Anyway, as I was googling princesses, I came across this and thought it was funny:

Lessons from the Princesses

Posted by Vicki McCash Brennan

Reading Anne Vasquez’s entry about her son’s love of Cars and what he’s learned from that movie made me think about my own decade of raising daughters on Disney movies.

They have learned much from the revered Disney Princesses, including a few lessons you might not expect.

1. If a short, grumpy guy tells you not to open the door for “nothing or nobody,” do not open the door for a scary, ugly woman selling apples. Especially not if you already know that someone with magical powers is trying to kill you. This is stupid. It is good to be smart and take care of yourself. It is not good to open the door to strangers. My girls don’t want to be like Snow White, because she is not smart.

2. If a big, hairy guy imprisons you in an enchanted castle, the way you can tell if you’re going to be OK is to check out the library. A well-read man may have depths of feelings and knowledge he’s not showing. You just have to open your mind and your heart. My girls have always wanted to be like Belle, because she is smart and she likes to read. She gets to know her prince before falling in love with him. And she doesn’t go for the first handsome guy who wants to marry her.

3. Kindness counts. Cinderella is kind to her animal friends and even her mean old stepsisters, and look where it gets her. We’re not too sure what happens after the slipper fits, but we know she had a great time at the party and her life is definitely looking up. My girls are, quite rightly, a little concerned about her running off to marry a perfect stranger. We hope it works out for her.

4. Careful who you bargain with. Poor Ariel almost loses the thing she wants most because of her lousy negotiation skills and poor judgment in her business arrangement with the Sea Witch. Thank goodness love triumphs, but Ariel got lucky and also had a loving dad to rescue her.

5. Girls kick butt. And they also come up with some really good plans. Mulan fights as well as most of the guys, and she out-thinks them, too, thus saving all of China. Not a bad day’s work. It’s good to think before you act.

6. Think for yourself. Maybe a poor, honest man is better than a greedy, rich one. That’s what Jazmine thinks, and for her trouble, she gets to ride on a carpet to see the world and meet a really funny blue genie who makes wishes come true.

And finally, what does Disney have against mothers? Have you noticed that not one – not one! – of these princesses has a mother? What is up with that? My daughters know that they are luckier than any Disney Princess because they have me.

Breakfast time is often the same routine with Alexia. Alexia is hungry. She has been asking to eat and I have been finishing things up until Alexia is positive she is going to die from hunger and I am positive I am going to die from nagging and whining. So we commence to the kitchen, Alexia gets in her chair, and then gives her order, “eggs, toast, cereal, pancakes, waffles—usually Alexia doesn’t care, she’ll eat any type of breakfast food.” However, while Alexia doesn’t care what she eats, she does care when! When I pull the bread out of the bag, Alexia sees the super unhealthy empty caloric white bread and her eyes light up- finally breakfast! Then I cruelly take the bread out of her sight and her outreaching stubby fingers, and put it in the mean toaster machine. Of course, Alexia cries, “no, toast, toast, toast.” I try to explain over Alexia’s wailing and whining that I am making toast, she just needs to wait. Frozen Eggo Waffles are perhaps the worst scenario for us. The waffles looks just the same frozen and toasted. I pull the hard frozen waffle out of it’s package and again take it away from her sight and watering mouth and put it in a toaster. Alexia is sure I am being cruel and mean. A couple of times I have angrily set a cold waffle on her plate in response to her demands. Tentatively she bites it and then wails some more. “Waffle mom, waffle,” she screams in indignation, as if I have no idea what a waffle is. It’s not that I want to make Alexia mad, and I usually give her what she wants, largely because she doesn’t understand as much as Jeffrey and I can’t stand the crying and whining. However, breakfast principles remain the same from one morning to the next: bread must be toasted to produce toast, eggs must be scrambled so as to prevent disease, and frozen waffles are more like doggy treats to be gnawed on if not toasted first. This morning it was hot chocolate. Why does it need to be put in the microwave? The cold water in the mug with clumpy chocolate is what I want, isn’t it?

This morning as I tried to tune out Alexia’s wailing about her hot chocolate going into the microwave, I had a realization. I am much more like Alexia than I realized. I often am tired and hungry for more in my life. So I sit at the bar and give God my order. I probably sound much like Alexia to him: Whiny and demanding. However, as Alexia’s mother I want to give her everything I can, including good waffles. God, as we know by scripture is a much better gift giver than I am, and I know that even though we are whiny and demanding he desires for us not to be hungry and tired. So he sets about to fix our breakfast. However, we see what we want and we want it now. “Waffle, Heavenly Father, Waffle.” Or maybe more appropriate, “Fix this child now, Money now, Health Now, House now, etc.” I put my order in, now where is it? Why does it have to toast, scramble or heat up? Why can’t I have it now? God, in his infinite wisdom, like me and my infinite breakfast wisdom, knows how it works and what we really want. We may think, like Alexia, I want the waffle now! However, if He were to plop a frozen waffle on our plate, we would look up at him with hurt “how could you” eyes just as Alexia did to me.

Perhaps next time when we pray for something, we should realize, some things just take time. Good things usually do. God is a giver of good gifts. He wants us to be happy, even more so than we want our children to be happy. He knows what we want. He knows what is best. He knows how to do it, and do it right. So just as much as I long for peaceful mornings of silent, meek children waiting patiently and gratefully for the food I am taking my time to prepare, perhaps He wishes the same: a little trust, a little patience, and a little gratitude!

]]> http://dyealog.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/alexia-breakfast-time-and-a-lesson-for-life/feed/ 0 dyealog waffle1 http://dyealog.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/okay-okay-im-alive-and-iowa-wasnt-heaven-on-earth-after-all/ http://dyealog.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/okay-okay-im-alive-and-iowa-wasnt-heaven-on-earth-after-all/#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:30:52 +0000 dyealog http://dyealog.wordpress.com/?p=6 ]]> My friend left a comment last night on my blog saying I actually had to keep up with this blog.  What?  The truth is, I moved home from Iowa 40 days after I moved there, and didn’t really have any desire to explain it to everyone, and didn’t think my blogging lies would go over well if I just pretended to live there rather than here !

It is a long story, which I still don’t have any yearning desire to tell, but basically I still feel like we were supposed to move there, we learned a lot, and then I felt like we were supposed to come home.  So thousands of dollars later, and some major amounts of confusion, but having learned a lot of lessons along the way, here I am.

We are living in Orem.  Dustin is finishing his degree at UVU in leadership/business.  He is loving it, and it makes me want to go get a masters so bad.  I love school!  He also works at Allen Communications in downtown Salt Lake, but I am looking for a new job for him that fits better into his desires: which are in the training field.  So, if anyone has any tips, let us know!

I am at home with Jeffrey and Alexia and am enjoying their ages.  Lexi is 2 this week and Jeffrey is 5.  Jeffrey’s best friend lives next door and as of late, he is my best friend too, since he entertains Jeffrey every single day, which makes Jeffrey’s life infinitely better and mine too.  Jeffrey is also in preschool and loving it.  In classic mom style I think Jeffrey is the smartest boy in the world!

This is a recent picture of Jeffrey taken at Thanksgiving Point Gardens

Alexia is at one of the best stages ever, in my opinion (minus the terrible two tantrums that happen).  She is talking!!!  Hallelujah chorus can now sound!  It seems like one day she was saying one word and then the next she was saying anything and everything and stringing words together.  She tells me whatever she wants and I love it!  I never could quite figure out what octave of crying meant what when my babies wanted things, thanks anyway Oprah and the baby crier woman on her show!  She is also at this darling stage where she looks like a little girl, rather than a baby, and all I do all day long is kiss her on the cheek, even though it makes her mad a lot of times!

This is a recent picture taken of Alexia at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens

Beyond adoring my kids, I do the normal “mom” and “wife” things.  I am also in Young Womens and love that.  I also started working one night a week teaching a class for UVU.  I teach an anger management class for youth.  I am loving that as well, and I haven’t been shot yet by one of the angry youth.  Actually, the youth I have in my class seem like great people and I pray for them and that they can learn things that can help change their lives and the hard situations they find themselves in.  It also makes me grateful for my life and my problems.

Okay, so the reason I don’t like blogging is this: my life isn’t that interesting to write about.  I have limited time as it is, and I would far rather do other things in my life than update the world on my kids and my housework, which is what I spend 99% of my life doing.  I decided to blog when I went to Iowa so I could stay in touch, and because I was hoping life would get more interesting.

However, I do LOVE to write.  I spend a lot of my time writing in my journal and writing about lessons for life.  I love teach and I love to study.  So I figured I am going to blog some of the lessons I learn in life.  I actually have a blog where I organize and keep all these things, but I write stuff I don’t want the whole world of blogging to read, so I thought I would create another with things I don’t care if people read.

So, if you’re not interested in things beyond my life and my daily non interesting events, sorry.  But I might just enter into the world of blogging again in a different way.  I would also appreciate if you read something and think, “Oh wow, I have a story or an experience that goes along with that,” if you would write me or post it.  I am teaching this class once a week, teach at church, and am preparing curriculum for other endeavors as well and I believe people have the very best banks of material to teach from just from their experience in their lives (even boring lives, like my own )  So any ideas, activities, lessons, or experiences you have had or heard, I would love hear them!  Thanks, and I love you all and appreciate your concern, love, and interest in my boring life !

See, I'm alive too, and I have short hair

These are the kids at the park downtown in Iowa City. Really for the first two weeks we were here the kids probably thought Iowa was heaven on earth; all we did was go out to eat, (i.e. they had lots of chicken nuggets and root beer), go to play in parks or in the play land at the mall, watch lots of cartoons and movies, go swimming in the hotel pools, and spend lots of money going to places like the Children’s Museum, the arcade, and buying toys to compensate for my guilt that my children left their family and friends in Utah and were now homeless in different hotels every night with a mom that was crying every day trying to figure out what was happening. No more crying mom (for the most part), but also no more chicken nuggets, root beer, movies, TV (we don’t even have one, yeah), toys, children’s museum, etc. We have though been going to lots of friends houses though. Which they have enjoyed a lot, and so have I.

Iowa city has tons of stuff to do and it is super family oriented. I am constantly pleased to find out how many fun family activities there are, most of which are free. Last week we went to the Rec Center for “Tot time,” where they have mass amounts of balls, bikes, play houses, slides, etc. set up in the gymnasium and all the little kids just go for it. Some little girl took to Alexia and started toting Alexia around everywhere she went. Surprisingly Lexi let her do it and it was glorious to have a little babysitter!!!

Lately Jeffrey has become a trike master. We live by quite a few hills and his favorite thing to do, much to my dismay, is to let go of the pedals and fly down the hills as fast as he can go. So, I am usually pushing Alexia in the stroller screaming after Jeffrey while his legs are out in the air and he is flying down hills. He also likes to get pedaling as fast as he can go and then coast. Speed demon! Scary thing!

Anyway, they are loving it and so are we!

Iowa is still great.  I am loving even more the great people.  Tomorrow I am going to an Amish community with a friend for a morning trip (apparently they have great grocery deals and awesome spices and vegetable starts and things).  Wow, I’m domestic and a blogger, who would have guessed?  Actually, on that note, I am so much more domestic than I thought.  Apparently having a kitchen you enjoy is a huge boost to my desire to cook (that or we used up all of our money eating out solid for a month before and while we were moving).  I have been cooking two to three meals a day!  Wow!  That probably won’t last long!

In terms of our house, since people have been asking, we are actually only renting it for three months (or so the contract says).  It is actually for sale and we can rent it for three months or until it sells.  We have the option to buy as well.  We wanted to do something short terms so we could decide what to do: buy, build, rent, or beg on the street !  Anyway, you can see inside pix and more details if you go to this link (and if you honestly have nothing better to do with your day than this, jk) http://www.ambroseboyd.com/address.php?property_ID=317.  You can buy our house too if you want to, we would happily relocate if any friends or family want to move here (more plugs !

We really do like it here though. The people are insanely friendly, most of them are not insane though (except a man we met at the Public Library who told us every time we passed him to go dig up the worms so we could go fishing, Jeffrey liked him)! Honestly though, when we go to restaurants people from other booths talk to us our entire dinner through. In WalMart I got stopped by a man that told me all about his life, his watermelon sales, and living with his mom (okay, sounds like more people are insane, he was borderline, but mostly just nice). I actually love how friendly people are! On our first day at church we got invited to dinner four or five different times, and I got invited to several different people’s houses to play or so they could watch my kids. Like I said, super friendly people!

We really like the atmosphere too. Our first night we stayed downtown (yah, there’s a downtown!). Check it out:

It was crazy, people were out walking everywhere, I think most were going clubbing! Like I said, this is a University Town. Which reminds me, a little more crazy stuff, people are into the Hawks or maybe it’s the Hawkeyes (the school mascot) like you would not believe!!! One day in the mall we guessed how many people we would see wearing Hawkeye paraphernalia, we stopped counting when we got to 50 in the first thirty minutes. It’s always like that! Everyone has Hawkeye license plates, clothes, mailboxes, things in their yard, or large Hawks in their stores and stuff. Let’s pause momentarily so you can witness the craziness of it all…

I can’t wait to get my family an entire Hawkeye getup! Luckily, like I said, the people are really nice, so maybe they’ll keep being nice even if we don’t join the Hawkeye cult. In addition to the fun downtown, they have the nice suburbs, lots of trees and awesome parks, then they have rolling hills with pastures and corn fields, and what I love the most is they have water everywhere!!! Everywhere you look there are lakes, rivers, ponds, etc. We have a couple of lake/ponds down the street that our master bedroom looks out onto. I love it!!!! Anyway, Iowa City just has a lot of diversity and I like that. So far my only complaint is that IKEA is 3 hours away in Chicago and Costco is 1 ½ hours away in Dubuque! That is the other thing we are excited about with living in Iowa, we are relatively close to a lot of cool places! I love Chicago, and it is not far. In addition, we are only a couple of hours to St. Louis. Also, the Nauvoo temple is our temple and it is only 1 ½ hours away.

Anyway, we also like our new house. I LOVE having enough space to put everything! The kids have their own room, we have a play area, and the best part of our house is a screened in deck, where the kids play all day long (everyone here has one)! It works great for them because they can play outside, and great for me because they are right off the kitchen and they can’t get off the deck or get hurt! I LOVE IT! Our address is 425 Thornbury Avenue, Iowa City, and I don’t know our zip code!

I don’t know if anyone actually reads blogs this long, but there was a lot to report on, and in any case I am sure our parents will read it, well at least I think my Mom will! We love you all and miss you, and are very sorry for not telling anyone we were moving before we left. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if we were crazy or not, so I didn’t want to announce to everyone that I had received revelation we were supposed to move to Iowa, and then not actually go. We might still be crazy, that is still debatable, but we are here (and truthfully don’t have enough money to do it all again and come back, so for now, we are residents of Iowa City, Iowa, who would have thought I’d ever say that in my life?!). Thanks for all your love and support and I will try to be much more faithful at blogging, than I was at Facebook!