Conversations with a kid: Ashton's philosophy on Santa Clause.

The other day while visiting at grandma's house, Ashton suddenly and randomly blurted out,

"You know, I can believe in Santa Clause because he makes perfect sense, but its the elves that I have a hard time believing in. I mean, all these little tiny people in funny hats and tights running around? It doesn't make any sense at all."

(Yes, and that makes perfect sense Ash.)

Ashton at her Christmas choir concert. 2010

Conversations with a kid: It's going to be a series!

I'm going to be starting a new series on my new and improved blog, hopefully to be written every Thursday, called "Conversations with a kid".  I've put a lot of thought into this little endeavor and I have to say that I am quite excited about it. I must be excited because as some of you know I never commit to anything unless I'm excited about it. So without further ado, the first entry in what will undoubtedly be a long series of blog entries.

Conversations with a kid:

Matthew's heart to heart moment

As the Roane family was just finishing up their dinner Matthew, who is five years old and still speaks with a pretty heavy lisp suddenly blurts out, "Daddy, you know how you will get old one day and then you'll die?"

Nate, steadies himself for what he thinks is sure to be a difficult conversation. When he feels prepared to address the topic and calm his little boy's fears about the inevitable he answers.

"Yes, Matthew. But you know that won't be for a very very long time. You will be a grown man with a family of your own when I finally die."

"Yeah daddy, I know, but you know how you will die one day?"

"Yes, I do know."

Matthew's expression is thoughtful. "Well, when you do get old and die, in a long long time, I'm going to take all your clothes and suits and wear them."

(I hope he puts that in the eulogy.)

I saw mommy kissing Santa Clause, then I went to therapy for five years after.

I was out shopping at the mall with my mother the other day when, while rummaging through my favorite store, the christmas song, "I saw mommy kissing Santa Clause", began to play over the system. This one wasn't the typical version of the song you are used to hearing; sung by a child, but rather done very rock-and-roll style and sung by a sultry sounding woman. It may have been Gwen Stephanie, but I'm not positive about that either. Anyway, fast forward to that evening, Nate and I were trying to get the dinner cleaned up and kids to bed, all the while "I saw mommy kissing santa clause" was still playing over and over in my head like an internal broken record. Then it got me thinking.

Everyone (myself included) always thinks that song is so cute and funny, but what if that really happened to some kid? that would not be cute or funny, it would be terribly tragic and disturbing to that poor youngster.

Imagine yourself at seven or eight years old and you still (spoiler alert) believe in the jolly Saint Nick. You sneak out of bed to catch a glimpse of the bringer of toys and happiness first hand only to find him totally macking on none other than your own mother! It would be terribly confusing. How would you know at such a tender age that it was your dad dressed in a costume?

Would Christmas ever be the same again? Would you ever be able to look at your mother the same again? I think not. You would probably despise Christmas. You would never care for any of the presents brought by that evil man who everyone believes to be so wonderful and giving, and only you know the awful truth; that he's nothing more than a fat red-suited home wrecker.

What about when your parents take you to see Santa the next year at the mall or whatever and tell you you're supposed to go sit on his lap? I think if it were me I'd probably sit on his lap and then scratch his twinkly little eyes out!

Maybe I've given all of us something to think about this year. I'm certainly not going to ask Nate to dress as Santa Clause just in case one of our kids decide to sneak out of bed and catch us in the living room together getting our mack on. Either that or I'll just not kiss him while he's wearing a santa suit, but I'm pretty sure Nate's not going to put a santa suit on at all in this life time so I just won't really worry about it.

Hopefully, the next time I go to the mall shopping at Christmas time I won't be overly analytic about the silly Christmas songs they play in the stores because thinking about this has been terribly exhausting.

The lazy housewife's black friday shame.

Brace yourselves. 

 This year, I actually put some serious thought  into joining the crazy group of people that go out at midnight after Thanksgiving to fight to the death for the last half-priced whatever at Wal-mart. I even almost made arrangements to meet my brother and sister-in-law so I'd have some buddies in the ring with me.

 This is so not like me. I'm the type that will pay more than I should for anything just to avoid the inconvenience of crowds or actual bargain hunting. I'm a store-window shopper. I see an outfit in the window then go to the store clerk and say,

"That outfit in the window there. I need that exact thing in about five sizes larger, ASAP."

But I guess after eight years of being married to the king of basement bargain shopping, the thrill of the deal is finally rubbing off on me too. In fact, Nate usually does the Black Friday shopping while I'm snuggled up cozy in our bed. This year, however he had to work in the morning and had to skip it, which is most likely the only reason I even thought about doing it myself. 

In the end I was, as with most of my endeavors, all talk and no action when it came to this middle of the night shopping crap.

 I chickened out. 

I don't like the cold! And last night in Utah it was really freaking cold!

 I also value sleep -- a lot! Being the mother of four young children, sleep is a precious comodity that you don't squander easily. It would be the equivalent of the US passing up some free oil drilling sites or something. It's just not done.

Of course now I'm thinking -- with deep regret-- about the deals I passed up for my laziness. I could have gotten a Kung-Zhu for only four dollars! Four dollars! There were other values I found in the newspapers that I don't remember entirely, but thats just because my short-term memory is shot. I'm pretty sure I had my eye on a Bakugan thing-a-ma-jig and some board games as well. 

To lessen my guilt, I'll just do what I attempt to do every year:

 Convince my children and myself that Christmas isn't about how many presents you get, but about the birth of baby Jesus. It's never really worked before--they're way too greedy for that crap, and I'm not spiritual enough to make them believe it, but if I really put my mind to it I'm sure I can ham it up pretty well. Maybe I'll pull out the old Ten Commandments movie from the storage shed and everything. 

If all that doesn't work, I'll just do what I usually move on to :

CHARGE IT!

All Humans Should Be Hibernating right now.

 My big brother once told me that humans had the same capacity for hibernation that bears do and that we are therefore meant for it. I don't know for sure if he is correct or not, but I've never questioned the logic of Troy because he's one of the smartest people I know. And even if I did question his logic about some things, I wouldn't question it on this particular subject because I rather like the idea. So, I did some research and discovered that bears don't hibernate in the same way that squirrels or hamsters do but that its more like denning or shutting themselves in for the long winter. Squirrels and hamsters however fall into a deep, almost comatose like state that other mammals are not designed for.

 Anyway, the point to all of this is that I want to start a petition, based on the evidence that I've both read about online and learned from my big brother (because those are both scientific methods!) about the human's capacity for hibernation-like sleep, to have a world-wide human hibernation during winter. I propose that we, humans of the world start hibernating New Year's day. (That way we can all enjoy Christmas and drink ourselves into comatose-like states on new year's eve. Plus, the Christmas dinners are the perfect way to stock up on the body fat we need to get us through a long winter's sleep).

I'm practically a genius.

The reason for the proposal? Well, I have plenty. In fact below is a list of the reasons I think humans should hibernate.

awe. don't you want to be cute like him?

Reasons Humans Should Hibernate:

Its too damned cold to be awake

Its dark outside way more than is mentally healthy

There would be no snow-related accidents

We all get crabby in the winter anyway

January and February are extremely depressing and ugly months.

Couldn't we all use a good nap anyway?

bundling up in coats and hats and scarves and gloves is a huge pain in the ass.

No one likes Valentine's day anyway - its stupid.

If any of us don't want to hibernate we should be issued government winter homes in places like Florida

and that would only be good for boosting the economy in those places, right?

I'm sure I'll think of more reasons humans should hibernate and if anyone else thinks of some good ones that I have missed you may leave it in the comment box below. 

Lets start this thing!

Uncle Paul and Char: The tragedy that didn't need to be

I've been hesitating to write this blog because the subject material is touchy. However, after some good thought, I've decided its what needs to be said then, perhaps we can move on to sunnier stories.

This week I attended my uncle's funeral. Funerals are never happy occasions but this one was tinged with an extra dose of tragedy considering that his death was both untimely as well as unnecessary.

I got the call on the evening of Friday, November 5th. My mother was on the other end, she was obviously upset.

"My little brother, Paul, (his wife), Shirlene, their son Cameron and his fiance were just in a terrible accident in Wendover. Some of them were life-flighted to the University of Utah hospital. I don't know any other details yet."

I told her to call me the minute she heard more. Anxiously I awaited her call, all the while hoping and praying that everyone in the car would be alright.

"Don't let them die this way, please. It's just not right." I thought aloud.

several hours later, as Nate and I were just crawling into bed, the call came. My mother could hardly talk through her sobs.

"Paul didn't make it." She finally uttered. And I didn't know how to react, or what to say, so I just didn't say anything.

The next morning I drove my mother and father to the hospital in Salt Lake to see my aunt Shirlene who was badly injured in the accident. Once we talked to her and her other two sons we learned that the accident was a result of a faulty gas petal.

Remember the Toyota recalls a few months ago? Well, Paul and his wife owned a Toyota Carolla. Once the recalls came out they did their due diligence and took their carolla in to be inspected. Apparently, Toyota cared enough to fix half the problem and leave the other half to chance. Telling my Uncle that yeah, the entire problem isn't going to be fixed at Toyota's expense, but that the chances of the other part of the problem actually being a problem was slim to none.

Unfortunately, Toyota's half-assed job at fixing their mistake caused my Uncle, and as we were soon to discover, his future daughter-in-law's life. Soon after my Uncle was pronounced dead in the ambulance, my cousin's fiance, Char, was also pronounced brain dead due to severe head trauma and the choice was made to take her off life support. Char was thirty-eight years old she leaves behind two teenaged children, parents, and of course my cousin, her future husband.

My Uncle Paul was sixty-six years old and full of fun-loving life. He leaves behind his wife of forty years, three sons, two daughters-in-law, four grandchildren, and two older siblings, one of them being my mom.

I suppose I've hesitated writing this blog because my sadness is equally matched with anger. And anger won't do anything to bring back the lives that were tragically lost. However, I finally decided that people should know the truth. That despite their claims to care so deeply about their customers' safety, when all is said and done, Toyota is just a very large, very successful and very insincere business that cares about one thing; The bottom line.

Buyer beware.

Eve's autumn time description.

My friend, Eve, is a gifted comedian. Its not that she tries to be funny, she's just naturally gifted in wit. It is

 Eve's description of my favorite season, autumn, that I find to be both, humorous as well as very accurate at the same time. I wanted to share it with all of you today.

"I like fall, but I almost don't like it at the same time. Fall time is like a bad boyfriend, seducing you with the cool, crisp weather and beautiful colors then just when you start to really like him, bam! He changes and here's winter!"