My Name

My whole life I have had to deal with questions on my name.
For example
- that is a boy name
- is it short for Roberta
- Being called Robin (there is not N sound at the end of my name)
- being accused of not being Robbie (this goes back to it being a boy name)
- did your dad want a boy
- where did a name like Robbie come from?

I have faced this my whole life, but it seemed to have died down. I am not sure if it is because more names are less gender specific or if abnormally names are now the norm. For a long time I have not had to explain my name, until recently. I have been asked how I got my name and what it is short for from the managers at Pacific Ethanol (the ethanol plant next to us) and then while in Wallula (another Boise plant in Whashington) the guard assumed my name was short for Roberta and then a few days after that I am questioned on whether the credit card I am using is indeed mine, she just wanted to make sure I was not using my husbands card!
Oh well, at least my name is original.

Grandma Turner

On Sunday Matt and I went to a mission farewell for a guy he works with. One of the speakers talked about his storage and how they were making bread and then he began to tell a story about his grandma, I wanted to ask him if we had the same grandma!
He told a story about how they would go to her house and they could not leave until his grandma gave them all bread with butter, I leaned over to Matt and said sounds like my grandma, but she gave us honey to put on our bread and butter. Then he was telling about how she would send bread home. She would pull out a used plastic bag to put the bread in and then would put a rubber band around the bag, the rubber band came from the newspaper. She had saved it so she could reuse it. All which she stored next to used tin foil she had saved to use later.
The bread that came from my grandma's was always in a bag that had been used before. She had a neat little stack of rubber bands in her house and I am sure she re-used her tin foil. After all she would save wrapping paper to use again! You would have thought he was talking about my grandma!
The best part about grandma..... frozen chocolate chip cookies and sauerkraut.

Pulled Over

I got pulled over for the first time in Burley. Now not the first time ever, just the first time in Burley. I have a very heavy foot and have had my share fare of tickets. Matt lectures me the whole time about how our insurance is going to go up and about how good I had been doing. Well the cop comes back and gives me a warning.
Matt is telling me how lucky I am and I tell him I have been pulled over enough, I knew he was only giving me a warning. At which Matt tells me that is nothing to be proud of. Now I will have to watch my speed, the town is small and I know the cop will remember me, especially since I have Bonnivelle county plates, not Cassia county.

McKenzie Birthday

March 5 was my little niece, McKenzie's birthday. She turned 14.
You see this particular neice's birthday is a little hard for me because that means in just 3 short months Patrick will be the same age. Yes, he will be 14. Everytime McKenzie gets older I question how that happened. How is it that she is so old. And how is it that I have a son that old.
It is a little hard for me to take in.

Bogie

My dog bogie is part human. He has learned how to show his emotions and we some how manage to understand. He got his hair cut the other day and he was not happy about it. He has been so bad since he got his hair cut. I gave him a bone and told him to put it on his dog bed. He looked at me and kept chewing. So I took it and put it on his bed. He glared at me and took his bone out of his bed. I put it back and this time it stayed. I tell him he has to stay home, he can't come with us. So he bites Patrick's ankles because he wants to go.
This is not it, we went to the vet last week to get his shots. Bogie was mad at the vet and would not take the treat he was given because he was mad. So I took it with me. We get to the car and as soon as the door to the car is closed he begins to try to get the treat out of my hand. He knew I had it, but refused to take it from the vet!
I guess I can only blame myslef for his finikiness.

Broken Ears

The other day I read heather's blog about broken ears. Apperantly her little girl tells her that her ears are broken when asked to do something.
Well thinking it cute and funny (it is always funny when it is not your own kid) I tell Matt and Patrick. Well Patrick thinks he is pretty funny.
I asked him to walk Bogie (a task he hates to do) he looks at me and says, what mom I think my ears are broken.
Being a smart kid and old enough to understand "the look" jumps up and gets bogie to take hin on a walk as soon as he got "the look".

Afirmative Action

This last week I have been working on an Affirmative Action Plan and it has sucked!
Now don't get me wrong. I am a believer in Affirmative Action. However, I am not such a big fan of putting them together. There is so many steps to take. I have had to print off a million reports to put in the hard copy of the plan. This is just in case any employees or god forbid the EEOC wants to see it. Then I have had to write narratives. I had do do a business summary and a narrative with an action plan on how we are going to try to "fix" where we are under utilizing women or minorities and a narrative explaining our community involvement and how that has encouraged women and minorities to apply. I have not even began working on the veterans section!
However, I cannot complain too much. I knew that I would have certain things like this to deal with on my job. Hopefully it is easier to put together next year!

Weather

There is not much about Burley that is better than Idaho Falls, but one thing that is better in Burley is the weather. We do not have any snow. Not to say we have not gotten snow, but when it snows it usually is gone soon after it stops snowing. It also is warmer. We have had a few cold days where is has gotten into the 20's and some in the 30'. But for the most part it is in the low to mid 40's.
Wednesday I went to work in snow and come home with sunshine and most of the snow melting. It is weird, but I sure love it.

Moving Day

Friday was moving day. I hate moving. It is a lot of work!
I don't mind packing things up, but I sure hate to move it and unpack it. You have to figure out where you are going to put things and then you can never find them! This morning I have no idea what hapened to the pair of shoes I wanted to wear today. Even though it is a pain it already is so nice. This house is so quiet, we only hear each other and we control the smell!
We bought a new washer and dryer. We have not hooked them up yet so we had to go to the old house do to laundry. So we walked in and the smell about knocked me over. The smell of cigarette smoke was so strong I thought I was going to puke. Then when we were putting our clothes away they all smelt like an ash tray. So that made me wonder did I go to work smelling like that? Or was it faint enough that it really could not be smelt? Anyway those days are gone. All we have left is to clear out the fridge and clean and cleaning should not take us that long.
So while it was a pain to move and to unpack it is all worth it in the end.

Better late than never

Here are some Christmas post. A little late, but here they are finally!
Enjoy....