‘Magoo is not yet ready to appreciate a cultural event of this nature. If I’d known that in advance, I’d have bribed him, just like I do in church.” [Read more at Parenting.com]

Today in the car, Magoo noticed that several cars were speeding past us.

Magoo: They are going off the speed limit mom! Totally!
Me: Yep. They’re going pretty fast.
Magoo: They’re going too fast. We don’t drive like that.
Me: Hrm.
Magoo: We don’t drive off the speed limit because we don’t want to get a ticket.
Me: That, and we want to choose the right and obey the law.
Magoo: Yeah. Maybe they just don’t know about speed limits.
Me: Hmmm.
Magoo: Or maybe they just don’t know about Jesus.

In his mind, Jesus equals good. If you are doing what’s good, you’re following Jesus and if you’re doing what’s bad, you are not. He gives you the benefit of the doubt though. If you’re doing something wrong, you may just not know that Jesus exists so you don’t have the option of following him. This can be broadened to include speeding, favorite color choices, not eating your vegetables.

It makes me want to watch my speedometer a little more closely. After all, I’m a good Christian woman. I might as well drive like it.

I stayed home from church today with a pathetic sickly Wanda. She’s got a snuffly nose, a cough, a rattle and a roll. She can’t sleep without a binky but she can’t breathe WITH a binky so we are at an impasse. There is a lot of crying and snarfling going on.

I’m just getting over something similar to what she has, although I looked a lot less cute when it was my turn so I tried to nap in between rescuing her from the suffocating bink and alternately calming her with it.

When I woke up from my nap, the kids were watching a movie, something we don’t do much of on Sundays and Dan and I decided it wasn’t a great Sabbath day movie choice. I’m not sure that there’s anything religiously wrong with Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus, although the male/female relations are somewhat of an archetypal muddle. I think we decided it wasn’t a great Sunday movie because it sucks.

So we let them watch a movie that does not suck. According to my Grandpa, who saw it around one hundred times in the theatre when it was released, it’s about the un-suckingest movie that has ever and will ever be made. The hills are alive with it. You guessed it. We watched The Sound of Music.

I cried when they sang about the problem with a certain young novitiate named Maria. I cried when she had confidence in sunshine. I bawled my eyes out when she taught the children how to verbalize Solfège and don’t get me started on Maria’s favorite things. It is too much. I love that movie. It’s in my blood.

I love it because it reminds me of how happy my childhood was, even though my sister made me be Rolf when we danced along with “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.” It was a charmed childhood. Tonight I proclaimed that when Dan and I dress up as Rolf and Liesel for Halloween, I get to be the girl, all pretty in pink and he can be the pre-Nazi messenger boy.

Laylee was enthralled, talking about what an amazing governess Maria was. As I child I liked Maria, but I don’t remember thinking she was all that amazing. Weren’t all moms kind of like that? She very much reminded me of my own mom but with shorter hair and a guitar.

The best comment of the night came when the nuns were singing about Maria at the beginning of the movie and Magoo sat with a disgusted look on his face and said, “Why do they just go on and ON and ON and ON about it?”

We stopped for bed just as the Von Trapp family singers were climbing trees, about 5 minutes pre-firing, about 7 minutes pre-Edelweiss, somewhere near 20 minutes pre-most-romantic-dance-scene-ever.

So far my kids think it’s a happy movie with lots of singing and too many nun parts. But wait. It gets better. Tomorrow we get to finish up with icky romantic love and Nazis. Maybe we should just watch the first half again.

P.S. “Favorite Things” is still not a Christmas song.

If it’s unplanned, some people might call it an “actual” emergency but no one died so I’d like to refer to it as a drill.

Monday night we were staying up a little late to watch our new favorite show Castle and I told Dan I could smell something coming in the house from the garage. We went out to investigate and found that the super strong smell was filling the entire garage and we couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Having never been trained as a general contractor or a disaster-sniffing K9, I had no idea what the smell was or where it was coming from.

It could have been a gas leak, a motor failure, burning electronics, or maybe even a can of rancid food that had exploded in our storage shelves. Dan and I sniffed our way around the garage and even aired it out to get a better feel for source. In the end we decided that it was probably a furnace issue, turned off the furnace for the night and Dan headed inside to bed.

Now here’s how I know someone was looking out for me. I suddenly felt an urge to rearrange things in the garage, the garage that I’d let fester for months, the garage in which it was 11 o’clock pm and I had a sleeping baby in the house where I should have been sleeping as well. I just had a feeling I should move some stuff around.

As I walked by the electrical box, I heard a skittering sound. Thinking it was likely a rodent of some sort, I decided to stay away from that part of the garage but a few minutes later I noticed a swollen, bulging, water-soaked cardboard box on the shelf next to it. When I went to investigate, I found that one of our water bottles had a slow leak and had made a bit of a mess on the shelf and I decided I’d rather clean it up sooner than later.

So I spent the next several minutes mopping up the water, long enough to hear that the skittering sound was coming from inside the breaker box which was crackling and popping and giving off a burning smell but no visible smoke.

Looking down around the breaker box I noticed that directly in front of it was our kerosene heater full of fuel, a box of Duraflame logs and our wood supply. It was a perfect stack of kindling and accelerants. Nice. I called Dan out to have a look while I moved the flammables away from the fire hazard.

He went inside to turn off our computers before turning off the electricity to the house and my job was to stay by the box in case it burst into flames. And what was I to do then? Stop them with my laser vision? I had no idea because we couldn’t find our fire extinguisher. We both totally knew where it was. Only problem being – neither of us could actually locate it.

When I talked to my sister about this on the phone the next day, she said she totally knew where hers was. A minute later, she started grumbling, “It’s not there.” It took her several minutes to track it down, by which time her house would have burnt to the ground. So I encourage each of you to go today and find your fire extinguisher and give it a little pat so that you know that you really know where it is. And while you’re at it, check the expiration date.

Anyway, when we got the electricity turned off, I still wasn’t feeling safe enough to go to sleep while my children slept above that box. So we called the fire department to make sure we were okay. They jumped in the rig and stopped by with their giant red truck, their heat-detecting gun and their big huge pants. The box was still hot but not sparking and they told us we’d be fine and to call an electrician in the morning.

I just feel so blessed that we were able to figure things out in time to not be burnt to a crisp in our beds. If we hadn’t stayed up late… if I hadn’t smelled the smell from the garage… if I hadn’t decided to rearrange things when I should have been sleeping… if that bottle hadn’t leaked, drawing my attention to the breaker area, who knows what would have happened to us? I know Heavenly Father is protecting and looking out for my family and that’s a very comforting feeling.

We had one night without power and the next day, Dan was able find an honest and capable electrician who fixed things up to the tune of less than $200. Wild, wild night.

This past weekend, we watched General Conference, a big fat conference our church has twice a year where the Prophet and other leaders of our church broadcast speeches and messages all over the world by internet and satellite.

We watch church on TV for 2 days at home in our pajamas. This year my mom made the kids a big tent to watch from and to be honest I slept through most of it in my sleep-deprived haze. I’m glad the talks are available online for later review because I could not keep my eyes open most of the time.

One talk I will NOT forget involved one church leader giving his solemn testimony of the Book of Mormon while holding the original copy that was read by the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum at the time of their martyrdom in the early 1800s. Not only was it an extremely powerful talk, but as a former librarian, I will always remember it as the talk that gave historians across the world a coronary. I wonder exactly how many seconds after he finished speaking that a team of archivists swept in with special dusting cloths and archival quality Ziplocs.

Getting ready for the conference, Magoo and I were looking at a picture of our Prophet and I asked him if he knew his name.

“Yeah…ummmm…no.”

“It’s President Monson.”

“Nope. That’s not it. It’s something with a train in it.”

“A train?”

“Yeah. The prophet’s REAL name has a train in it.”

I was dumbfounded. I tried to prove him wrong.

“There’s no train in his name. His name is Thomas S. Monson.”

“YEAH! Oh YEAH! He has a THOMAS in his name.”

So I wonder if President Monson’s other friends ever refer to him by his REAL FULL NAME, Thomas “The Tank Engine” S. Monson.

We had a great Easter today. Magoo woke up bright and early and came into my room ticked that there was a baby gate at the top of the stairs. Yes, young padawan, you really think I trust you not to run down there at the crack of dawn (as though dawn exists in Seattle before June) and eat yourself into a diabetic coma? Not so much with the trusting. Very much with the child restraints. He calmed a bit when I told him to snuggle in bed with me while Dan finished his shower. Calmed and then fell almost immediately back to sleep. It’s like he’d been awakened by his chocolate radar and once he realized that the chocolate was surrounded by a parentally-induced force-field, he lost the will to remain sentient.

I mean come on, after all the trouble we parents go through to help put out the baskets and make our home a welcoming environment for the bunny-man, we deserve to see the looks on their faces when they run down and dig through that grass for treats and prizes. This year Dad was in charge of “setting the mood for the bunny’s arrival — edible division” and the sugar flowed FREE-LY. Holy Dina Cow! There were a lot of chocolate and marshmallow things brought into this house, many of which will be finding their way to Megacorp in the morning.

Some things that did stay were the two giant chocolate bunnies. Each a foot tall, containing almost a pound of chocolate. They may not ever make a return trip to this house but the video of the kids gnawing on them is priceless.

I “helped the bunny feel welcome — toy division” and the kids ended up with flashlights, a big Frisbee and a rubber snake.

Church was a good opportunity to get the kids grounded back in the real meaning of the holiday, although their thoughts were never far from their treasures at home.

At one point this afternoon, Magoo ran up to me. “Oh Mom! My snake is so cute!” He then stared up at the ceiling and yelled as if to the heavens, “YANK YOU EASTER BUNNY!”

I’m not sure he lives “up there” so much. But I’m sure he heard the thanks and was grateful for it.

I cut way back on dinner this year — ham, potatoes, corn, green beans and Pillsbury crescent rolls. It was nice, not overwhelming and I think it may be a foreshadowing of Easters to come. I usually go a little crazy overboard with the side dishes and homemade everything. But this year it was simple and Laylee called me “The Best Mom Chef Ever.” Dan agreed that it was the perfect Easter dinner, not too much, just enough. Lazy pregnant Kathryn is teaching regular Kathryn many tricks and shortcuts that regular Kathryn will remember and revel in for years to come.

We then scooped up the kids, took the new gospel art book our church has just come out with and narrated through many of the major events of Christ’s life with the chronological paintings. Then we did the Easter egg lesson about the days leading up to Easter. The whole thing lasted a little over half an hour and it was fun and the kids stayed with us most of the time and participated, making me feel less guilty about the party atmosphere that accompanies the serious stuff.

I think the best part of the day was at dinner when I told Laylee and Magoo that some of our friends have asked the Easter Bunny not to visit their homes because they want to focus more on the Savior and what He did for us and less on the candy and treats. They looked horrified and then an analogy came to me.

Can you imagine if it was your birthday and some friends threw a huge party and celebrated and had treats and gave each other presents and food and played games but never looked at you or talked to you or wrote your name on the cake? Technically it was your birthday party but everyone there ignored you. This was shocking. I told them that for a lot of people that’s how they celebrate Easter and Christmas, not giving any thought to what the celebration was really about.

Laylee thought this was awful. But I explained. Maybe a lot of those people didn’t even know it was your birthday or that birthdays were even important. Maybe they just knew there was a celebration and thought it would be a great time to get together with family and friends to have a good time. But we know when your birthday is and why we’re celebrating so we need to make sure to celebrate for the right reasons. And we know what Easter’s for so we need to be sure to celebrate what really matters.

I think Laylee got it. Magoo was still clutching his snake and shoveling Marie Calendar’s pie into his grinning face. At least he knew that the answer to most of our serious questions today was “Jesus?” We’ll work on him some more next year.

We say a little prayer before we read scriptures each night. Usually Dan or I say it because it’s a special short little prayer, just inviting the Spirit to be there and giving thanks for what we’re about to read.

Tonight Magoo insisted on saying the scripture prayer. I let him. Here is an exact transcription of that prayer:

“Dear Hebenly Father. We thank thee for the scritchers and we thank thee for the slugs because they are SO nice to us. Jesus Christ. Amen.”

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure God enjoyed that prayer almost as much as I did.

And Magoo’s right. They ARE so nice. Let’s praise and be glad of heart for slugs this Easter season.

We have a big fat hairy bedtime routine at our house. First we send the kids up to prepare for inspection. They’re supposed to brush their teeth, go potty, flush the toilet, wash their hands, make sure the bathroom’s tidy, turn off the lights, get in their pajamas and pick a story.

Dan comes up and does a military-style inspection. You may ask, “How does Dan know how to do a military-style inspection?” and I would answer, “From TV. Duh!” To perform a military inspection, don’t you basically just bark out orders, while going down a checklist of to-do items and remaining extremely serious while the inspected parties giggle and yell back either “CHECK!” or more sheepishly, “UN-check!”? When they yell “UN-check!” usually in regards to flushing or washing hands, they scamper off to complete the task so they can then yell “CHECK!”

The only time Dan breaks his harsh military demeanor while performing the inspection is at the end when he gives high fives and tells them what a great job they did. I’m pretty sure that behavior is not regulation. It’s also probably not regulation to perform the inspection while a pathetic parched-lipped woman lays on the floor in the corner of the room, attempting to hold in her vomit. But such is life in our household these days.

I will report that I did not vomit yesterday, much to the chagrin of my stomach, who fought hard to liberate its contents. This triumph brought me to the gym today, followed by a chiropractor appointment, wherein the substitute chiropractor looked into my eyes and told me he could tell 100% just by looking at my irises that I’m going to have a boy. I’ve been sort of feeling a boy vibe for a couple of years now so I choose to believe him.

So on to bedtime. We then read the kid’s stories and have scripture time. After reading all the way through the Book of Mormon a couple of pages at a time with very little comprehension on the part of the kids, we’ve moved on to illustrated stories from the New Testament. These are definitely a much bigger hit as they have pictures, fewer Thou-type words, and most of the time when the kids guess that the guy with the beard is Jesus, it actually is.

Then we do prayers, the lights go out and we let the kids each pick a song for us to sing to them.

Lately Magoo has become obsessed with a song he learned at church, “We are a Happy Family”. He loves it. When we ask him which song he wants, he proceeds to sing, “She loves me. She loves me. We are a happy family.” I love that in his mind, the whole song boils down to “Mom loves me. Mom loves me. This equals happiness for all people.”

We’ve been meaning to record his song request for a while but when we finally got around to it, he’d changed his lyrics a bit. It’s still cute as a button though. Please overlook the fact that his pajamas are an advertisement for the Wii. For some odd reason, these were not hot sellers and so there were millions of pairs of them on rock bottom clearance. I figured they would be no worse at covering his nakedness than say, Diet Coke pajamas or Geico pajamas. I feel almost no weirdness, wrapping my son in a giant advertisement to sleep each night.

The actual lyrics to the song are:

I love Mommy. She loves me.
We love Daddy. Yessiree.
He loves us and so you see.
We are a happy family.

I love Laylee. She loves me.
We love Magoo. Yessiree.
He loves us and so you see.
We are a happy family.

Poor Jack is dead. Poor JackAgain is dead. I noticed him laying on the bottom of the bowl a few days ago, his untouched pellets swollen on the surface of the water. This is not unusual for JackAgain. He will sometimes lie on the bottom of the bowl for days at a time as if sleeping or in deep thought, only to startle when the glass is tapped and then sink back down to the bottom.

I think he was always prone to depression, a little fish stuck in a bowl with no chance of escape.

When I tapped on the glass this time, his lifeless body just swayed with the motion of the water but nary a fin did he flap. I tried again, this time noticing that his body seemed to be covered in sort of a waxy film.

So I told the kids. They took it okay. Laylee was off and running in a few seconds. Magoo seemed fine until suddenly he was not. His eyes filled with tears. “JackAgain is dead?” he cried. “Yes buddy, I’m afraid he is. But it’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

Magoo reached out for some mama loves and I picked his giant boy body up in my arms and held him like a baby. Seeing the attention he was getting, Laylee came running over. “I can’t believe he’s dead,” she faux-sobbed in a voice vaguely reminiscent of a half-way decent impression of real sadness. “I just can’t believe it. Oh JackAgain!”

My eyes did not do a full roll. They just sort of drifted heavenward and my eyelashes only fluttered a bit as I reached out a hand to touch her un-Oscar-worthy play-grieving arm. “Yeah. We’ll sure miss him,” I lied.

So we held a bowl-side flush funeral for the fish. Dan asked for advice on what he should say and we came up with a Finding Nemo meets The Lion King sort of Christian sermon about how all drains lead to the ocean and he’ll then be eaten by a bigger fish in the great circle of life but his spirit will live on in fishy heaven. You see, I have a firm belief in an afterlife and resurrection but I’ll be darned if I could explain exactly what JackAgain’s spirit was doing at that moment. Honestly I didn’t much care.

I have disliked that fish with a fervent dislikishness since nearly the day we brought him home almost THREE YEARS AGO. We had gone through a series of fish rather rapidly. They would die or eat each other and we’d get a new one. I was sick of cleaning fish poop out of the bowl but each time I’d cave and buy another to quell Laylee’s grief. When she was 3, it was more believable.

The day I bought JackAgain, I told Dan he was the last fish I’d ever buy. In 3-6 months when he kicked the bucket, I was done. The kids loved him for about 2 minutes every couple of weeks when their friends were over but other than that, it was just me, Jack, and the stinking bowl of fish ish. He couldn’t do anything cool. I sensed he was unhappy in his little glass prison. He looked weird. My confessions of periodically forgetting to care for him earned me nasty comments from pet lovers who felt I should not be allowed to reproduce considering my inhumane treatment of Betta fish.

At some point, around when I read the first book in the Twilight series, I began to wonder about how he was living so long. Maybe he wasn’t alive but some sort of undead fish who would “live” forever, pooping and tormenting me, long after my children were grown and gone.

Apparently he was un-undead because now he’s actually dead and I think we all know that’s impossible for an un. I can’t say there wasn’t some glee as I cleaned out his bowl for the last time, running his little glass rocks and plastic plants through the dishwasher to remove any deadness that might have rubbed off on them.

Since he left no last will and testament, his home and other personal effects will be donated to my neighbor Natasha, the marine biologist, to be used in some sort of humane and deeply noble project that will possibly absolve me from openly admitting my failure to love one of God’s creatures.

Laylee’s been trying to interpret and apply the biblical story of the widow’s mite. I blogged about it over at the Parenting Post.

…She replied, “Maybe Jesus just decided he didn’t want people to give as much money to the treasury anymore so he was happy that she understood what he wanted and only gave a little bit.”…

[read more at Parenting.com]