Pure Honesty Tag

Tag!

I'm not one to be afraid of showing my true colors, so don't expect beauty when you look at these picture. I think it's nice for all of us to show our vulnerable or even our messy sides (whatever our weaknesses are) on occasion. I knew I'd get tagged with this one, but I followed the rules and didn't cheat. These pictures are of how everything looked exactly after I read my friend's tag.

1. The sink. Believe it or not, I cleaned it spotless this morning, but look at it already. I still haven't even painted my window trim!


2. The toilet. Looks like Hyatt used it during his bath. I meant to clean it today, but other cleaning took priority. (You'll notice step stools here and there since I'm a shrimp, but the kids use them too.)


3. The laundry. It's down in my dark dungeon of a storage room, so it gets really dusty, but can you see I labeled my laundry supplies area? I got a label maker...I love organization, when I get the chance to do it.


4. The fridge. I had to show all the magnets. We started collecting them from all the places we go starting about a year ago, so the front (top half) of the fridge is London magnets, the bottom half is kid magnets for them to play with, and the side is London and other places we've been in the last year. Someday I'll make a magnetic travel board so they won't be on my fridge. I have a serious lack of storage in this apartment, so the top of the fridge is doubling as a cupboard, and the garbage is piling up next to it on the floor because Hyrum's been too busy to take it out. The inside is dirty and has bare space since I only bought essentials since returning from England.


5. My closet. Too small to get messy. Hyrum and I share this space. I hide tubs of toys on the top out of the kids' reach so I don't go insane with 10,000 toys in such a small space.


6. Favorite shoes. Cute and comfy, but I don't wear them as much as I'd like because I rarely wear black, and they actually make my feet really stinky so I have to wash the insoles often.


7. Kids and spouse. Two were in the tub, one was playing on the floor, and one is in my belly, so you'll have to look at my picture to see it. Hyrum was watching Casino Royale (the James Bond movie...it has lots of London shots in it where we can say "hey, we've been there").


8. Favorite room. I don't like any of the rooms in this aparment because they're always messy since I don't have enough storage, but we spend the most time together in the living room and I catch up with friends and family on the computer, so here's the room. This is a typical scene, Hy playing with the kids.


9. Dream vacation: travel the US in a motorhome with my family. Most likely won't happen, so that's my retirement dream also.



10. Me. I was cleaning the kitchen, house, dungeon wood shop and doing all kinds of laundry (pillows, blankets, big stuff) all day, so I look like a serious scum.


I tag my sister-in-laws and Marcee. Daisha, you're off the hook because I was just at your house for 3 weeks and it's too clean to be embarrassing, though the Tabby-inflicted toilet seat damage might be interesting to others. :) Go take pictures of those 10 things RIGHT NOW! No cheating, no cleaning or straightening, no photoshop! Be honest!

Good Eats????

Okay, here's my top 10 list of strange food related things I've discovered while in England.
1. You will never find root beer over here, because it tastes similar to a medicine they have, so no one likes it.
2. It's hard to find a decent sized jar of peanut butter because, again, they don't like it. Edward won't even kiss Daisha after she's eaten it because he detests it that much (Hyrum won't kiss me after I've eaten green olives).
3. There's no such thing as steak sauce, and mustard isn't like the typical yellow stuff you get in America. It's very spicy...makes your eyes water.
4. At McDonald's, they don't have biscuits, so if you order breakfast, you'll only have the option of the muffin. Biscuits don't exist in England because biscuits are cookies to them. The closest they come is scones, and those are too sweet to be biscuits. Again, no one is a fan of American biscuits over there, so they just skip them entirely.
5. Having tea doesn't mean you're drinking tea. It means you're having a snack between lunch and dinner. Many people drink tea at that time with their snack (cake, scone, etc). Kids ask for tea after school instead of dinner, because it's the same thing.
6. Almost every single food is eaten with a knife and fork (fork in the left hand, upside down, and knife in the right), and napkins are a rare find.
7. Juice concentrates aren't frozen, they're in plastic jugs and they're collectively called "squash".
8. The alcohol section in the stores is about 4 times as big as the ones I've seen here. A lot of it has theft tags on them that set off the alarms if you shoplift.
9. Ranch is unheard of.
10. If you order food at KFC, you won't find it coming with biscuits and mashed potatoes. You'll find baked beans (though they're more like pork and beans without the pork) and french fries (chips) come with your food instead. The mashed potatoes and biscuits are my favorite part, so I was disappointed!

English Vacation (Day 20): Jet Lag

The Johnson Jinx hit us this morning in the form of jet lag, or should I say children lag. Here are the events that occurred today that I attribute to the Johnson Jinx.

Lack of sleep.
At 12:30 am this morning, Kiersa woke up. Ugh! She's on English time still and to her it's 8:30 am and time to be up playing. She only nursed for a minute, then she just fussed until I made her a bottle. Kiersa and I have had a hard struggle with nursing, and she's my first baby that has caused me serious pain...for the whole 7 months she's been nursing. I think she'll be weened this month since she only nurses for a couple of minutes twice a day and then gets mad at me, and all I'm left with is horrid pain and a fussy baby. She doesn't even have teeth yet, but has always managed to inflict pain on me on almost a daily basis since the day she was born.


Anyway, she didn't want a bottle, but she wanted to be up and playing. I could hardly bear it with only a couple hours of sleep under my belt, but after about an hour or so, she finally took her bottle and went back to sleep...until 3:30 when she wanted to get up again. I about died. I was trying to recover from the jet lag (there's an 8 hour time difference between England and Oregon), but her getting up all night wasn't helping. She went back to sleep around 4 am, when Hyatt and Talea woke up hungry and ready to start their day. I figured there was no point in trying to go back to sleep again, so I made them sandwiches (then Kiersa woke up again) and folded the blankets and secured car seats in the car until Hyrum woke up. We left Angi's at 5:30 am and headed up Hwy 101.

We stopped in Eureka to shop at Costco since that's Hyrum's favorite store. We miss not having a Costco in our area. I wish I lived close to a Costco, Target, Les Schwab and WalMart. I always base whether I could live in an area on if it has those stores (yet I don't have a Costco or Target here). I don't really care about shopping at other stores that much. We got our Christmas shopping done for Kiersa and Talea, which is a first in our procrastinating history.

We also stopped in Crescent City at their castle park. It's seriously the coolest playground I've seen in a long time, and I wish we had a park like that in our area. The kids loved it!

While we were there, a family group was having a BBQ birthday party which smelled sooooo good, and it made us miss our Johnson family in Utah really bad. Even though there's almost constant drama out there, the Johnsons know how to party and get together often, and we really miss those get togethers. Hyrum's entire family (aside from one sister and him) live within an hour of each other, and he has aunts, cousins and grandparents there too. We suddenly had a longing to move to Utah to be close to family. Or better yet, for Hyrum's family to give up Utah and move to Oregon, Wyoming, Idaho or Montana.

Don't be fooled. The Johnson Jinx didn't end with just a lack of sleep this morning. Several more surprises awaited us later.

Locked out.
We got back home around 6:45 pm only to find that Hyrum's employees who had been checking on our house and animals didn't leave our house key at the house, so we were locked out. It took almost an hour, bent cards, bent trowels, breaking into the big house to get our tall ladder, and crying kids before we were able to get into our apartment. If Hyrum's employee, Jeremy, didn't live 45 minutes away, we would have had him bring us the key that evening.

No hot water.
We got in the house, desperate to take showers (since it had been the evening before our departure when we took showers last) and brush our teeth (our tooth brushes had been packed away in our suitcases that would have exploded if I'd opened them), but there wasn't any hot water. We had turned off the water heater before we left. Luckily, we have a new water heater and it didn't take long for it to heat up once Hyrum turned it back on.

No football.
Hyrum turned on the TV to watch his football games he'd recorded while we were gone, only to realize that we'd turned off the electronic equipment at the surge protector in case anything happened while we were gone, so nothing had been recorded.

English Vacation (Day 19): Headed home

This morning we finished packing the clean laundry, stuffed all our souvenirs in our bags and copied our pictures onto disks. We had to leave early to make it to the airport 3 hours early (for international flights) since our flight left at 1:50 and we had to turn in our rental car. It was a sad thing to leave Daisha's house. We'd had such a great time with her family and will have such great memories to look back on. Here's her cute place.

Oh, and her neighbor's car. It's a Ford Ka (pronounce like what a crow says...Kaaa). The most popular brands of cars I saw out there seemed to be Vauxhall, like our rental, VW, and Ford of all things! This Ka should have been named the Ford Pimento, because it looks like a cross between a Pinto and a Gremlin.


Hyrum drove the car, without following Daisha, and did an impressive job. Well, at least for the part I saw. I slept most of the hour drive from staying up so late last night. After driving so much in England for 2 and a half weeks, we were getting used to the left side of the road thing, and it almost felt natural. Almost. We saw more interesting things on the road. Trailers are pulled by small cars, and horse trailers are actually motor home looking things rather than a truck pulling a trailer. This is the only regular horse trailer we saw, but look at what's pulling it!


We didn't have a car seat for Talea since she had borrowed Tabitha's booster, so she was in just a seat belt. Being the car seat fanatic I am (I'm a Britax fan), that kind of freaked me out, but I handled it...mostly because I was asleep. I didn't want to make Daisha follow us to the airport just to retrieve her booster.

Hyrum dropped us off at the terminal, so we waited for him to return the rental and catch a shuttle to meet up with us again.


By the way, our rental was diesel and was averaging 39 mpg. Pretty darn nice for a 7 passenger vehicle and how much we drove and the outrageous price of their fuel (petrol).

When Hyrum arrived, we tried to check in, but of course things couldn't go smoothly like in San Fransisco. SF had no lines, we breezed through everything, sat together on the plane, the kids slept almost the entire way, and we were thrilled with the service. Our trip home was the complete opposite. I swear that by going to England we entered the twilight zone with how many freaky weird things, or lame things, happened to us.

-The terminal was packed.
-It took ages to check in.
-We had to get on a shuttle and drive to Timbuktu to board our plane.
-We waited something like 15 minutes, or so it felt, in the shuttle while they moved the stairs.
-We had to climb stairs like the president to get on the plane, so we had to wait at the bottom while all the shuttles unloaded since we had 3 kids, a carry-on, a car seat, a stroller, and a backpack carrier (Daisha gave hers to us).
-They wouldn't put our stroller up on the plane for us, they put it underneath.
-Someone put our carry-on on board for us, and it took us forever to find it.
-They didn't seat us together.
-I was seated with Kiersa at the bulkhead with a lady to my left and a middle-aged couple to my right. How the heck did they get to sit in the bulkhead without kids!? The computer wouldn't let us select those seats unless we had another lap infant. No one was willing to trade us seats.
-Hyrum and the kids were seated a row behind and to the left so I had to gesture to get his attention if I needed help.
-I was trapped by the baby cots and couldn't get out without making a huge production of it.
-Hyatt peed his pants twice and went through all the spare clothes until he was wearing Talea's pink accented jeans, and one of the times he peed, he peed on Hyrum's lap.
-Hyrum didn't have spare clothes.
-Kiersa threw up all over the place during dinner, and the lady next to me freaked out because she thought Kiersa was choking (though she wasn't). The smell of vomit was mingling with the smell of chicken and vegetables, which didn't combine well.
-Kiersa's vomit got all over my leg, and I didn't have spare clothes.
-Hyatt's TV wouldn't work, and Hyrum's was on the fritz doing strange things.
-Everyone's headphones would scream loud fuzzy sounds in their ears if the movie would get shut off, but when you watched the movie, you could barely hear it and had to press it against your ears most of the movie.
-The flight attendants barely pretended we existed, except to tell me I had to go back to my seat and not let Kiersa sit on the floor.
-There was turbulence.
-Tilly kept pushing on the seat in front of her with her feet, annoying that person, but of course she didn't want to trade seats because she had leg room.
-The kids hardly slept and Kiersa cried a lot (for her, since she rarely cries).
-They didn't bring our stroller to the plane exit. They sent us on a wild goose chase to find it, and when we couldn't find it, they said they'd sent it to oversize luggage so we had to tote all the sleepy kids, the stroller saddle bags, the jackets, the car seat, the carry-on, and the backpack carrier all the way to the luggage pick up before we could have our hands free. Misery!!! Hyatt was crying the whole while to be carried, but it's so hard for me to carry him now with my carpal tunnel. If they didn't breeze us through customs, I was going to scream!
-We sort of breezed through customs, but had to stop at the agriculture place and explain about the farm we'd visited, in case we brought manure on our shoes or something.

And yet, with all the crud that happened, people came up to us at the end of the flight and told us how great our kids were and that theirs never would have been so good. If only they'd seen what angels they were on our first flight, they would be singing a different tune. I felt like the frazzled mom on the flight that Bill Cosby talked about.


Lest you think I'm all doom and gloom, there were a couple of good things:
-There were sterilizing toilet wipes on the flight so I didn't have to freak out about nasty bathrooms.
-The dinner was better than on the way out.
-They didn't lose our luggage or break anything.
-The people seated by me were nice and helpful.

Angi was coming to pick us up, and when she arrived, she informed us that her household was afflicted with croup. Oh boy. Just what we needed after a flight like that. We got to her house and I had to be the bad guy asking the kids not to kiss Kiersa and not let my kids play with their friends. I felt so bad. They're such loving kids and they all were excited to see each other. We went to bed at 8:30 that night because we were on England time, which meant it felt like 4:30 in the morning for us. We were beat.

English Vacation (Day 18): Windsor Castle and Cheddar Gorge

Today started as a wrap up the trip day. We were scheduled to leave tomorrow, so we only had one day left to play. It was either go to London again, or go back up to the Cotswolds to get the bag Hyrum left at the hotel (they wouldn't mail it to us unless we shipped them a postage paid box first...too much trouble). We decided to make it one last day of touring the countryside.


We started off by going to Windsor to see the Queens suburban home. We saw Buckingham Palace in the city, so we thought we'd see her home on the outskirts of London. Windsor Castle is far more impressive on the outside (in my opinion), but we didn't have time to tour the inside. It's open to tours year round, unlike Buckingham.


The city around the castle is very beautiful. I'd like to go back someday and spend a day there seeing the city and touring the castle.

We snacked on candy on our drive, and I had to take a picture of their mini candy bars. Their candy wrappers are twisted on the ends, but you can't pull them to open the wrapper because the seam is sealed. It has a little nick in the middle of the wrapper that you pull to open the candy, which is fine, but you end up with two pieces of trash rather than one most of the time, which is slightly annoying. I think I prefer to pull the twisted ends.


As we drove, I was finally able to capture a picture of Kiersa and her noistache. That would be nose sweat. You know how you sometimes get moisture between your nose and top lip, like a mustache of moisture? Daisha calls that a moistache. Well, since Kiersa always sweats on her nose, we called it a noistache. I know, we're weird. But really, she ALWAYS sweats on her nose first. That's how I know she's hot or sleeping.



We made it back up to Cheltenham to the cursed Travelodge, and picked up Hyrum's bag. Now, we were free to roam. We drove down to Bristol to see what it was like, but it was actually a rather unattractive city centered around shipping. Just a port was all it seemed to boast. We didn't have time to stop, so we drove on.

You have to understand that all these places took a long time to get to, with lots of driving, so when we finally arrived at our next destination, Cheddar, it was about time for things to close. We quickly jumped out of the car in hopes of making it to the tour of the cheese factory. Cheddar is where cheddar cheese originated.


We walked down to the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company, only to find their tours were finished for the day. We settled for browsing in their shop and tasting cheese.


We tasted all kinds of cheddar (which is white by the way...American cheddar is only orange because they add a dye or something), and most were pretty good, although I have to admit in the end that I prefer our orange mild cheddar to anything I tasted there. It all was a bit sharp and funky with a reminiscent hint of soured milk lingering in the aftertaste, but really not bad. We actually bought a hunk of the chive and something-or-other cheddar.

A million great things happened while we were in England, but the two worst things that happened to me this whole trip were getting my camera stolen, and tasting sheep milk cheese. The buffalo and goat were just fine, but the SHEEP....it tasted exactly like how I would imagine licking a sheep would taste! Like wool and manure! It was the last thing I sampled, and I about died! I couldn't hide my reaction because my disgust was so severe. I told Hyrum and Daisha to taste it while I scrambled to find a yummy cheese to eat to get rid of the taste. They tried it and thought it tasted normal, like the other cheeses! What the heck!? Did my little square get dropped in the field while the others were fine? Mine must have been milked from a poo-y tit, while theirs was from the sanitized one. Or maybe it's just my heightened senses from being pregnant. I don't know, but I do know that I wasn't imagining the wool and manure taste. It lingered far too long! I thought my reaction might have offended the people working there, but they told Hyrum they preferred my reaction to his, probably because I was so melodramatic.

We had been looking for some kind of souvenir this whole trip that we could display and that would be a unique reminder of England, but found it difficult deciding on what we wanted. We thought a tea set would be nice, but then how could we transport it home? While we were at the cheese shop, we saw some handcrafted pottery and knives and utensils that would be great for entertaining, so we bought a blue triple pickle bowl for putting appetizers in,


and then some utensils like a scoop, a spoon with holes, and a cheese knife. So if you come visit us, we'll pull them out and use them so you can see a little piece of England! Cheddar, in fact.


We wandered around the shops for a bit, then we took a drive up the Cheddar gorge. It was "gorgeous". Is that where they get the word gorgeous...because gorges are so beautiful?


There were wild goats and sheep all over the place. On the hillsides, running down the road. The kids loved that part!


We took a few family pictures, with sheep in the background sometimes. We even got one that shows how difficult it is to get the kids to sit in the right places and look at the camera.



There were some guys rock climbing, so Talea wanted to try her hand at it. She climbed up really well, and Hyrum stayed right behind her to keep her safe, but we worried the rock climbers. Like most overly cautious Englishmen, they kept watching us and telling us to be careful. They don't know my little monkey!!! She's been climbing things since she could stand.


Hyatt got brave and decided he wanted to go up too. I stood under him, but stepped back when he was okay to take some pictures. I was impressed that he did so well and climbed so quickly by himself. He loves to copy Talea, so that must have been his motivation.


Instead of scaling down the rocks, they walked down a path, much to Daisha's relief. She's inherited her husband's cautiousness.


We left the gorge and drove back through Cheddar, with its adorable buildings


and on through Wells and then home. It was late when we arrived, but Daisha made us yet another traditional English treat: Rhubarb and custard. It was interesting and okay, but probably something I wouldn't request again. Not too bad though.


Hey, I think I forgot to mention that Daisha had us try spotted dick while we were there. It actually wasn't half bad. It's a dessert by the way...a spongy cake thing. Nasty name though.

Daisha was wonderful and started doing loads of laundry for me so I wouldn't be overloaded with washing when we got home. When I was picking up toys that night and packing, I found Tabitha's notepad, and in it were the most adorable pictures she'd drawn and some very sweet little notes she'd written about my kids. You have to understand, Tabitha is only 3 and a half and she can read (I heard and saw her reading "King Bidgood's in the bathtub" to my kids) and even write by figuring out the phonetics. Her spelling isn't accurate in these notes, but if you say them phonetically, she did a darn good job. I mean, come on, she's three! She did as good as the twins do! Sorry boys.

"I love you, Talea"

"Hyatt, I love you"

"Kiersa, I love you"

I love how she made boxes and checked them! You have to admit, that's pretty darn impressive.