Saturday, September 20, 2008

Me times twelve

I've seen this on numerous blogs and had to add it to mine.

Just call me a lamb!

First, the questions:


1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your nickname.

Now the answers:




In case you can't tell from the photos, here are the answers in writing:
1. Stephanie--duh!
2. Chocolate--double duh!
3. Kaiserslautern American High School
4. Green
5. Aaron Eckhart
6. Dr. Pepper. Although I'm totally off it now. See two posts down.
7. Fiji
8. Brownie Sundae. Or anything with chocolate and ice cream, really.
9. Hmmm...I can't remember what I chose! Oh yeah--HAPPY! Not that I'm unhappy now.
10. My family. Especially Darrell.
11. Fabulous!
12. Ladybug--that what my grandmama calls me. I always think of her when I see one.

Since I still can't figure out how to make a link, if you want to add this to your blog, you'll have to look elsewhere. I really do need to figure out how to do all the fun stuff with the blog, but that's for another day.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Cutest Niece in the World

Look at the cute outfit Malena is wearing:



I don't mean to brag, but I bought it for her!

Ok. I guess I mean to brag. But that's what aunts do.

Duh.

Tip to self

After giving up caffeine because of all the side effects, don't drink 64 ounces of Dr. Pepper in a 12 hour period.

You won't sleep for about 483 hours.

Monday, September 8, 2008

I heart Aunt Spicy!

I just found my favorite aunt!

Ok, she isn't my aunt, but she's my favorite blog-friend!

Since I don't know how to link to someone else' blog, just go to auntspicy.blogspot.com and check out her site. It's great!

Plus, I won a yard of this fabric:



She had a giveaway for her 100th post and I was one of the lucky winners! I was even luckier, since I discovered her blog just hours before the deadline.

I hope I can be as good of an aunt as Spicy is!

Friday, September 5, 2008

This one's for Freaky

Ok. So in my family we have really weird nicknames for each other. We'll start from the parents and go in sequential order of age and I will list some of the nicknames:
Dad--Lou; Pappy
Mom--MAHW!; Penny; Mumsy
Stephanie (me)--Sis; Sissy; Stepharennapey
Jennilyn--Nee-nee; Jen-jen; Neen
Todd--Todd-a-rina; Toddy; Superboy
Julie--Juge; Ju-ju; Jingermanson
Emily (she has the most--probably since she is the youngest and we ran out of kids, but not nicknames)--Freaky Friday (Freaky for short); Ma'am; Carolina Gadget; Me-me; Meemers; Ems; Uuh-emleay

So the topic of this post isn't really about our names--I'll have to explain those later. I read my sister, Emily's blog earlier tonight. She cracks me up. Go to the Geeks in Love link to the right and see what I mean.

Well, she talks about how sheltered we were in relation to the "bad" words. We grew up in a home where, I kid you not, dumb-dumb and poo-poo-head were the worst of the worst. It is actually very difficult to type those words. Not because I can't figure out the question of to hyphenate or not to hyphenate. It's because they still carry a sort of power of being "bad" words.

Now, you must know that Emily and I are 11 years apart. So by the time she came around, the majority of the family knew there were words worse than the above-mentioned two. Like "stupid" and "shut up." Ok. And the four letter words that can take a G rated movie to a PG and a PG movie to an R. (PG-13 didn't exist yet). But, they were banned from our home. (Except on the rare occasion when a parent-who-shall-remain-nameless would get really mad and utter a profanity. We would all get eyes as big as saucers--the flying kind--a wish we could become invisible and slink into the other room. I can still remember one such occasion in El Paso, TX, in pre-1983 when this occurred. Yes, they were that few and far between.)

I think I have sufficiently set the tone for the following event.

When I was old enough to attend Senior Sunday School, in the days before the block, I remember thinking it was pretty cool that we would sit with our Sunday School classes and have opening exercises. We'd sing an opening song, have a prayer and then take the Sacrament. Yea, for all you too young to know. We had the Sacrament twice each Sunday.

I remember that I was just getting to the age where I could pay attention enough while singing to make it through the whole song--yeah, all four verses. Well. If you have never noticed this before, all LDS hymns are pretty tame. Except for Sacrament hymns. I hear you asking yourself what I mean by this. A large percentage of the Sacrament hymns in the rotation during the late-70's and early-80's contained some choice "bad" words. Like "hell" and I think even "damn."

I was shocked!

What was I to do? I knew these were words that were off-limits. I got my mouth washed out with soap (dirty Lava, even) and got hot sauce poured on my tongue for words that were far tamer. (I was a back-talker, not a swearer!).

I was supposed to sing. But I couldn't use "bad" words. What to do?

I devised the perfect plan. I would sing along and then sing "H. E. Double tooth-picks" in lieu of hell. Yep! I was plenty pleased!

Until I realized that I just missed my opportunity to say "bad" words WITHOUT the hot sauce.

I was always so disappointed. I would resolve to sing the words with gusto next week. But I always forgot. I think the Lord tried to keep me from developing a love for colorful language.

Even now, when singing one of the few remaining songs with hell in it, I sing that particular word a little louder than the others.