TAGGED!

Okay, I am WAY behind on tags, but Jenni got me this time with what seems to be the mother of all tags so I hope it will make up for those I have yet to fill...

What were you doing ten years ago?

Ten years ago you'd have found me smack-dab in the middle of the jungles of South America in a tiny town called Concepcion, Paraguay. My clothes were roughly the color of the red dirt that swirled around our feet, and my companion and I bought "panchos" for lunch between "charlas" and "citas". We drank "terere" and whatever "mba'e pico", but feared "chivivi", "bichos" and "pique". My Spanish was getting better but my Guarani was terrible, and I'd just received the miniature Christmas tree in the chocolate-caked, semi-raided packages sent from the states in October. Hermana Smith and I lived across from the senior couple and they had us and the four elders in the area over for pancakes on p-days. The air was humid and had a musty, nutty smell to it, and the fish at the market were like nothing I'd ever seen before, but the children were beautiful and the brazilian witch women unforgettable...anacondas in the gutters... those were good times. I can't believe it's been ten years.

Five things on your to-do list today: it's night now, so here's what was on my list and how we did...

1. Morning carpool - Erick spent 20 minutes in his room "getting dressed" without my noticing so he got a cereal bar for breakfast rushing out the door to pick up the rest of the carpool. We made it on time, but barely. Izzie and Audrey got eggs when we returned. Poor Erick, I need to do better tomorrow.

2. Mail valentines that will NOT be there on valentines' day because we didn't get them done last night - I knew if I waited another day they just wouldn't get sent, so just before the lines closed I slipped in and got them off. Yay!

3. Playdate with another MBA family at 1:30 - Man, I got in a random cleaning funk today around 10:30 that lasted until the playdate was about to begin. On the way out the door I realized in my madness I'd forgotten to feed my kids, so we had a quick hot dogs and mac n' cheese meal while I finished addressing those valentines I needed to mail. When I came back into the kitchen I found Audrey with her head down on the table fast asleep! I scooped her up anyway, ran the kids to their playdate, and excused myself to take Audrey home for bed. By the time we got there she also needed a diaper change, and had poop clear up her spine. We made the mistake of buying pull-ups on a whim a while back, and now it's a fight to get her to wear anything else, you see, because they're pink. Well, princessy or not, they don't hold up nearly as well for a girl completely uninterested in actually potty training. I changed her, the clothes, and the crib sheet I had unfortunately laid her on, and of course by then she'd decided she was up and I spent the next hour convincing her it was still naptime.

4. Groceries, we're out of milk again - ran by the Creamery just before I picked the kids up from their playdate. Amazed once again at the number of BYU students with a phone glued to their head. I don't think many come without these days. Most come with expensive SUVs, too. It's insane.

5. Book of Mormon reading - still going strong!

Didn't get done - call Black and Decker for Justin's W-2 forms, pick up my pictures at Walgreens and dig through our boxes for the Microsoft Streets and Trips software we have somewhere but ironically seem to have lost in our move...

Things I would do if I were suddenly a billionaire:

Pay off student debt
Pay off house
Travel
Go back to school, maybe?
.....?

Two of my bad habits: (only two?)

1. I often expect other people to do things I am perfectly capable of doing myself.
2. I start huge projects with great ambitions, but get bored quickly. As such, I have a huge list of huge projects still awaiting completion.

Places I have lived:

Spanish Fork, Salem and Provo Utah; Various locations in Paraguay; Saint Louis and O'Fallon, Missouri

5 Jobs I have had:

1. The BYU Movie theater
2. FARMS student editor
3. Tech Support for a computer hardware maker
4. Associate Producer for a small ad agency
5. Web content manager at Franklin Covey

5 things people don't know about me:

1. I grind my teeth at night. I think. At least I do some of the time and I can tell I've been doing it because a - I can somehow still "hear" that awful sound in my head the next day and b - my head throbs when I wake up in the morning and I head straight for the advil. This even with a bite guard. Ick. Somehow this doesn't wake Justin up.

2. I really hate putting away laundry. I think that's why I don't turn shirts right side out on their hangers, either. Justin's gotten good at doing it himself before he sends is clothes through the wash, but I feel those shirts are lucky to be hung at all.

3. I love vacuuming, dusting, and washing the windows. It's funny because those are the same chores, now that I think about it, that my kids like to do. I think because in my mind they're more "finishable" projects than ever-looming things like the forementioned laundry, dishes, kitchen floor, etc. Now, it doesn't mean my house is dusted all the time, because I'm often bogged down in those other awful chores and don't get to the ones I actually like...

4. I read the Book of Mormon in it's entirety in the third grade before my baptism. 20-something years later I have yet to do the same with the Bible.

5. I built the little bench five years ago that sits inside our front door today. It's not fancy, but I was terrified of power tools and with a husband working for black and decker I really needed something to practice on. Justin found the simple plans and supervised, but I bought the wood, cut it, sanded it, screwed it all together and stained and lacquered it. Hooray for me. :-) I'm much more comfortable with those things today.

Now I tag Shelly and Miranda!