Over the river and through the woods to grandpa's house we went

For the 4th of July weekend we braved the heat and headed out to Grandpa H's house for a visit. E has always been a pretty good traveler although this time was a little more of a challenge than most. Luckily he was kept occupied with eating the ice from the beverage service.

Before leaving Las Vegas to drive to St. George we swung by Strip Burger so I could have my favorite shake in the whole world. It is sooo good. I better move on before I feel like I need to have another. Br spent a lot of the time helping Grandpa get all his programs loaded onto his computer while I chased E around.

E did a lot of redecorating while he was there, specifically with plastic fruit. In his defense he did help clean up.

He also enjoyed walking around the yard and riding Grandpa's scooter (check out the "Fun in the sun" slide show for more pics of G'Pa's yard). I even let him drive it for a while (please excuse how horrible I look in the video).

We ate really well while we were there. Grandpa taught me how to make his special cake and easy chicken. And anyone who has visited Grandpa knows that you can't leave without him taking you to the Golden Corral.

A little behind with the times

After much debate and going back and forth as to whether we were going to redo our kitchen counters ourselves or pay someone, we gave in and headed to Home Depot to take advantage of the last day of their 10%. We knew exactly what we wanted, had a picture sketched out of our counters with accurate dimensions, and had already priced it out using their online counter top estimator. It was around 7:30 when we arrived. After ringing the little "I need assistance" button in the kitchen department we were greeted by David who was actually supposed to be off for the rest of the night but was asked to help us anyway. Needless to say I think this may have been David's first week on the job. All he really needed to do was:

• Draw a picture of my kitchen with dimensions, which I already did


• Calculate the square footage, which I already did


• Give us an estimate for the counter top


• and then let us pay.

Sounds simple, yet it wasn't. He tried to draw the picture in pen which didn't go well. Before drawing each line he would move the pen back and forth over the place the line went but without actually touching the paper (kind of like a practice swing) and then finally commit-- usually incorrectly. Mind you I did hand him my drawing. After almost completing it he gave up and started over. I thought he was playing a cruel joke on me. Nope. Attempt two looked worse than one. He made some joke like "I hope your husband (who was chasing E around the store to try to keep him entertained) isn't an engineer". I said "Oh, he's not... but I am". He looked at me first as if I was joking and then looked a little horrified when he realized I wasn't. At that point I think he got performance anxiety and decided to ditch the drawings all together and just attempt to calculate the square footage without it. You can imagine how quickly that went, or should I say didn't go, and in the end he derived a number very similar to the one I told him maybe and hour and a half earlier. Fast forward through lots more simple math and pecking into a dos program on the computer with a screaming kid in the background because he had poopy pants and a diaper rash and the night finally ended at 10:15. WOW. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. The most amusing thing about all this is that Home Depot trained this poor old man to do everything by hand when they have this handy dandy program online that draws the figure to scale, calculated the square footage, records all the specifications and outputs the price all in about 10 minutes. In the end though I think it will all be worth it.

What we do in the Summer time

June was kind of a weird month for me because for the first time in a LONG time E and I kind of stuck to a schedule. That of course will probably be short lived but here is was:

Monday Toddler Time at the library

Tuesday Primary presidency meeting

(No picture because it wasn't all that interesting)

Wednesday Play Group at the park
Thursday -- okay so we didn't have a "thing" for Thursday so we did whatever we pleased
and Friday- Tumbling at the Rec Center.

We filled the rest of the time with working in the yard, cleaning and decorating the house, taking a few walks with Daddy and Duchess, going to Target, playing and working, swimming at the pool, and taking naps. We'll see what July will have in store.

He's a boy

So I just walked into the kitchen to find the cutest thing. E was talking to a little bug and was trying to catch it. I thought it was so cute I ran to get the camera to capture this sweet moment. All I got was this:

He spit it out alive by the way.

Happy Summer

Happy Summer Everyone!

One of my favorite things about summer is corn on the cob. One of the things I like the least is ants. These were some of the treats I made for one of my most favorite things to do, have a BBQ (before you think I'm really creative I have to confess that the corn and ants idea came from a book my mom brought me when she came to visit last weekend. It was just following directions. The only improvisation came when I decided to put the ants on an ant hill only because I had lots of cupcakes left to decorate but ran out of time).

Midway through the week I sent a big manual I've been involved with out for national review (which means I don't have to look at it for a month or so) and I decided to celebrate that and the first day of summer by firing up the grill and making some sweet treats. Okay so I made Br fire up the grill. He is such a good guy from going along with all the crazy ideas that I come up with. We had lots of food, played bocce ball, Br's arcade basketball game, and the little kids all swam in the pool I got on clearance for $7.50 last fall (I saw it last week at Target for $35). The only disappointment was that nobody wanted to play croquet with me. I guess it's going to have to take a while from people here to get used to my kind of fun:) I had a really good time and hope others did too. The weirdest thing was that everyone was gone by like 9:30. It threw us off because our parties in Houston would go long after that. I guess the difference was all the little kids here. I think it is a sign that we are getting older. Can't stay up all night like the youngins any more. Sad.

Surgar Shock

Flour, butter shortening, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, eggs and lots of cleaning my kitchen-- that summarizes my week. Somehow I got myself into making cookies for all the males at church this week. That was right on the tail of making Br's birthday treats. The sad thing is I'll probably make cupcakes this week.

Some green on my side of the fence

Over the past few weeks we've worked a lot on trying to make our backyard a little more interesting than it was when we moved in. E has been especially excited about all the time he's gotten to spend outside "helping". We are still working on our water feature and put in two flower beds.


















E saw br moving stuff on the dolly and wanted to ride so he climbed on by himself.

He's also watched me fill my watering can out of the barrel that collects rainwater. I was out in the garden pulling weeds and turned around to find him trying to fill his watering can.

Just as I was beginning to give up hope on my garden -- most of it has died or has just stopped growing -- I discovered these little guys.

Visiting the family at the Zoo... I mean Visiting with the family at the zoo

Our Memorial Day adventure to ABQ for Pappy's birthday (observed) celebration included a trip to the zoo. It was some good furry fun! Thanks Jess, Chris, Parker and Pappy for letting us come!

CONgraduation much better than a Graduation

When I opened the mailbox on Monday I discovered that Br's Master's diploma had finally arrived. Yes, we both finished our graduate work like 3 years ago unfortunately Br's adviser wasn't very motivated to approve Br's thesis. My observation of grad school is that it is a lot of jumping through hoops and it seems at times that advisers get a lot of joy watching you jump so they put up hoop after hoop and you have no other option but to jump. You work hard on writing a thesis and then you give it to them and they turn around and make you change it. Then you give them the revised version and they want to change it again. And this process goes over and over until you finally change everything you've changed back to how it was before. In the end you find that the last hoop you jump through looks a whole lot like the first one you jumped though.

In any event Br's professor finally let him defend his thesis this past semester and now he has officially graduated. Since the end was a little anti-climatic (seeing as we've already moved on in our life), Br didn't go to graduation. When the diploma surprised me in the mail I decided to surprise Br with a CONgraduation when he got home from work. I put up some balloons and a banner, turned our outdoor kitchen into a podium and stage, and invited out friends over. We played pomp and circumstance on kazoos. I made Br give the commencement address. His friend Derek hooded him (with a hood made of tissue paper and aplastic table cloth). Then E presented him with his diploma. After we went and got some pizza. I think every graduation should be this short and sweet.

Back in the saddle again

Since we've moved I haven't really had the time or a reason to make any cakes. Yesterday I finally got to break out the cake stuff. Our friends the Kelly's redeemed their free cake coupon I donated to a service auction to raise money for girl's camp. The cake was for their sister's 30th birthday.

While my kitchen was taken over by fondant, icing, and food coloring I decided to make my dad a cake for an early birthday celebration we are going to have when we head to ABQ for the long weekend.

It feels good to have my creative outlet back! Anyone want to help me clean my kitchen?

Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water

The theme for this past Saturday was "the elements". Okay so it was only a little windy as we were going to sleep so that doesn't really count. Despite the fact that is was the hottest day of the year so far and SOOOO humid we spend a lot of time working in the garden and trying to fix our waterfall in the back yard. E got a little too into trying to help with the water fall so we decided to distract him by letting him run in the sprinklers for the first time.

Later that night we got a call that the guy that owns the land behind our was having a little bonfire so we walked down to join in on the fun. There were a bunch of youth from church there who were supposed to be piling all the dead branches onto the fire. Once E figured out what everyone else was doing he wanted to join in.

While we were there he took a ride in a little backyard merry-go-round (hey he was spinning through the air... maybe that counts for wind).

And even caught a toad.

Hello Mr. Toad

He's been spotted

E advances

Contact!

Farmer E

I don't always dress my kid like he's working on a farm, but it just so happens that on a day I did he decided to act the part. He and I were in the backyard while I was trying to talk to my boss on the phone. I hung up and turned around and saw that he'd drug a hoe out onto the lawn and got to work.

The Masked Bandit

So last Thursday I looked out the back door window and saw a masked bandit creeping up the porch. It was almost a year to the date that the guy tried to break in the back door at our old house while I was standing right there... but this wasn't quite the same thing. This masked bandit was a HUGE raccoon. I've seen tons of squirrels in the backyard but didn't realize our little forest had other critters as well. The neighbors say there are a couple raccoons, some possums, lots of squirrels and possibly a fox. I feel a little like I'm living in the movie "Over the Hedge" except that the hedge is a fence. Seeing as I like that movie a lot I feel a little hypocritical. I vow not to call the verminator though.

The thing is the raccoon was coming to the porch to each the dog's food that we leave outside because E loves to play with/eat it. Now that I know I've fed the wildlife, I'm wondering which of the little ones I care for has been malnourished this whole time. If the raccoon has been eating the dog food then that probably means that Duchess has been eating more of E's food then I realized and if that is true then E has been eating less of his food. Maybe that's the reason he tries to eat the dog food.