Race

So, I don't know why race is such an issue. It really shouldn't be. This is something that has bothered me for most of my life. I've been thinking about it more recently as I hear of interracial adoptions. Some parents have experienced criticism for adopting a child of another race. This is crazy to me. Tom Cruise has adopted children of a different race and he made a statement saying that we are all part of the HUMAN race. Okay, I know he is a little crazy now, but I wish more people would look at it that way. People often take issue with interracial couples too. They give you some bull about how it's because there are often cultural differences. There may be a small amount of truth to that, but if you are in a relationship and you discover that the cultural differences are too much for you, you won't date that person anymore. People work out all sorts of issues when dating. Society doesn't seem to think anything of a white American marrying a white Swede or a black American marrying a black Kenyan. I guess people just like to see what they are used to seeing, which usually is people of the same color together. I married someone from a different social class and culture. Nobody was protesting our marriage. We are both white with German and English ancestry, so we must be a good match. Trust me, the culture of Sandy Utah is quite different from my South Whitley Indiana upbringing. I grew up driving down dirt roads and Chad couldn't believe that people had unpaved driveways. He has since become accustomed to our strange Indiana ways-especially since we now live on a gravel road.
People try to make things about race when they aren't. I was watching Oprah once, which I rarely do because I usually end up angry with her comments, and they had interracial couples talking about the differences in their family backgrounds. Most of the things they said weren't race related, they were just differences in personalities. One couple was a black man and white woman. He was talking about how when they get together with her family it's laid back and quiet and when they are with his family everybody is loud and laughing. That's not a black or white thing. I have two white parents and he just described my family- The Staller's are pretty laid back and the Gradeless's, well, we get kind of loud when we are all together. I wish things would stop being about race and start being about people.

Have I seriously not blogged since February?!!

Well, I guess I haven't blogged because we were busy getting things planned for our trip to Italy. It was so much fun. I didn't miss the kids as much as I thought I would. We were pretty busy, so I didn't have a lot of time to dwell on missing them. We did get to email them some, and they sent us emails via Mom, who was kind of enough and brave enough to watch them for 10 days. We've been home for a week and we've just been catching up on everything. It was so good to see the kids when we got home. They were so excited and so cute. I could probably write 10 pages worth of stuff about Italy, but I won't. We had a heck of a time reaching Rome. We had a 7 hour lay over in Chicago, which ended up being 8 and then landed at JFK on time, but taxied forever-seriously, we taxied so long that I thought I would pee my pants and I had to get up and use the lavatory while taxiing,even though they say to stay in your seat. We missed our flight to Rome. The American Airlines workers were less than helpful. We ended up taking a flight with a lay over in London. That flight left late also. We were 60th in line for take off, yep, 60th! So, we get to Rome, and we are all excited that we finally made it, find an ATM to get the cash we need to pay for our Bed and Breakfast. Nothing. We tried 3 ATM's and none of them worked. We needed to get on a train to meet the owner of the B&B because she doesn't live at the B&B. To say the least, I was stressed. Then, we walked around Rome for an hour and a half looking for the B&B. My arm was ready to fall off!! Things went better after that, but we were not without incident. We had ATM issues almost every day. It was really cool to see all of the famous sites in their surroundings that you don't ever see in the photos. All of the stuff in Rome is right in the city. I thought it would be more preserved or set back from streets and traffic. The weather was great every single day. It was around 73 degrees and sunny every day. Rome and Florence were crazy busy. If we hadn't had the ATM issues, which stressed me, I probably would have enjoyed those cities more. The leaning tower of Pisa totally leans more than we thought it would. I heard others around us say that same thing. Stephanie was a such a huge help. She told us what sights to see and gave us really good tips and she even called the B&B in Rome to let them know we would be 9 hours late because of our flight junk. There were some beautiful places everywhere we stayed. We got lots of great pictures. We didn't get pick pocketed, which I was sure we would. We were in Rome, Venice, Florence, Sorrento and Rome again. We took a gondola ride in Venice. That was fun. A lot of the places we saw I recognized from movies. I didn't know what Piazzale Michealangelo was, but Steph said we should go. We went, and it's totally in movies. It's the highest point above Florence and it was gorgeous. I'm glad we walked up the huge hill and then the million steps-it totally was worth it. Sorrento was a smaller coast town and it was so relaxing. Italy was great! I was sad when we came home and Chad and I didn't get to spend every minute together like we had for the past 10 days. We had a such a great time!!!!! I wasn't too sure about traveling to a foreign country, but it was really cool and not as difficult as I thought it would be. Even though there were times when I was cursing the scooters and alleys that they call streets, I'm glad we went and feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to take such an incredible vacation. Thank you, Mom, Stephanie, Chad and Rick Steves.

Pictures will be on Facebook, hopefully, soon.

What would you say if you were about to die?

We were reading scriptures and talking about Moses before he died. I asked the kids, "What would you say if you were about to die?" Heidi said, "Oh, no I'm gonna die." Noah thought for a while for his answer. He finally said, " A prayer." It was pretty funny.

Heidi is a sweetie

Heidi picked out Valentine's for her classmates. She asked if it was for the boys too. When I said yes, she stopped looking at the Hannah Montana and Barbie Valentines. She didn't think the boys would like those. She picked cats and dogs. Then, she said she was going to ask each kid in her class if they have a cat or a dog, so that she could give them the right Valentine. She is a very thoughtful little girl.

Clogged Toilet

So, about two weeks after we moved into our new house, the downstairs toilet was getting clogged, like, all of the time. It was really annoying. We thought we were going to need to get a new toilet. Well, the other day Chad put the little snake thing down the toilet and pulled out one of our cookie cutters!!! Oh, the joys of having kids! The toilet is perfect working order now. Thanks, Chad!

NKOTB

Last weekend Macy and I drove up to Chicago for the New Kids on the Block concert. We had a blast!! It was so much fun singing all of the old songs. Everyone in the arena knew all of the words. They sounded good, and it was a really entertaining concert. Our seats were better than expected, so we got some really good pictures. Donnie was as nasty as ever. The girls behind us were Donnie fans. Macy and I kept laughing every time people screamed for him. We did a lot of screaming and singing along. We had so much FUN!!!!! Most of the songs from their new album are pretty good. Natasha Bedingfield opened for them and she was really good too. So, about half way through the concert this girl sitting next to me is not feeling well. She has her head down, covering her ears. I'm pretty sure she was drunk. I just kept thinking, Why don't you go out in the hall or the bathroom. Well, she started to look like she might get sick, so I move my purse and stuff and start moving away from her. At the end of the concert she puked. Nasty! It got on my shoe, purse and jeans. It wasn't a ton, but still.

How did she Know?

So, Chad was totally joking around with Heidi and asked if she did anything bad at school. She said no. He then told her that she better fess up because her teacher called and told him what she had done, which was a total lie. Heidi responded with a question, "How did she know?" At this point, Chad and I laughing so hard and wondering what she is going to fess up to. It ended up that she accidentally pulled some kids hair while she was trying to grab her chair. What a naguhty girl, huh? Chad told he was kidding, but thanked her for telling the truth. Funny kids!