Indiana Jones, Eat Your Heart Out

Sadly, in the Kartchner house, things often go missing. Shoes, wedding rings, phones, socks, remotes, books, clothes, toys, you name it, some unknown beast has eaten them. Well, as of last Sunday, the beast has officially been beaten to the ground and hopefully (but probably not), been expunged from our lives forever.

Kelly was complaining that he could not find the remote for the downstairs TV (MIA for appx. 6-9 months). I jokingly said it was probably with the phone (MIA for appx. 3 months after having it for maybe 3 weeks). I told him that I had checked the couch, but he could check again.

This man generally walks into a room to find something and stands in the same place with his eyes closed for a few minutes and then comes back to tell me he can't find what he was looking for. This causes me to then go and find it immediately because it is in plain site. I divulge this information, only because the following is JAW DROPPING and AWE-INSPIRING and you need to know why.

Back to Sunday.

He does a little looking in the couch and pulls out the phone. Yeah! We were all so happy and kind of laughing that his was not a fruitless search, although he did not find what he was looking for. Excited now, he goes back for more and emerges with the remote control. Wahoo! I thought that puppy was gone for good! I continued to email and not pay attention when he comes in to kneel by the bed. I stopped what I was doing to look at him and he pulls out MY WEDDING RING! He asked me to marry him, and since I was so impressed I had to say yes. I have lost this ring several times throughout our marriage, most recently was four years ago when I was newly pregnant with Ryan. I have been looking for the thing everywhere and had given it up as long gone. We were planning on getting me a new one.

I have vacuumed that couch at least 4 times in the last four years and luckily have never sucked up the ring. I do not know how Kelly did it, but man oh man, he is on the nice list again!

Last thing, just so you don't put Kelly on too high a pedestal (we wouldn't want him to fall), My couch is still all pulled apart and the vacuum still sitting where the cushions should be:)

Some kids can name all 12 apostles.......

Ryan may not be able to tell you what a temple is, who the prophet is or anything like that, but she has memorized something pretty great. If you come over on any give day you will hear my 3 year old singing "honey, honey, how he thrills me, uh-huh, honey honey!" or "Mama Mia, here I go again, my, my, how can I resist ya?" And then to top it off the other day during breakfast she started listing off names "Sam Carmichael, Harry Bright, Bill Austin" and so on. She randomly says phrases from the movie. I have only let her watch it like 5 or 6 times, but, now I have had to hide it because both girls are making every effort to memorize it.
Jannica asked the other day if this was a church movie. I swear we are teaching our girls about standards and stuff, but I think we might need to kick it up a notch.

Sneaky Little Devil

Kelly and I were being lazy and so did not put our "sweet little angel" to bed one night last week. We were letting her lay on the couch and watch a movie until she fell asleep. I had left her alone to go lay on my bed.

About a half hour later, I sent Kelly upstairs to see if she had fallen asleep yet. Kelly came back downstairs after a very short time. He was laughing, and said you gotta come see this.

I followed him upstairs to find this..........

Notice the intricate use of eyebrow pencil, eyeshadow, blush, lipstick and whatever you put on your nose? She has taken the use of markers to a new dimension. We were laughing too hard to get too upset. We learned that blue does not come off for about three days. Luckily her face was mostly green.

I have a similar story from my youth only my older brother was my palette. I guess what goes around comes around.

Daddy-Daughter London Trip

Since Jannica has been 8 years old, she has had a special birthday trip with just her.  Last year Jaimee came too but not this year.  Jannica and I took our first ever Daddy-Daughter weekend birthday trip.  She got to pick the destination and she chose London.  So on Friday we wisked away to the airport and jumped on a flight to London.  Jannica was so excited to be on the plane she was taking a picture of how wide the plane was.  She took a picture of a nice English gentleman who just smiled for the picture.  He just heppened to be in the picture and was a good sport.  He then took a picture of the two of us.  

Now this was a special treat, because we were able to sit in the Business-Elite cabin all the way there and back.  Jannica just loved the on demand movies and TV shows.  So much so that she only got 2-3 hours of sleep on the plane.  We arrived in London at 7am for a full day of excitement.

As soon as we arrived at Victoria Station she started taking picture of everything from the double-decker red buses to the rubbish can (because it's called rubbish, not garbage).  She also took pictures of no trespassing signs and every statue that we passed.  She was just excited to be in London.

Well we jumped on one of those cool double decker red buses and made our way to Big Ben.  She was still very excited taking pictures of everything.  She enjoyed how cool the Parliment building and Westminter Abby looked.  We did not go inside either but did enjoy the outside.

We later walked up the Thames river still taking pictures of everything.  We went and looked at #10 Downing Street to check out where Gordon Brown lives.  Jannica could not have cared less about that.  

Just up the street was Jannica's favorite attraction, the changing of the guards, but not the real one at Buckingham palace.  The little one done by the Horse Guards.  There was not a big crowd and Jannica was able to be right up seeing the whole action.  

After that we went to the real changing of the guards and Jannica was not really interested.  It was too boring and long for her.  She made friends with a few English girls that were amazed that someone from Georgia would come visit them in London.  They just loved Jannica's strange American accent.

After that, we went to Jannica's second favorite activity of the trip.  We went to King's Cross train station with our luggage and owl.  We wandered around looking for our train platform and we couldn't find it.  We went up to a train conducter and asked where platform 9 and 3/4 was.  He looked at us like we were crazy and said go away.  It was ok though because we found this family of redheads that was also looking for platform 9 and 3/4 and they showed us how to get there.  We passed through the wall and caught our train to Hogwarts.

25 simple pleasures

1. Kelly comes home every night.
2. Real lime juice to drink.
3. Breakfast in a little hotel in Latin America.
4. Crest Pro Health mouthwash.
5. Wireless Internet.
6. Sleeping in.
7. Eating without any nausea before or after (I think, is that possible?)
8. Gardening.
9. Cooking experiments that turn out great.
10. Giggling uncontrollably.
11. Comfy sweats.
12. Claw foot bathtubs and HOT water.
13. Reading all day without interruption.
14. Cookie dough.
15. A good pee.
16. My mom's cooking.
17. Feeling a baby kick from the inside.
18. This may shock all of you - Being on time and organized (I guess not so simple).
19. Falling asleep whilst cuddling.
20. Holding a sick kid.
21. Slap-stick comedy.
22. Being told thank you by Ryan the minute the prayer for dinner is finished.
23. Staying in hotels with pools.
24. Couponing/ bargain hunting.
25. Chewing equally on both sides of my mouth.

This was not as hard as I thought it would be. Tag to all of you, my millions of blog followers.

snow pics

Ugliest Snowman Ever?

It snowed today the most that I have ever seen in Atlanta.  And remember, at most we only get one snow storm a year.  We had a good 2 inches, maybe 3.  Not much for all you Utah/Idaho folks, but for us this is huge.  School is cancelled on Monday.  Nobody is driving on the roads.  My carpool is seriously considering taking the day off.  And we get to make a huge snowman.  This is is the snowman that we made with the help from the Denison's.  I'd have to say that it is about 2 feet taller than last year's ugly snowman.  We had more snow this year so we could make a bigger snowman.  I'm not sure which one is uglier.  What do you think?

This year's snowman.

Last year's snowman.