Freaky Friday

Ed Sullivan. Hmm, the funny thing is, I don't even know who that is, what he does, or anything else. All I know is that anytime we hear the name Ed Sullivan, us Sorensen kids laugh so hard people wonder if we are falling apart into hysterics. The funny thing is how close to the truth they are. It also doesn't help that anytime we see a plastic bag blowing around the sky in the wind we all point at it, burst into tears and sing, "Ed Sullivaaaaaaaaan" at the same time. To us, hilarious, to onlookers, not so much because they crane their neck to the sky expecting to see something other than a piece of trash causing us to shriek in delight. After they roll their eyes, they quickly push their kids along saying, "No honey they are ok, some people are different. They can't control that." Why do we do this you ask?

I am sure you have noticed that my family brings destruction to things we are around. My mom bought us all kites for Easter and we were ecstatic. We went right out to the roof and tried to fly off. When that didn't work, we decided to actually fly them. After losing one, and getting two tangled so we had to cut them apart, we only had one left. We quickly discovered that when you pull the strings a certain way, it became a weapon of mass destruction as it would cut down out of the wind and nearly decapitate us. However, when you were the one in control it was hilarious to watch it fly down and punch someone in the Achilles tendon. After a thousand nose dives into the cement, it finally became demolished. We ran inside and tried to come up with new ideas to build a kite. In the movie The Halloween Tree, they used clothes and sticks to make a gigantic kite. After we sawed down two healthy branches of my moms baby trees, we hooked it to a carefully cut out piece of my church dress. What? It still had the tags on, therefore it was never to be worn by me. However I was very resourceful, I used the scraps for a party dress for our depressed guinea pig Cathy. May she rest in peace. Something about velvet makes it very hard to fly. So we all sat around, gazing out the window with the musical "Bye Bye Birdie" in the background. It was to the part where they start singing a song about the Ed Sullivan show and right when they sang "Ed Sullivannnnn" a plastic grocery bag floated by the window. We laughed uncontrollably and took the box full of grocery bags my mom had saved over the YEARS and launched them into the sky while singing "Ed Sullivannnnn." Now you can see why my mom would start yelling out of the kitchen window when she caught sight of this. She was yelling something about litter, hard months of saving, and crazy children before stomping out into the yard with a ball of yarn. Let me tell you, there is nothing prettier than the sight of a grocery bag in the sky being flown by a piece of yarn and five kids singing "Ed Sullivannnnnn."

I love these little people

I am obsessed with digital scrapbooking now : ) I am so lucky to have all these cute babies to keep me from desperately needing one. If you want to know the sight where you can make these it is www.scrapblog.com. It is seriously so awesome : )

Just do it.

I am so annoyed. This has always been a huge pet peeve of mine and I am talking HUGE, bigger than Michael Jackson's plastic surgery count huge. I simply cannot stand when people leave their grocery carts in the middle of the parking lot. This has always bothered me as bad as that teenage boy I sat next to in fifth hour that never wore deodorant... and had gym fourth hour. They have conveniently placed cart returns every five stalls to solve this problem for you lazy people. But heaven forbid you have to take ten more steps. Are your legs broken? Didn't think so, because you just walked up and down all the walmart aisles for an hour looking for frosted animal crackers because YOU JUST HAD TO HAVE THEM! (Ok that was me) But whatever the case, you can do it, it is only ten extra feet of pushing. I hate when I am turning into a stall and there, standing like a deer in the headlights, is a poor lonely misplaced cart waiting to attack my car and carve profanities into my paint. So, I am going to start safety patrol in parking lots where I wear a neon vest and give anyone that doesn't put their cart away a flat tire. I am not talking about letting the air out kind of flat tire, I am talking about running over, stepping on the back of their shoe and then shoving them flat tire. After they step out of their shoe I will sprint with it to the nearest cart return and hold it for collateral until they manage to walk ten extra steps in one shoe to return their cart where it belongs. Then when they get there I will hit them over the head with their shoe and tell them that life could be harder and that THEY could have been in my fifth hour class with BO boy. What if they decide a shoe isn't worth it you ask? I have my Kart Krew begin to ram their car with carts until they raise the white flag and surrender.

PS.

Look over there --->
I am now a member of twitter. I will mainly use this to tweet random things that are said by the family. Oh this is to good : )

Freaky Friday

As if Fridays couldn't get any better right? Ahh the confessions of your children must be so nice huh mom? Which memory to choose...

When I was younger, my awesome parents gave me every tomboys dream: a creepy crawler oven. (headbang and do the rock on sign here!) Girls my age were all getting easy bake ovens... but my parents knew if they had given me one of those I would have looked at them horrified like "and what do you suppose I do with this, other than turn it into something to jump over with on my roller blades?" If anything came in a pink box it was automatically thrown aside and forgotten once the dry heaving ceased. When I unwrapped my creepy crawler oven I was stoked and automatically planned which bugs I was going to make to scare Sarah with by secretly planting them in her bed. Because we all know how real neon blue and green spiders look and how rubbery plastic just catches the perfection of fake insect fur. While I was daydreaming off all the possibilities, I noticed my parents looking at me like,"umm there is a catch." The next gift I unwrapped was the dolly maker kit. It was the girl version of the creepy crawlers. I am sure my parents thought it only fair to search for a balance. **I did eventually use it, not for its intended purposes however** I loved my creepy crawler oven, I made tons of creepy crawlies and planted them through out the house while my dolly set sat untouched in the top of my closet. I was only allowed to use my oven when my parents were home for the obvious reasons that the metal mold gets scorching hot and I had no patience to let it cool down so I would carry it from my room to the bathroom sink and set it in some water (Sooo dad, all those times you thought Sarah burnt the counter when leaving on her curling iron... you owe her an apology.) Now we all know how much I or any of my siblings did as they asked us to NOT do it while they were gone. I would sit in my room creating my crawlies with such carelessness. I would overfill my molds and under cook them and I accidentally flipped the mold over pulling it out probably a thousand times and every time it would melt small pieces of my carpet, or skin, and replace it with impossible to remove goo. My parents very openly admit that the reason why Sarah got nice whiteish carpet and I got multi-colored party carpet was because of those types of things. Sarah wasn't up in her room mixing strange concoctions, whipping paint, and all out destroying every piece of carpet in there. So now mom and dad I would like you to go up into my room at night after the sun has shown on the carpet and turn off the lights, you never imagined the possibilities of glow in the dark paint.

Need. More. Sun.

I don't know about you but the weather seems to be squashing every last ounce of life out of my soul when I wake up in the morning. Poor Nick keeps waking up to Frankenstein or "grumpenstein" as he likes to call me. I am not necessarily grumpy or snappy or rude, I am just quiet. Which is probably really shocking to Nick seeing that he is usually reaching for anything he can shove in his ears, because if he has to hear the Rainbow Bright or My Little Ponies theme song one more time he might accidentally sing it himself in public and that wouldn't be good. I just don't feel like I have the energy to be my Tom Cruise couch jumping, children song singing, somersault rolling self. Let me put it this way, I am acting my age and the best part about it is, it is freaking Nick out. Every morning he pokes me in the ribs with his finger and says one of the three, 1-why are you miss grumpenstein? 2- what's wrong, you are acting weird? 3- why haven't you annoyed me to the point of wanting to leave early? Ok so the third one I made up but still, it is not normal for me to go a morning with out doing something that would completely bother someone other than my husband. Lets just put it this way, imagine that you live with not just one tellitubbi but all four, I will even throw in that annoying vacuum thing they have too and all at the same time you have a midget that runs around kicking you in the shin and leaving piles of clothes everywhere. That is what Nick goes through living with me. But he doesn't seem to mind because at the end of it all he cheers, "Again, again."

Freaky Friday

I am starting a new thing where I write about a childhood memory once a week, it was going to be memory Monday but that title sounded to soft and happy for what it was for. The reason it is called freaky Friday is because I am sure when my parents find out some of this stuff they are going to freak... I am not throwing myself to the sharks because obviously there are things they will never know because siblings have a secret pact that comes standard with being a Sorensen. So don't worry Mitch, I wont tell mom about the time you lit her curtains on fire because they said they were extremely flammable and you thought that meant fireproof. So here you have it, freaky Friday.

It was in the days where video camera's didn't come in nano sized but in large, extra large and "you will never get this out of your house" sized. Our parents were on their weekly date (lets get away from the kids while we still can) night. Whenever they did this, Tales from the Crypt and the video camera became our best friend. Not because we weren't allowed to use it when they were home, because we were free to use it at anytime, we just weren't free to drop it on accident without breaking my dads heart and causing him to mumble obscenities when they were. On this particular night we decided to host the first annual Sorensen Grammy Awards where each of us kids picked a song to lip sync too and "Perform" on stage. I believe Sarah was the host and she quite possibly sang a Mariah Carey song because she was wearing her satin pink dress that was sure to steal any mans heart and any girls ego. I tastefully chose a song by Brandy because I had the look and the moves... actually I am the complete opposite from her but Sarah said whoever was Brandy had a free access pass to her Jynco jeans and those were like Disneyland in a clothes form. Those would boost me up on the social ladder quicker than arriving to school on a ten speed. Shanna chose to sing "Spider Webs" by No Doubt. She didn't know the words but she looked like Gwen Steffani's 7 year old version so no one cared. For the winner of the night, Mitchell. When Mitchell was younger he always had a fetish with stealing the princess dress up shoes, wearing the tiaras and telling everyone he would like one lump in his coffee and his dry cleaning by noon. Mitchell also had a fetish with Madonna, I mean it isn't like we had a choice because that CD was always on repeat in my dads car along with Heart and Chicago. So as expected, he chose "Secret" by Madonna. However for his stage name he was Grandmadonna because he had glasses and when you are young, the only people that wear those are you grandparents and Santa Clause. So there Mitchell was, busting all the unmentionable moves on camera while wearing a white mullet wig, lipstick, a pink bathrobe and princess heels. He would make any father proud. Of course my parents have seen it and now we all end up in tears every time we watch it but I think that when my dad came home to his son dressed like that while painting his nails, he went straight to his room and prayed promising he would get rid of every AC/DC record he owned in turn for a son that doesn't scrub, exfoliate and repeat.

We have a new neice!

Baby Emeri Rose was born on January 4 but I had to wait for Matt and Shy to post a picture before I could : ) It is after all their baby.

Late Night Conversations

Nick and I were laying in bed, winding down and then this just happened.

Amanda: They don't know, that we know that they know we know.

Nick: So they don't know that we know they know?

Amanda: No they don't know that we know that they know we know so they know we know.

Nick: They don't know we know they know we know they know.

Amanda: They don't know that we know that they know we know that they know we know that they know... we know.

Now you see how we get so much accomplished.

So I took what little pride I had left and put it in a ziplock bag labeled "For a rainy day"

While being the good Samaritan that I am in taking Nicks car to get the oil changed, the alignment and all that other miscellaneous stuff, I found myself in yet another bloggable position. In the beginning I had full intentions of letting this one slide after making only one freeway mistake but when the mistakes started piling up like exercise DVD's under my couch, I reconsidered. First off, I have traveled this route many times because my car dealer is right by Nick's so I was perfectly fine leaving Gwenith the GPS at work. Total bad idea. I remembered that they had put in that new Legacy freeway so I called my dad to ask him which side of the road I stay on to fork off into the right freeway. He tells me right but for some reason my car went left. At this point I was talking to Mrs. Kay (Nick's mom) so she had to help me the best she could without knowing exactly where I was trying to go, or exactly where I was. It didn't help that when she asked where I was my answer was, "there are cows to my right and an industrial building to my left." Perfect, I am sure that Kay knew exactly where in Utah there was just that. So eventually I thought I had found my way and thanked her to only tell her this wouldn't end up on my blog... Well guess what, with the events to come it just wouldn't be right to leave this out. When I discovered I had made the wrong mistake in going further North on the freeway instead of South, I called my dad yet again. He calmed me down and got me on the right road because I am sure he knew that once I got back on the freeway he would spend another hour trying to get me there. After what seemed like all hope was lost, I saw the dealership sign glowing and the heavens opened up and I was personally escorted into the parking lot by a homeless man that looked like Ryan Seacrest. Since I have been battling a UTI for the past forever, I now HAVE to go to the bathroom, but I can't until I cover everything with the service man and let him know all of what needs to be done. When that was finally over I went straight to the bathroom. You know those times when you need to go so bad it seems like it is spilling over out of your eyeballs, you are doing some awkward dance because picking up your feet seems to help hold back the urge, and right when you see the toilet you can't get your pants off fast enough? It was that times ten. The germ freak that I am couldn't find enough time to put a seat liner down so I just went for it. Once again, another bad idea. They had just cleaned the bathroom so the toilet seat was up. I fell right into the toilet, went to stand up, hit my purse off the door hook with my head, and spilled out the thousands of things inside..................................................................................................... I just needed a moment of silence. I considered throwing everything in the toilet and flushing it but remained calm after counting backwards from a million. After I got myself situated in the waiting lobby, I pulled out my book and had about an hour of un interrupted reading time. The car was finally done and with confidence I figured the ride back would be fine considering there was no legacy freeway to accidentally end up on that way. I was faced with something much worse, I missed two exits, couldn't merge over on one because for some reason people are NOT polite, and ended up doing laps inside that monstrous spaghetti bowl of roads we have. I couldn't bring myself to call anyone to get me out of it so I continued to flip a coin to determine my next exit. After five more minutes of feeling like I was in the book "go dogs go" and just making laps, I found my exit and was on the right track. FIN-A-LLY. I am so glad I did though because right before that I made a decision that if I took one more exit that was wrong, I would find the one that says Vegas and continue following it until I actually got there.

Over the river and through the construction,

to grandmothers house I go. Every week I try to go over and visit Gma D because when I am under the stress of everything she seems to take it away with her very witty words and crispy bacon. I am not sure what it is about it, but no matter what she makes, it always tastes amazing. I could use the same peanut butter, jelly and bread as she does, but it is like there is something magical in the way she cuts it into halves. My favorite meal has always been GRANDMA'S roast beef and mashed potatoes, not just roast beef and mashed potatoes. Like her, I have a liking for food that is a tad bit burnt, hence the undying love for crispy bacon and burnt popcorn. So no Nick that is not an accident when the popcorn bag is on fire in the microwave and I refuse to let you put it out with an extinguisher. It isn't just me either, just on Sunday Sarah was saying how good grandma's nachos are and we both looked at each other and said "the cheese," and grabbed our hearts like we were in love. How has she gotten so good at cooking? My cute Gma D has always liked Martha Stewart and taped her shows and watched them religiously. As a matter of fact, when Martha was taken to camp cupcake I am sure my gma was thinking of ways she could post her bail. However, I would just like everyone to know right here and right now, if those two were to have a cook off, gma D could beat her blindfolded, using NO Kitchen-Aid.

New Year Resolutions...

Everyone has their new year resolutions and that is totally fine with me but they are definitely not for me. After the three years of my new years resolution to get my first kiss and the hundred years that it was to exercise and get fit, I realized that it was just wishful thinking on my part. Well of course I got my first kiss but it was SO not worth those three years of determination, practice on lemons, and wishing on every little thing I could. But Nick totally made up for it when my new years resolution was to score a major hottie with blue eyes, dark hair, preferably 5'10" and with the last name Fankhauser. He fit the description perfectly. But I think that maybe this year I will really consider making some serious resolutions. One, I will not, absolutely not, meet my medical deductible this year. Two, I will learn how to make at least 5 edible, healthy meals for Nick and I (Nothing will include nasty broccoli, it kills braincells you know.) Three, I will actually attempt *don't laugh* to train for a half marathon with Sarah and my mom. Four, I will finish my wedding scrapbook that has collected five inches of dust. Five, I will dust my house. Six, I will successfully make a batch of cookies where I don't have to blog about the horrors of it all. Seven, I will be a better wife to my husband and do my best at not publicly humiliating him at times when I am experiencing giant urges to dance in the car. (Nick dances too... just controllably.) I guess I will stop there, I think since I listed seven I can safely say that I will complete a New Years Resolution. Oh wait I forgot one, Eight, actually remembering that I wrote these.

I think he might end up regretting this

Nick sent me this text message: "I now pronounce you princess of all the Fankhauser family plans from this day forward."

So I hope he is ok with seeing twilight a bajillion more times in theaters, me buying another Sheltie so Shelbie has a friend, my plans to go to Disneyland at least twice a month, my plans to have an indoor pool in our future house, my plans to own a pet penguin and keep him in our future gigantic freezer room that he doesn't know about, my plans to go to the state and ask them to ban fro's, my plan to design my own line of hospital gowns so that we no longer have to wear those drab grandma curtain ones, my plan to own at least 100 more pairs of shoes EACH by the end of 2009, my plan to never deep clean the house again with out a Kevlar suit, my plan to only go camping in an RV, my plan to finish the Twilight puzzle two hundred more times, my plan to get him to the 2012 Olympics, goodness there are so many things. So here you go Nick, here is your warning of what is about to come. Watch out 2009, you have Nick to blame.

Happy Anniversary to US!

So Nick and I celebrated our two year anniversary and wow has time gone by fast. Here is a list of a few things we have done in our two years:

We went on vacation back East to New York and all the surrounding areas

We hit the medical max of $2000.00 two years in a row

We survived a huge trial together

We made dinner together about five times

We started my Twilight puzzle and gave up after every piece connected

We bought an adorable Sheltie

We went to Lake Powell, Disneyland and CAMPING. Yes I actually camped in a tent.

We hiked donut falls

We had a DEEEEEEP cleaning on our house that somehow my lazy self survived

We fixed our shoe rack over ten times after it broke under the massive weight of my hundred shoes

We became guitar heros

We stayed together and stuck out all the hard times, laughed during all the fun times, and loved during all times.

Love you Nick!!