Lauren's Choice

Tonight I had to make the hardest decision OF. MY. LIFE!!!!
Okay...I over-reacted. A little bit...
We were playing a semi-friendly game of Apples to Apples and I was judging the round. I mean, it really shows how well my friends know me that these cards were played, but how am I supposed to make this choice:

How, I ask you...HOW?!? It's not fair making me choose...
On one hand, I have been to Disneyland 25 times whereas I've only seen about 8 Broadway shows/national tours, on the other hand I have 1,625 showtunes on my iPod, but only 403 Disney songs. I'm still really stressed out thinking about having to make this decision in real life. What a quandary!

I finally just closed my eyes and shuffled the cards and picked one at random.

Adventures in Babysitting

There are a lot of things I'm not good at. I'm a terrible singer, I'm not a very good driver, and I suck at spelling. However...despite all of that, I am a darn good babysitter. This is one area where I am more than willing to toot my own horn (toot toot) I am AWESOME at babysitting. I mean, I've had close to 11 years of experience. I love kids, kids love me. But it takes more than that to rock as well as I do at babysitting.

Tonight a co-worker asked me, last minute, if I could watch her two kids (ages 8 and 6) tonight. I thought, 'why not? I'm not doing anything, and it's easy money.' So when I got there, the kids were finishing their dinners, and I allowed them to finish the episode of Wizards of Waverly Place, and watch an episode of Good Luck, Charlie. Then...we turned off the TV. We played Freeze Dance for, like, 45 minutes. They kept bringing props and costumes out into the living room, so towards the end, my rule was every time I froze the music, they would have to put something away. Then they put on a show for me (I could tell they did this quite often, as they had as choreographed a routine as an 8 year old and 6 year old could come up with). Then the little girl asked if she could paint my nails (she was not at all satisfied or impressed with my clear nail polish) but decided after painting one thumbnail a kind of orange-y coral-y color that she would rather have me paint her nails. So I did. She wanted to be surprised, so I did each one a different color...she loved it!! Then we played hide-and-seek, Mickey Mouse Yahtzee, Crazy Eights and more freeze dance. We were having a crazy dance party when their parents got home. It was my first time sitting for these kids, actually, my first time meeting them...and they wanted me to stay longer. Why?

BECAUSE I ROCK AT BABYSITTING, THAT'S WHY!!

(Although, it helps when you have great kids, like I did tonight)

We Are Family

I am home from crazy Christmas extravaganza and I can honestly say that this was probably one of the best Christmases of my life so far. Family, family, family!! Playing Wii, decorating the tree, playing cards, opening gifts, EATING, my goodness...so much food. Gramma doesn't let ANYONE go hungry.
To be completely honest, I was actually a little nervous going into this Christmas. Just because my mom's youngest brother lives so far north and doesn't travel very much (or really get that much time of work, as far as I know) so I was seeing a set of Knights that I hadn't seen in 7 years (the last time we were all at Gramma's for Christmas). I thought it was going to be a smidge awkward, since we don't have much in common. We're about the same age, but that's about it. They are hunters and they kill things and then eat them (in fact, my cousin Ryan's fiance made him squirrel stew out of a squirrel that he shot). We are past the days of hide and go seek and epic quadruple deck games of war...but y'know...family is family. Yeah, we don't have a ton in common in terms of day-to-day life, but we played Apples to Apples and 'Ultimate Go Fish' with the other set of Knights, aka the "little cousins" (the shortest of which, even though she's 13, is 5'7"...we're a tall family). It was a great day!!
Although, I am a little disappointed that there isn't much crazy to report on...