Aliens among us.

"Are you an alien?" my 5-year old nephew Ben asked me today.

"Nope," I replied.

"I think you're an alien," he insisted, his twin brother Tim shaking his head in agreement.

Trying to change the subject, I asked them if they knew who would be arriving soon.

"Who?" Ben and Tim asked eagerly.

"Diane is coming!" I told them.

"Is Diane your dad?" they wondered.

"No, she is my sister," I clarified.

"Are you sure she isn't your dad?" Tim wanted to know.

"Yep," I answered.

Tim and Ben turned to look at each other and Ben said, "I bet she's an alien too."

The Swiss Nursery ROCKS!

On Sunday I went with my sister to the nursery. I'm in the nursery at home, so I thought it would be a fun way to maybe get some new ideas.

To my surprise there were very few things the same about our two nurseries. Yes, we both have snack time. My sister baked bread (in an oven inside the nursery) and sliced up various fruits and veggies. Making the stale animal crackers we have, seem even more lame.

One more thing we have in common is play-doh. Well, I did try play-doh once. But one little boy kept eating it so I put it away and never tried it again. Here, they do play-doh every week and just let the kids eat it.

But that is where the similarities end.

Can I just say two words? Sand box. Yes, in Switzerland, they have a sand box in the nursery. How cool is that! My sister bought it and put it in there. If I were to bring a sand box into my nursery at home, I think they would completely freak out.

But the best part is the bikes. They have half a dozen bigwheels and baby strollers that the kids climb on and race down the halls when they take a "walk." I can just imagine how well this would go over in West Virginia.

I'm seriously thinking about trying out some of the great ideas I've seen here. Maybe a sandbox and a few bigwheels...Because, as my sister says, "The kids love it!" And that's all the reassurance I need.

And it may even ensure a speedy release from the nursery.

Feeling a bit jet-lagged, but loving every minute.

I think the second I landed in Switzerland, Julie's five-year-old boys started asking me questions. Wow, I've missed them.

"Are you my mom's brother?"

"Were you little the same time my mom was little?"

"Were you in my mom's tummy?"

I had thought we finally got it figured out when they declared: "Oh, so you are my mom's sister!"

But then I wasn't so sure...

"Are you a boy?" Tim wanted to know. "Because when you came to see us in England, you were a boy."

Julie left to pick up the older kids from school and Ben reached up to grab my hand. "So, I guess you're the boss now," he informed me.

I asked him who the boss usually was. "I'm the boss of me, Tim is the boss of Tim, and George is the boss of everyone," he answered.

And then the conversation changed. Which is one of the things I love most about these guys.

"Who made the world," Ben asked standing inches away from my face as I was trying to use the bathroom as discreetly as possible.

I told him that Heavenly Father made the world. "Did he die?" he wanted to know.

I reminded him about Easter and how Jesus was raised from the dead. "Oh yeah," Ben nodded his head, remembering. "That's when the Easter Bunny came to raise Jesus from the dead." Or something like that.

Time for a Scooby snack...

It's that crazy place between real and dreaming. That's where I was this morning. I'd woken up and driven the kids to school but had a terrible headache. Got home took something for the headache and checked my mail and facebook. My sister mentioned something about having tickets to see some kind of murder mystery dinner train. Wow! I've always wanted to go to one of those.

My head was throbbing so I decided to lie down for a while. And suddenly I was in the middle of a ghost hunt. Not quite the murder mystery I wanted, but I guess it was close enough. It was almost like a Scooby Doo episode...

And I was chasing down ghosts when all of a sudden the phone rang. In my dream it was someone trying to trick me---trying to convince me they were not really a ghost when I knew they were.

I woke up as I was hanging up the phone---the real phone. Desperately hoping that I hadn't just had the same conversation on my phone that I'd just had in my dream. I'd just yelled at the "pretend" person, telling them that they had to be a ghost because were too ugly to be real. "Of course, I'm real," the person on the phone had insisted. But I knew better and had hung up them.

So, maybe I'd just picked up the phone in my sleep and no one was ever really there. But just in case---and you called me this morning---I apologize. I'm sure you're quite lovely. Not ugly at all. And maybe next time, don't call so early.

It's possible.

Today as I sat in McDonalds drinking my 10th refill, waiting for it to be safe for me to go to my car, I had to wonder. Is it just me? Does everyone else have encounters with crazy people and find themselves in strange situations on an almost daily basis? Surely I'm not the only one. But then again, maybe I have my own magnet that attracts crazy.

So, I watched the lady check my car doors one final time before giving up and finally wandering off. She had been beside me in line and arguing with herself over who would get to sit in the front seat on the way home. Then she'd taken her drink and gone straight to my car and tried to get inside. There were cars parked on both sides of me, yet she had stood waiting beside the passenger door of MY car. I decided that waiting inside for her to leave was the best way to handle things. Even if it had taken an hour.

Anyway, I realized that things do seem to happen to me. For example, recently my husband and I were driving to pick up Anna from choir practice, and we noticed that one of our front headlights had just gone out. AutoZone was less than a mile away so my husband figured we could just stop by and pick up a new headlight on our way home. I was not so sure. But my husband convinced me that it would be fine. A few blocks away from the store we were pulled over by the police for having our headlight out.

We bought another headlight and I begged my husband to put it in right there in the parking lot. He needed tools we didn't have in the car, so he wanted to wait until we got home. "Besides," he assured me, "what are the odds that we'll get pulled over twice in one night for the same headlight."

He'd forgotten that I was with him. And yes, we did get pulled over on the way home.

And then yesterday. I noticed the shorts my daughter was wearing looked like they were ripped in the back. But I can never say the right thing the right way. "Anna do you have a hole in your butt?" I yelled out. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at me. See? Anyone else would have figured out a better way to phrase that or would have been more discreet.

So, I'm going to challenge myself to be more invisible. To try to make it through an entire week without making a scene or attracting the attention of crazy people. I think I can do it.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I was just trying to be nice.

Why else would I have 10 cases of Pepsi Max piled into my cart. Target is always out of Pepsi Max, so when I saw they had some in stock, I bought all they had. 9 cases fit into my cart perfectly, but I was able to balance the 10th box on top.

And it would have been fine...except I saw my neighbor and was waving hello to her. Instead of watching for potholes.

The case of pop flew off the top of my cart and instantly I knew that at least one can was leaking. And since I couldn't put a leaking box of pop into my car, I knew I'd have to remove the damaged can(s). I picked the box back up and put it into my cart where I could open the soggy end of the container. Before I was ready, all 12 cans came flying out of the box.

It was like mini explosions with pop squirting in every direction. The lady walking towards me ran for cover behind the trash can. If it wasn't such a surprise and pop wasn't spraying all over me, I would have stopped to watch. It truly was incredible.

I threw the damaged cans---that were still spraying out pop with amazing power---into the trash can. (Once again I needed to apologize to the lady who was then hiding behind the trash can.)

I had it almost under control and was ready to continue my trek across the parking lot when I overheard a women passing by inform her friend that maybe I should start drinking non-caffeinated pop. Before I could scream, "It was the POT HOLES!" once again my cart lurched into a hole and the few cans that hadn't been damaged went flying out of the open box...

This time I wasn't so apologetic to the women who ended up getting sprayed. It really was an accident.

The fabric store is not my friend.

This morning I decided to finally go buy the fabric my sister had asked me to get for her. I've been putting it off because fabric stores are a bit intimidating to me. It turned out that my fears were justified as it ended up being a stressful experience for me.

My sister wanted some baby fabric she could use to make baby quilts. Any fabric at all, she assured me. As long as it was cute. I ran around looking at baby material for an hour trying to decide if it was cute enough or even cute at all. I mean what if I thought it was cute, but it really wasn't?

I gathered my "cute" fabric candidates and decided to canvass the store to see what other people thought. 8 out of the 10 people at the fabric store agreed that the material I had picked out was cute. One guy tried to talk me into choosing a nice cammo print instead. Another lady declined participating in my little survey. (Whatever that means.)

Now I'm home and I'm second guessing my choices. What if those people were just telling me what they thought I wanted to hear so I'd leave them alone? Maybe after I left they all started laughing at what ugly and inappropriate material they had talked me into buying.

Anyway, I don't visit my sister for another month so I still have time to re-think my fabric selections.