Wanna know how to get rid of telemarketers?

Let your 1 year old play with the phone and mess up the answering machine. Then you get to hear the telemarketer's conversation with the answering machine that goes like this:

Machine: Ba Da Da ((beep beep beep))
Telemarketer: Hello?
Machine: Da da da bababa ((Beep BEEEEEP))
Telemarketer: Hello? Anyone there? Ma'am?
Machine: Hey! Come on. Give me the phone.
Telemarketer: ( Click )


Sweet. It would probably work well for those midweek calls from a Bishopric member wanting to ask you to give a talk in church on Sunday.......

Jack is 4!

And what exactly does that mean?

It means that I can finally cut his sandwiches in FOUR pieces instead of three.


I reminded him throughout the day that it was his birthday and that he was now four years old. This is how the conversations went. All. day. long.:

Me: Do you know what day it is today?
Jack: YEAH! It's my birthday!
Me: That's right! How old are you?
Jack: I'm three.
Me: No. It's your birthday which means you're four!
Jack: No. I'm not four until I eat my cake.

I guess he's probably right. He WAS born at 8:10pm. Right around the time we ate birthday cake.

The cake. Ah. The cake. With baited breath you wait, eager to see the masterpiece I affectionately call.....

"The Birthday Cake".

I shall refer to it as a "she" as it was temperamental, unstable, and had a mind of its her own. The cake whos frosting oozed down her sides and puddled at that bottom because of the 115 degree heat. She wasn't exactly archetectually sound. Held up by toothpicks placed just about every inch throughout. Kind of like a "cake bra". But, in the end, it worked. Jack loved it and thought it was "cool". And really, that's all that matters.

FLaShBaCk FRiDaY!

So I thought I'd share a little story from my childhood with you.

When my twin brother and I were 7, the movie of all movies hit the big screen. This was not just any movie. This was THE movie that changed the future of movies as we know it. Can you guess what it was? This was 1977 by the way. Here's a hint:

"Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way!"

Man I wish I could figure out how to insert music on my blog cause I'd have the theme music blasting right now!

My brother and I wanted to see this movie so badly. Badly enough that one day when my parents had some friends over at the house, we decided that they would be perfect cover for our plan. So, we told our parents that we were going to go for a "jog". A "jog"? I mean....couldn't we have come up with something better than that? In reality, our "jog" was to the downtown Libertyville Movie Theater. Two hours later, we came out of the theater deliriously excited and couldn't stop talking about how that was the coolest movie EVER. We probably even talked about what action figures we wanted to get for Christmas and which would be better.....an X-wing fighter or the Millenium Falcon? And I'm pretty sure I know what we dressed up as for Halloween that year.

When we got to the end of our street, we realized that we needed to make it look like we had been jogging for the last two hours. So we ran as fast as we could for that one block. Red faced and out of breath, we went in the house to find our parents and their friends still sitting in the same place they were when we left. My brother and I looked at each other as if thinking the same thing.

"We really pulled it off!"

And then we played Star Wars the rest of the afternoon.

Gone fishing.....

Being summertime, I haven't been able to keep up on my blog as often as I would like. So, I've "gone fishing". Isn't that what they say when you're taking a break from something?

So I've gone fishing, figuratively. And gone fishing. Literally.

My dad found a box of old poles and miscellaneous fishing paraphernalia and mentioned he thought that it would be fun to take the kids fishing. Reminiscent of childhood. That father/grandfather/son bonding experience.

And because it was an overcast, breezy 105 degrees last week, it was a perfect time to go. So, we put together a picnic, packed up the tackle box and drove out to the lake.

Jack was unexpectedly patient. I thought for sure that he would be done after 3 minutes. Instead, he would ask every once in a while, "How long until the fish come?"

Lauren surprised me too. She was content just sitting on the bank. She really wanted to cast off all by herself. But I kept having flashbacks to when I was about 10 and cast off and almost used my Great Grandma who was 20 feet behind me as bait.
We heard my dad tell his tale about a goose who attacked him as a child and how he fears them to this day. Then, we saw the mother of all geese wandering the bank. Obviously, it wasn't a smart goose since there was a piece of a hook and some fishing line stuck in its mouth. We felt sorry for the poor thing. That is until it decided to attack Jack with wild abandon for a piece of bread he had in his hand. And being the pathetic mother that I am, I really did think that it was too bad I had already put the camera away. That would have been a great picture. But, kidding aside, it was nice to see the tradition of the Hagen side of the family continue.

Erik and I played it safe. And as you can see.....so did Grandpa.