Good Good Times…

Captain Birthday here made the official jump from being a little guy of 4 to being a “big one” who is 5 YEARS OLD!!  He requested a Haunted Mansion (“Nightmare Before Christmas” style) birthday cake—fortunately, Jack Skellington is not a character of intricate details.  Also fortunately, Target has some fantastic striped birthday candles right now that add so much to any birthday celebration…

The parents of the birthday boy with the very favorite tree during its limited engagement week-long glory of blooms…The Goff Family spring soccer  superstars—Cael was initially devastated to find out that he wouldn’t be on the black jersey team.  He has quickly adapted to his team’s color scheme and the rest of us are also adapting to seeing him in purple at all hours of each and every day and night…

And HOORAY!!  A grand and glorious weekend was had by me!!  My one and only delightful mom came with my one and only delightful sis, who also brought her equally delightful lovely little lady, Miss Kate.  Their flight was delayed 3 hours, but we most certainly made the most of our limited time together…

We made our venture to Alpine to the fabulous “Dear Lizzie”—oooh, such fun lovely things to look at and such fun tasty items to taste…

And if one yellow apron is good, three must be super good…

Love my sis, love my mom, love my husband for holding the fort down on Saturday while I gallivanted around to every girly place we could think of in the valley and beyond…

Easter Weekend and Furniture Re-Do…

I am obviously all about clever titles, but that is exactly what’s going on—gathering with family for Easter festivities and updating furniture!!  Oh, can you even stand the excitement?!

The lovely and colorful Easter girl cousins: Morgan, Kendell, Aspen, and Kylie…

Serious Easter Egg Hunt for Kylie, Kendell, and Cael…

Coordinating Cousins: Stockton and Kendell  (Paul didn’t get the light gray and white memo)…

An old and inherited (nevertheless appreciated) peach Laz-E-Boy ready for some new life…

A sad, sad table in desperate need of something (although Cael doesn’t seem to mind, as long as he can play “go fish” with mom on it)…

And now for the big reveal:  Slip-covered chair and repurposed mod-podged world map covered old/new table!!

Our goal is to be a family of geography wizzes, well that and also not to see the sorry table top underneath…

Circle of Life—end of March edition…

 

I went and had myself another birthday and now I am even more thirty-ish than I ever was before…

And as a complete bonus, two of my girlies are still off-track, which means they were able to join Cael and me at the Discovery Children’s Museum for preschool fieldtrip/big birthday festivity fun…

Paul and I celebrated being officially Mr. and Mrs. for 17 lovely years now…

Since it is springtime, Cael was again able to rejoice again in the fluffy white stuff again (it did melt by the afternoon, and we will always take all the moisture we can get)…

Big plans were made for a fun family weekend in warm/not snowy St. George for Kendell and Kylie’s dance competition (with Morgan as the #1 cheerleader)…

We got all packed and ready and poor little #5 here went and got back in his bed—that’s not the normal routine.  He was feverish and miserable, so we went for plan B—mom and Cael stay home, dad takes the rest of the crew down south.  This turned out to be a good call, Cael threw up his orange popsicle and eggs about a half hour after the crew left…

Cousin Apsen and Kylie did beautifully on their duet…

Kylie shimmied it up in her group routine, as did Kendell (insert awesome Kendell pic here from other memory card)…

The kids got to ride home with Grampa Randy and Gramma Sharlene (thanks, guys!!), because lucky dad got to stay in the sun for 2 more days for a work conference…

Of course, that was all after Curtis was trying to learn a few new sweet moves from Cousin Tanner, and, uh, the cool handstand maneuver didn’t work out all that great for Curtis…

On the minus side, Paul missed the portion of the dance competition involving the Goff girls.  On the plus side, the emergency room doctor was able to determine that Curtis’ shoulder was not broken, just separated, and could be all fixed up with the help of a sweet wrap-around brace and ice pack to perch upon his right shoulder…

Since neither mom nor dad were able to witness the fabulous dancers and their fabulous dancing, naturally Kendell’s group took first in their age group, and Kylie and Aspen took the the grand prize with the high point award out of all 45 of the performing groups !!   I may not have seen the dancing in person, but I have seen the trophies and they are super grand…

That’s so how it goes, and no way--now we are back to snow!!  But hey, we’ve absolutely also got daffodils…

Loving March…

So it is off-track time for 2 of the Goff girlies, which means instead of going to school like regular school aged school kids for the entire month of March, we can do exciting things like travel to exotic European markets for very fancy gourmet lunches of Swedish delicacies (ie: meatballs, we are soooo cosmopolitan) …

We’re going with the theme “the family that plays ‘let’s try to win a radio contest together’ stays together!!”  It’s a theme that may linger for a while-- we have yet to be the magic #20 caller, but what we do have is the very same thing that the female team on “Celebrity Apprentice” has, and that my friends is a little something called tenacity…well, that and the fact that there’s still 2 more weeks left to win, so there’s always hope.  Hope and tenacity, quite a pair…

Miss Kylie is now officially 9 years old!!  The day started out with some potential March springyness, but as the jumbo snowflakes started falling and then kept on coming and coming, the birthday girl and her curly locks found it necessary to stay inside and add more layers of clothing.  Fortunately, Layered Reese’s Peanut Butter Cake (thanks, Picky Palate) tastes delightful in any weather…

Our St. Patty’s Day green baby bundt cakes were tasty and fun (thanks again, Picky Palate!!), and eventually I’ll learn to get enough Pam spray into each individual nook and cranny of the pan to facilitate a smooth and complete baby bundt coming out of the baby bundt pan!!  (Just a little fyi—the jr. Goff’s could not have been less concerned with the lack of complete uniformity in the festive presentation of the dainty little cakes—frosting is truly a magic salve for semi-broken baby bundts.  For those playing along, that is now 4 uses of the uber-chic culinary term “baby bundt”…)

Then there’s Mr. Festive, himself, once again sporting his very best green ensemble!!  He has been so concerned that he needs to wear green that he has worn this little number to preschool for the past 3 times, just in case he had the wrong Irish holiday or the wrong date or the wrong whatever.  He’s all about being prepared and also, he likes green—it’s a win-win all the way around!!

This, the beginning of March…

One of the true highlights of 3rd grade is getting to take part in the wax museum!!  Miss Kylie was all about researching and then portraying the one and only Florence Nightengale…   Kylie’s mom was all about channeling my inner-Julie Andrews channeling her inner Maria Von Trapp—while the skirt, apron, and cape came not from old/dowdy draperies, they did come from old and not-a-bit-dowdy sheets!!  (Gramma Bev would be impressed with the resourceful re-use of aged and torn bedding.  Kylie’s mom is continually impressed with Kylie’s good-sported nature…)

We heart progress in the basement, not to mention the lifetime supply of heavy duty buckets…

March, of course, equals snow…

Cael, the “super pre-school kid of the week” could not have been more thrilled with the weatherly turn of events—“Mom!!  It’s not melted anymore!!” 

MORE progress in the basement—HOORAY!!  (Still waiting for Desi Jr. to show up with the projector that would fit right there in the ceiling, hmm, maybe??…)

And it is good for me to know that I am completely of super sound mind.  I do know that my girl, Kylie, is 8 right now, and that on her birthday she will indeed be 9.  I only got the first part of that thought on the calendar—it’s a good thing she straightened me out…

Bummer…

Do you remember that Brady Bunch episode where Marsha was writing in her secret diary about her secret/ potentially embarrassing/yet undying love for Desi Arnez Jr.?  Then she hid this secret diary away in their carport/garage next to the astroturf lawn, only to have it be discovered by the youngest one in curls, Cindy, just in time for it to be given to the man collecting books for the charity book drive??  Upon discovering this unintentional theft of the volume containing the innermost thoughts, hopes, dreams, not to mention swoonings of tweenage Marsha, the entire Brady clan was sent into emergency detective/ clean-up mode—they must find the bookstore that had become the unwitting new home to this, the most private and precious diary of a young girl!  And not just any young girl, the one and only Marsha Marsha Marsha Brady!  Fortunately/ amazingly/ incredibly for this teen queen, after several minutes of angst and many tears, not only was the diary found by Mrs. Brady and Sister Cindy (all is now forgiven) Brady—of course, but awesome housekeeper/cook/laundress/ bowler/advice giver, Alice, just happened to be buds with one Desi Arnez Jr.’s housekeeper/cook/laundress/ not sure about the bowling/advice giver!!  Awesome!!  And groovy Alice arranged for groovy Desi Jr. to come over to tell Marsha how groovy it was to keep a groovy diary where she could write all about how groovy he was—groovy!!

It is a classic episode—Marsha and Desi Jr., drama, a happy/entirely believable ending, what’s not to love??

This brings us to last Wednesday at the Goff house.  Mr. Goff has been dutifully working on the main room of our basement—we are (he and Curtis, actually) in the sheet- rocking stage.  Paul had just ordered and received a lovely and surprisingly small new LED projector (with 30,000 very cool available running hours on the very cool/ low energy using bulb) that he had mounted into the ceiling so we would know exactly where to paint out the screen—exciting stuff!  The sheet-rocking business is a dusty one, so Paul had removed the new projector from its ceiling perch to keep it in fine working condition for the upcoming day when walls are painted, carpet is in, and the Goff’s would gather as a family with popcorn, licorice and smiles for movie night!

Mrs. Goff had helped Curtis go through  his closet and eliminate some things that no longer fit.  These items were put into grocery bags that were sitting in the hall.  I had some errands to do that would be in the general vicinity of the local DI.  In a continual effort to make the most out of my time/money/ gasoline, all of the bags of items to be donated came with me on my errands and were dropped off at the DI.

Around 9:30 in the pm when the Mr. and Mrs. were chatting and the Mrs. mentioned to the Mr. about the earlier drop-off at the DI, the Mr. got very panicked and ran ashen-faced down the stairs to witness for himself that indeed, the DI bags had gone ………….to the DI.  Unfortunately, the Mr. had slipped the new projector into one of those very bags to keep it protected from getting dusty.  Also unfortunately, the Mrs. was not aware of this product placement.

Not good.

After a frantic late night/ after-hours phone call to the DI, an early morning run to the dock to go through all of the items that had come in during the last day, conversation and searching with Manager Tom,  our name and number and picture of our sweet/ not meant to be donated item left with the manager, more phone calls, a subsequent floor and backroom search later in the day with the Manager Frank and Manager Joe, a call to the Humanitarian Center, where surplus items are sent sometimes…

we came up with nothing.

Our new projector is no longer with us.  We have come to the acceptance phase.  It is somewhere, somewhere in the fine company of its very own remote.  But not in the company of its power cord, because that we do still have, whew!  So whether it found its way out onto the DI floor, or whether it didn’t make it past the loading dock, or whether it ends up in some exotic locale such as Turkey or Somalia with Sandy Parks and Rec Basketball t-shirts, little red crutches, and baby blankets, or whether it has been compressed into a cube of clothing (think Wall-E style) –I don’t think it is coming back.

We can’t lose hope, though—Desi Jr. could totally show up with it this week and that would be so groovy…

love is in the air and on the door…

I do like when I’m actually able to come up with something good—I’m not saying that this happens frequently, but every now and then it sort of does…

The kids were excited when they saw the stacks of hearts that we would be using for Family Home Evening (the 11-year-old said “Wow mom—you actually prepared something, instead of like a lesson or a story!”   Huh, good to know that my diligent lesson/ special story prep doesn’t actually count…)

Each family member got a stack of hearts that they got to write something on that they loved about each other member of the family.   We slathered them all over the pantry door and now we get to feel and see the love!!  (I learned that the thing one of my other children loves about me is my “housekeeping”—wow, housekeeping…)

The excitement expressed by my fab five makes me think we’ll try a repeat performance for next Valentine’s Day, that may start a little sooner so the mother can get as much lovey dovey mileage out of this as is humanly possible…