GNO

I am a BIG believer in the need for a good girl's night out! There is no better therapy then lots of laughs with your friends (and a little chocolate!)

We had such a fun night last night with pedicures, pizza at The Pie, shoppping at Gardner Village, and then watching a chick flick.

Hours of talking, laughing, eating, and having a great tme. Does life get any better? It's nights like these that probably are the cause of my not needing drugs, alcohol, or a therapist!

I'm changing my name to Holly Homemaker

It's either that or start attending meetings.

I have ended up planning, shopping for, cooking, and hosting three dinners in the past 8 days as well as helping with one more. Last Wednesday I cooked for 60 teachers at the middle school. Thursday I helped with another teacher dinner. Monday night I hosted the high school soccer team for dinner and tonight I am in charge of a YW Combined Crazy Menu dinner.

That makes 3 days of shopping. Three days of frantically cooking and three days of then having to clean up my destroyed kitchen.

To add just a little bit more fun, besides the dinner tonight, I am also baking goods for an elementary school fall festival.

No, I did NOT plan for it to end up this way. That's why I need to attend meetings. I had to leave early from the January YW planning meeting so I was assigned tonight's dinner. Then, I missed the RHS soccer team meeting (I was at Chandler's game) so I was just given the night that no one else wanted.

Moral of the story: Become a professional caterer or start attending ALL meetings. (Couldn't cloning myself be another option?)

Thank goodness Chandler is off-track. It hasn't been much fun for him but he has been an emormous help. He's unwrapped caramels, peeled potatoes, unwrapped buillion cubes, sliced cucumbers, made punch, run back into the store to purchase the vanilla pudding I forgot, made his own lunch, run up and down the stairs to the storeroom to fetch ingredients for me, etc

and the parents role is?

It's hard to be a parent - at least it's hard to be a good one! How does one determine good, better, best practices? How do you know where to draw the line? I have to admit that I think I fall into the category of "pretty-tough-parent that expects a lot from her kids".

For example, I have trained all of my kids to get themselves up in the morning. They have to take responsibility for themselves and not rely on a parent to wake them up. I think this is a good practice. They won't always have a parent around to wake them for college classes or work.

However, I work with 2 women who have 17-year-old sons who wake them every morning. They claim it's a parent's job plus it is nice for the sons to wake to a loving, caring voice. They also tell me that their sons can't reliably get themselves up and it's the parent's responsibility to ensure they get to school.

I say, "Let them sleep in and miss a few classes, have to pay for and attend tardy school, and they'll eventually catch on."

But, what do I know? It's not like I'm winning any mother-of-the-year contests.

and the list just goes on...

I keep finding more things that I lost when my computer crashed. I've had to re-create PTA files, directories, mission statements, 100 life goals lists, etc.

This morning I added one more thing to the list: McKayla's player profile. I had spent hours last year creating it before we attended the major tournaments in California and Nevada. We're heading to Surf Cup in San Diego over Thanksgiving. What should have been a 2-minute update on McKayla's player profile (what's her new GPA? what tournaments has her team won in the past year? etc) has turned into a several hour project of re-creating the entire profile.

Dang!

General Conference

My favorite General Conference quote of the day:

"We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become."

Elder Richard G. Scott

Good Things Utah

One of my Mia Maids (Atalie) wanted to go to a broadcast of a local talk show, Good Things Utah, for a class activity. Since there was no school today, we went this morning. I only have 3 Mia Maids right now and one couldn't go so here is "my girls" pictured with the hosts.

McKayla and Atalie are in the back. The hosts are Nicea, Angie, Mardi, and Reagan. (Reagan is my personal favorite.)