"The Delights of Self-Discovery are Always Available." --Gail Sheehy

You know, all these years David and I have had a good laugh at our siblings for their nocturnal activities. You see, all of the kids except us did weird things while sleeping. Okay, when it comes down to it, I can't remember what Isaac does that's weird. David will have to help me out on that one.

Sarah and Jon both sleep like the dead. They can sleep for far longer than most people--10, 12 hours don't bother them. In fact, they enjoy it. Also, if you wake them up before they want to get up, both are grumpy as bears. Cute bears, sleepy bears, but still, dangerous bears. :) Take a word of warning from me and try not to wake them if you can. It got to be that when the parents would ask me to rouse one or the other of that particular pair, I would hastily remember another, more pressing matter, and decline their invitation to walk into the lair and be mauled. :)

Jacob is extremely sensitive to light and sound when he is sleeping. He likes to have things pitch black and I have seen him wear ear plugs when going to sleep. Don't get me wrong--I understand the notion of not having a lot of light while one is trying to sleep. We have a lamp with a night light which I absolutely detest. I always throw something over the night light so I can fall asleep. I also turn the extremely bright clock radios away from me so I don't have a glaring neon light in my eyes all night long. Brent doesn't understand either of those notions. :)

David's a pretty light sleeper and it doesn't take much to wake him, but other than that, he's pretty normal...so far... :)

Rachael--now, well Rachael is another story. Rachael grinds her teeth during her sleep, which absolutely drives me crazy. You really want to throw a pillow at her when she's doing that, but that seems unkind. She doesn't injure her teeth like other teeth grinders. No dentist has been able to find any evidence of her grinding her teeth, but I promise you, she does it.

Rachael also talks in her sleep, which amuses me to no end. I would sometimes try and get her to spill vital information, or carry on a ludicrous conversation, just to have a laugh. Unfortunately, Rachael would always become suspicious and would wake up and be mad at me, so I never had a successful test.

But I thought I was the same as David! I thought I was a good sleeper, with no annoying habits! Brent tells me that this is not so--not even close. In my defense, Brent is a very light sleeper and if I do something like roll over in bed, that will wake him up. He seems forgiving of bed rolling, but not so forgiving of sleep talking. Yes, apparently I also talk in my sleep. Brent told me that last night I was talking about burning marshmallows in the kitchen. He said that sometimes I tell him something and he thinks that I'm awake and asking questions, but when he tries to respond, I don't respond to him. No, no, I'm just having the fun of a conversation by myself.

So, I did not know that I talk in my sleep. I have tried not to talk in my sleep, ever since Brent made this known to me. I want him to have a good night's sleep. But apparently that isn't working, as evidenced by the marshmallow comment.

I've attached a picture of the Lauritzen siblings, without Jacob. We, the weird sleepers, UNITE! :)

I'm not going to talk about the condo remodel...

...because it's a somewhat frustrating subject to us. :) Instead, I will talk about how much support we have been given--many, many relatives have given of their time and effort to come down and help us out. Scott, Rachael, Trent, Ray, Karen, David and Martha--you are all fantastic! We really appreciate you!

Last week I found the time to make a wedding scrapbook, only we can't call it that, because I'm not really a scrapbooker. For my wedding guestbook, I had people sign 12x12 cardstock that had pictures of Brent and me on it. I put those in a silver "Our Wedding" special from Mervyn's, but there were plenty of extra pages. So last week I cut out and artistically arranged the cards we got from our wedding. I put on stickers and things and generally tried to make it cutesy. I also put in all the advice that was written down for me at the Lauritzen family shower. After having done it, I was really pleased with it. No, I'm not a master scrapbooker, but it reflects a bit of my personality, as well as all of you who were so generous to us. I made Brent look through it--telling him that he would only have to do it once. I also had my mom and Rachael look through it. I was pleased when Rachael said that she thought it was a very good idea and that maybe she'd do that with her wedding cards! She still had them someplace. I'm not sure how common that is--does everyone out there save the gift cards? What did you all do with yours? I'd love to know.

Okay, since we have a million of these, here is another picture of us from our engagement photos. Sorry folks, but I like putting pictures up and we're too busy to take any right now (see above subject that must not be mentioned.)



This is a picture that I really like and we almost put it on a photo montage wedding invitation. Now it's yours to enjoy!

Brent's first blog....

Well, this is my first ever blog posting. Becca has been the one to do it so far, and has "requested" that I participate.

It is true, we've been working hard on our condo. We have approached the point where we look for carpet, which is really the catalyst to this whole thing we've been doing. We wanted new carpet, so as a result, the entire condo gets torn up.

Not much new has happened lately. I am starving right now, and am hoping for some sort of lunch to happen shortly. But while I was waiting, I started thinking about the Jazz game that Becca and I went to last week. We had (Nearly) centerline seats, on row "C". If you used a number, that would be the 3rd row, meaning we had but 2 people in front of us. Our tickets were part of the "100 club", which means we got to go an hour and a half before the game to eat on the 6th floor of the Energy Solutions Arena. There we had such things like crab claws, dried fruit stuffed pork (it was delightful), tenderloin, bass, various salads, fancy chicken dishes, and all sorts of things. It is like a super fancy buffet, so you get a little of everything. They brought us fancy drinks, and we ate our alcohol covered bananas. This was all being done on a small table by a large glass wall over looking SLC. We ate there until tip-off, at which time we took our seats.

It is entirely different experience being so close to the action. You hear the vulgarity from the players, the groans, and can see the players sweat (which isn't as big of a deal now that HD TV allows that sensation). It is like you're part of the action.

At half time, they usher you into a room where they feed you yet MORE food, as if you hadn't had enough before the game. This time, however it is finger foods, nachos, fruits, drinks, popcorn, and the like. While it is a lot less formal, it is still fun, because you think of all the suckers on the levels above you, actually PAYING for their half-time snacks.

We finished a complete blowout of the Mavericks and walked across the street to our parking spot (also a 100 club benefit) in a guarded parking lot about a minute and a half walk from the front doors of the arena.

It was a good time, one that I get once or twice a year through work. This time I got our seats early enough in the season, there is hope that I may get another round in the playoffs....GO JAZZ!!!!!

Well, i've been trying to post some pics of this event, however my USB driver isn't getting the pics, so I'll have to work on this later.

Just Ranting...

Isn't it funny how it's the ordinary things in life that really take up all of your time? Case in point: people close to me know that we are trying to make our condo a little bit nicer. We had "popcorn" on the ceilings in most of the condo, and we finally scraped off the last of it in January. We've run into a bit of a snag in that we needed to scrape the door frames as well--they weren't properly primed before they were painted--and that has proven to be a long, grueling task with very little in terms of satisfaction. It would be one thing if the paint scraped off easily, but it only does that in about a quarter of the frames. The rest is mind-numbingly slow. And yet, most people don't know that about me--that I have this very frustrating remodeling job that is seriously trying my patience. And when people ask about my life, I either tell them about something completely different, or I tell them how difficult this job is and then watch and see that I am not believed. For instance, my mother-in-law was properly sympathetic when I told her about the remodeling woes. She came over to help us last Saturday (thank you!) and was quite surprised at the work that there was to do. Her words were, "I know you told me, but this really is difficult." Yes, it is. :)

So, just for fun, I've posted a couple of the "before" pictures. Hopefully by the end of the month, you will see some "after" pictures.