random Keli

I went out to my car last week to go to Leah & Ian's house.. and the DOOR WOULD NOT SHUT.. the driver's side dented door.. I was like hmmm this could be a problem... so I called Rebecca.. their mom and I was like " I don't think I can come to work today.. my car door wont shut"....................does this kind of stuff only happen to ME??? like one time in Utah.. " I don't think I can come to work.. because I dropped my keys in the snow and it is still snowing and it is to cold and I just don't want to dig through the snow to find them.. THIS EARLY." but anyway I digress. BACK to my car door NOT shutting..
Rebecca said OK that is fine..
I had NO IDEA what to do.. I had a lot of visions in my head though.. Like WHAT IF I NEED A WHOLE NEW DOOR?.. I am about the most vain poor person you will ever meet.. I thought omgosh I don't want to be driving around with a car with a door that is a DIFFERENT COLOR..!!!!! but I kept feeling like " CALL AMEEN"
that is the mechanic my mom and brother and now me go to in Chantilly...
So my friend Erin came over on an unrelated thing.. and I asked her can you follow me to the mechanic? she said yes...
I went 40 mph...
when I pulled into the gas station my door FLEW OPEN...
IT WAS BEYOND SCARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ameen fixed it for FREE in like five seconds he just needed to move over something because it was not catching on the frame when it closed...
so now my door shuts... as a byproduct ...
my door also has to be locked manually..just that one...
there are three lights that just stay on in my car if I am driving at night..
and also if I go out to my car and I have not opened it for awhile and I open it.. the beep beep beep alarm goes off..
that happened three times yesterday and I scurried in the house to get my keys and turn it off
.my neighbors LOVED that...
BUT YOU KNOW WHAT MY DOOR SHUTS..
and I can get to work!!! :)

Field trip

In November 2011 I took Julian to
"Dinosaur Land" I am not sure where it is SPECIFICALLY but let me just say that it was " out there" like IDK out by Front Royal or something.. "out there" like there was still snow on the ground " out there" and there was none here.. it took me a little over an hour to get there. When we got there we walked around one of the most eclectic gift shops I have ever walked around in .. like ever.. some of the stuff was collecting DUST..and they had TONS of stuff for the " confederate states of America" and " the south" and " the rebels" they also had an extensive collection of stuff to use to make your own moonshine... I am SERIOUS..
We paid a couple of dollars to go out and walk through a bunch of large old dinosaurs that have probably been there my whole life and I am 37..I pushed Julian's stroller up to lots of them and took pictures..
We saw the T-rex eating a pteranodon..which does not go along with the storyline of "dinosaur train" at ALL..there was also a dinosaur that had fell over and instead of picking it up they just moved a couple other ones over by it .. and wrote " epic battle" ..there was also stuff that had a TON to do with dinosaurs like
a woolly mammoth
a very large praying mantis
an octopus
a shark
a very large King cobra
a King Kong.. I asked this lady to take a picture of Julian and I sitting in his hand but she did not get what I meant so I have a picture of us sitting in his hand .. and that is all you can see..you can't tell we are in King Kong's hand..

you know all things you think of when you think of dinosaurs.

When we got back Julia was like wow that sounds like something out of " roadside America" so we looked it up.. in a book she had and sure enough it was in there!!! I mean if that is not a roadside attraction IDK what is.. it was pretty amazing you know...
....and in case you did not realize it I THINK YOU SHOULD GO THERE..
pictures will be up on FB soon!

field trip

In October 2011 I went to a civil war event at Arlington House.. maybe I should try and update my blog a little more often because I don't even remember how I FOUND OUT about this event...
It was snowing off and on that day and it was almost cancelled ..but it was not and my friend Cherie was nice enough to go with me and another guy Mike met us there.
The only time that you can go to Arlington National Cemetery in the evening is when there is an event at The Arlington house.. that is a fun fact.
 We walked around the house which sustained some damage in the 2011 earthquake. The house is under restoration right now.. we saw several people in civil war outfits. There were people playing civil war music..
2 of the really cool things were:
1. We were able to take a short tour of the graveyard right around the house with a guy dressed in civil war clothes and he told us a lot of interesting stories and history.
2. We were able to sit in on a lecture with  a man that wrote a book about the Lee's during that time period and how Robert E. Lee's son sued the government because they took Arlington House from them..
It was a very interesting evening.. after that we went and met our friend Elaine at a chocolate place in the Del-Ray Arlandria area where Alexandria and Arlington meet.
we had some divine hot chocolate things...
I was thinking that I should do some more things involving history... then I remember
OH YEAH I DO VOLUNTEER AT A HISTORICAL SITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

reading Keli

I just finished David Archuleta's bio. It was filled with uplifting things but here is one of my favorite thoughts from the book :
  " I look at things differently. I like to believe that you don't need to reach a certain goal to be happy. I prefer to think that happiness is always there, and that when things don't go the way we might like them to, it's a sign from above that something even better is right around the corner. Not winning was almost like a personal lesson on how to stay positive and optimistic. I think that's hard for people to understand. They wonder, " after all that hard work you put in, how can you be happy to be in second place? Why aren't you devastated?"  And the answer to that is,  "Well why shouldn't I be happy? Over one hundred thousand people auditioned and I never thought I would get past the first round. Now here I am, months latr, in front of a million people, in the Top 2. How could that possibly be a bad thing? I may not have won, but there are about one hundered thousand other people who didn't win either. And I was the  runner-up and have a great feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment knowing I did my very best. How could that possibly be a losss? I made it much farther than I thought I was going to, and I got have a musical experience second to none, so at the end of the day, how could I not be completly happy"

David Archuleta 2010

he must be an AMAZING missionary right now!!!

holiday Keli Halloween 2011

For Halloween I dressed up as a ninja mummy Adele...Ok so um not really but Halloween 2011 I managed to pull off THREE costumes for THREE different events.. I am serious!!! so first up
1. Elaine had a party where she asked people to dress in black.. I could not go and just dress in black I wanted to actually dress up.. at the time "rumor has it" that my heart was still somewhat broken so " I sat fire to the rain" and I dressed up like Adele.. all though no one realized it..I am so ahead of my time.. like the year I dressed up as Avril Lavigne and no one realized it.
I had to watch a tutorial youtube to figure out how to get my hair like Adele's and you can check out my pictures they are in my mobile uploads album I think.. but after a lot of teasing and hairspray I think that I did a great job :) I was going for the look she has in the "rolling in the deep" video. If you have not seen that video you can check it out here http://youtu.be/rYEDA3JcQqw 
I tried to do my make up like that too...
some girl that is "popular" with the mid-singles was Kim Kardashian which consisted of her wearing a wig and looking more like Teresa Giudice or whatever her name is than ANY Kardashian..but people went on and on about her.. and well um people did not know who I was .. oh well.. such is life for me in the mid-singles and I realized that awhile ago..

2. My ward had a "trunk-or-treat" I was not going to go because um I don't have a CHILD.. and those things with out children.. are painful for me.. and a bit boring.. then I got a child!!! well Will and Julia wanted to go on a date so I brought Julian to the trunk-or-treat and it SNOWED.. here in VA at the end of October.. that was some of the worse weather that we had all winter if you can believe that.. I dressed Julian and I up like mummies I got us both white stocking caps and I dressed Julian in a white onesie and white tights and myself in a white turtleneck and a white dress over that and white tights and then I got some cheesecloth and ripped it up and safety pinned and tied it all over Julian and I .. how FREAKIN CUTE IS THAT????? SO CUTE!!!!! if you do not remember that picture you need to look it up on FB like RIGHT NOW.. little tiny Julian not even a year old!!
Julian could not walk yet and I had not realized how hard it was to just GET FOOD and sit down and EAT with an 11 month old..after we ate we walked around and different people were sitting outside all around the cultural hall and they were giving out candy..Will and Julia came and picked him up at the church it all went really well :)
3. My friend Elaine's dad was running for school board in Loudoun County, VA. Elaine said that there was a big parade in Leesburg,VA and that we could go to that and pass out flyer's.. I was running out of costumes by this time.. but someone in my ward had given me a bag of stuff to take to the thrift store and OF COURSE I went through the bag first and lo and behold in the bag was a ninja costume for a 10-12 year old boy... and yeah it was skin tight and high water and high sleeves but I marched in the Leesburg parade as a NINJA!!!!!!!! and
I WAS ON TV...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but it kind of SUCKS because they were talking about how the Republicans in Leesburg had put up some anti-obama poster and all this other stuff and then they show up a picture of the parade and ME walking in it...
so I was on TV.. dressed as a ninja..
so that was Halloween 2011... I look forward to Halloween 2012 and all the fun I will have...
who or what will I dress up as??
will I have a guy to dress up with me as something?
will Will and Julia have the baby?? will I get to dress up Julian as something.. and if so what??
all those questions will have to wait:)

random Keli

When I was in elementary school I was OBSESSED with the MTV video countdown.. I used to watch it every day to see videos of all my favorite people.. crazy to think that now I can pull any of those video's up on my phone.. and believe me sometimes I do..
When I lived in Provo, Utah I was beyond OBSESSED with VH1 so much so that sometimes I am worried that if I had access to it again then I would go right back to where I was .. every Saturday I would watch the top 20 video countdown from 10 AM -12AM.. I remember that Maroon Five had video's that were on there forever and I thought Adam Levine was so HOT!!!!
But I did not just watch the countdown for awhile there I swear I watched EVERY SHOW that was on VH1's programming..
all the "I love ... series"
all the Surreal Lifes
anything where they talk about something and have people commenting on it..
all the Chris Knight and Adrienne Curry shows
all the stuff with Flava Flav and the whole progression with I love NY , Real Chance at Love and Charm School..
all that stuff with Bret Michaels ..
and if they played movies I would watch those over and over again...
some of those shows I swear I probably saw some episodes like ............five times.. and some of my roommates sat there and watched all that with me...
and those shows are such a time drain and SO TRASHY...
I told this to my friend last night and he said "how do you stay so skinny sitting on the couch watching all those shows"....
ahhahahhah

random Keli

I have several goals of things I want to accomplish if I ever have kids.. I don't know if I WILL have kids so I try and live out those goals with the kids I baby-sit.
  One of those goals is for kids to be creative and think for themselves. I want the kids in my care to be able to come up with solutions and to be able to figure things out.
Recently when I was watching Tessa age 8. I was cleaning out my car and I found a book in there that  I bought at the thrift store's " $2 a bag book sale" it was a book of different things that girl scouts could do to earn badges. I thought that it might also be useful for the older kids I watch for them to do to something creative.
 I handed the book to Tessa and said here you go, you can read this and find some stuff to do...
 So Tessa sat in the open garage on a lawn chair and read that book and until she found something to do..
..she got a plastic container out of the recycling, and then asked me if I had a " handful of dirt of sand" .....
I said no..I thought um...where would I have that Tessa I mean REALLY....but she went out and found a handful of dirt or sand..
For awhile she was busy.. a little bit later she asked me if I had any moss...
wow............................I said no that she would have to go out and look around for that.. and I did not know if she would be able to find any..
( they live in a townhouse in Gainesville,VA).. I gave her permission to go down to the lake, a couple of blocks away.
I said that she might want to look on rocks and things like that..
By the time that the sunset  that night guess what Tessa had made her own little terrarium type thing...
see what amazing and wonderful things kids can do when they put their minds to it :)

random Keli

A couple of months ago I was leaving my friend Christina's house in Vienna, VA and I saw someone had thrown a hard plastic pool away.. it was just sitting out there like it was "trash" so I put it in my Blazer..
  It was still in there a few days later when I went and picked up Tessa age 8 and Chris age 7 from school. Tessa said what is going on with that pool? I said that I had gotten it off the curb. She then asked if she could use it. I said sure why not.
  When the kids got home from school I asked if they had a hose. She said no. I said that she was going to have to get a big bucket and fill it up with water and then dump that in until she had enough water in the pool.
   Tessa said that the pool was dirty and that first she had to clean it out she asked me how to do that. She said "do I just spray some 409 in it ?" I envisioned Tessa spraying a ton of 409 and then basically just sitting  in the fumes.
  So I showed her how to put soap and warm water on an old rag and then to squeeze it out and then I told her she could scrub out the tub.
 So Tessa did that. then she filled up a bucket of water but that was too heavy so I helped it her pour some out.
  after about three buckets Tessa came to me and asked do you have any tape? I said what kind? She found some Scotch tape.I went out to see what was going on and she said that the pool had a hole in it..
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO so that was why it was on the curb.It had a crack that you could not see unless it had water in it.
           Tessa was trying to put Scotch tape on the crack WITH THE WATER IN THE POOL!!!
     so now there was Scotch tape floating in the pool.
     I said Tessa this will not work you are going to have to dump out the water that is in there and then you will have to dry it with a towel and then you will have to use duct tape.
............at that point Tessa decided that she was done with the pool. I said I don't blame you.
...........so we dumped out the pool and put it on the curb..for some other person that hopefully owns duct tape.