Foede Family Blog

Today Zach chose his dorm room.  At BYU, after you’ve accepted the offered enrollment, they give you a date where you get to log in and choose your room.  Zach’s date was right in the middle of the 2-week window of residency enrollment.  Which means that he likely wouldn’t get the best place, nor would he get the worst place.  At first he envisioned himself in a typical dorm (AKA Helaman Hall.)  2 kids living in a room the size of a closet, sharing a bathroom with everyone on the floor.  Which of course brought back memories of my freshman year at college.  I had a blast there, and can hardly believe it was almost 21 YEARS ago! Then he saw himself in the New Heritage Hall, the coveted apartment with a kitchen and a separate living room, 6 roommates (3 bedrooms) and 1 bathroom (yikes!) What he ended up getting was in the middle…the Old Heritage Hall.  Apartment living with 6 roommates, 1 bathroom, and a couch thrown into the kitchen. HA!  Those of course reminded me of my second year at college, where I lived with 3 other girls who were nothing like me, but more importantly the year I met Mark. (And we will NOT be following that train of thought!)

To pick a room you see a basic map that shows if a bed is empty, on hold, or taken.  If you click on a taken bed, you can see some facts about the person who has taken it.  What type of music they like, what time they go to bed, and if they consider themselves neat.  I wish they’d thrown in what their major is, and if they plan to eschew the honor code and start smoking, looking at porn on their computer, or bringing girls into their room, but hey, you can’t get everything. After Zach registered, we were able to see the names of the other guys signed up so far (there is one bed empty, the one in Zach’s room) and of course I googled their names to see what I could find.  Not much, as it turns out.  Zach then googled his name, which led him to this website, and a dorky picture of him when he was 11 and desperately needed a haircut, ha ha!  (So hey, if those kids googled Zach’s name and find this, I say, “Hi!  I’m his really cool mom!)

This all has me remembering signing up for dorms.  I don’t remember much of the process.  Certainly you didn’t see a roommate profile picture.  I signed up for a survey through some PhD candidates that got me into a bigger dorm room.  I imagine everyone else had a first pick, second pick, etc.  and hoped for the best.  Kind of what I’m doing for my Zach, now!

This is Zach’s apartment.  We went to Google Earth and tried to find one where it had a more pleasant view.  In this case, it seems a tree is right there.  And a gorgeous mountain to the west.

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My brother Brendan is back on USA soil, after a year long deployment to Afghanistan.  He’ll be in Fort Hood, Texas for a couple of weeks (Debriefing? De-stressing? But here’s here.  Thanks to everyone for their prayers on his behalf this past year!

This is a picture of Brendan I took at his deployment ceremony last year.  Welcome home, baby brother!

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I found this awesome picture of a digital pregnancy test that says, “Just Kidding!” in the window.  Unfortunately, since I’m not on Facebook, I couldn’t have fun with it.  Or fortunately…I think I’ve been on FB for 4 years, and joke pregnancies are the number one status on that day, at least on my feed.  So I guess it’s probably a good thing I didn’t use it anyway!

It was a low-key day around here.  Not only did it fall on Sunday, where we try to be a bit more reverent, but on General Conference Sunday.  So we skipped much of the usual joking until our annual April Fool’s Day dinner, which we’ll never skip!  (Mark and I are going to be 90-year old empty-nesters drinking water off the table, I promise!) Where we break down a meal into parts: (This year was: chicken, corn, roll, mandarin oranges, Jello, baked potato, butter, salt, pepper, sour cream, water, plate, cup, fork, spoon, napkin, brownie.)  We then write the parts on pieces of paper, and draw 4 pieces out per course.  What we draw is what we get for that course.  And ONLY what we get.

Here’s a few of the pics from April Fool’s Day.  More, and a few extra just because it was a gorgeous day, will be on Facebook HERE (link to be added after my Lenten Hiatus!)

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I haven’t printed pictures for about 2.5 years.  I know, the new thing is putting them in a digital frame, or printing photobooks.  But I’m old school…I have a photo album for each first year of my baby’s life that contain just photos of them, and regular photo albums for everyone else. (At first I envisioned the kids taking their albums with them, but now my mantra is, “Over my dead body…but feel free to make copies!”  Anywho, with 9 people in the family you can imagine that means I am WAY behind on my photos…organizing them, uploading them, getting them printed, and then putting them into albums.

Finally I am all caught up with the organizing part.  I have made separate folders for the photos I want to print (I’ve taken close to 15 THOUSAND pictures in the last 2.5 years, so I have to be selective.)  Unfortunately, for Kamea’s first year album (which holds 400 pics, and I’m not going over) I have almost 900 pics.  Apparently I get to be selective by half again.  The problem is I took such fantastic shots of my pregnancy, labor, her baby blessing, etc. that I want to include them all.

For the other albums of just regular stuff,  I have “narrowed” it down to about 1400 pics to put into albums.  Since I want to get that down to about 400 pics per year (or one album), that’s almost half as well.  CRAP.

I think the solution is going to be that I am going to have to take all the event pictures and turn them into a photobook.  Bite the bullet, join the millennium, as it were.  Wish me luck!

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Ah, the first day of spring.  I find it ironic that all last week we had gorgeous weather with temperatures in the 70’s, and it was technically “winter”, and on the first day of spring we had cool weather with rain.  OK, maybe ironic isn’t the right word unless one subscribes to the Alanis Morrissette School of Irony and Rhetoric (see her song “Ironic” vs. the dictionary definition of the word) because March in MN is actually known to be changeable and cool anyway.  Maybe discouraging is a better word.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of winter.  I LOVE winter.  But once the season starts changing, I like to embrace it.  So my heart was pretty happy with the mild weather.  Part of me still wants another snow storm though! I guess perhaps sometimes I too am as changeable as the weather!

Gabby recently had a band concert, and it was wonderful.  It was the All City concert.  In years past, they have packed parents into the gym and I was miserable, as it was a LOT of parents (grandparents, siblings, uncles, BFF’s etc.) due to it including grades 4-11.  Thank goodness the fire marshall put his foot down and required tickets, with fire codes being observed.  I didn’t leave the event harried, squished, or overheated, and I could enjoy the music.  Yay! She did a fabulous job, as did all the choirs.

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I think I’m something like 1/16th Irish.  We like to do a little something for the holiday, so this year we made green pancakes.  Yummy! (You can’t tell, but they are in the shape of a shamrock  Oh, and did I mention, Mark let me sleep in, so he did all the work.  So by “we” I mean “he”!)

I also took this fabulous picture of Kamea today.  Sometimes you just get a good one.  I’ve always said she has “smiling eyes” (hey!!! “When Irish eyes are smiling”…looks like she got a bit of the Irish in her too!) because they crinkle up when she smiles.  They are so expressive when she pouts, frowns, laughs, anything.  She’ll never make a good poker player…you can read her eyes!

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The Ides of March are upon us.  My children really like this tale from history of Julius Caesar and a seer foretelling his fate.  I, of course, want to go back in time and tell him to NOT go to the Roman senate, but in reality I am sure his fate was sealed one way or the other, as he could be quite cruel to foe and ally alike, as far as I understand it.

Anyway, I digress.  Recently I read an interesting poll taken at a parenting website.  The poll question was, “Do you think your baby is cuter than other babies” (or something like that.)  97% of people answered, “yes” to the question.  (This was no small sampling, almost 36,000 people answered the poll.)  This is where the “Et Tu, Jen” part comes in.  I didn’t take part in the poll, but did ask myself that question.  I’ll admit, I am a little bit vain when it comes to my children.  I happen to think they are the most beautiful children.  On the other hand, the word beautiful means so much more to me than outward appearance.  It has to, because I am at best average and yet Mark thinks I am the most beautiful person he knows.  (Or perhaps his eye prescription needs a re-check!)

So when I look at my kids, I do see beauty.  But I’m not sure what the poll question means?  Does it mean I think my child is cuter than ALL other children?  Hmm.  I remember that after I birthed a child I thought he/she was the most beautiful, cutest thing in the world.  In hindsight, I obviously missed the swelling and the bruises, ha ha! Except for maybe Dylan.  That child came out pretty, and he’s still pretty to this day.  :-)  I have a friend who has gorgeous children.  They should be modeling, I tell ya’! But I don’t love them (it’s an online friend and I’ve never met the kids) and so while when I see them I think “Wow, they are so cute!” my heart doesn’t melt into a big puddle of goo like it does when I see MY kids.  I think that’s the key to 97% of people being able to answer the question with a “yes” when statistically that should be impossible…the heart plays a very big role in subjectivity.

But like I did mention above, I am a little vain, perhaps even prideful when it comes to my kids, so even when trying to be objective  I do think they are seriously cute.  I can’t say that I would be able to say I my children are cuter then ALL other children if that was the intent of the poll, but I can say that when I look at them my heart skips a beat and swells with love and happiness, and I get teary with how beautiful they are to me.  Hopefully every momma in the world feels the same.  If the poll is any indication, I think we’re getting there!

That being said, my camera has been laying still for a while, but the light was pretty today, so I got pictures of Kamea.  (And why Kamea?  It’s not because I think she’s any cuter than the others.  She’s the only who doesn’t roll her eyes and pout when I get out the camera, though that too seems to be changing!)

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This is my last week of the C25K program.  Today’s run went fine.  3.0 miles in around 42 minutes.  I am sure that at this point I should be thinking about what to do next.  Obviously my time is really poor and I should think about improving it.  But the thing is, I HATE running.  I’d much rather be on a bike, swimming, doing Pilates/Yoga, or taking a walk with Mark or the kids, so while I can see keeping the status quo going a couple of times a week, I really can’t see me signing up for 5K’s, doing the Bridge to 10K, etc.  Gabby warned me that you lose any gains you made VERY quickly, so I do need to stay on top of it.  I never want to go back to not being able to run a mile.

Zach took my scale away (mom-ordered!) so I don’t know how much weight I’ve lost.  But I have brought out my spring clothes (since it’ll been in the 60’s and 70’s this week) and the ones that I had to leave unbuckled are loose, and the ones that didn’t fit over my hips are sliding over with ease.  When I step on that scale (I am doing it on March 23rd, the day Gabby and I are going to see The Hunger Games and go eat somewhere lovely) I need to keep those things in mind if the numbers turn out to be less than stellar.  I can’t remember if I wrote here that I could put my wedding ring on again for the first time since pregnant with Reese (that milestone happened in January) but now it too is loose. (Mark hasn’t been wearing his either, but that’s because it’s broken.  I know I should fix it, but someday I’d really like to exchange mine (or keep it for one of the kids?) and get something more “me” (platinum and Tanzanite or watermelon tourmaline or pairaba tourmaline) and it makes sense to get hims something that matches. (I don’t think he identifies with a stone so much!) Of course, that could be years away!

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I woke up this AM and got onto the treadmill.  I did my 5 minute warm-up walk, and ran for almost 10 minutes, but just wasn’t into it, and stopped.  And told myself, “Fine, everyone deserves a free day!”  Not to mention a few friends were coming over for a church meeting.  But after the church meeting, I noticed that the temperature on the thermometer read 62 degrees (not wholly accurate, as the sun was shining on it, but definitely better than yesterday morning’s 3 degrees! (For some reason my computer is not letting me use the alt symbol code for “degrees”!)  So I grabbed Ethan and we tried again.  This time I didn’t time myself according to the C25K program, instead went for a distance goal since I run pathetically slow.)  And ended running 2.75 miles!  Again, slow miles, but still.

My other update is that Zach made his decisions on his dilemmas.  First, he accepted BYU and we’ll (Mark and I and maybe a child or two) be driving him out in August, and secondly, he got the job in town and put in his two week notice at McDonald’s.  I’ve warned Zach that no matter HOW much I cry, I am only 49% sad.  51% of me is happy, proud, excited, joyful, for him.  And that number will rise as I get used to this season of life…his and mine. So now I get to research what fun places I can go see out west!

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