Another Claim to Fame

This is Aaron Gryder...



he is one of the Jockey's that is featured on Animal Planets new reality show titled "Jockeys". Aaron was my next door neighbor for a long time during my childhood. His older brother Jason and him used to babysit me. How's that for a claim to fame?

My Babysitter

This is my babysitter:



She's twelve years old and she ROCKS! Due to the high demand of awesome babysitters and my need to keep her "MY" babysitter, I will call her "Karina". I met "Karina" and her family when I filmed her play at the elementary school my kids go to. Patrick and I took her to Sunsplash with our family over the summer which made that day so much more enjoyable. She was "learning" how to babysit and her mom offered to pay half of her earnings (which I declined).



I hadn't used "Karina" since that Sunsplash trip until this past week. I've used her three this week. I tried to pay her $30 for the first night. She told me she only charges $1 an hour...I laughed. I would never underpay my babysitters. Later that night, after I dropped her off at home, I was checking my email and to my surprise I opened an email from her that said:

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Durling,

Thank you so much for letting me babysit tonight. It was really fun! You paid me way to much! (smiley face added here) My mom agrees with me! Thank you again. I would love to babysit really soon!

Sincerely,

"Karina"

P.S. All the kids were really good and Carly is so cute!!"

We had her babysit for us on Valentines Day. She had prepared a valentine chart that the kids got to put stickers on if they were being good. If they filled it up, they got a prize. She also had prepared a craft for them as well (cute valentines to Patrick and I)...



She turns off the T.V. and plays with my kids. She has taught Ethan some pre-kindergarten things and every time Ethan sees the letter "K" he says "Karina, starts with K"....Unfortunately, "Karina" is a busy girl. She dances 4 hours a day, three times a week, and is on a traveling soccer team so she is going to be harder to get here, but one thing is for sure...she is going to be the first babysitter I call and NO, you cannot have her name or number, so don't even ask! (place smiley face here).

Seriously???

I am about ready to purchase myself a "No Soliciting" sign for my front door. I understand that people have got to make a living, but I am just NOT interested. I've learned to just hang up on telemarketers and not feel bad about it, but when they come to my door, I am polite, mostly because I would rather not have my car keyed or my house egged and some because it's hard to shut a door in someones face.

The doorbell rings tonight while I am making dinner (so convenient), and I decide to answer it. Two young men, clipboard in hand, introducing themselves before I even fully open the door. They told me they were trying to get people to take a survey so that they can "better our community". Nice young men, I'll give them that. Before they began, I specifically asked "This is just a survey, you aren't going to ask me to buy anything right?" They assured me that it was just a survey. The questions began..."Do you or anyone you know have high blood pressure? Would you or anyone you know benefit from non-medication anti-depression seminar? Do you or anyone you know smoke?" etc. etc. etc. Then I started getting "Do you believe what the bible says about natural disasters and wars as a sign of the last days? Would you or anyone you know be interested in a bible study group?" etc. etc. etc. Then they handed me a pamphlet and asked if they could come back with other "colleagues" to discuss it. I told them no thanks and that I was very happy with my religion and that it satisfied my spiritual needs. I told them that I would take their pamphlet and look over it though. They were kind and non-pushy and then left.

Here's where I have the problem. Most religions, if not all, teach about being honest. These two young men deceived me from the beginning so that they could hand me a religious pamphlet and try to get me to have some kind of bible study with them. Maybe they felt that they were being honest with me because they could justify the "better our community" line by getting my neighbors and I to join their church. They very well could have some kind of heart disease and non-medication depression classes that they offer, but seriously...was I not deceived at the beginning? I've had Jehovah Witnesses at my door who don't come out and say that they are actually Jehovah Witnesses, but they do come out with their bibles in hand asking to share scripture with me. The Mormon missionaries, when they knock on doors, the first thing they say is "Hi, I'm Elder (place name here) from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints". I'm having a real hard time wrapping my head around a religion that will deceive people from the beginning to get them to listen. Thank goodness I live in a free country where I can choose to be one religion or another. Thank you to our American Soldiers for that freedom and thank you to the person who came up with the clever "no soliciting" sign that I will be purchasing tomorrow to hang on my front door.

Mom, Look What I Did!!!

I've probably mentioned before that we have a budding photographer living in our household. He's four years old. I honestly have to hide the camera from him or I am spending a lot of time deleting pictures. Tonight has been one of those nights. I was actually trying to upload some pictures that I took for another post, but decided to post this instead. My other post will have to wait.

I was preparing to delete a massive amount of pictures, but then decided to look at a few of them. I was truly surprised at the greatness of these shots. I know Ethan wasn't working the angle's or waiting for the light to be just right, but the shots screamed ART to me...Art for a four year old.






Of course when I saw the above picture, the one of my one year old who still isn't quite walking yet, trying to stand and balance on top of a toy with wheels on a hard wood floor, I about died. Later, I witnessed it first hand. I debated whether or not to get her down, or, grab the camera...I chose to grab the camera and document how smart she is...she wanted one of the books off the shelf. So she figured out how to get it, but she needed a little bit more height and climbed up the onto the handle bars...Geniuses my children are...simple geniuses!


**Disclaimer** No children were hurt during the production of these photographs. A CPS phone call is not required or preferred. Thank you.

Valentine's Day Humor

For Valentine's Day, I bought some of those traditional candy hearts with writing on them for the three older kids. Malia decided to open hers up and put them all in order going through each one and reading what they said. The following is the exact conversation between Malia, myself, and Ethan.

Malia: XOXOXO, What does that mean?

Me: It means Hugs and Kisses, do you want to give that one to your boyfriend?

Malia: I don't have a boyfriend.

Me: Do you want a boyfriend someday?

Malia: What kind of question is that?

Me: I'm just wondering if you want to have a boyfriend and get married someday?

Malia: Yes

Ethan: Malia, I'm your boyfriend...

Got to love that childhood innocence. Hope your day is filled with LOVE...and in the words of my cute Ethan...HAPPY HOLIDAYS...Yes, he says that for all "Holidays"

A Lesson Learned

I had a meeting after church today so Patrick had to take all four kids home, feed them, and put Carly down for a nap. When I got home, the door was locked. I knocked, no one answered. I debated whether or not to ring the doorbell. I didn't want to wake the baby so I decided to search in my bottomless bag for my keys. I didn't have the patience to find them so I rang the doorbell. Again, no one answered. I was annoyed now. I knew Patrick was probably sleeping but I didn't understand why the three older kids weren't running to the door and opening it without knowing who it is because they seem to do that while I am in the middle of changing a poopy diaper and it's, of course, a sales person. Anyway, I decided to walk around to the back in hopes that one of the 3 other doors would be unlocked. I heard the girls outside playing. Phew...at least I wasn't locked out! As I rounded the corner I see my little monkey girl Malia sitting on top of a beam as high as our roof that was for an over hang for our porch. This girl has made her way on my roof many of times and now she is progressing to the beams that are over cement??? Sadly, I was much to frustrated about being locked out, that I walked past her and said with a laugh "Malia get down". She did. I got into the house and sure enough, Patrick was asleep on the couch. He hadn't heard the knock or the doorbell so he must have been really out of it. I woke him up with an irritated voice and told him that Malia was basically on the roof. Later, after dinner, I explained to him exactly what had happened, beginning with the most irritating part (no one answering the door) and then onto Malia being on the beam. "Remind me never to get mad at you when you fall asleep with the kids running around." Patrick said. "ya, and that happens when? Ummmm, NEVER!" Lesson learned? I hope so. At least Malia is still in one piece!

Confessions of a TWILIGHT Addict...

**WARNING**
This post consists of my TWILIGHT conversion and my general thoughts and comparisons of the book versus the movie. It is rather lengthy, but it is good. Grab some popcorn and a drink because this post just might be better than TWILIGHT the movie.

My life has been consumed with VAMPIRES and WEREWOLVES and a clumsy human girl who longs to become a "vegetarian blood sucker" like her boyfriend, for the past few weeks. I eat, sleep, and breath in this fantasy world created by Stephenie Meyer almost all day and night. I do believe that it could actually become unhealthy, yet, in a weird way, I'm okay with that. I've often thought, How can one be obsessed with a book series? I now know.

I am not an avid reader. I prefer video editing and paper crafts over it. It was almost a year ago when I first heard about this VAMPIRE book called TWILIGHT. A friend of mine came to pick her daughter up from a birthday party at my house and beamed as she told me about this story of a human girl named Bella falling in love with a VAMPIRE. There was so much to be told and she did so with a huge smile on her face. She told me about the author's website and how I needed to go on it and read passages of the NEW book BREAKING DAWN that was coming out. She even spelled out the website so I would get it right. W-W-W-.S-T-E-P-H-E-N-I-E-M-E-Y-E-R.C-O-M. I listened like a good friend and put my "uh huh's" and "oh's" in the very few open spaces during our one sided conversation. I had no intentions of picking up the book nor go to a website to tell me about the book. Let's face it, I felt like I got all the information I needed during this conversation with my friend and I still wasn't interested.

Over the course of a year, I would stumble upon a few people who had to give me their two cents about this great book. AND THEN, the date release of the actual movie TWILIGHT was announced. All I heard was "I can't wait for Twilight" and "Do you want to go to the midnight showing"...Uhhh NO! I don't care! Give me a break people! Ok, so I wasn't that rude, but I was a little miffed because Harry Potter was supposed to be coming to theatres and when the date got pushed back almost a year, TWILIGHT took it's place. I was a little bitter even though I knew it wasn't TWILIGHT'S fault.

For awhile I endured all this VAMPIRE hype, and I started to become slightly intrigued with this whole TWILIGHT phenomenon. Was it really that good? Are people really reading all four books in a weeks time?

Fast forward a few more months...I got a phone call from my bestest friend in the world. She lives in good ol' Salt Lake City, and like me, she's not much of a reader. In fact, she recently confessed to me that she can't remember EVER reading a book from start to finish. Her and I relate obviously well in this manner. She wanted help with her myspace page. She was trying to change her background to a TWILIGHT themed one. I laughed! She must of thought that the movie was good, I thought. And then I got an ear full from her about how she read all the books and that even her HUSBAND picked up the books and read all of them in a weeks time. Huh? Wait! Did she just tell me that she read not only one book but four? Interesting! Maybe I need to check into this book. It has to be somewhat good if Holly's reading it. I got online to see if my local library had a copy of it. They did. They had an amazing 84 copies of it! I would be the 584th person in line for one of those copies. Hmmm, I guess I will have to wait.

My sister came to visit Christmas week. We decided to make a late night trip to Wal-mart minus husbands and my kids. She needed a heater for her bathroom and I needed milk for the kids. We walked around talking about whatever and found ourselves in the book section. A place that I've rarely visited. All those Fabio covered romance novels are a good reason why I don't stop. TWILIGHT, NEW MOON, ECLIPSE, BREAKING DAWN were in three different areas of this section. I pointed it out to my sister and told of my "crazy obsessed friend" encounters regarding this book. She bought two copies, one for her and one for me.

Christmas Eve came and the family and I headed up to visit Patrick's side of the family. We made a quick stop at Grandma Olson's place where we met up with Patrick's cousin Tim. Tim is a stay at home dad and a professional mountain biker. His wife Jeni is an anesthesiologist. They both read the books. Tim read all four in four days. He couldn't stop telling me about the book. I was a tad bit disturbed that I was having this conversation with a male but as I look back, that was my turning point. That conversation with Tim and Jeni was when I decided that I would delve into this crazy world of VAMPIRES and WEREWOLVES. The next day, Christmas day, I picked up TWILIGHT.

It took me a while to get through TWILIGHT. I couldn't understand how this book was an addiction to so many people. Was I missing something? Was it just not my cup of tea? I made numerous jokes about my readings on my blog and on facebook. It seemed that I wasn't the only one who just couldn't "get into it". With many comments of "hang in there" and "the last two hundred pages are the best", I decided I would continue reading, but still wondered how any one could sit and read this entire book in a day when it has taken me a month to get through it. It wasn't THAT good...

Page 300... Two hundred pages left, and all I can say is, my friends were RIGHT! I read those last two hundred pages in all my spare time. My sister let me borrow NEW MOON because she had already blown through it and was heading off to Wal-mart to purchase ECLIPSE and BREAKING DAWN. It took me 3 days to get through NEW MOON. I couldn't get the story out of my head. It consumed me. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking it. My children were neglected, fending for themselves, and my house, well, it was neglected also. Laundry wasn't getting done and neither was my husband. My world consisted of Edward, Bella, Jacob, and the Volturi. I had to hurry and fly to Italy to rescue my LOVE from a crazy death by VAMPIRE ROYALTY...I WAS BELLA!

Carly was playing by the fire place. I am not exactly sure what happened, but I heard the guard fall down and I instantly knew that it had fallen on top of her. She let out a bloody scream (no pun intended) and after I picked her up and held her, I decided I should assess the damage. BLOOD filled her entire mouth. I was in shock. Patrick wasn't home and I almost didn't know what to do. She wouldn't let me touch her mouth and I was afraid to do anything that might make whatever injury she had worse. Eventually it stopped bleeding and she had a fat lip. Would VAMPIRES waste their time feeding from a baby or would they move on to bigger and better things? I laughed at my thoughts and realized then, that this was what all those TWILIGHT addicts were talking about. I was officially obsessed.

Facebook is a wonderful place to visit. I enjoy reading every one's status updates, I enjoy chatting with long lost friends, and I even enjoy the friendly arguments made back and forth. A woman I met through Malia's schooling recently found me on facebook. We've been chatting it up. She too, is a huge TWILIGHT fan. She introduced me to MIDNIGHT SUN. Stephenie Meyer, creator of this obsessive VAMPIRE world, was in the process of writing Edward's story of TWILIGHT. She handed a handful of copies out to people who she thought could be trusted. I am guessing so that they could critique it. Somehow, it got onto the Internet and spread like wild fire. She wasn't finished with the book and was extremely upset about the situation. She decided not to finish the book, but she also knew that TWILIGHT obsessed fans would want to get a hold of Edward's story, even illegally if they had to, so she put it on her website for the world to read. It is the same story, yet strangely different. I enjoyed it almost better than TWILIGHT itself and hope that one day, the anger will diminish in Stepheni's heart and she will finish it for me and other obsessed fans.

I know this post is long, but it's about to get longer...

During my NEW MOON reading's while at the gym, I ran into a girlfriend who happened to be reading NEW MOON as well and even though I was almost out of breath, I enjoyed exchanging a few thoughts about the book with her. I told her that I hadn't seen the movie yet and that I was going to drag Patrick with me sometime real soon. She told me not to and that it was a MAJOR chick flick...I drug my husband there anyway. He was probably one of 5 guys in the theatre, but we all make sacrifices for our spouses don't we? His would only last two hours long...

I was so excited to see this movie. I knew for a fact that it wasn't going to be as good as the book. That's how it always is right? I prepared myself mentally before seeing the movie, not to get my hopes up. I was still excited!

SHOCKED!!! The movie was fairly true to the book. I will give them credit there, but the casting was ALL WRONG! How could they screw this up? I am not an expert when it comes to casting for films, but my vision of the characters did not match up to the ones in the movie. Maybe it's just me. Maybe MY TWILIGHT world was not envisioned correctly. Either way, it threw me off and I couldn't keep the characters straight while watching the film. Not only that but I could barely watch Bella with all her twitching...I was annoyed. Was I missing the deep love they had for each other? There was no chemistry between the two. It was almost painful to watch the two together, yet in a strange weird way, maybe that was how it was supposed to be. The love that the two characters have for each other in the book is mostly mental and barely physical due to the fact that Edward would have eaten her the first day he met her if it hadn't been for a classroom full of students in biology. So maybe it was supposed to be that way. I am going to let this movie slide and see where NEW MOON goes. My one suggestion to the directors...Put some money into it okay? PLEASE! I couldn't hold back a laugh when Edward seem to be getting pulled up a tree with a wire rather than climbing one...

So where does this leave me? Well, it leaves me to MY TWILIGHT world. As a self proclaimed obsessed fan, I have decided to cast my own characters for TWILIGHT and without further ado...The cast of Rachael Durling's TWILIGHT world...

Carlisle and Esme


Rosalie and Emmett




Alice and Jasper


Jessica and Angela


Mike and Tyler


Laurant, James and Victoria


and finally...Edward and Bella.


Who wouldn't have chemistry with Edward if he looked like that?

Maybe I got this all wrong, or maybe I'm a genius who needs to get paid for my visions. Hmmmmm, any takers?