Census, can you sense my aggrivation?

I am a patriot. I love this country and I felt a patriotic thrill when I filled out my Census the day I got it and sent it right back in. I answered all the questions even though my sweet hubby gently ridiculed me for being so forthcoming with our government, I thought he was just being paranoid. What harm can come from them knowing that we're all white and we don't have much money? Well, apparently some of my answers baffled them because I got a message from them while we were out yesterday that they needed me to call and answer some questions about the form I sent in. I couldn't understand what they could have a problem with. Perhaps they couldn't grasp the reality of a family with two parents of opposite gender who are married where all the children share the same name as both parents?? Although. . . our first three children were born kind of rapid fire and it might have raised a few flags and eyebrows, perhaps they had questions about that. So I decided to call them back much to the chagrin of my "paranoid" sweetheart. I dutifully dialed the number and was quickly speaking to a nice young man who then proceeded to administer the ENTIRE questionnaire all over again. I found myself trying to be nice to the harried governmental worker and answer his questions despite my own instincts to just hang up the phone and Ryan's insistence that I do just that. I asked him shortly into our interview why he didn't simply read the answers I'd given on the survey, they were to be exactly the same as I would tell him over the phone and it would perhaps save us both time and he could go on to the next poor sap on his list but he insisted that he wouldn't call unless he had valid questions about the survey. He then drilled me about each of our children, had any of them been in staying with a relative during this and this time? A friend? In jail? In a shelter? In a tree? In the yard for a long time? It went on and on. My answers were clear, no, no, no, no. . . I said to him. "We are a family. We live together. Nobody else lives here. Nobody lived anywhere else." And still he plowed on and on. I said to him again, "Look at what I mailed to you. You have all the answers, nothing will have changed. Just because I filled it out April 1st doesn't mean I was trying to trick you!" During this whole exchange Ryan is lingering near me, urging me to end the conversation and I'm feeling more and more like I really should. Then the fellow gets to the race part and I again tell him that we are what I said we are but he continues bravely onward slightly apologetic. I finally just told him that I answered the questions on the form, that the answers I gave are correct and that he should refer to said answers and that I had not really enjoyed our conversation but that I hoped he had better luck grilling other citizens and good day. I hung up the phone.

I felt guilty. I love our country. I have ancestors that fought in the Revolutionary War for heavens sake! I am proud of my heritage and my citizenship but it is getting harder and harder to be proud of this country and that is sad.

Getting Along

Peter and I have had some trouble getting along lately. He's been super grumpy because his tummy has been hurting and he gets frustrated when he can't tell me what the problem is or what he wants. Today we clashed over him riding in the cart at Walmart, he didn't want to and I wanted him to. I won and he was a good sport about it eventually. Then we came home and he wanted chocolate but I didn't want to give him any so we fought about that. Then I gave him some cereal and he was okay with that. I sat down to say a prayer for the food with him and I'm so glad that I did. Up to that point I was feeling a little bit grumpy about my son who screams, but when I sat down to pray with him and thank our Heavenly Father for our blessings I immediately felt love for the dear boy and for our Creator and I know he felt it too. We kissed and made up after the prayer and we are going to try to get along better.

Alana Kay Kindergartner

I'm sure all of my discerning readers are fluent in Kindergartenese however, I will provide a translation just in case: "My butterfly is pretty. It has purple and orange and yellow and green. My butterfly can fly up in the sky."


"My family and I went to my Grandma and Grandpa's house. We went Easter hunting I almost got the most but my sister Tessa got more than me. It was fun I really like it."

How can my little itty bitty Alana be grown up enough to know how to read and write?!

Peter is 2!

Our Peter Mac turned 2 on Saturday. He is fortunate to always get to have his birthday close to General Conference weekend and Easter. Hopefully it will always be fun parties with family and lots of Easter candy.

I made his cake to be a road with cars on it. He LOVES cars. He points out cars whenever he sees them with an excited, breathless, "Car Car!" He had a fun party with lots of cousins, Aunts and Uncles, and Grandma and Grandpa L.

He likes to eat cake and ice cream. We love our Peter a lot. He is a very sweet little boy, he is growing up fast and learning a lot. He loves his brother and sisters and they love him too.

He came out front with me this morning to pull wildflowers, as you can see, he had to bring along four of his Car Cars to help. He continually clutches at least two cars at all times :)

April Fools!

Tonight we had a special April Fool's dinner. I was too excited about this all day, I actually set up a curtain partition in the kitchen so the kids couldn't see what was being prepared for dinner to keep it a surprise. Grandma and Grandpa Livingstone graciously came over and were good sports, Grandma Livingstone did this a lot when her kids were little too :) Also Aunt Jessica came over after she sent off her hubby who chose to flee the state rather than be subjected to yet another strange meal at our house. . . We did the menu thing with a few little tricks thrown, in - there were 6 things they could order on the menu so we had three courses and they ordered two items per course, here's what they chose from and what they really were:

Nectar of Life (a cup of water)
Cow's Blood (a glass with jello - it looked like a cup of juice until they tried to drink it! Ha-ha!)
Fish Blob Nuggets and Squashed Spuds with Peace and Wabbit's Delight (this one looked like chicken nuggets and mashed potatoes with gravy and peas and carrots BUT it was in fact oatmeal cookies, ice cream with carmel sauce and green and orange jellybeans - it wasn't super convincing looking but it got some laughs.)
Mini Sweet Cup (this one looked like a cupcake with pink frosting but it was actually meatloaf baked in a cupcake cup and topped with pink colored mashed potatoes, it was awesome and totally tricked the diners.)
Poseidon's Trident (a fork)
Mini Bowl (a spoon)

So there were some fun ordering mishaps, Jeffy got the ice cream dish and the jello for the first course but no utensils to eat with and he was the first to discover the jello trick (tee-hee). Alana got the "Mini Sweet Cup" for her first course and was licking the mashed potatoes off the top and all the other diners asked her how the frosting was (they still didn't know it wasn't a cupcake) and Alana said, "It's not frosting, it's mashed potatoes." And they didn't believe her, they thought she was joking. Ha-ha! It still makes me laugh. I had Ryan helping me put the dishes together behind the curtain and it took him a long time to figure out that they weren't really cupcakes, he was kind of like, "So, what's for dinner?" Hee-hee! I giggled a lot while listening to them discovering my trickery.


The "cupcakes" were actually really tasty even with the strange colored potatoes, it was a fun way to make meatloaf, I stuffed red peppers and corn and onion in them because I couldn't figure out another way to get veggies into the dish as a side and make them look desserty. . . I'll work on it for next year. Note in the picture above how Alana put her "peas and carrots" on top of her jello. I'm not sure how much the kids actually ate, but whatever - we had fun so I guess it doesn't matter.

It was a good day and it turned out well, maybe I'll grow up to be one of those fun, cool moms. . .