The Happenings

I haven't much to say--I am leaving for NYC this afternoon and it will be my third week in a row gone.  I have to say that I have never felt so at loose ends before.

I love my new place, but I feel like I can't enjoy many of the amenities because I keep leaving.  I also had a very depressing moment in Indiana last week when my bff of all time texted me that she was in Utah for her kids' spring break and I was nowhere to be found.  It was tragic and I cried in my hotel room.  Sadness for me.  I guess that means I need to make a trip to Colorado soon.

Steve and I haven't sat down together to do much of anything because of the maximum three-day stretches we have been together for the last 7 weeks. 

Meghan's broken leg makes everything hard.  I was taking her to the pool during swimming lessons that the older girls had, but those days are over.  She can't move herself, but she can demand, loudly, that she be moved, or that other people provide toys for her.  Thank goodness for older siblings who have stepped up to the plate nicely.  They seem less impatient than I.

I owe a huge thanks to my friend Chellese for getting me started on an exercise routine.  We started getting together twice a week to exercise and she introduced me to Tracy Anderson.  I couldn't link you to anything else because she is always wearing a bikini in her pics, but her mat workout video is amazing and you can see with her Japanese "pretty women" clip that what she does is really different.  I feel like my upper body strength is increasing, evidenced by the fact that I won the Fleming Family Olympics, a new game we started this weekend.  More on that in a minute.  I have taken to doing strength training 3-4 days a week and though I am not getting svelte, I feel a definitely increase in my overall health, and my back no longer hurts when I travel.  Highly recommend Tracy if you don't mind a bit of pop culture and constant reference to how she can make you tiny (not like I am opposed to that goal, but I don't like my daughters hearing that, wish she said "... so that your heart with operate at optimum efficiency and you will feel good inside" but perhaps that motivation is less than the desire to be thin.  Oh, evil society pressures.


Fleming Family Olympics--so on Saturday when the kids were fighting and bored (ahem, Conference on Saturdays, tough) I decided we should do an impromptu competition.  Here is how it works:

--Each person in the family picks a particular competition. 
--You get 30 minutes to "prepare" (so I could clean up the house)
--Bring your stopwatch and your measuring tape so you can assess winners in those categories, along with a pencil and piece of paper to keep track
--Go!!

The activities we prepared:
--Bridget:  take a random object from around the house and decorate it with paper and tape.  The most creative wins (she judged and therefore could not compete in this one).  I of course won because I know how to do something in 6 minutes.  I took the Eiffel Tower and added a bunch of monkeys that I cut out from paper.  Creative, no?

--Casey:  5 trivia questions.  I lost this one because I couldn't remember how many DS games he had or the name of the book he was reading.  Bridget won this one.

--Gillian:  List as many words that rhyme with ees as possible.  Meaning, how many words can you create that end in ees.  There was some fighting as we defined rhyming but in the end, I would have won anyway, not really fair competing with kids, but I will take the wins wherever I can.

--Mama:  Try to build the tallest tower from blocks.  I wish I would have set the timer for this one because Bridget actually made the fastest, tallest building.  When her building fell, Casey scooped up her blocks and then spent about 20 more minutes building a really stable foundation.  He pointed out that I never said they couldn't use the extra blocks from others and there was no time limit. 

We had a great time while Steve was at Priesthood meeting--then on Sunday after Conference, same thing, bored, fighting, etc. so we decided to do round two.  This time Steve was involved so we ended up doing some more physical feats--chicken fighting within the taped area on the carpet, wheelbarrow race, and a series of competitions involving the exercise ball.

Everyone went to bed happy, energized, and when we finally did our family prayer and scripture study at the end, there was NO fighting.  It was magical. I did lie about winning though, Steve actually beat my on Sunday due to the exercise ball competitions--I don't have the upper body strength to pull off the stuff that he did.  I beat my kids though, and that is all that counts.

I am off to NYC this pm of course, my last travel for TWO WHOLE WEEKS, hopefully I will capture some more colorful images of the culture.