We're home, Carmen's napping, I'm cleaning ... life is back to normal!  It seems I found the sweet spot for Carmen's nap today - she went down without a fuss.  Of course, a little bit of pre-nap snuggle time helps. :)  Also sleeping in your own crib (after a month!!) is awesome.

Thanksgiving weekend was awesome.  First of all, it snowed on Monday and school was cancelled all week.  Logan and Torrey got some extra Carmen play time!  We left around noon on Wednesday and traffic was BAAAAAD all the way to Olympia.  That's when I stopped paying attention to how bad the traffic was.  We stopped a few times for food, and finally got to Nehalem around 7:30.  It's interesting how sitting in the back seat of the car changes how much attention you pay to the road.  Suddenly I was one of the kids again, blissfully unaware of where we were, how much farther we had to go, and what the road conditions were like.

Mark's brother, Nate, is going to school at the University of Washington, and he came to the Nehalem house, too.  He picked Mark and Marissa up from the Portland airport.  They flew in together from Salt Lake City.  The flight was delayed by an hour or so and the family considered having them stay in Hillsboro with Mark's aunts (called "The Aunties") but Mark wanted to see us so badly he convinced Nate to drive to the coast.  YAY it was great to see him!

Unfortunately, I spent the whole weekend uber sick with a nasty cold and slept 12-14 hours a day and spent most of my waking hours wiped out on the couch cross-stitching.  I'd wanted to help prepare food, clean, play games, and otherwise be a pleasant person, but I guess phlegm happens.

I had planned on doing a ton of writing in my down time (I have the energy to type!) but I was in for a shock when I turned my laptop on at the coast house ...

Somehow, my laptop got crushed in transit and the LCD screen cracked. You can see the two big holes where there was pressure on the screen, and you can kind of see the u-shaped crack on the left hand side of the screen.

I almost had a heart attack when I discovered my precious Lappy was maimed, but it's otherwise completely functional.  It's annoying to type and look around big black holes, but what the heck.  I was planning on getting a Netbook some time soon anyway.  Does anyone know if it's possible to replace a laptop/LCD screen?  And does it NOT cost as much as another laptop?

I could always tell people I got shot at and my laptop saved me.

Anyway.  I've got some kitchen projects I'm working on (okay, I just bought new canisters to store sugar and flour and stuff in and I want to see if I like it), and we have to buy a Christmas tree and put up Christmas decorations, and I have to dust and vacuum and all of that good stuff, and I want to look into buying new carpet/flooring in general (does anyone have experience with this?), and the kindergartner I tend before school is coming back tomorrow, so I might be a little busy ... but I love writing and I'll probably be posting a lot this upcoming month!

I'll write about how funny Carmen is and post videos! And pictures! And I will talk about how to make money doing online surveys! And how I save money! And I'll tell stupid stories about myself so you can feel better about the dumb things you do! And talk about my favorite funny things! YAY!

Carmen's Pretend Play

I've been kind of sick for the past few days (sore throat/headache/sneezing/body aches and chills/etc) so I've just wanted to sit on the couch and cross-stitch.  Lucky for me, Carmen does a pretty good job of entertaining herself.

Today, I was sitting on the couch and she started dragging around the changing pad.  I saw her lay down across it sideways, pull a wipe out of the pouch, and wipe her stomach with the wipe while trying to stick it down her diaper.

... Pretending to change your own diaper, honey?

I checked her, and she's clean!  This is hilarious!!!

She also likes to read books.  Not picture kid books - real books, like Harry Potter and Freakonomics.  She points to something big and in hardcover and asks, "Book?" so I hand it to her and she starts to flip through it.  Yesterday, she wasn't too interested in playing in Nursery all by herself, so we spent the last hour sitting quietly in the chapel while I cross stitched and she flipped through the hymn book while eating sweet potato-flavored Gerber puffs.

Hey, whatever works, right?


This morning, she woke up shortly before Torrey left for the bus stop.  As Torrey was getting ready to head out the door, she asked Carmen for hugs or kisses goodbye, which Carmen refused, but then Torrey called out, "Bye, Kamis!  Bye, Carmen!" as she was leaving, and Carmen immediately started crying and running towards the stairs saying, "No, no!  TOYYYYYY!!!  TOOOOOOYYYYYYYYY!"

And while we were walking around the church yesterday after Nursery, we came across this poster with a bunch of pictures from some park volunteer activity thing.  Dad was in one of the photos, and Carmen found it and pointed to Dad and said, "Papa!" (her word for "grandpa")  I walked her over to the photo directory of the young women and young men, and she said, "Toy!" and pointed to Torrey's picture.  She also pointed out Logan's picture, but she doesn't say his name yet.  She's got about a week left to do it!

Anywho.

This stage is really delightful.  She's grown up SO MUCH in the past month - I totally see why 18 months is Nursery age.

Yulefest Adventures

Mom was trying to find something to do today, so she looked in the newspaper and the most interesting-looking event was Yulefest at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle.  We invited Logan's friend, Spencer, to come along with us.

It kind of reminded me of the Danish Days festivals we have in Elsinore over the summer ... only it was indoors and there were a lot more old people.  ;)  It was kind of funny being surrounded by a whole bunch of white people again ... it almost felt like Utah!  Honestly, it was kind of boring, but it's fun being out!

First, Carmen enjoyed some ebelskivers:

Ebelskivers (Æbleskivers) are like ... little round pancake balls.  Grandpa (the bald one) sometimes makes them at his house during the holidays.

We went out into the hall to see if we could get in to some semi-interesting-sounding dance thing, and it started getting really crowded.  People were moving towards the back door, and someone said, "There's a fire and we're supposed to evacuate."  I didn't hear any alarms going off, but a minute later I could smell smoke.  It was like ... an electrical-smelling smoke, not a wood-smelling smoke.  Ick.

Apparently some wiring caught fire in the auditorium during a performance.

Everyone went outside and the fire department came!  It was kind of awesome.

It made for a great photo op:

Logan and Spencer are awesome goofballs:

After they let us back inside, we went upstairs and looked at all the crafts they were selling.  They had some cool knitted flap hats ...... that were made in China. -_-;  We found some hats this lady knitted.  They were only $1 so Torrey bought one for Carmen as a Christmas present.

It looks like the excitement wore Carmen out:

We joked they could make t-shirts, like, "I survived the great Nordic Heritage Museum fire" or "I survived the Yulefest fire!"  (You know, like "I survived the Carnival Splendor Cruise Spamcation!")

Speaking of the Carnival Splendor, that's the ship we were on in February when we went on our Mexico cruise.  For anyone who is worried about Carnival after the engine fire ... Carnival is amazing, I think they handled the situation fantastically, and I would totally cruise with them again.  If I were rich.  And could actually afford a cruise. ;)

If I were bald ...

My maternal grandfather looks a bit like Charlie Brown - he is bald.  When my brother was 3 or 4 years old, Mom informed Logan that because her father was bald, he had a chance of being bald when he got older.  (The gene for baldness is carried on the X chromosome ... and I have no idea why some women don't go bald like men do.  I should look that up.)

A few days later, Mom found Logan checking himself out in the bathroom mirror.  He was pulling his hair back, as if pondering what he would look like if he were bald.  Mom asked him what he was doing.

"You know, I guess I wouldn't mind being bald ..." he said thoughtfully.  "Then I would have more time to wash my armpits!"



I thought of this story because I noticed the kind of shampoo my brother uses:

Head & Shoulders Hair Endurance for Men

I won't ask who picked it, because I think my thoughts are funnier than real life.


ETA: So I broke down and asked Logan about it.  He said his friend borrowed some shampoo from one of the leaders at High Adventure over the summer and all of the guys thought the shampoo smelled amazing.  (Everyone gets really really stinky after a week of camping.)  So Logan went out and bought some Head & Shoulders shampoo and now his friends are jealous of how good he smells (he's kind of like the Old Spice guy!)  I pointed out that he bought the "Hair Endurance" kind and it cracked him up, too.

James Bond Taught Me Physics

Today, I finally understood the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, thanks to Daniel Craig in the play Copenhagen.

Five years ago, I took Chem 111 at BYU and was introduced to the uncertainty principle - basically, you can't simultaneously know a particle's position and momentum.  It was explained to me multiple times.  I just didn't get it, and decided to just accept the fact without exactly understanding it.  After all, quantum physics isn't supposed to make any sense, right?  Especially not to a freshman in college who is not a physics major and sucked at math until she got it.

For those of you who don't know me ... I rock at math.  I love it.  I tutored it.  I like math until you hit calculus.  Calculus is awesome, but I have a hard time integrating - not knowing what the answer is supposed to look like.  And then physics is all calculus, and I can listen to people talk about it, but if you ask me to actually do physics and I'll probably start crying while doing the homework.  Freshman year, this really awesome guy named Ben (physics major) helped me with my calculus homework.  I loved him.  He was a genius.

ANYWHO.

BACK TO THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.

I never got it until my Dad was watching that Copenhagen show (recommended by my mom's dad), and James Bond (I mean Heisenberg ... I mean Daniel Craig ...) was walking around the city at night illustrating random physics concepts.  He said something along the lines of, "I was thinking about what it would be like if someone were observing me with a telescope ... you don't see me, and then I walk past a street light and you can ... then I go back into the darkness and I'm unobservable."

And suddenly, I got it.  You're trying to observe just him, but there's also the light you need to observe him, and now you're messing everything up because you've got extra stuff in there ... and somehow, that particular illustration is all I needed to get it.  And Schrodinger makes more sense now.  I thought I got it before, but now I get it again.  Check.  And my brain just exploded.  I'm so happy!!

Now, I don't care whether or not you understand the uncertainty principle, or know what it is, or whether it made sense to you from the get-go (you darn genius, I hate you!), or even care about it, but I'm feeling really proud of myself.  It's been five years and this concept has been bugging me.  I guess physics is supposed to bug you, huh?

Okay.  I'm a nerd.  I'll go back into my room now. =p

Playing with Carmen

Carmen's tons of fun to play with!!  I love the random things she does and the stuff she gets excited about.

I was sweeping the kitchen floor the other day, and she wanted to take the broom and help me sweep.  Luckily, my parents have approximately 193834 brooms, so we had one to spare.  As she ran around the house "sweeping" the carpet, I decided her name should be "CinderCarmen" because she reminds me of Cinderella.  And I can't call her "Carmenella" because it sounds too much like "salmonella" ... which is just wrong. ;)

The last of the autumn leaves have fallen from the trees, so at another point last week I went into the backyard and raked up all of the leaves.  When all of the leaves are raked up, we put them in the yard waste trash can and dump the leaves into the wildlife preserve on the other side of the fence.  While I was picking up the leaves and putting them in the trash can, Carmen would walk across the backyard to another pile of leaves and dump her own handful into the trash can.  It was so cute!!

We've started watching a little bit of TV together.  I happened to stop on the Disney Channel while Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse was on.  It was an episode about giving Pluto a bath, and when Carmen saw Pluto, she got really excited and said, "Doggie!  Doggie, doggie!!!"  Then there was an episode of Sesame Street where Elmo talked all about bananas.  It was pretty much a perfect day. :D

Another time, Logan and Torrey were watching an episode of The Office on Netflix.  They were interviewing Kevin (maybe this was the episode where he got Jim and Pam's credit card cancelled while they were on their honeymoon?) and there was a container of M&Ms on the desk.  Carmen looked up at Kevin and said, "More?  MORE?!?!" because she really really ridiculously likes M&Ms.  HAHAHAHA.  I think it's fabulous that she wanted the M&M's on TV.

I was at Costco a few weeks ago and found this awesome Dog book I thought Carmen would like.

You can pull on these little arrows and it makes a dog's tail wag, or there are some parts where you can pet a fuzzy dog, etc etc.  It's adorable!  You can get it used on Amazon for $4, including shipping!  It looks like they have a Cat book, too!  I'm totally buying another one of these for Carmen!  She loooooooves dogs and cats.  And she can say "puppy" too.  Whenever she sees one, it sounds like she says, "Ooh, issa doddie!"

Yep.  Definitely buying myself a zillion Matthew Van Fleet board books ... looks like they've got "Dog" "Cat" "Tails" "Heads" "Frogs" "Fuzzy Yellow Ducklings" "The Alphabet" ....  I can't tell you how much I LOOOOVE board books, especially one with fuzzy things in it.

Part of me is still 4 years old.  Does anybody remember the Rainbow Fish book?  I loved it because it had those pages with the sparkly scales.  I loved activity books (also called "quiet books").  I have friends who have made some ... I should go get some ideas from them.  I think Carmen's ready to play with 'em.  YAY.

Junk Food

Several weeks ago, we went to Cornbelly's Corn Maze at Thanksgiving Point with some of our friends.  The kids started getting hungry, and we decided it would be cheaper and more fun to have corn dogs and s'mores at our house than to have the overpriced corn dogs and s'mores at the corn maze.

Usually, I avoid "frankenfoods" like corn dogs, but let's admit it - they are amazing and tasty.  The occasional snack won't kill you, right?  So I went to Costco and Wal-Mart and bought the kid-friendly junk food so we could enjoy the evening with our friends.  I'm not about to make a bunch of 5-year-olds eat my leftovers.

You'd think that, as adults, we would have some level of self-restraint when it comes to eating junk ... especially when we're eating at home (not out at Cornbelly's) and there is plenty of tasty produce in the fridge, too.

Mark saw the corn dogs and was like, "Oh, great, corn dogs!  I'll have three!"

**facepalm**