a few funny things

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I am leaving in 20 minutes to pick up Daniel from the airport – woo hoo! He’s been gone for 4 days, can’t wait for a Daniel filled weekend ahead :) But I wanted to jot down a few things that I think are funny that are happening around here lately.

Zac – Christina’s little boy, Zac, is 3. His older brothers, Ben and Rocco, always refer to my boys as “Noah and Liam” and never refer to them individually, so Zac started calling Noah and Liam, “Newman” …. kind of a combo. It’s hilarious. Zac: “Hey Newman! You coming in my house now?”

Right before the movers came to pack up my house in MI, I was walking around the house trying to make sure everything was in order and that I had packed everything I would need on the trip in suitcases, so it didn’t get packed in boxes. As I was walking around, I came across Daniel’s and my condom stash. I thought it would be weird for the movers to find and pack our condoms, so I tossed all of them in my yellow purse. I didn’t know where else to put them. I figured since I usually use the diaper bag as my daily purse, it was no biggie.

Fast forward to a few weeks later when I ran out the door with my yellow purse in tow. yeah. I had Ray with me and I set my purse in the shopping cart next to him and before I knew it, Ray was holding a condom and bringing it towards his mouth – oh my gosh, so wrong right? So as I reached to grab it quickly from him before anyone saw, he pulled away, not wanting to give up the goods and we struggled with it between us for a second before the condom popped out of our hands. It felt like one of those slow-mo moments in a movie where you watch the condom flying through the air in an arched motion before hitting the ground with a loud thud. I hurried over to where it had landed, snatched it up and stuffed it back in my purse. So embarrassing. But also funny.

What’s even more ridiculous, is that I still haven’t removed the sexy contents of my yellow purse. I went out to the store alone one night and plopped my purse in the shopping cart in front of me and it was just sitting open in the cart revealing the condoms (and a few other things) … so I zipped it up. Man, I’ve gotta find a better place for that stuff.

my life in pictures

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Well, I’m bummed out. Daniel just left on a plane … again. He keeps doing that. So I sat down with my computer and the only sugar I could find in the house was a bag of somewhat stale red vines and started blogging. I feel sick. The red vines were probably not a good choice.

I have had so much going on, but I’ve been keeping tabs with my camera phone. So here it goes, my life over the past few months (aka “the blur”) in pictures with mild storytelling:

Once upon a time, movers came to pack up my house in two days …

And while they were packing, the boys and I had nowhere to go but our backyard. So that’s where we ate, and played and sat and talked on the phone for two days. In the backyard, mostly on the ground.

And so my house was packed. And we began living out of suitcases in empty houses (both in MI for a few days, then CA for ten days).

We ate sitting on the floor a lot over the span of two weeks.

Before we headed out of MI, Daniel and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary and partied in Ann Arbor for the last time. We of course had to visit the Farmer’s Market.

And Zingerman’s.

And most importantly …. Treasure Mart. One of the coolest consignment shops on the planet. Ahhhhh, look at all that wonderful junk around us. It was an awesome farewell and celebration at the same time (even though Daniel wouldn’t let me buy the $6 globe I wanted for the boys’ room. Yes, only $6!!!! I said I could rearrange our luggage and fit it in, but he made me put it down and walk out of there. big mistake. huge! Who’s with me on this??).

I love him anyways :) I actually adore this man. He’s perfect.

Then the goodbyes commenced. Sad, tearful goodbyes to good people and friends in Michigan. I will not miss Michigan. But I will miss my friends there and my boys’ dear Ordaz boys.

Oh the Ordaz Boys!!

Then goodbyes to Liam’s “Woocus (Lucas)”.

But after goodbyes, there are always loving and happy hellos!!!!!!

The California days with family were underway! Trips with Clarks,

dinner and movies with Ben Rocco and Zac,

Playdates with Emily,

Hanging with Blackburns in downtown Claremont,

and eating ice cream!!

But even with all that good family fun, we had hard work ahead of us in CA. We spent a loooooooong time in an empty house and putting together chairs from IKEA (so we could sit somewhere other than the floor to eat).

We had to do laundry at Christina’s house because we didn’t have our washer or dryer yet. And when you’re doing laundry for little boys, you often times come across the needful things a boy carries around in his pocket.

And while you’re waiting for the movers to bring your stuff, you will probably find yourself at Cost Plus World Market with Christina, picking out a dining room table that is 7 feet long. And you love this table, but then Daniel sees it and says it’s impractical to own a table that big. humph.

Then one day (and this day is 4 days later than you anticipated) … your stuff arrives!!! And you spend the rest of your life unpacking.

(side note: I saw this picture and instinctively started stress eating another piece of stale licorice)

I do not have pictures (thank heavens because it was scary and gross) of the billions and billions of ants that have attacked and re-attacked different parts of our new house. But just know that that is a major part of the story – ANTS. So many ants, that one night I kept having nightmares that they were crawling all over me and didn’t sleep well and woke up about 15 times all night long. So yeah, ants. Major part.

Then it gets hot … like 102 degrees hot. So we went to the fountain and farmer’s market!

And finally …. your Cakes flies in town – Daniel cakes is finally in California!!!!! The joy is short lived however. He only gets to stay for 4 days, then flies back to Michigan all day Thursday, so he can go to Ford for his last day on Friday. He was literally in MI for less than 24 hours, but that meant he was away from me for 2 whole days and that I had to pick him up at 10:45 pm on Friday night. sigh. Ford. grrrrrrr.

But he’s home. yes. Buuuuuut, I only got him for 2 days, because tonight he flew away again on a plane. He is training for Amazon in AZ. He’ll come home in 4 days, then I get him for 3, then he’s gone … again. It’s kind of like having a weekend lover. It’s pretty stupid.

But while we had him this weekend, man, we partied! (I know they don’t look like they have party faces, but these guys were tearing it up in the pool on Saturday. It WAS a party :) )

And we squeezed in a date night! Daniel’s face doesn’t look like he’s enjoying date night, but it wasn’t date night that made his face look this way. It was me taking about 7 pictures to try and get a good one. It never worked, so I went with this picture. Gotta document it – first date night in SoCal!

And that’s the end so far … or really, the beginning.

What month is it?

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Noah had to have me sign his reading chart yesterday and I looked at the date he had written. It said 9/5/13 and I thought, “what?! no way. It was just July …”

So the past few months have been a blur. seriously. a blur. Kind of like my wedding day. You remember faces, places, feelings and then a whole lot of stuff happened. I’ve been keeping all this “stuff” off the blog because of Daniel mostly. It gets really dicey when you’re looking for a job and trying to not let the other people at your current job know what’s happening. We knew a lot of people that worked at Ford that we interacted with almost daily, so no blogging. Anyway, it’s all over, he got a job with Amazon, we moved to southern California and somehow I lost 2 months of my life and didn’t know it.

The biggest reason for the secrecy was the tuition reimbursement stuff. Daniel agreed to stay 2 years after he graduated from U of M with his MBA, but the exact date of when that 2 years was up was in question. We thought it was August 23rd, U of M’s academic records confirmed August 23rd, but Ford thought it was October 27th, then they said September 6th and then Daniel ended up using vacation days for this last week of work with Ford, flying back for his last day (because Ford has a policy that a vacation day can’t be your last day) and we still owe Ford $2500. whatever. What a headache. There have been so many, many, many details to this whole move, it’s exhausting to review them, so I won’t. Bottom line – we’re done with Ford and Michigan, we have a renter in our MI house that we can’t sell and we’re renting a house twice the size in CA. We live five minutes from my sister Christina and her family and 30 minutes from my sister Aria and her family. I am tired but happy.

The relocation package from Amazon has been a-mazing. Having professional movers rocks and this whole cross-country move has been so much smoother than it could’ve been, but it’s still a move cross country with 3 boys and no husband and it has been crazy.

The first 10 days here we (me and the 3 boys) were living on air mattresses in an empty house. Christina and Aria did an incredible job setting us up though. Aria, Walter, Luca, Enzo and Chiara all met us at the airport as we walked off the plane and toward baggage claim. They were waiting at the bottom of the escalator. I really didn’t expect them all to be there, so it was a total surprise and they were holding a huge sun sign that said “Welcome to California Forsyths!” My boys and Aria’s boys were so excited and I was so emotionally exhausted from the previous week of leaving MI stuff and then a long full day flight with all the boys alone that I just wept when I saw them all there. I felt like I was really coming home. I wouldn’t have to leave again. It wasn’t like Christmas or vacation. I was here and they were here and I could enjoy it and live it. Just a rush of emotion.

The love kept coming too. Walter took all the kids, except for the babies, and Aria and I went to get the rental car and we drove to my house. Once at my house, everyone came. Christina and Aria had made a welcome basket of food and necessities all beautifully packaged with tiny flags and labels on it! And while I walked around the new house and played with the kids and talked to everyone, they set up beds in each room – complete with lamps and side tables and put toilet paper in each bathroom (I now have three bathrooms, instead of one!!!!!! …. no more peeing in the bathtub when 2 people reallllly gotta go.) They just completely set me up. With things I didn’t even think of yet, like trash bags and lamps. seriously. What would I have done when the sun went down? I had no lights and the house didn’t have any ceiling lights in the bedrooms and family room (weird right?).

But there was a lot of stress the first week. Even with all the love, family and sun, crappy stuff still happened. For instance, Ray was a nightmare. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but he was not taking the change well. He cried all. the. time. He cried going to sleep, woke up crying, cried whenever anyone walked into the same room he was in if they weren’t me … he has been ridiculous. And then we all got sick, within the first 5 days. Then on day 8, Noah threw up, over everything. I am cutting and pasting the email I sent to Daniel about this particular incident:

“You will not believe this.
Noah has been kind of sick, as has Ray and me. But Noah was coughing. He told me on the way to Blackburn’s that he was going to throw up. I asked when and he said, I don’t know. I asked if he needed to right then and he said no. That was weird. So, then we’re at Blackburn’s all night and he runs around with Luca and Liam and plays with fake money and eats dinner, no problem. On the way home he even sang to Ray, who was screaming the whole way.
We got home and I told them to get ready for bed, then right in bed because it was already 8:30 pm and we had school tomorrow. He got ready and I dealt with Ray, who was beside himself. I finally got Ray down and he was still screaming and crying, when I went into their room and said prayers with them and said goodnight. I go into my room and start washing my face and brushing my teeth.
As I’m brushing my teeth, I hear Noah really starting to hack/cough. Really loud and long. Before I had finished with my teeth, he came into my room, flopped back on my air mattress and said, “I’m gonna throw up”. Well, he’d said that earlier tonight too, so I figured I had enough time to spit the toothpaste out. But I didn’t. He coughed and threw up at the same time about 1 second later, all over my mattress and sheets. I still had my toothbrush in my mouth as I quickly grabbed him by the waist and led him into the toilet and said if he needed to throw up anymore, he should do it in the toilet.
And he did. He explosively threw up 2-3 times more in the toilet. He really emptied his stomach. It smelled awful. He had eaten barbacoa pork.
He had it all over himself now, his shoulders, face, forehead, hair, dripping from his mouth … so I told him to strip down in the toilet room and then get in the shower. I turned on the shower and he got in. I gave him a water bottle in the shower to rinse his mouth out with.
Then while he showered, I started cleaning up the mess everywhere. I was really afraid that we would get ants unless I was very careful about getting all the throw up cleaned up. But I don’t have a washing machine to throw everything in and I don’t have all my cleaning products. So I went straight up Peruvian-woman-style on his shirt – using a bar of olay soap on his shirt and all the sheets on my bed. Then I started on the toilet.
That was horrendous. I had to take a deep breath in my room, then head into the toilet room as fast as possible and wipe up as much as I could before going back into my room to breath again. I couldn’t wipe up and throw things in the trash because again, I thought it would attract ants, so I used toilet paper and would flush as I went.
He finally finished in the shower and I had him get dressed for bed. I asked him how he felt and he said better now. Once dressed he asked if he could go to sleep. I said sure and he went and fell asleep fast. I went back to the toilet.
He had thrown up not quite into the toilet, but kind of onto the part where the hinges are for the seat. So the hinges and all their crevices were covered in throw up. I got a screw driver and disassembled the seat from the toilet so I could run the whole thing under water and wipe it with disinfecting wipes. Disinfecting wipes is about all I had cleaning-wise. It was absolutely the low point so far. There was throw up splashed onto the walls. I finished that all and went to check on Noah and Liam. Noah felt warm. I think he has a fever, but I have no thermometer or Tylenol for him. I think I’ll let him go and check his temperature in the morning and have Weedy bring Tylenol and a thermometer.
At this point, it had been an hour and Ray was still wimpering in his bed. I was worried that maybe he had thrown up in his bed too and that’s why he was still awake, so I went in and checked on him. He was just sad. So I held him for 20 minutes and rocked him to sleep.
It was a pretty awful night. But strangely, I do not feel beaten. When I have something to do and an immediate challenge, I feel more focused. I feel very focused. Noah will obviously stay home from school, but Liam will go. I will ask Weedy to come by in the morning with a thermometer and Tylenol. Pray that we make it through the night. I know you won’t get this until the morning, but pray anyway.
This is definitely the worst way to begin a life together here in CA. Not even together, without our stuff, with sick kids, throwing up, and Ray who is acting just absolutely crazy, all the time. Oh yeah, and with ants. Like a bazillion ants.”
Yes. There have been zillions of ants. On day 3 here we looked out at the back porch in the morning and there were about 12 thick lines of ants marching into the base of our house. Liam summed it up well when he leaned his head against the glass sliding door and said, “we got a big pwob-wem (problem)”.
So it hasn’t been easy, but things are working themselves out and I absolutely love three things:
1. To hear my boys say “Aunt Aria” or “Aunt Stina” and “Wooca (Luca)”. I love seeing my boys get to know who their family is.
2. The sun. I can count on it. Pretty much every day the sun is out. Every morning it shows up and it is blazing hot, but the sun is there.
3. I hang out with Christina and Aria all the time. Every day.
Oh yeah, and I love my pantry, 3 bathrooms and the master bathroom especially. Nothing like having an “en suite”. woo woo!

queens, activity days

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I teach the Activity Day girls at church. They are 8-11 years old and we do activities every other week, so 2 a month. This month we focused on beauty. We did an outer beauty night where we talked about hygiene and then did manicures and pedicure to one another. It was a fun, pampering night. But last night, I was in charge of the “inner beauty” night.

I wanted to make sure the girls felt special, had fun, but knew that what we were talking about was important. So I wanted to add details and elements to make it special. The theme for the night ended up as “Being Queens – as daughters of God, we are queens in the making”.

Then I of course had to make crowns. duh. And since I had to do it all for free, because our budget is blown, I made them out of lace I already had. I saw these crowns on Pinterest and was inspired:

Gorgeous right? Yeah, well, it gave instructions on how to make them from lace and so I thought I could …. but it was a bit of a fail. I was trying to do it on the cheap, so I didn’t go out and buy fabric stiffener, I saw online that you can make your own homemade fabric stiffener with glue and water. no you can’t. I did it and it didn’t make it stiff. They were semi-firm. Anyway, here was my process:

Apply glue/water mixture (or fabric stiffener if you’re smart) and let it dry completely, overnight.

Apply silver or gold paint and let it dry then brush them with mod podge and apply mad amounts of glitter. Let it dry completely.

Then, give up on making them completely stiff and turn them into quasi-tiaras with ribbon you have on hand. Whatever works.

The plan for the evening was this:

They come into the room and I wanted to have a “throne” for everyone (steal the chairs from the foyer), but we have too many girls coming for that. So instead, I am having a set of tables set up in a U shape with chairs.
Then they will all be seated and we will watch these two Mormon Messages for the youth … in this order:
Next, we’ll play a game I made up called “WWQD? (What Would Queens Do?)” Throughout the game the girls will be guessing and playing charades to find out what queen qualities we are working to possess and then doing an activity for each quality.
I brought my magnet board from home and put up this awesome picture of a girl in a crown.
There are 4 qualities we focused on. It’s supposed to be all about the girls’ inner beauty, so the qualities are: be kind, THINK, be modest, and the 13th article of faith (which obtains just about every quality we need).
Be Kind – played charades/Pictionary/hangman to figure out the quality, then we played “Baby I love you, won’t you give me a smile”. Sometimes being kind is simply a smile.
(THINK) “Think before you speak” – played charades/Pictionary/hangman to figure out the quality, then played “the minister’s cat”, where you have to think quick and come up with a quality for the cat in alphabetical order. You clap your hands in a beat and go around the circle in the order of the alphabet.
Be Modest – played charades/Pictionary/hangman to figure out the quality, then broke into groups of 2-3 girls each and had them use magazine cut outs to create outfit boards for certain occasions. How would a “queen” dress to go to a swim party, prom, work, school? etc etc. They glued all the outfits onto the page and showed the group.
This was fun, I got to ask them what they thought about modesty and how it worked in their lives. We had a good discussion.
These girls were finding a modest outfit to wear to working at Subway. :)
13th Article of Faith – play charades/Pictionary/hangman to figure out the quality, then I will teach them to memorize this. However, they already knew it and so we just recited it. We were out of time anyway, so it worked out.
Once done, I had handouts and sugar cookies for the girls with little sparkly crowns on top:
And that was it. I had fun and I think the girls liked it too. I usually do too much, but this was a good balance for me. It wasn’t going overboard with decorations or extras, but hopefully it was just enough to let them know I thought this topic was important enough to put extra time into it, making crowns and displaying pictures and having awesome sugar cookies. There we go. Now next time, I think we’ll just sit in the gym and play games :)

weight update

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This is mostly for me. But I feel the need to celebrate/be accountable to someone/something. I weighed myself on April 19th and I was 168. Today, July 15th (almost exactly 3 months later) I weighed in at 158.5 at the gym this morning.

I only weigh myself at a specific time: in the morning, after I’ve pooped, with as little clothing on as the gym allows :) So I guess it took me 3 months to drop 10 pounds. And that is 3 months of going to the gym 2-3 times a week, sometimes more. One month of 6 am workout class with Leslie. 3 months of watching what I eat, doing a juice cleanse, trying out “clean eating” for a few weeks, skipping out on treats and not eating after 8 pm. And all of that means that I lost a little less than one pound per week (0.83 lbs per week). That doesn’t seem like a lot, hmmmmm. I have 13.5 lbs to go until I’m at my goal weight. I guess that will take me until Thanksgiving, at this rate. That’s crap. Maybe I’ll make the goal to be back to 145 by my birthday. Yeah. November 1st, here we come.

I have been working waaaaaaaay harder to lose this weight than I have with any other baby weight. Ray officially did me in. And another thing about my weight/body – it is “settling” differently. Like, really differently. All my weight is settling slowly into my belly and thighs. I have a mommy body. The gut is never tight and my legs are disproportionately larger than my upper body (and by upper body, I mean my chest is smaller). It’s not cute, that’s for sure. Sagging, settling, lumpy, stretch marked body.

I see these little 20-somethings walking around the gym with their sweet, tight little bodies and I have this unbelievable urge to shake them and say, “Enjoy this! Appreciate your body now! Take pictures! ….. cuz it’s all downhill from here girls ….” I don’t shake them, but I must have a desperate look on my face because sometimes they seem to feel my stare, look at me and then hurry past. Such is life as a mommy – you start staring desperately at young girls at the gym. Weird, right?