It Really Isn't Funny.

I know this question has been asked by a million people but I am still going to ask, why is a funny bone called a funny bone? Anything I can possible smash, ding or full on destroy with my elbow is always pulling them in like a giant magnet. And you know what else? When I hit it, I don't laugh, I don't even giggle, as a matter of fact it happens so often now I don't do much of anything besides letting out a possible little sigh. I used to wheeze and curl up into the fetal position on the floor while screaming that my hand is on fire and for Nick to grab a bowl of ice and the chocolate chips while he is at it. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is either at the perfect inconvenient height or swings out at just the most awful position. The doorknobs for example, my elbow matches up with them with such perfectness that I swear they were made to torment me like my middle school gym teacher. Always nagging and reaching out telling me to get over there this instant and my elbows happily oblige. Then there are chairs, the backs of mine, my inlaws and my parents just suck my elbows in like two middle schoolers that just discovered making out for the first time, and hitting my elbow on them is pretty much just as enjoyable as my first time making out so that was a very good analogy. My elbows now have a new best friend, the banister in my house. I hit it so often and so hard that I considered unscrewing it from the wall, puttying the holes, painting over them and putting the banister up a few feet higher all while Nick was at school. I think it was within the first few days of moving into our house that the banister and I met. I remember that I came down on it so hard that my teeth hit together and my shoulder dislocated, I have never seen Nick's head snap up so fast. This is how the rest went...

Me: (Huddled over grabbing onto my elbow and trying to tell Nick where my will is in the pile of a hundred boxes.)
Nick: (Clearly distraught and quickly running over.) Geez, is the rail ok?
Me: (Standing up like I am totally fine and clearly pissed off.) Thanks for being so concerned with the rail.

After I stomped downstairs and sulked over a bowl of cereal I realized how ridiculous that was of me. Poor Nick has seen me hit my elbows thousands of times and now he assumes that I will just shake my head and continue on with my business. I guess he didn't realize that I had never been subjected to the physical abuse of a banister so it was an all new angle to my bone. I am happy to announce that after a couple of months it is just another crappy elbow to railing make out session waiting to happen.

I Learn A Little More Each Time

I have been cooking lately. Huge shock I know, but when your food is super limited because of a certain annoying allergy you don't have much of a choice unless you want to starve. I know, I know, the drama. Well when your favorite food like chicken fingers, cereal, peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese and basically everything in this entire universe contains wheat and it is off limits you have the right to be dramatic. I am just hoping they have food in heaven so I can swim in a pool of sticky fingers from Wingers... with extra ranch. I bought a gluten free cook book on Amazon and can I just say it is the third best investments I ever made? The second would be Shelbie and the first would be my first pair of heels that had Nick hooked. I know I have mentioned that Nick does the grocery shopping so before you reached through the screen and punch me, hear me out. I have done some recently. A very small amount, but still. So I have now learned where the spices are located in the grocery store, how to not pick a potato, and that Harmon's has their own cheese man. I thought that was a lot of learning but other things I have learned are these...
-1/2 C. of grated Parmesan cheese does not have to be from the cheese man (even though I swear it tastes better.)
-Potato's are not supposed to be green.
-If it takes more than three pans, pick a new recipe.
-A flat top stove is completely awesome. (All you electric stove haters are crazy. I am now a gas stove hater for life.)
-Dog's don't like Rosemary.
-Never put your face in the oven right after you open it. The heat escapes and melts your mascara, rendering you blind when your top and bottom lashes glue together.
-Oil gets EVERYWHERE.
And lastly...
-When your recipe says to put the rice crispies in a food processor to grind them up finely don't worry because it isn't necessary. Putting them in a gallon sized bag and stomping on them in boots works perfectly.

Just When You Think It Can't Get Any Better...

My family loves to hunt for hilarious videos that usually entail ice skaters colliding, random groin shots, and moms flipping end over end on a motorcycle. Mitchell reminded me of this little gem last night and I laughed so hard that my stomach cringes every time I move.

For My Best Friend

Today is Sarah's birthday so I thought I would give a small shout out in the form of a way awesome story to her since all I got her for her birthday was baby stuff. Necessary baby stuff that probably sucks to buy with your own money, but still, baby stuff. I have always looked up to Sarah and always wanted to be just like her. I was the shy tom boy and she was miss fun and popular and always knew/knows the latest fashions. When Nick and I got married we moved into Sarah and Kyle's basement apartment. A lot of people thought this was crazy and doubted that it was a good thing or if it was even going to work. This bothered me because for one it was none of their business and for two, we knew it would work. We always had so much fun together and it was nice that our best friends were only a flight of stairs away. We loved it so much we tried to figure out a way to build a duplex together so we would be neighbors forever. I miss Sarah so much. When we were younger I was her little side-kick partner in crime and I loved it because it meant that I wasn't just a sister, I was a friend. Unfortunately we got in some trouble. When I was in second grade and Sarah was in fourth, we had just built and moved into our new house so this was a new school for me and Sarah. The closest school was Westvale Elementary and it is approximately 2.3 miles away from my parents house. One day after school Sarah decided it would be fun to "miss" the bus and walk home. Did I protest? No. I just said ok and went to swing on the swings until our bus would drive out of site. One boy from our neighborhood came running at us, like I do when it is free hot dog day at RC Willey, he was gasping for air and trying to tell us frantically that the bus was leaving right that second. Sarah was calm and explained to him that we wouldn't be taking the bus today. He turned back to the bus, hopped on it and away it went. I don't think we could believe that it actually worked. So we began our trek home. 2.3 Miles is a long way for little legs. It was getting darker and darker but no matter how dark it would have gotten we still would have been able to spot the speeding bus of a van that was angrily coming for us. My mom had one of those giant Ford vans that could fit up to 50 large humans and boy was it intimidating. As she came to a stop, my mind said all sorts of words a small child shouldn't be thinking. Mother Kat rolled down the window and let us know that we should probably get in the van right. this. second. Did it matter she was yelling at us? No, because we had successfully made it to 90th south and probably would have gotten home in the next 20 minutes. It was worth it to me to be with my big sister and I would walk the 2.3 miles home from school again if I could. Love you Sar. Love, Mandy

Update On the Work Out

I believe Nick and I are on week 6 of working out six days a week and as you can all see I am still alive. As a matter of fact, I feel great minus the lack of sleep and steamrolled legs. I no longer feel like putting the vacuum on the reverse setting in my mouth to manually give myself oxygen after running a mile. Oh and number of times I have tripped, number of collisions, and number of times I have dropped a weight on my face still stand at zero. I would say that this is successful overall. Every week I get a tiny bit stronger, I am now to the ten pound setting and add a one hundredth of a pound every week. Ok obviously that isn't true, I bet if you took all the CD's Clay Aiken sold and put them on a bar, I could bench press them. You know what really shocks me? There is a couple at the gym that somehow manages to get their three kids to go to the gym with them. Do they work out? No. Do they sit on the last available piece of work out equipment and do nothing? Yes. Another question I want to ask is how the heck they even get them out of bed that early. I pretty much have to have my head pryed off my pillow by a crowbar and I know at that age the only thing getting me out of bed that early in the morning was cake for breakfast. All complaining aside, I have so far survived the gym. Something I never thought possible in a trillion years. Now I want cake. My least favorite part of my work out is the elliptical machine, that is death on plastic. I set it to ten minutes and when I hit the one minute mark I am begging for it to fall apart so that I have an excuse to stop all while my legs are shrieking that they should be resting peacefully in the giant king size bed that is placed in my room for the sole purpose of being used. I have missed that extra hour of sleeping to a point, it generally goes by really fast anyway so I try to tell myself that that one extra hour isn't worth the wheezing and small heart attacks after a flight of five stairs. Plus I enjoy not feeling like I ate two hundred bologna sandwiches and washed them down with a pure fat milkshake for breakfast every day. The best part of my work out is that it is an hour that I get to spend with Nick in the morning, I am usually breathing to heavy to say anything but it is nice knowing he is there and we are supporting each other. I wouldn't be going to the gym if it weren't for Nick's strange obsession with feeling good, I mean what is that all about? But I go to support him because if it were me I would want the same. So all and all I would give this work out thing ten bowls of cookie crisp out of ten.

Priceless

I just got this picture in an email and I have to post it here. If only I could have a picture with the Easter Bunny like this... notice the suspicious leg on the floor on the left hand side.

For My Mama

Today is my moms birthday and I just wanted to take some time to talk about what a wonderful person she is. My mom has been through a lot of tough times and she still manages to be our "Yellow" person. My mom is sunshine. I have always loved my mom, I haven't ever thought for a second about how a different mom would have been. My mom can never be replaced. My mom was the mom that all the carpool kids loved, all my best friends loved, and the mom I loved to go to the mall with. My mom loves to have fun and always wants everyone around her to be having fun too. My mom is so talented and I have always looked up to that, especially her musical talents. She has such a beautiful singing voice and it has always been one of my favorite things to listen to. My poor mom has been tortured by us kids her whole life. Never eating what she cooked (that might have been just me), always ruining our hair she so nicely combed, and running around the house screaming for hours like our hair was on fire (Which in some cases it was) while she was trying to take a Sunday nap. There is one thing that I will never forget we did to my mom and it is going to make it so that I never trust my own kids, karma. The DeLange side used to take a yearly trip up to the family cabin to hunt for Christmas trees. One night us kids decided to go sledding down the road, eventually that got boring so we decided to make a massive jump to go off of and this baby was huge. Also keep in mind that it was night so on top of being extremely dark out, the road was deadly with slick ice. After lots of arguing and threats of cutting off each others Barbie heads we all agreed that none of us would be the first to try. Fortunately for us we knew the perfect person to ask because she was always up for anything so unfortunately for my mom it was her that was suckered in. Let me take the time to point out again that it was dark and we may have accidentally on purpose forgotten to tell her that there was a jump at the bottom of the hill. We put her on the saucer and four tiny little kids started her down the hill while one of the older cousins sat at the bottom with a flashlight. She was flying, and laughing, that was until she got close enough to the jump when we knew she couldn't bail, the flashlight was flipped on just in time for her to see the jump and have her eyes open the size of her face before she took off. I don't think I have ever seen anyone fly so far, or have the rings of the saucer bruised into their butt. Thanks for all the fun mama, and always being such a good sport. Love you!