On the road again...

After hunkering down for the holidays, we are looking forward to doing a little traveling in the next few months. I have traveled a lot with Kai in the last two years so I have picked up a couple of travel tricks along the way. I'll buy some toys at Savers and wrap them individually and then stagger when Kai gets to open them along the trip. I come equipped with snacks and toys and media and lots of changes of clothes (trust me, it's better to be safe than sorry!).

But nothing entertains Kai like a good book. So I always make a point to get a few new books for Kai (preferably new, used books) for each trip. So I'm wondering, what are your kids' favorite books these days?

Here are a few of our household favorites:

P.S. I have a job

As of January 1st, I am officially a working gal yet again. Now, I know what you're thinking, I've tried the working thing over and over again since having Kai and it never ends up working out. But this time I think that I've finally found the perfect formula for successful work life balance.

1. I'm only working out of the office two full days a week and while I might have to work more from home, I am not on-call 24/7 like I was in my last job.

2. The company I am working for is small, and my colleagues are the best. They are young, bright, business-savvy and talented, but they are also extremely ethical, family-oriented, loyal and so much fun. I couldn't have hand-picked a better team.

3. I have the best boss anyone could ask for. Me!

I am officially a business owner. I have three other partners, two of whom I knew from my former job as a nursing home administrator.  They are great guys who have become good friends. The idea for our company was born last summer. Since then it has evolved a lot, but in the last few months things have really started to accelerate and come together. Now we have a business license, an office space, some really cool medical equipment, a handful of full and part time employees and fancy job titles (I'm still deciding between "President" and "COO"). We are officially open for business.

There is no doubt that I have been blessed in my career. I was given a huge opportunity right out of law school that I totally wasn't qualified for. Since then I've had constant job security and worked with some really amazing people while getting to stretch myself professionally. But I can honestly say that co-owning a business takes the cake.

It's going to be a big year for Mobility! Stay tuned.

The story of my hair

The last few months have been so focused on the holidays that I've gotten behind addressing any other news of interest going on in our lives. So the next few posts will get you up to speed on all of that.

First of all, I feel obligated to address my new haircut (or my #*$& hair as I'm more likely to call it these days). I hadn't gotten my hair done in a couple of months and it was starting to look too long and too drab. I've been thinking about chopping it off for more than 6 months now and when I found out that this stylist who I had been to in the summer and really liked, was back from maternity leave, I decided to book an appointment before Christmas and go for it.

This is the picture that I brought with me to show the stylist:

Those of you who have only known me for the last 2 years wouldn't know that I had my hair short for years before I finally grew it out. I like shorter hair. But seeing as how long it took me to grow my hair out this last time and how long it was when I decided to chop it off, I told the stylist that I wanted a longer version of the above haircut (I'm a mom, ponytails are a must). I also said that I didn't want it to be too drastically an A-line cut or too layered.

Things started off well enough. I didn't flinch when she tied my hair back in a ponytail and hacked it off a few inches below my shoulders. But things went downhill from there. The stylist was working on the back of my hair for what felt like forever and even from my vantage point I could see that my hair wasn't laying right in the back. And it felt like I was getting a lot of layers and that they were getting shorter and shorter. It wasn't going well. And then she started taking off length in the front to match it up with the mess she had made in the back. My face turned stony. She asked if everything was ok and I told her that it was looking a lot shorter than what I had asked for.

She started getting super flustered and apologizing. Saying that her razor wasn't working right and that she had to take length off in the front to fix it. I had been sitting in her chair almost 2 hours at this point. After abandoning the "faulty razor" she started trying to salvage my cut with scissors, but dry-cutting hair with scissors isn't a good idea. So she told me that she needed to wet my hair down again and essentially start over to fix it.

By this time my hair was already 4 inches shorter than I wanted it. The front was totally uneven and the back looked like it had been cut with a mini weed-whacker. And I had been sitting there for 2.5 hours. I was already late picking up Kai from my friend Kaari's house. She had places to be and I felt so bad for taking so long. I also wasn't anxious to lose any more length from my already-too-short hair to fix the problem (let's just say a ponytail was no longer an option).

So I ended up leaving instead of waiting for her to fix it. By this time my stylist had literally broken out into hives on her neck and her whole face had gone crimson. She had tears in her eyes and kept apologizing and saying that she wanted to fix it and asking when I could come back. Unfortunately I had a work engagement the next day that I couldn't miss so it was going to be a few days.

When I went to pick up Kai, Kaari convinced me that I would be crazy to let the same stylist touch my hair ever again and that I should demand that a master stylist fix her mistakes. I felt a little bad, but that's what I ended up doing.

So I went back to the salon a few days later and had a master stylist work on my hair for an hour or more to fix it. I can appreciate that she did a good job considering what she had to work with, but I still didn't end up with a haircut that I like. It's too short, too layered, too much of an A-line and at an awkward length. It would be cuter if it were either shorter or longer. It was of little consolation when the master stylist told me, "Don't worry, you'll have the haircut that you asked for by the end of summer."

In hair years, that is an eternity.

But at the same time, what can you do? I'm not a dweller. I'm a big believer in "what's done is done." So sometimes I look in the mirror or see a picture of my haircut and feel annoyed for a moment, but then I go on with my life and remind myself, it's just hair. It grows. There are worse things.

So there it is, the story of my hair. I feel like I've had to repeat it too many times already. So hopefully now that it's recorded on here, I can just reply, "Thank you!" when someone says, "I like your haircut."

New Year's Resolutions

I usually don't do the whole New Year's resolution thing. Resolutions usually result in two emotions: apathy or guilt. I'm not a big fan of either. But this year I decided that I would jump on the bandwagon and come up with some resolutions that I can actually stick with.

Here they are....

1. Take my vitamins every day
2. Give Kai half as much attention as I did last year
3. Only wear pants that have an expandable waistband
4. Gain 25-30 lbs

I know it's ambitious, but if all goes well I'll have this list knocked off by July 29th. Feel free to be impressed.

What'up Twenty-Twelve?

Most of my NYE's have been spent in unmemorable fashion. Usually they involve Chinese takeout and movies. It is a small miracle when Yo and I are awake to see the ball drop and ring in the New Year with a kiss. But this year I was determined to change that.

Now that Yo and I live someplace where there are a plethora of young, fun couples to hang out with, I have been inspired to return to my party planning ways (anyone who knew me before 2005 knows what I'm talking about). And when I found out that out of my fun, party-planning friends, no one takes on New Year's, I decided I was up for the challenge.

So, inspired by a ridiculous slew of "friendly" competitions that peppered the last 6 months of my social calendar, I decided to create the ultimate competition and invited some of our favorite couple friends to participate in a Mr. and Mrs. 2012 Pageant (the first of many to come, I think).

First, meet the contestants:

The Andersens

The Ashbys

The Atwoods

The Aufdermauers

The Grays

The Jacobs

The Adams

The Carters

The Leeflangs

We started out the night by learning how long each couple had been married and how everyone met. Next year I may just ask, "Did anyone not meet at BYU or in a Stanford singles ward?" and take it from there.  

There was time for a couple of pictures before the competition started heating up:

After the introductions couples participated in three rounds of competition to earn points. The first round was the Not-So-Newly-Wed Game where we put the couples' knowledge of each other to the test. For a room full of college grads, VPs, CPAs, JDs and MBAs it sure took a while for people to catch onto the rules of this one. But eventually everyone got the hang of things. Here we are answering the questions and laughing over each others' answers:

The next round of the competition was charades. Girls and guys separated into two rooms and each person had to come up with 10 singular words, either a noun or a verb, but no proper nouns allowed. The girls were pretty much done in a jiffy. We had fun giggling over our less mature entries (like "poop" and "breastfeeding"). The guys, on the other hand took forever. Why? Because they either totally didn't understand the rules (my favorite entry was Yo's "Peter Pan") or they were busy coming up with words like "carpaccio" (thanks a lot, Dave Ashby!).

Look at the men deep in thought. And those are the words they came up with?

But after all that waiting, it was totally worth it for the priceless shots we got of everyone acting out the ridiculous words we had come up with. The way the game worked, each person had 1 minute to act out as many words as possible with only their spouse guessing the answers. Points were rewarded for each correct answer.

These pictures are priceless. And if you're wondering what the heck each person is acting out, your guess is probably as good as mine. (Heck, I couldn't even tell what words I'm acting out in these pictures!) Another priceless lesson learned from these pictures, I make really stupid faces when playing charades.

I don't think we ever did figure out what Allie was doing here. But it made for one of my favorite moments of the night

Did you guess pretzel?

I think this was for "Trapeze" but I'm so distracted by my face that it's hard to tell.

Sadly, probably one of the more flattering of the pictures that snapped of me. I'm sure my friends will post a few of the less flattering pics on their blogs. So if you want a good laugh, be sure to check that out.

If you are going to be in a charades competition any time soon, this is the guy that you want on your team. He was good, and fast, and he was good at guessing what his wife was doing, too. Even when no one else had a clue. I swear the Aufdermauers may be telepathic.

There weren't many shots of Dave acting things out. Why? Because Candace couldn't guess what he was doing for the life of her. I thought that this was the funniest shot of Dave, not because he's doing stupid actions like the rest of us, but because he is giving Candace a dirty look for not knowing what he was doing.

Another one of my favorite moves of the night. Hayley being a perfect little Meerkat (complete with their baby eating and baby-Ashby-like hair)

On the other hand, Hayley made a less than perfect submarine. In an ingenious move she went from looking like a shark to smiling and waving at everyone in the audience. We were totally baffled, but as she explained later, she was waving at the fish. Oh, now I get it!

Yo gets really animated when he plays charades. He was actually really good at acting things out. Guessing answers? Not so much. He totally played the "foreign card" on the words "pentagon" and "limbo".

No one told me that my head was in the middle of half of these shots or I would have moved.

Louis, also surprisingly good at charades. He is Mr. Cool Calm and Collected under pressure which I think helped a lot.

I don't know what Molly is eating, but I think that she likes it.

            Also not a lot of shots of Steve because he stood there smiling half the time.  I think he was going for the Mr. Congeniality title.

Guess who drew the word "Poop"? I'd say what are the odds, but we found out afterward that at least 3 of us had submitted the same word. Guess we weren't as daring and original as we thought. 

Now that everyone's walls were down and the audience was sufficiently warmed up, it was time to move onto the talent competition. I learned that not only are my friends diversely talented, they are good sports for throwing acts together so last minute (I think I gave them 4 days' warning).

The Aufdermauers did a little music number. Molly convincingly did some mix-mastering on the old turntables while Christian played MC.

Yo and I threw together a little Midget dance number. When I asked Yo what he wanted to do for our performance, he said juggle. When I reminded him that I don't know how to juggle, so he put the ball back in my court and after doing a little research on YouTube I learned that midget dancing is pretty much a full proof way to win a talent show without demonstrating any real talent. In other words, it was perfect.

My one regret of the night? That we didn't remember to video tape this dance because Yo and I had literally never put all of the elements together before the big show, so we had no idea how we would look or if the choreography that we threw together an hour before the party would come together at all. Oh well, thanks to the Jacobs, we got a lot of still shots, so these will have to do. We were told that we were told that we were very fun and must have been somewhat so because we squeaked out a win beating the (actually) talented Carters by scoring perfect 5s across the board.

For those who have never seen a "midget dance" (ok, not the most politically correct name, I know) those are my arms as the little legs, and Yo's arms as the actual arms.

The Jacobs reenacted a scene from The Matrix. It was ridiculously stupid and therefore absolutely hilarious and perfect for the occasion.

The Leeflangs brought it with a couple of simple, but impressive magic tricks.

The Atwoods relived the glory of their college days (ok, it was more of a nod to Hayley's past glory than Tat's) and put a little pep in their step.

Hayley's literal interpretation of raising the roof.

The Carter's brought their A-game and their lightsabers, performing an epic dance to Michael Jackson's, Billie Jean. It was awesome.

The Grays stepped up the competition by going a cappella on their singing number. They performed an old slave song passed down from generation to generation in the Gray family. (Louis claims he is 1/64 something other than flaming white, if that explains anything about the back story?)

The Ashbys claimed that making really cute babies was their talent. They brought little Drake as evidence and we all had to agree with them... still no points were awarded.

Speaking of points, contestants faced a jury of their peers:

Tough Crowd

15 minutes until midnight we rushed into what was to be our dance competition, but with no time to score, it just turned into a ridiculous series of dances. I can't think of a better way to spend the last 15 minutes of any year!

We drew the name of the song we had to dance to. Yo and I ended up with Britney Spears', "Womanizer" thus the pissed off look on my face and the goof grin on Yo's. What can I say, it was a dramatic interpretation.

My man's got moves!

Where I may have been harnessing righteous indignation in my number, Hayley was harnessing pure jubilation in hers.

These guys have some serious moves. We can hit the clubs anytime, Aufdermauers...or at least club Andersen.

Now we know where Charlie gets his moves

Someone's bringing sexy back!

To ring in the New Year we had a midnight balloon drop. Three of the balloons were marked with a sharpie and whoever found the marked balloons won a prize.

And of course there were stupid party hats and noise makers and toasts and hugs and midnight kisses.

 After the midnight madness, we announced who came out on top in the competition:

In 3rd Place:

The "Most Compatible" Grays

In 2nd Place:

The "Most Talented" Andersens

And coming out on top:

The "Most Well Rounded" Carters

The victory lap

 Because I don't believe in rewarding losers (and may have exceeded my party budget several times over) only the winners walked away with a prize, one-of-a-kind, his-and-hers, Mr. and Mrs. 2012 World Champion jackets:

Enjoy the title while it lasts, Carters, because I know 7 couples who are gunning for you next year!

I might be a little biased, but this party was honestly the most fun that I've had on New Years, maybe ever. Thanks to all the friends who helped us ring it in in style.