something about the long, slow, soliliquy-songs as the antagonist or protagonist learns an important lesson about him/herself). Then I find myself explaining Javert's suicide, and I realize that I have just filled my son's head with thoughts of the French Revolution, scavenging for bullets and weapons from the bodies of dead people, thieves hiding in sewers, and now suicide. Oh well, we're too close to the end and too close to my parent's house to stop now.

Final Number--"Do Hear the People Sing?": I tell Sam all about the themes of the law and grace and heaven and fighting for freedom and the sadness of war and then he falls asleep the minute the last note is played.

30 minutes later, we arrive on my parents' driveway, open the doors, and all my STUFF explodes onto the concrete.

The next morning, I hear Sam asking my mom if she knows about Jong-a-Zhong (Jean Valjean) and remember the story I told Sam the night before and think, "What have I done???".

Curtain closes, The End.

Jeremy's motorcycle, packed for the trip...I have to admit
that the gas tank strapped on DID make me a little nervous for some reason.

Motorcycles in Mexico

Sunset in Mexico

Is this a pile of stuff or someone sleeping?

Oh, someone sleeping...and my husband's hairy chest in the foreground.
But if the other lump is someone sleeping, then did Jeremy take a picture
of himself and pretend to be asleep? And if so, can I make fun of him?

This is why they went to Mexico.

And this.

And this.

And especially roadside taco stands.

They should have taken video footage and made some documentary
like "Motorcycle Diaries" or something. Or not.

Here's where they stayed one night.

Or maybe here, I don't know...he didn't tell me much about that.

One thing I do know is that they definitely took more pictures of their motorcycles than themselves!

El Fin.

A Little Bit About Me, For a Moment

It was my birthday last month. I had a nice day, except for the part where I said something that made all 3 of my children cry. When the weekend came around, I got to go downtown with some friends to sort of celebrate.
Jeremy gave me the newest Sara Groves CD...he splurged and got the special package that comes with a t-shirt and the director's cut of the CD, which I highly recommend you listen to because it explains the songs and then they take on a whole new level of meaning. Now I cry when I listen to them.
I have to admit, I wasn't that surprised with the CD. But what DID surprise me was the neat little photo collage he made of pictures of us together. Here are most of the pictures he chose:

Malaga, Spain

Somewhere in the CA Redwoods

Main Street, USA (Disneyland)

Turkistan, KZ

On a water taxi in Dubai, UAE

Some small village in Kazakhstan, where we were at a concert and there were critters crawling around in the dilapidated ceiling above us.

Snowboarding in the Italian Alps (not as glamorous as it sounds)

Hiking in Tucson, AZ

Visiting friends in Park City, UT

Edinburgh, Scotland

I liked seeing the pictures that he chose...I probably would have chosen ones of our wedding or the birth of our children, but he chose ones that represent fun stuff we have done together. My goodness, we've gotten to go a lot of cool places!

Last weekend, I went to Lost Canyon Young Life Camp for our church's Women's Retreat. I had a lot of fun, like always. I dressed up in a lot of silly costumes for some skits I was in and a lot of people took pictures of me, but I haven't seen any of them yet, so I'm wondering when they will appear and how embarrassing they will be :) Oh, here are 3 that I found.


We played a game where you had to stand in the middle and tell something you are afraid of (it was kind of a theme of the weekend) and then everyone who also was afraid of that thing would get up and change seats. We always called it Fruit Basket Upset when I was a kid. I never got to the middle of the circle, which is good, because that is honestly something that I get afraid of--a game where you have to come up with something clever on the spot like that and everyone is looking at you from all directions--I'm much more comfortable with a microphone in my hands on a stage or something...weird, huh? But this time, I had a few ideas of things I could say, so here they are:

1) standing in the center of Fruit Basket Upset
2) black widow spiders
3) having only one gallon of milk in the fridge
4) opening refrigerated biscuit dough or anything that might pop while I'm opening it.

I know some of those sound silly, but they all create the same creepy, anxious feeling inside of me where I want to crawl out of my skin a little bit.

The young life camp was awesome and I wasn't too afraid of going on the zipline into the freezing cold lake or riding the Screamer swing...though after teasing everyone about losing their swimsuit on the zipline, mine (yes, the youth pastor's wife) was the one that came undone...but luckily it stayed in place. But it still was embarrassing.

Here's me with some youth group girls who came to help serve at the camp. Jeremy was there at the camp, too, but I think he was avoiding me because Women's Retreat stuff made him uncomfortable.

Some of my sweet friends, Brooke, Molly, and Sarah.

So now you know some things about me. And I only mentioned my kids once (though they were implied in the statement about how much milk is in the fridge...they go through that stuff so fast!).