Just cause I am blogger happy...

My last blogs have had a lot to do with some of these special people. It's time I just shared some pictures I took before Christmas. I hope I get many more opportunities to take pictures of all 5 together for years to come.

Finally-Some cute quotes

I love funny quotes from kids. I haven't had very many here lately. But I have had 2 in two days. I have posted them on Facebook so they are repeats.

Amber had her birthday. The day after I tell a little first grade boy that knows her well that "Amber turned 20 yesterday. Isn't she so old?" He thinks and then in amazement he says "She's older that Harry Potter!!" He turns a little away from me and I hear "One two three." Really quiet and then he says "She's 3 years older than Harry Potter because he is 17." Harry Potter just came out of nowhere. I laughed about that one for awhile.

This morning Hannah was getting out of the car at the school and she says. "I know what my e-mail address is going to be when I get one." I say "What is that?" "It's going to be mold- capital E E cheese. Spelled chez." There was a pause. "@ Yahoo.com" I am glad she has that all figured out. But I am not sure that I would want to be known as MoldEEchez. What a goofy kid she is.

Brain issues and birthdays

I really wanted my last post to be special and then I reread it at a decent time of day and went "Oh my gosh, I sound like an idiot." So I cleaned up that last post and few other things on my blog. My brain has issues sometimes.
Today is my oldest daughters birthday. It could be that my reall issue with my editing skills is that I am getting old. Because I AM almost 40 and My daughter did just turn 20!!! TWENTY!! I don't have 4 teenagers anymore. I am the mom of an adult, 3 teenagers and a way too smart 9 year old.

Amber is still my steadfast daughter. 2nd year at BSU. She still loves music, and is fun a quirky. I think she might be driving home with the first car she just bought herself. I think it's a Mitsubishi Eclipse. I don't know much in my old age do I? She's a great kid and we are lucky we have her. We are hoping that with her major in Materials Science Engineering and her minor in Biomedical engineering that if we don't succeed greatly in life that she will take great care of us.
I wanted to do a blog about my youngest when she turned 9 but it seems so after the fact to sit and find some reason to talk up my kid, but hey, it's my blog and a another one of those kids of mine that I am darn proud of. Yes, she is amazingly quirky. I asked her what kind of cake she wanted. She wanted flowers and butterflies on it. But if you asked her what she got, she got Lego Star Wars for the Wii and for the DSi and has played it more than any other game she has. She got a couple of Star Wars figures, a BSU football and a soccer ball-but it was from Justice so that was super cute and girly. She loves to be on the computer. She did beg me to start a blog. When she writes it has so much of her personality in it, it just makes you laugh. She is really sensitive and quite easygoing. But she is notorious for leaving a trail where ever she goes. She has a very short attention span with some things and is very easily distraction. Her most amazing accomplishment the other day was that she beat her dad at Chess. He was pretty surprised by it. She has a really high IQ. She has been learning the piano easily. She would love to play drums. She has been drawn to drums since she was 2. She has some skills at memorizing that blows me away. She is a fun kid and she is growing up way too fast.

For me, I have loved having my kids around. I love them when they are 8 and younger. I love all the little kid things you can do with them. And we have for the first time grown out of those things. And even more so because of Hannah's accelerated pace. But I enjoy those little moments where she picks up something with Strawberry Shortcake on it which has been a favorite of hers for a long time. I love taking her to build a bear. But with the last visit, it is a little less magical because she is self -conscious about looking silly. A big sign that she is feeling much more grown-up and a lot less carefree.
I suppose that means that with my oldest turning 20 that it is time to look forward to grandbabies. But I am in no hurry.

Memories of Grandma and the mall

YouTube - Buckingham Square Mall Tribute Trailer

You might wonder why I have posted a YouTube link on my blog. I wish I could figure out how to put this on so you don't have to click this link and you could just watch this on my blog. But I was pretty upset here recently to find out in 2007 this mall was torn down. This mall is the reason I love malls. It sounds silly but I will tell you why. Looking at the video, the mall had not changed much from when it opened in 1971 that could be good reason why it didn't survive. Here is my nostalgia from my childhood.

I think it was in about 1976 that my mom, baby sister and I moved to my grandma's house in Aurora Colorado. My mom and had dad had divorced and this was mom's fresh start. The start was bumpy to say the least with two little girls and very little skills to go on. So it was a difficult time for mom. As she was getting on her feet and for the 6 years of the time we spent in Denver we were Buckingham Square almost as often as we were at my grandma's house. My Grandma worked in the Pant and Top shop. In the YouTube video it was in the last shot before the end. It was the store on the left next to the marble wall where Joslins was. We would go to see Grandma at work, or we would go with Grandma to work sometimes. I remember sitting in the back of the store and we would watch a little black and white television. We seem to spend endless amounts of time there, I was allowed when I was somewhat older to walk the mall on my own. I was about 5 when we moved there, so could you imagine these days letting your kids roam the mall at about 7? I was well behaved and very responsible. Outside Grandma's store there was a puppet show several times a year. I was at the mall so long some times that I got to watch several of his shows in one day. I was never allowed to go far when I was little.
My grandma and grandpa loved to take us out to eat and it was always at this mall. Number one on the list of places to go was Furrs cafeteria. We ate there so many times and grandma thought is was hilarious that Melissa and I would always get Macaroni and Cheese. Melissa would get jello for dessert and I would go between the pumpkin pie or the custard pie. But we never did vary from those choices much. Sometimes we would eat at the restaurant by Wal-greens and not very often we would go to the top floor of Joslins to the little restaurant they had there.
When I was left on my own with my sister I would walk through Wal-greens and look at the toys. Then I think there was a lingerie shop we would go into but we would ignore the lingerie and look at the dolls they had. I thought they were beautiful dolls with big hoop skirts and fancy hair. Many of them had music boxes on the bottom and the dolls would spin. I wanted one of these beautiful dolls so badly. I loved to go Baskin Robbins to get my very favorite Grape sherbet ice cream. I have yet to find a Baskin Robbins today that carries that ice cream. There was a burger place close to Grandma's store that I liked to go to. I remember eating in there. I was scared very easily when I was little and there was this big happy face that had this tongue that came out and licked it's lips. I remember it would happen every so often and it made a noise when it was about to start. I would run out of the restaurant when it would start and then I knew I had a few minutes before it started again. Eventually I got over my complete fear and just had a little anxiety but a total fascination with the happy face with the mechanical tongue. That place was there a long time but I think it became a pizza place later. Or maybe it had been the other way around. Either way that creepy smiley face stayed. I saw the Fox and the Hound for the first time at the movie theatre there and I think that was the first movie I went to by myself.
My mom had a couple of jobs at that mall too. She worked at Montgomery Ward for a time and then she worked in the office another time on weekends. So we did spend a lot of time there still.

The mall smelled like chlorine because of all the fountains and when I came back and visited years later some of them were filled in with plants. But what was always there was the bridge. When we were little we would beg to go down to the bridge and run right back and we would beg for coins to throw in the fountain around the bridge. Many, many wishes were made in the fountains in that mall. But the bridge was the best. We were the most entertained by that bridge.

I loved visiting all the malls in Denver during holidays. They had the cutest animatronic displays. I just loved all the moving creatures and I loved watching them more than I ever wanted to visit with Santa. Buckingham Square had a train always at Christmas and we had to ride that every year. I hated balloons after my mom accidentally popped one of mine in the mall. I love Swedish fish because I use to get them from the little candy store thing they had in the middle of Sears. So everytime we went in the Sears entrance to the mall I had to have some. I got my most favorite pair of shoes ever at the Hush Puppy shoe store and that was the best shoe store ever because you could climb up to this special carpeted area to look at shoes and watch their fish. I liked to play in that store more than I probably should have. I don't remember anyone ever saying an unkind thing to me.
The time we spent in Denver were challenging for my mom. We spent a lot of time with my grandparents and they did their best to make sure we were well taken care of. Because of the hours spent at Buckingham Square mall and another favorite mall of mine Cinderella City( that mall is also gone), I do enjoy the mall very much. It always makes me think of my grandma.
Right now I live 5 minutes away from the mall here. Everytime a store shuts down I feel sad and I mourn that store like the death of a friend. I don't have to spend money there but there is something retail does to me that brings me contentment in some silly way. I am sad that Mervyns is gone the most. I miss the Disney Store and the Marketplace gifts and several other stores I have liked very much. My grandma passed away a few years ago and to know that Buckingham square was gone and that I could never go back and revisit many hours of where much of my childhood was spent, made me very sad. It's not like I had plans to go back but I have lived in so many different places it was one constant, like grandma's house. When we vistied Denver a visit to grandma's wasn't complete unless we went there, to Buckingham Square.

Girls and Boys

This is a funny story. I told a smidgen of it in my last post. My second daughter is somewhat impulsive. Over Christmas break Amber and Kelsea were driving on the freeway to do something I asked them to do. They happen to pass a van that was full of teenage boys. But Kelsea tells Amber to slow down so they can drive beside the van. Amber thinks it's funny. She does. Kelsea gives out her number to the car load of boys. Yes-I am shaking my head at my daughter-REALLY? So she starts texting the boys. They are from Nyssa Oregon and they are in town to watch the Humanitarian bowl. She keeps talking to the one that wants to get to know her. They both Have Facebook. She sees that he is REALLy into hunting. He even said he felt sorry for her because she lived in the city and she asked why and he said because you can't hunt or drive dirt bikes here. So she really doesn't mind not doing those things. So they get to know each other. He really likes her. She starts to get a little overwhelmed with how much he likes her. But he is LDS. He is 16. He is planning on going on mission and he is already talking a little about marriage. Yes dear, what do you expect when you give your number out to strangers on the freeway? So he really wants to meet her in person. He wants her to come out for his birthday. No. He tries to get his dad to bring him into town on a day they are off from school. Dad doesn't wake him up and leaves him behind. Then he wants Kelsea to go to his school dance. We aren't sure. I don't know. Then they talk some more. He doesn't really like to dance and neither does she. So they plan a date to the movie instead. In Nyssa. So we do let her go and they have a nice time. It was his first date but it was fun. Kelsea was nervous driving on the country roads out there. A conversation they had she said she was scared with how dark the roads were and if she was going to hit something. He tells her "you just hit it." Kelsea says "I can't hit it." "You have to just hit it." "But I can't" Yes we have raised some city girls. She says he is cute and tall. He is shy and funny. So she seems to think he is very nice. So I guess all strangers on the freeway aren't scary stalkers. Or maybe we just don't know it yet. :)