For the Beauty of the Earth

Apparently, when you stick a little seed in the dirt and give it enough water and sunlight, things grow. Ben is the resident gardener 'round these here parts, so this year I haven't done much in that arena except the [very] occasional weeding and running out to grab something so we could eat it that day. Well, I decided that we've been grossly neglecting the garden, so yesterday we spent the morning there as a family. We weeded and picked all of the fruits of our labors that were in any state to pick. We've picked a few things here and there to eat and to give to friends, but yesterday was a knuckle-down-and-see-what-we've-got-and-what-we-need-to-do-with-it day.


Apparently, what we need to do is learn how to make pickles.

I don't even like pickles. But Ben and Turtle do, so there ya go.


We also had enough zucchini for one or two of loaves of zucchini bread.

Who am I kidding? We were sick of zucchini before we ever picked those monsters (or the two other monsters that we already gave away).


And we need to find a good way to store some yellow squash too.

And there's beets and cabbage and corn and the 4th time we've picked green beans too. Although, we did eat that corn for dinner today. Mmmmmm.

Not bad for one week, eh?

Aside from all of this, we have pumpkins and watermelon taking over the entire garden, onions, carrots, garlic, peppers, more corn to pick, probably some more green beans, cucumbers and squash and tomatoes that are just starting to turn red. I don't even like tomatoes. Why do I grow them? "Because I'm an old Southern woman and we're supposed to wear funny looking hats and ugly clothes and grow vegetables in the dirt. Don't ask me those questions. I don't know why, I don't make the rules!"


First one to name that movie wins a cucumber.

Spewing Forth

Dear Charlotte,

Do you stay up later than you should when your significant other is gone for the night? I do. And I do stupid things like scarffing down half a bag of Doritos and watching Whose Line Is It Anyway clips on Youtube. Actually, I've been known to do those things when the husband man is here, too, but it's much more enjoyable then. Because laughing with someone you love is always better than laughing alone, don't you think?

So then after I grow bored of such festivities, do I go to bed? Of course not. I must spew nonsense onto my keyboard and post it to my blog so that both of the people who read said blog can get all excited that there is an update (because I know you got all excited) and then get all disappointed when they actually read it because, well, it's not actually about anything.

What's that you say? Oh, where's the husband man anyway and why did he have to leave so as to inflict you with such ramblings? Father/Son campout. He has been strictly charged with keeping the beginning-to-act-like-a-two-year-old Chicken Little and the no-sense-of-boundaries Turtle alive and in one piece. Well, two pieces really. Because there are two of them. And warm at night. And hopefully well fed. And with not too many bug bites. And preferably not burned by either campfire or sun. But I don't want to come off all naggy, so I didn't mention that last one. Not the campfire part anyway. No one likes a girl who nags, ya know?

All in all I must say that I have enjoyed the tantrum freeness of the last several hours. But alas, nothing gold can stay.

Long Time No See

Dear Charlotte,

Remember me? The one who used to blog here? No? I don't blame you. A lot has happened in the last almost year since I really blogged. (Wow... almost a year!) What have we been up to? I don't really know where to start...how about a few visuals.

Oakley 4th of July Parade

Camping at Capitol Reef

Eccles Dinosaur Museum

Chicken Little's 1st Birthday

Halloween

Ricochet's 7th Birthday Party (Thanks Grandma!)

And Christmastime

That's pretty much what we've been up to of late. Well, that and buying a house and moving. One little detail that took over a great deal of our last 10 months that we have no pictures of. How is it that we bought a house and have no pictures?! Well, we did. And it's been great - we're really loving it here. Mostly. If the snow would just GO AWAY.

Oh yes, there is one more little thing:

BUNSO (which is a Filipino nickname for "the littlest one") joined us at the end of February.

Ain't he cute?

Now if he would just learn to sleep at night I'd be a little more functional.

So there you have it - our past year or so in pictures. Any questions? No? Good. Because I've got a baby to go feed.

A Really Great Idea...Or Maybe Not

Turtle and Ricochet were outside playing yesterday while Ben did some yardwork. It was a beautiful day. Turtle was playing in one of those big plastic cars made by such companies as Little Tykes and Fisher Price. You know - the ones you push with your feet like Fred Flinstone. You see that hill down there that they were sledding on during Spring Break (only 2 weeks ago, I might add)? You've probably figured out where I'm going with this, no? Turtle got this Really Great Idea to go down that hill in his little car. Being the neglectful parent that Ben is, he had no idea.

Point of fact: Little Tykes cars for preschool sized children are not made to safely travel down large hills of dirt and weeds. Not even medium hills.


As you can imagine, the result was less than desirable. Ben brought Turtle in crying uncontrollably while he (Turtle) tried to tell me what happened. The gist of what I got out of it was: The car, big hill, you know, tipped, bonked, you know, a thing. He had obviously hit his face because that was where he was holding, but at the time, I didn't know exactly what had happened. (Yes, Ben brought him in crying and then went back out after telling me no more than "He fell." I'm fairly certain this is why Heavenly Father gave mothers the primary responsibility for the care and nurture of their children. But I digress...) He seemed generally in good condition, just scared and a wee bit hurting. The next day, his eye/cheekbone/nose is still sore and a little swollen and looks like this (only, really, it looks worse than this because the camera didn't capture the purple color around his eye very well, but it is, indeed, purple):

Maybe it wasn't such a Really Great Idea after all.

Spring Break My Foot!

Ugh

Ski Week

Officially known as President's Week in dear ol' Park City, we just finished a week off of school. Which also means a week off of work for Ben. It started by having cousins over for the weekend. And then, Ben who doesn't do vacations told us Sunday night that in the morning we were going to get in the car and drive south for a few days. We're all a little sick of the cold. Literally. The coughing hung around for a month and is just now gone. So we did. Get in the car and head south.

We figured we'd stay in Cedar City and then drive down to St. George for a day. We had a great time. Especially when Turtle started screaming at 1:30 in the morning and then barfed all over the bed/wall/floor. Good times. Let's just say he doesn't travel well. Letting him stay up late and eat a bunch of junk probably didn't help either. We're good parents like that. We stopped at Cove Fort on the way down and took a tour, swam in the hotel's pool that was rather dusty because of construction, stayed up late watching the olympics (much to Ben's dismay), visited the Dinosaur Discovery in St. George (where our future paleontologist Ricochet was enthralled and asked in-depth questions about everything and we had to finally pull her away because Turtle and Daddy were getting antsy), played miniature golf (of which I sadly have no pictures), ate lots of food and paid too much for it, saw Princess and the Frog at the dollar theater (which was really a $2 theater, but that doesn't flow off your tongue quite as well, ya know?) and just enjoyed our family time together. Interestingly, we ran into another PC family at the movie theater in St George. Who'da thunk? Pictures, you say? Yes, here are a few pictures for your viewing enjoyment.

Cousin Princessa V apparently should have had a nap that day...

Cove Fort

Do I really need to label where we are in this picture?

Each of the kids got to pick something from the gift shop at Dinosaur Discovery...

Turtle picked a little stegosaurus puzzle.

And Ricochet picked a mini excavation kit. As she was excavating through the exotic plaster to find the dinosaur bones, she was all atwitter at the "discovery" she was about to make.

No, I didn't forget this one - Chicken Little did indeed come with us. He just doesn't do much yet so he didn't get as much camera time. Poor Chicken Little.

Saturday Makes Six

Bouquets of flowers that is.

Friday

Saturday
I've run out of vases :)

Friday Five

Remember me? Probably not, but I'm back. I'm not even going to comment on how long it's been since I blogged. Dang. I just did. Well, rather than giving an update of my life over the past forever, I'm doing a Friday Five. Because it's Friday. So there.

Five Things That Came Home From Work With Ben This Week

Monday


Tuesday

Wednesday


Thursday

Friday
Well, I don't EXPECT anything today, but it wouldn't be a Friday Five if I only had Four.
Then it would be a Friday Four.
Which is really what it is, I suppose, since nothing has come home from work with Ben today because Ben hasn't come home from work. And whether or not he brings me MORE flowers today (which I don't expect, but possibly anticipate), I still love that man with every fiber of my being. He's the best.
And if you feel like I'm bragging, you're probably right. Deal with it.

Not So Friday Five

Dear Charlotte,

Okay, so it isn't Friday, but I missed it this week. I had planned on posting this, but I never got around to it, so here it is. Consider it a special Sunday surprise!

Blowing Smoke and Dandelions
5 Pics from Memorial Day Weekend

And yes, we are proud that Daddy's a smoker. ;)

Confessions:

Dear Charlotte,

Ricochet has been sporting the same hairdo for three days. Not that I've done the same hairdo on her for three days, but that I never took it out.

The dishes have been waiting to be washed for the same amount of time.

Yesterday we all stayed in our pajamas until Ben called and said he was coming home from work soon.

Ssshhhhh! Don't tell my kids I'm a bad mom and they'll never figure it out, right?

My husband thinks I'm crazy....and you probably will too

Dear Charlotte,

I don't really know what's gotten into me, but I got this idea and now Ben thinks I've gone off the deep end. Maybe I have, I don't know. So I was thinking, why don't we use cloth diapers on this new baby? Not the takes-20-minutes-to-fold-them-and-have-to-be-careful-not-to-stick-your-kid-with-a-pin cloth diapers of years ago, but modern cloth diapers. Did you know they make cloth diapers now that are practically like disposables? Diapers like bumGenius and Mommy's Touch and Kissaluvs. I think I'm even open to doing plain old prefolds with covers sometimes. There are several reasons I've been considering this, like:
1 - Even to buy the nice ones, it is cheaper than using the cheap disposables. (Although it's an up-front cost instead of spread over the months and years) Plus, if you have more children, the cost is even lower because you can use many of the same diapers and products.
2 - It's better for the environment.
3 - It's better for the baby. It's crazy how many harmful chemicals there are in disposable diapers. I was amazed at the things I learned when I started looking into it. Seriously - google it and see for yourself.
4 - For some reason, it doesn't sound that bad! =)

Ben thinks I couldn't handle cleaning the poop off, but guess what? I have to wipe the poop off the kid's butt anyway, right? And you can hook this sprayer thing - basically like a vegetable sprayer for the kitchen sink - up to the plumbing on your toilet. No dunking, just spray it off and wash them every couple of days! And if you're out and about, use a flushable liner and whala! the mess goes down the john!

See? I knew you'd think I'm crazy! So now's your chance to make your opinion known - take the poll on the side of my blog to let me know if I have really lost it or not!

Wouldn't it be nice?

Dear Charlotte,
I just ran across the best job in the world. SOMEBODY is going to be paid $105,000 to live in beautiful Australia for six months and blog about how awesome it is. No, really. It's not even a joke. Here is the link. I could totally go for this. I wonder if Ben would consider skipping the first four months of work next year? Or if the school would even let him....Heck! We'll live off of the pay for a year and THEN he can go back to work, eh?

Halloween at Last!

Dear Charlotte,

Yes, that title says Halloween. Yes it's been almost two months. Yes I'm only now getting around to posting pictures. Se la vie.
First and foremost, if you know what this is a picture of, you must have a little girl in your life. Here at our palace (that's a fancy word for castle) we LOVE this book. What book is it? Why, Fancy Nancy of course! In the book, Nancy, who loves to be fancy, gives her family lessons on being fancy, dresses them up and they all go out for pizza. A very fun and delightful (that's a fancy word for good) book that even Ben enjoys. So for Halloween we decided to dress up as Nancy's family. Only, she has a little sister and we happen to have a little brother. Although we considered dressing the little man up just like Nancy's little sister, we decided to let him retain a bit of dignity instead. So we improvised on a fancy little man and he played the part - strutting all over the place, flashing hand signals, saying, "yo, yo, yo." Ricochet, of course, got to be Nancy. And if you're wondering, yes, I did sew each of those ruffles on her dress. No, not by hand. What do you think I am - a seamstress? She was simply darling. So without further ado, here we are - Christmas ball earrings and all! (See, now I've tied it into Christmas so it's a perfect December post, right?)

You're Invited...

Dear Charlotte,

Ben found this wedding invitation online and I couldn't not share it. Click on it to read it. Enjoy!

The hardest thing I've ever done...

...is to help pin my little man down while he was screaming his head off so he could get stitches in his chin. Seriously. Nothing I have ever done was as hard as that. He was all wrapped up on a papoose board so he couldn't move and when the doctor put down the cloth to keep the cut sterile, it covered his eyes, so he couldn't see and I was helping to hold his head steady and looking the other way because I couldn't watch while they sewed it up. I also hadn't eaten much, so I even started to get nauseous at the end there. I usually don't have a problem with blood - I even considered a career as an ER nurse at one point - but something about the combination of a cut on the chin and someone I love make it too hard for me to watch. When Ben got stitches in his chin last year I couldn't watch either. And now they'll have matching scars - oh goody! OK, so you're probably wondering what happened. Ben was carrying Turtle up the stairs to my parents' house this afternoon and tripped, so Turtle cut his chin on the edge of a step. Fourteen stitches later, he's doing just fine and I'm slowly recovering.

Opening Night Run-down

We had opening night last night for our stake play. It was a lot of fun and actually turned out pretty well, all things considered! Our dress rehearsal the night before was quite rough. But last night people were actually laughing and seemed to enjoy it, so it couldn't have been that bad. But Oy Vey! In one scene we had two missed entrances, which totally threw me off, so then I ran off stage WAY early and had to, quite obviously, re-enter to continue a conversation that never should have ended. Yikes! Joel (Junior) got a little pistol-happy and decided to shoot our already dead prop man to death, not to mention everything else in sight. He seems to think he is the star attraction. I'm thinking tonight I might try to replace that pistol with a banana when he isn't looking. Really. I'm going for it. Oh yes, and the director has a crush on my hubby. Really.

Of Shirts, Ambulances and Late Nights Out

Turtle has a shirt that reads "My Parents are Exhausted" and I think we should permanently attach it to his body. We Are! With everything we've got going on lately, we can hardly get a snore in edgewise. We've signed up for a city-sponsored program called Slim Down Sandy (or more affectionately known by our friends Scott and Missy as Fess Up Fatty, Trim Down Tubby and Lose It Lardo). This has added the time-consuming tasks of eating healthier, exercising and a weekly family walk to our schedules. We enjoy it, but it does take time - in fact, last Monday I forgot I was supposed to babysit the neighbor's kids because we were out on our family walk. Yikes!

In addition, we've been rehearsing for our Stake Play - Phantom of the Op'ry - which we're supposed to perform next week and, as a cast, we've not yet run through it from beginning to end. I think that will happen a total of ONCE before we begin performing. This calls for a lot of late nights out in order to rehearse, and today I can feel that it is taking its toll on my body. Regardless of how late we stay up, Ben still has to get up for work at 5:30 and the kids still wake up around 6:30, so there's no sleeping in!

And what of the ambulances in the title, you may ask? Well, last night we were a half hour late for rehearsal because we couldn't get out of the parking lot of our condo. An ambulance, a fire truck and two police cars were blocking us in. So, like all good neighbors, we stood and stared as they took care of business. Ben had heard a loud pop a few moments earlier and was wondering if it were a gunshot. A life-flight copter landed on the street next to the condos, and then a man in a stretcher was brought out and rolled down to it. This morning we found out that a man and a woman were cleaning a condo that had been foreclosed. The woman found two rifles under a bed and as she was moving them, one went off and shot the man in the stomach. She called 911 and I already told you what happened next. We could see the woman and she was frantic. The man was flown to the U of U Hospital, and later pronounced dead. I feel horrid for that woman and the man's family. My heart goes out to them and I am praying for them. I would take exhausted over that any day. Any Day.

A few more....

I can't get enough of that face recognition thing...

http://www.myheritage.com/collage