After finding my long lost, beloved calculator, I sent this email to BZ..

"fell asleep with work stuff on the bed... woke up with the calculator smooshed into my face... had to take M to school before the key marks on my face went away"

His response?

"Can I post that on facebook?"

And he did... I can't even remember how many people asked me about it this weekend.

What's in a name?

This weekend the hubby, our friend Josh and I stopped by the coffee shop. The gals working there at the time had never seen me come in with anyone, so they had never met the hubby. In taking our order, the conversation went like this:

Them "Your usual, Anne?"
Me: "Yep"
Them "And.. Mr. Anne? What would you like?"

The hubby got a kick out of it.... I'm going to start referring to him as my arm candy from now on.

A word from our sponsers

This garage sale find brought to you by Feminism Weekly.

Spare Minutes

I've found myself with a few spare minutes... er HOURS in the airport so I thought I'd use the time wisely and start updating a few things. But of course, with limited resources (dirty laundry, leftover corn nuts, laptop) I am limited to writing about recent events.
I'll start with our recent trip to Salt Lake City...
We (Brian, M, Brian's dad and I) jumped on up to SLC to attend a conference and were lucky enough to get to see some family. Our cousin Michelle of outdoor stove fame, her husband and daughter wisked us away on our last night in town and took us up to Red Butte Gardens. As we drove out to the gardens we could see a thunderstorm gathering, but Michelle had packed a great picnic and after days of fast food and buffets we weren't willing to give it up.
We gathered up some tables with umbrellas and ate while it rained around us. The rain turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it kept us all close, eating and talking and then cleared up to a beautiful rainbow just as we were finishing.

Afterward we walked around the gardens. The Herb Garden:












M had a great time with Johanna and her boyfriend. The Children's Garden was great - it included giant lizards, a snake made out of a twisty tunnel of vines and of course all kinds of plants to touch and smell. It was truly beautiful after the little bit of rain.

 

 Cousin Michelle, being the awesomely cool cousin she's always been, brought Miss M a couple of treats. These included a couple a painted wooden fish. Let me narrate some photos for you to give a sense of one of the current favorite conversations:

Miss M: "Mama. MAMA. Pish Kiss."

I am supposed to kiss the fish. The "Pish" kissing does not commence fast enough.

Miss M: "PISH KISSSSSSS"
The end of the conversation varies, but it is usually something like this... 

Your pish kisses are substandard. If this is the best you can do, I'm outta here.

We were happy to see family that we'd like to see more of, happy to spend time with Papa Z and happy to be on our way home!

Not sure what this means....

Today my students gave presentations on thier research projects. It is usually a good day in class because the projects are interesting and spark a lot of discussion. One of the projects was about the use of high fructose corn syrup. This picture was used in the presentation:

nataliedee.com
The picture was sited as coming from babble.com, but I instantly knew that was wrong. I knew that was wrong because I know it's a Natalie Dee cartoon. Of course I do. It's from 2006. I mean hellooooo... who wouldn't know that? Oh... right.. most.other.people.
So I'm not sure what this means.... but evidently I'm a better referece checker due to my religious daily viewing of online cartoons. Uh, go me?

Hair Update

Ok, so it's been awhile.. but I'm going to try to catch up on a few things that have happened in the last few...er, months? Geez... we are behind!

Well, I'm doing this a little backward because I'm starting with this morning. Something happened that inspired me to announce it to the blogosphere.








Let me make it a little more clear in case you didn't see it at first glance:

This was one epic case of bed hair.... it was a sight to be held. From past data, we can see that the situation is only getting worse. I'm thinking she's destined to be a hair model for that Hair Battle Spectacular t.v. show...






Now that I have you distracted with the 8th wonder of the world...I'll work on my other posts!

Bribery.... Lloyd House Style

I'm sure every parent has those moments when they find themselves saying or doing something they said they would never do. 

Tonight I started laughing in the middle of saying .."Now Maryn, after you eat ONE bite of ice cream, you can have a piece of candy."

That's right. I was attempting to get my daughter
to eat ICE CREAM*... by BRIBING her with CANDY*. 

Half way through the sentence I realized how ridiculous I sounded. 

BZ started laughing at the same time and said "Wouldn't it be wonderful if she learned how bribery worked from this?! That would be awesome!"

Truth be told... we've been working on this bribery thing for a while, just trying to get her to understand the cause and effect, and that by doing something we want, she'll get something she wants. 

It's been a bust until tonight, when a little light went off.
It's almost like you could see her thinking..
"A bite of ice cream for a piece of candy... doesn't seem so bad."
Followed shortly by "Yeah... I've got them trained... finally."

So, a real banner night in the Lloyd house, if do I say so myself. 

*ice cream = nonfat frozen yogurt
*candy = chocolate chips