Have you ever read

So have any of you ever read this book??? I think most people get the opportunity to read this book in High School, but this was a new one for me. I just want to say this about the book:

It is a sad book! Not sad as in "you'll cry your eyes out" sad, but rather heart breaking sad. The book spans the adult life of a farmer in China in the late 1800's/early 1900's named Wang Lung. In the beginning you revel in the strange love that exists between his wife O-lan and he. In the middle you want to cheer for the poor family in their success, but worry about the consequences of this success. In the end, you are sad for this man for not seeing fully what he could have had -- true happiness. For any of you who haven't read the book, I won't spoil the story for you. It's a good one and I really recommend reading it. I found my copy at a used book store for $1. :-)

The new arrivals!

Abram & Samuel Kelly



My Brother and his wife Denise welcomed their twin boys to their family early this morning. I'm so excited for them and can't wait to see them in person! Congratulations you guys!

btw.... this makes FIVE kids for them. ACK!!!!!!!! :-)

Today is a great day

Why is today a great day?

Well, I'll tell you.

I don't have any kids today.

Nope.

One is at school until 4:00.

The other is at a friend's house until then.

Today is a great day!

Ew......

Can you just say "Poor yarn choice"? Blech.......

So yeah, I totally thought to myself when I was at the store, "Hey, this yarn is cheap AND it's self-striping (meaning, it creates it's own stripes) -- This yarn will be great for making my first pair of gloves!" Um.... no. This is just plain disgusting. The pinky finger looks like a moldy lil' smokey sausage. The ring finger looks like a piece of poop dipped in lint, and don't even get me started on the middle finger. When I was knitting it, I had the other two fingers pushed back inside the glove and it was like I was flipping myself off the whole time. And to be honest, I could have handled that if it had been pretty. But an ugly middle finger? I just can't handle that.

So, back to the drawing board. Maybe I'll use the yarn for something else some day. Who knows, one of you lucky gals just might get a pair of lovely socks made from this crap.

BTW.... yes, that is my nasty carpet. All the years and all the places we have lived in, I have never experienced such nasty carpet. We have had it cleaned so many times and it doesn't matter. It's disgusting. It's crunchy. And if you're wearing shorts, it actually hurts to sit on it.

Where I've been... aka World's longest post

So I've decided it's time for a little catch-up since my blogging has taken a real nose dive lately. For a long time it was really hard to want to blog since I couldn't post any of the things I was making for Christmas. But, now that Christmas is over, I can share them and hopefully I'll get back into posting again.

Well, the holidays for the Parker family have been pretty eventful. Originally for Thanksgiving we were just going to go see Shane's family since Tracy would be there with the new baby. However, a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, I found out my cousin Dave was going to come this year to my family's gathering. You see, we didn't have a huge extended family with tons of cousins running all over the place at family functions. We just had a few cousins that we saw regularly and Dave was the only one my age. We were very close growing up even though we only saw each other a couple of times a year. The last time we had seen each other was when Kelly was a newborn (she's 7 now).

My cousin Dave and I

I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to see him, so we decided to pull off 2 Thanksgivings this year. Thankfully, Shane's family was understanding and offered to hold their Thanksgiving on Friday so I could attend mine on Thursday. I must say though, as great as it was to see everyone, it was really disgusting to eat two thanksgiving meals back to back (I'm not a big traditional Thanksgiving meal person to begin with). Shane and I seriously considered going vegetarian for a good while just to cleanse our system of all that meat.

But anyway, like I said, we got to spend time with both sides of the family -- I got to see my favorite cousin and we also got to spend time with the stinkin' cutest baby of all time (Tracy's little boy Graham). Sorry people, I have literally never seen a cuter baby -- including my own.

The girls with their Nana and Papa at Thanksgiving

Next up obviously was Christmas. I really enjoy homemade gifts (both receiving and giving) and this year I took some advice from my sister-in-law Melissa and started making my gifts earlier in the year. In July I started knitting my dad's scarf that he had been begging for (unfortunately I don't have a picture, but it turned out perfectly!). Shortly thereafter I began working on Loren and Autumns gift (Shane's brother and sister-in-law). We had them this year for Christmas and since they were having twins, I inflicted my knitting adventures onto them. I had always wanted to make a baby sweater before and this seemed like a good opportunity. I crossed my fingers and hoped it would turn out well. Here's the final product:

Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of both the sweaters together before mailing them, so this will have to do. I'm still waiting for a picture of the boy's in them, so hopefully they turned out nice. Whether or not they did, I still had fun making them and learned a whole lot in the process.

My next great knitting adventure was for my brother Steven. He and I share and common love and interest in all things strange and bizarre. I love my brother deeply for that. This would be the same brother of the Capt. Picard commemorative plate and the Knitted Poo and Toilet paper birthday surprises. This year we had him for Christmas and I knew I had to give him something simply divine. Behold:

His very own Battle Bonnet. Isn't it a beauty???? I was even able to find a foam head for him to Display it on when he's not wearing it. You know you want one.


My next gift was to my mother who also has a great sense of humor. So here it is: My mother loves Twilight and I'm pretty sure she loves the movie more. I struggled for a long time to think of what to get her for Christmas when inspiration struck: I made her a heart locket which held 2 pictures -- A picture of my dad on one side, and a picture of Edward Cullen on the other!

I really wish I had gotten a picture of the locket. It was absolutely hysterical! This was the picture that I had used of Edward Cullen. When I gave it to my mom, I told her it was so she could have both of her loves next to her heart at all times. She loved it!

Okay, I need to get a move on.........

All of the cousins on the Kelly side of the family got to have a sleepover at Grandma's. They had a lot of fun and I'm really happy they all get along so well.

Shane's little sister Britney stayed with us for a little over a week during Christmas while his parents went out to Idaho to visit his brother Loren. If you really wanna know why I haven't been on the computer lately, it's because of this beautiful teenager. I think she was physically attached to the computer while she was here.


To Isabelle's (and everyone else's) great delight, she got two new pillows for Christmas. If you don't know about Isabelle's disgusting love of diseased pillows, you're very lucky in deed.


Kelly proclaimed that her favorite gift for Christmas this year was a doll set I put together for her. It just consisted of doll pins and stands, pieces of fabric, rubberbands, and markers so she could make all the little dolls she wanted. I was really surprised at how much she liked this gift, but I'm so glad she liked it.


Shane received his annual innapropriate trophy from me. Oh wait.... I don't think that's a story I've shared on here before. Hmmmmmm.... it is a great story........


Shane surprised me with an amazing rendition of his anniversary gift from earlier this year. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love that shirt. I'm considering having it framed.


And lastly the girls received gift certificates to Build-a-bear workshop from Santa this year. The girls had a great time and thought Santa was the coolest for doing that.

But now that Christmas is over I needed something to help with my need for knitting (it soothes my insomnia). So now I have decided to learn how to knit a pair of gloves. We'll see what happens when I start to get to the individual fingers...........

Time worth wasting

Trust me when I say this will be time worth wasting on the computer. So put those children to bed and gather your spouse around -- it's business time!






Our other favorites:
Abli (The racist dragon)
Issues (Think about it)
Jenny

The story

So my friend Erin very nicely reminded me that it's been a little over a month since my last post. Whoops! Ever since going private, I have really slacked on the blogging. It's really weird. When you're public, it shows up on people's blog rolls that you've posted something new so people check out the blog pretty quickly. You pretty much get an instant response to your blog. However, when you're private that stuff doesn't work. People forget to check your blog for a while and sometimes you'll have a post up for days before anyone will notice. I know I know.... lame excuse, but hearing what people think about what I posted is half the reason why I do this. So yeah, that's what I've been the major slacker.

But anyway, here's the best story posted about the leg picture:

Peggy and Reed said: "Actually I thought the JFK story* was FUNNY. But knowing Shane, he just wants to surprise you for Christmas. Do I dare tell you? It might ruin the surprise. He is making you one of those lamps. You know from the movie Christmas Story. He is trying to disquise it until it is done. It will have the fishnet stocking, the lamp and everything. He just put the man's pants and shoes on it to confuse you! Can't wait to see the finished product."

(*JFK story by Marlena: You bought the leg of JFK on ebay!!..Congatulations on your purchase!!!)

I just died when I read Peggy's post because literally just the night before Shane asked me, "What would you think if for christmas I got you a leg lamp -- you know, like the kind from A Christmas Story?" Of course I would think it was the greatest present of all time and then worship him as the all-time gift giving god. So yes, to my amusement I woke up the next morning and found that post by Peggy. Brilliant.

So here's the real story:

The kids and I had just arrived at the pool for Isabelle's swim lessons. We walked into the locker room to get Isabelle dressed when I stopped immediately after seeing THAT. I was so shocked at what I was seeing, that I couldn't move. It was so............... curious. Apprently it's not strange to young children to see a fully clothed bodiless leg, because the kids never even noticed. They were only upset that I wasn't moving them closer to the pool. At that point I faced a real dilemma: To take a picture or not take a picture. You see.... I HAD to have that picture. I NEEDED that picture. Yes, I did realize that it was horribly insensitive to take that picture.... but then again, when was I ever a sensitive person? When Kelly was 3 and wasn't paying attention while walking and walked straight into a stop sign really hard, I laughed hysterically for a good 15 seconds before noticing all the death stares people were giving me. I guess the screaming child should have been tended to first.

So you see? No history of sensitivity here. But there was a bigger problem at hand. Sure I could take the picture, but was the owner of said leg nearby? Would she hop out at just the moment that I was taking the picture and giggling to myself? How would I explain to two children why a one-legged lady was yelling at me? How would I explain that we were banned from the pool for life? Was it worth it? Obviously the answer in my mind was yes. And no, I wasn't caught. But I actually did end up meeting the one-legged lady later in the locker room. Nice lady. Not sure she'd be so nice though if she knew that I had a picture of her leg. Hmmmmm........ I just crossed that line of creepiness, didn't I?