Flippin' Funny

This is one of my favorite videos.  I laughed so hard I peed myself (not hard to do these days).

Basketball Season Take One

Briz played her very first basketball league this year.  And it was . . . interesting.  I know, she's a little young for team basketball, but I am very worried about her extreme girliness, so I try to balance it out.  I think her success in basketball this year could be explained by a bell curve. 

Horizontal line = Time/Season

Vertical line = basketball skills/effort (i.e. ability to make a basket)

She peaked mid season with two shots made in back to back games.  Not only that, but she was hustling up the court.  Her biggest downfall I would say is her tendency to play defense against her own teammate.  

Doing some coaching while she sat the bench

Explaining what she needs to do when the other team shoots, and she is listening intently.

Me saying, "See right there!  There's the ball!  Go get it."  If you can't tell, I HAVE coached before.  That is some genius advice.

Typical picture of the bench during the game.  

The real highlight of the season: pizza AND a trophy!  

Her coach discussed Brizzy's strengths in her attitude and smile.  Not much mention of anything related to actual basketball.

Well, she may not be the strongest player, but look at that form.

Classic Off-the-one-foot shot

Mastering the skill of the bounce pass.  Although  she never got to utilize this skill during the game.  Anytime she actually touched the ball, we encouraged her to run straight to the basket and shoot.

So excited she can hardly stand it.

Fast Break. Part I.

Part II.  Trying to keep the ball bouncing with her dribbling.

Part III.  Shooting.   And that's about as high as the ball went.

Perfect defensive position.


A few things not captured:
Her constant walking/running on her toes.
Her random twirls.
 Her standing right in  front of her teammate and putting her arms up  in the air while yelling, "Pass! Pass!  Pass!"

On her very last game, she said she was very sad basketball was over.  As far as I'm concerned, that's a win!

Devil Child

So I have been calling Briz this lately, but truthfully I only mean it about 53% of the time.  The other 47% of the time she is adorable, fun, hilarious, kinda sweet, etc.  But man oh man, she has been giving me a run for my money.  For some odd reason, EVERY single thing is a battle.  She likes to argue, talk back, scream, whine, lie, you name it.  Normally I have felt pretty confident in my ability to handle her "difficult moments" but I often just sort of say lately, "Okay, I give up. Go ahead and do whatever it is you're going to do."  She can't seem to decide if she wants to be a little toddler or a big girl.  This morning she woke up talking baby talk, pretending like she couldn't do anything herself and telling me she is 2 1/2.  She decided to ly limp on the bed while I tried to get her dressed (that was fun!).  And then ended the day with telling me that tomorrow after school she's going to have her 7th birthday and she will be getting baptized soon.  I think she is having an identity crisis.  Is it too early for her to be getting PMS?  I keep holding on to the wish that she is getting all of her craziness out now and so she will be a perfectly obedient and sweet teenager?  No?  

In the meantime, I thought I would dwell on a funny, cute moment (Well, mostly, this was 30 minutes past her bed time).   

The Onion

These are some of my favorite onion articles recently. Enjoy.

http://onion.com/15QRFSi

http://onion.com/ZJH3QD

http://onion.com/ZIvidq

http://onion.com/YAvqdT

Returning Home

As much fun as going to New York City was, returning home has been . . . interesting.   It's like starting all over with our rules, chore chart, rewards, consequences, all of that.  And Briz seemed to grow up to the age of 14 while we were gone.  She now loves saying things like, "You're being rude," when I tell her to do something and "Leave me alone!" as she slams the door.  Awesome.

She cries and whines at the drop of a hat, although the crying is generally fake, dramatic crying where she throws herself on the floor, but there are no tears and if I happen to utter the word treat or candy she miraculously stops.  

Luckily, she makes me laugh enough and gives me a fair amount of hugs and kisses to balance it out for the time being.  But I am tired!

Princesses don't go to church

This is the conversation between nick and Briz yesterday before church:

Briz: "Dad, princesses don't go to church."
Nick: "How do you know that?"
Briz: "Because Alison doesn't go to church."
Nick: "Who is Alison?"
Briz: "Alison Wonderland."

On another note, Briz has been calling me "your majesty" and curtsying anytime I ask her to do something. I sense a bit of sarcasm in this and it worries me that she is becoming a bit of a smart ass. She must get that from her Dad :)

This is why I watch the Olympics

I loved watching the Olympics. I cheered, I screamed, I yelled, and I gasped (okay and maybe I cried a little one the night of the opening ceremonies where they showed all different parts of England). But I also laughed. A lot. Many of these laughing moments came from the hilarious Olympic commentary. I know that none of it was meant to be funny, but yet, it was. And there were a few times that I laughed at the Olympians messing up. Again, not meant to be funny, but I can have a cruel sense of humor sometimes.

 

Our Temple Trip

We only live about fifteen minutes away from the Portland temple but we had an adventurous night there tonight as we visited the grounds after church.  Here is all of the exciting things that happened:

Part 1:  Briz was very excited about the flowers she saw at the temple.  She was also excited about posing with her dress as she sat down.

Part 2 - Perfected the posing and Dad made her laugh so hard that  . . . 

Part 3:  She took a pee right on temple grounds.  Yep, we had no warning.  All of a sudden, there was a big puddle.  We contemplated tossing her sopping underwear in the bushes, but then realized that that may qualify us for hell, so we opted for making her carry them around.

Part 4:  Like the dirty girl she is, she took it in stride and carted her pee underwear around like a champ.  She kept dropping them on the ground, saying "Woops, I dropped them!"  At one point she enthusiastically threw them in the air like a pom pom.

Part 5:  Perfecting the posing with the pee underwear.  She started to get pretty comfortable with them, and she started treating them just like an accessory.  At one point she even wacked another little girl in the head with them.  No biggie.  Who hasn't gotten hit in the head with someone else's underwear drenched in pee right?   

Nick and I felt like this was one of  the true highlights of our parenting careers thus far.  Especially when Briz went up to try to talk to other little kids and the parents gave her (and the smelly object in her hand) the stink eye.  At that point, we just ignored her.  Yep, we are excellent parents.  It wasn't quite the spiritual evening we had anticipated, but at least Nick and I had a good time laughing at our child.     

Friend, Friends, 1, 2, 3

This is the name of the song that Briz sings at preschool.  It ends with, "All my friends are here with me."  Pretty genius if you ask me.

Briz loves Piper.  And let's be honest, I love Piper.  Megan and I generally do a swap once a week for these two precious girls and it's one of the best times of my week (although we've been slacking the last few weeks).  Mostly because Briz and Piper are hilarious together.  They have the funniest conversations together where they call each other "sweetie" and "hun."  Yes, there is some fighting over toys, but it's SO good for Briz to learn all of those things with another little person in her home.  I have had fun taking them on little outings.  Here are some pictures and videos of them at the Flower Festival in downtown Portland.  And I'm not going to lie, when Piper was being the funny yoga star and cracking up all of the people around me, I didn't NOT say she wasn't my little girl :)

 Piper really getting into the yoga.

 Striking a seductive pose.

 What can I say? Piper knows the way to Brizzy's heart.  She's feeding her fruit snacks (Although this one I think is off the ground).

 They love to pretend they don't want to hug each other.

 Doing some princess ballet (it's a very specific kind of ballet).

 Again with the forced hugs.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, these two are the coolest three and two/three year olds ever.  They are big fans of Fun, Gotye, and The Naked and Famous.  They love to cruise around listening to some Indie rock with their sunglasses on.  

I Am Kind of Stupid

After reading the title of this post, you might think, "Yeah, and . . . ?" But I am not just being self deprecating.  I have an actual reason as to why I was/am stupid.  It's actually a quick story as to why I'm stupid.  Here it goes:

It all started with me thinking that it would be a great idea to get overly involved in a YW activity.  We decided to force the YW to wake up at 6 a.m. the day after school gets out and hike thirteen miles to the temple.  I'm not going to lie, some of my good ol' coaching days came back to me where I secretly (or not so secretly sometimes) enjoyed torturing the girls I coached.  I got out a little of my own aggression.  But the problem with this cruel leadership was that I actually volunteered to hike it myself.  I thought it would be no big deal.  After all, I WAS training for a running relay race.  But then shortly before the grand hike was to take place, I realized that yes, I'm quite stupid.  The hike and the race took place on the same day.  Oh, and forgot to mention the fact that I bruised my heel very badly a few weeks before all of this took place, and then oh yeah, I got really sick.  Like sick sick for a week.  So two days before the hike/race, I was feeling decent.  My foot still killed and I still was very nasal-y, but I figured I could suck it up.  So sucked it up I did.  But when everyone tried to tell me how stupid I was, I just ignored them, thinking to myself that I could be pretty tough if I needed to be, and what's 13 miles walking and like 13 miles running?  No biggie.  Uh, wrong.  Fast forward to the end, I got a stupid stress fracture on my stupid foot.  I spent Father's Day (the day after the mayhem) rolling around the kitchen in an office chair trying to make a nice meal for Nick and all of our company.  Although, rolling around in a chair whilst cooking is not a bad idea for those times when you're ridiculously tired.  And, you look quite cool doing it.  Oh, except for the time I fell over in my chair onto the ground and couldn't get back up.  And also except for the many times I got my apron stuck in the chair and was like tangled in an apron mess.  Other than that, very cool.

But overall, I did have a ton of fun.  My stupidity and hurt foot were worth it because I love the Oregon Epic Relay (www.epicrelays.com).  I got to see some old friends, my in - laws came into town and had a blast with Briz, and it was actually sunny!!!

As evidence of how much fun I had, here are pictures of me shoving pretzels into my mouth while I give a dirty glare to Andrea and me passed out on Emily.

Long Hair and Drugs

This video is my favorite.  And so true.

Things I want to drop kick

I feel like using my friend Mander's List of things she wants to punch is basically stealing, so I decided to alter my list slightly, yet still including the same message of things that irritate me/make me angry. I have thought of a lot of things today:

- People yelling out emphatically during a group workout (particularly when they're not even really working very hard themselves). Please shut up.

- Zumba in general. I don't get the craze.

- Brizzy when she tells me to not touch her because I am either a)sweaty or b)smell like peanut butter (she hates peanut butter). It's quite bizarre how often one or both of these things is the case.

- Myself, realizing I have created a monster in Briz, when she asks me on every single song that comes on the radio, "Mom, who is this?" or "Mom, what song is this?" And she will not let me off the hook unless I give her the name of the band and the title of the song. When in doubt, and I don't know, she just assumes its Naked and Famous because we've been listening to a lot of that lately.


- Taxes ( even though I didn't do them - thank you Nick :) )

- The GOP . . . and the Democratic Party. Both of them are driving me crazy.

- Pretty much all of the news stations (CNN, Foxnews, ABC, NBC, you name it). I watch them out of necessity to understand a bit of what is going on this world, and yet, I am angry while I am watching them because they are pretty ridiculous.

- Anyone who talks trash on Mitt :) Okay, not really (actually, yes, really) . . . that is unless you want to complain about car elevators. I consider that acceptable to complain about.

- Clocks. In general, I don't like them, because there is just not enough time in the day! They need to move slower.

- Really really demanding rich people. Yes, all of them.

- My computer for freaking out all of the time.

- Tennis shoes. I am ready for flip flops/sandals. There have been a few days where I have even just rebeled and worn them anyways, but my poor, freezing feet suffer the consequences.

- And lastly, college basketball, for already being over. I think I only watched like two BYU basketball games this year. And I tried to get myself jazzed for March Madness, but it never really happened (probably mostly because my brackets sucked).

Stuff She Says

I miss my iPad for a lot of reasons. But one in particular is because it was nice to have something to write down all of the random crap Briz says on a day to day basis. Some of it is a direct copycat of me. But other things, I honestly have no idea where she gets them. She really does talk like she's 15 and it scares me to no end! Here are some of her favorite things to say recently:

- "How about in 30 minutes?"

- "Cute necklace Mom!" or "Cute shoes Dad"

- "That matches!"

- "Leave me alone" generally when she's watching a movie or going to the bathroom

- "You tired Lou?" (this is directed to me). A lot of the questions she ask me end in saying Lou

- "You're not being very nice to me." to Nick or I when we are disciplining her

- She also likes to put her hands on your face when she kisses you and move her head around. When Nick asked her where she learned that, she said, "Enchanted."

- "Just a little bit?" This is when she is generally asking for a treat or something she knows she shouldn't have

- "That's my new favorite _" insert the word princess, movie, shirt,dress etc.

-"That's lovely."

Her latest sayings

Here are some of Brizzy's favorite phrases these days:

-"Hmmm, let's see . . ."

-"What's next Mom?"

-"Here's the deal . . ."

- "That's a good idea!"

- "Oh my gosh!"

- "My hair is magical."

- "Oh well."

- "Dats okay."

-"Why?" (by far my least favorite, and probably the most common)

-"I'm just lookin' at it!"

My Sign

I wish I could wear a sign around that says:

"I just had a baby a month ago, please give me a break."

Particularly when:

- I am running so slow on the treadmill that I might as well be walking
- It takes me two hours to load up my car in the parking lot
- I am like Goldilocks and can describe my clothes as either too big or too small
- I have generally not showered when I go out into public
- Nick comes home and tries to be as nice as possible when he says as he looks around the house, "So . . . what did you do today?"