British invasion

My kids have been obsessed with a show on the BBC- Doctor Who (that's gonna get it's own post later).  The actors are all British, and therefore have British accents.  Add that to the fact that Christopher's bus driver is British, and has an awesome accent, and you get a little seven year old boy with a funny British accent.

It's actually pretty hilarious. He will just randomly spout something off in a British accent. Or use British words like "Mummy." (as in me, his mom, not dusty old Egyptian dead people.)

He's been paying attention, and taking notes, and I swear it's like he applies certain rules mathematically.

R's in the middle or end of words get replaced with the sound "uh".

"Christopher" becomes "Christophuh", "butter" becomes "buttuh" "December" becomes "Decembuh" and so on...

"My birthday is on May thirty-first"  becomes "My buhthday is on May Thuhty-Fuhst."

"It's not two thousand thuh-teen any more.  It's two thousand foe-uh-teen" (you can just barely make out the "uh" in "fo-uh-teen" it's more like "foeteen", but it's there.)

One that makes us giggle is his teacher isn't "Miss Burns", it's now "Miss Buns"

He's working on other sounds too.  The letter A as in "apple" becomes A as in "August". 

So "ranch" becomes "raunch" and his friend Grant is now "Graunt".

Other changes in pronunciation include the short "o" sound in "dog". It becomes a longer o sound like "poke". He told me that when he's "Thuh-teen he will get a doeg." (dog)

Of course his mathematical formulas don't always work. He tried to call the garage a "ga-roge" and didn't believe me that it was actually "gare-age" until he heard it called that on "Doke-tuh Who".  So now we "Pahk the cah in the gare-age".

And we all think it's brilliant.

Happy New Year & Extreme Makeover- Laundry Room Edition!!

Well, we all survived another year.  I shouldn't say "survived" it's not like it was a particularly difficult year. No more than most I guess, except of course that little bit about me almost having cancer last spring, but other than that, it was a pretty good year. Oh and I got an A in my photoshop class.  I actually survived. Proof that even if a class is hard and you hate it and it's way over your head, if you work hard you can still get a good grade.  (yes, I'm talking to my kids there)

 Since I like to make those blog books, and I am now two years behind in getting those published, I still plan on updating this with all the pictures and stories I've been neglecting for the past 5 or so months.  I'll back date them which means people grandparents will need to scroll down to find them.

2014 is already off to a rollicking start.  I might still have 99% of my Christmas decorations still up, but I am already feeling very accomplished this year. 

I cleaned out my laundry room.  Let me repeat that.  I CLEANED OUT MY LAUNDRY ROOM.

Okay, so when I say "I cleaned" I really mean "we cleaned" because I had a lot of help.  I really couldn't do it without John and both my parents helping.  I don't remember where my pint sized little slaves were.  Probably off enjoying winter break. 

Yes it was that bad.  Like, if guests were coming over at the last minute and I only had time to close one door in my whole house, that would be the door.  Hands Down.  These before pictures don't even do it justice.

Plus, remember how during our annual trip to Utah, the freezer in my garage decided to die and I had to clean it out?  It was so bad.  All that rancid and rotting food. Anybody walking by would have thought someone died in my garage.  Apparently the freezer had a little computer in the door that controlled the temperature, and the heat from the garage fried it.  It was still under warranty, and we got it fixed, no problem, but we still needed to figure out a long term solution.

Enter my dad.  He offered to come down and help install it in my laundry room.  That means first and foremost cleaning out the room, but also redoing all the shelving in there as well.

So my mom and John and I cleaned and reorganized and took stuff to DI, and my dad sawed and painted and built shelves.  Even with the loss of shelving due to the freezer taking up half the existing shelf space, my dad added extra shelves to more than make up the difference.

And just because we were on a roll, we even cleaned out behind the washer and dryer.  Which had pretty much accumulated ten years of dust and lint and all the crap that fell off the back of the washer during the spin cycle.  (You think we'd learn not to put crap on the washer.  But no.)

And then, for the cherry on top, we were able to make space in the garage for me to park again!!! (It's a three car garage with no room for a car)  But to our defense, the car used to fit, but then when the freezer died, I refused to park in there because the smell made we want to puke, and then the stuff just spread out.  And multiplied. And was totally out of control. It's amazing how bad things can get when you just totally ignore them.

There are of course no "before and after" pictures, because the "befores" would be too embarrassing, and the "afters" aren't that much better.  There's still work to be done.  But, I can park in the garage.  So that's awesome.  

Fiesta Bowl

I'm not sure how or why, but John scored some pretty sweet tickets to the Fiesta Bowl this year.

To be honest, I'm not much of a football fan.  John is though.  Thankfully, he's not one of those guys who totally tunes out his wife and family when a game is on.  He's in a couple fantasy football leagues, and likes to keep the TV on in the background when football season rolls around, but I've never once seen him place all his attention or focus on the TV or treat anyone as though they were less important than a silly game.

But he scored some great tickets and I went with him just to spend the day with him.

It was fun though.  And interesting.

For starters, not being a sports match frequenter, I was a little surprised that people really and truly tailgated like you see on TV.  Grills were set up, food and alcohol were consumed, fans were noisy and rowdy and getting pumped up for the big game... It's places like that which make me wish I were some kind of anthropologist who studies various cultures, because these people were kind of fascinating.  

Another thing that I found interesting was at this pre-game "party" we went to.  Somebody really wanted to get in good with John (some kind of company partner looking to do business/continue business with) and somehow we benefitted.  Anyway, our tickets came with free parking, and entrance to the better of two parties outside the stadium. 

Which would have been a bigger deal if we drank,

but there was free food, and naturally, a lot of free chips. It is the Tostito's Fiesta Bowl, after all.  

Anyway, it was a fairly expensive party to get into, but when I looked around, I was surrounded by a lot of middle aged fairly mild mannered and tame guys.  I seriously wonder how many of them actually paid for their tickets, or were like us, where someone else with bigger pockets sought their good opinion.  (In other words, many of the guys partying it up in the parking lot were a little wilder and crazier and seemed to be having more fun. For probably a lot less money.)

The game was actually fun. 

Our seats were pretty good, and seeing as we were surrounded by a bunch of people in the same job field as John, (obviously beneficiaries of the same bribers gift givers) John made a couple pretty good contacts for work, and he was happy about that.

But the best part besides hanging out with John? 

More free chips.

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