Seis Puerqueños

One weekend we went to Whidbey:

The next to Vancouver:

Fun times had by all.

Every Thursday night I am reminded of a funny phone call. Years ago I was working as a nanny for a family on Mercer Island. One day the phone rang, and the caller (who was calling for the dad of the family who he went to high school with) quickly recognized I was not the mother of the family and upon being told that she was gone he launched into a long speech of sorts. “This is Joel McHale calling, have you seen my show [The Soup]? You should tell all of your friends to watch, and then I will have one million viewers. And can you call the president of E! and tell him that you love it? Thanks!” (and on and on for several minutes without pausing…) I told him I would take a message and then I am pretty sure he rambled on for several more minutes about who knows what. So if you were wondering if Joel McHale is extra chatty with complete strangers, the answer is yes. And if you were wondering if I watch Community, the answer is also yes. (Oh that Señor Chang makes me laugh!) But probably you weren’t wondering about either of those things.

The other day my mom told me a story about my grandma. Recently grandma had been evaluating her finances and needed to make some cuts to her budget, and so getting her hair done was going to come off the list of necessities. She went into the salon where she gets her hair done to go one last time, and found that someone had anonymously put a very generous amount of money on her account. My grandma suspects an acquaintance who she had seen at the salon in the past, but of course she couldn’t really be sure. I just thought it was a sweet story, because who thinks to do that, and with such amazing timing?

I had been thinking about this a lot, and then I read about this site on another blog and I thought it was a really great idea. Giving Anonymously is essentially a website through which you can give money to someone you know without them knowing it came from you. What is extra cool about them is 100% of the money you send to your friend/family member/acquaintance goes to them, and everyone who works for this organization is an unpaid volunteer. (Not to mention the companies that donate their time, office space, etc. to the cause.) Another neat feature is the recipient of the money has the option to call GA’s voicemail line and leave a thank you message which is then available for the giver to listen to. Totally cool huh? Anyway, I just thought I would pass this along because it’s really great and I had no idea there was something like it out there!

Amazingly enough Harmon keeps getting older. At 18 months he is large in size, but off the charts in mischievousness. He measures in at:

33.5″ tall, 82.8%
27lbs 6.5oz, 70.5%
49.5cm head, 90%

He is: saying a lot of new words, climbing everywhere, being a little bit more careful (not jumping down the stairs), helping clean up (and then re-scatter), getting better at building towers, and reaching everything we thought was safely out of reach

He loves: bikes, outside, cars, trucks, playing in all his sister’s baby toys/bath, running, kicking balls, playing basketball, playing in dad’s truck and honking the horn, playing “choo choo” with aunt Eden, dancing on the back porch, shouting “hooray” and singing “if you’re happy and you know it”, pasta with red sauce, screaming for a “treeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat!!”

He turned 18 months last Saturday, and we had Stake Conference the next day (totally unfair), but this Sunday he went to nursery by himself and loved it. We are happy to have him go, because now at least one of us will get to go to class.

Here are several pictures of our big boy:

P.S. If you want to see all our April Pictures they are now online here.

I can do better…

(We borrowed a swing and then bought an almost identical one at a garage sale. Harmon only gets to play with the one we own.)

If you are like me, you love google. Anytime you want to know anything, you can find it, even if it takes you a while. If it exists, it’s there. I mean really, what on earth did we do before google? Ask other people? Really? Assume that if our local store didn’t have something we needed/wanted/imagined to exist we couldn’t have it? Preposterous! But the real beauty to google is that you can find answers to your embarrassing questions that you would never ask another person. You know, the Jessica Simpson Chicken of the Sea type questions we all have.

For your enjoyment here are a few things I have been googling lately. Don’t judge. Just laugh.

1. What is a non porous surface?

2. Coconut Crab (I really suggest you do an image search, if you want nightmares)

3. Mos Def

4. How many hairs in an armpit?

See, all things I would not ask my friends about nor would I expect my friends to necessarily know. (If you are an expert on a coconut crab and haven’t told me, you should, because that’s a pretty important topic.)

I should add though, that as of press time, google has failed me in my quest to find the answer to #4 on this list. The closest thing I could find was someone else on a message board asking the same question to which someone responded “what, do you want me to count mine?” Yes, yes I do, because me and now everyone reading this is curious.

Sometimes I find myself listening to songs on the radio that I think I shouldn’t. Not for inappropriate content reasons (although maybe I should look into that…) but because I find that when I listen to these songs I have to make sure my windows are up so that no one can hear what I am listening to. Since when did I become so embarrassed about my musical taste?

I’d like to pretend I listen to really cool stuff all the time. You know, like Smashing Pumpkins and Snow Patrol. (I know, that doesn’t sound cool to you.) Stuff that I would gladly tell anyone that I like. But apparently I am ashamed of about half of what I listen to. So, to publicly shame myself, I am going to confess some of what I am listening to (in the car, with the windows rolled up of course). I do this in hopes that if I can tell the entire www, then maybe I don’t have to be so embarrassed when I am driving next to complete strangers that I will never see again.

Here are a few that come to my mind (I know there are LOTS more):

*Shakira – Hips Don’t Lie (oh the shame)
*Jay Z – Forever Young (it’s so awful)
*Jason Derulo – What’cha Say (I can’t believe I just wrote that)
*Kanye West – Heartless (ok, and The Fray’s cover)

I am still unwilling to admit which Black Eyed Peas, Taylor Swift, and Justin Timberlake songs I may or may not be partial to. I have to go hide in shame now. Or listen to The Fray’s cover. Hard to pick.

Your turn, confess!

Here are two things I am probably the last to jump on the bandwagon for, but in case you haven’t either, maybe you want to. Or not, but just in case.

1. If you do a lot of online shopping like (because your kids are nearly impossible to take to the store) then you may very well love Ebates. It’s simple: you go to their site, then go to the online store you were going to buy from anyway, and they give you a % back. You know, like 4% at Old Navy, 1-4% at diapers.com, 3% at iTunes, 7.5% at Snapfish, 3% at Target, etc etc. (When I write all that out I get kind of irritated with myself that I didn’t do this sooner… All the money I could have already had…) Every three months (when you are over $5 in earnings) they send you a check. Easy. Oh, and when you sign up, they give you $5 to start. So easy. Feel free to click here if you want to give me credit for referring you. Shameless, I know.

2. If you have an office job with a lot of free time or search the web a fair amount, then you may like swagbucks. This site gives you points for searching on their search engine. Eventually you get enough points to redeem for prizes, like amazon.com giftcards and such. Also easy, but takes a lot longer and a bit more work required.

That’s all. I promise to post a real post tomorrow, as if anyone is really reading this far.

when your 1 year old watches too much TV?

Probably when he asked for the ‘mote and then proceeds to select “on demand” and load his show from the DVR. Mom says it was a coincidence, but I don’t know…