Alien Sighting

We caught an alien on tape. Strangely enough, it looked very similar to Spencer in his underwear, wearing the alien mask Ben got for his birthday.

Ben's 4th Birthday

Ben turned 4 last Sunday. He wanted a Black Spiderman cake, or rather, I talked him into a Black Spiderman cake. His first choice would have been a Green Goblin cake, but I thought the Black Spiderman would be easier to make. I made it after he was in bed on Saturday night, so it would be ready for him on Sunday. He was so excited Sunday morning, he spent most of the morning sitting on the counter just looking at the cake. Every once in a while he'd sigh and say "I love you, mommy".



We just had a small party after church with our family, plus Joe and Kacy. The Spiderman Pinata was first. After demolishing that, it was time for cake. Everyone's shirts had to come off, except for adults, of course. Black frosting is the one drawback of the Black Spiderman cake.


All Ben wanted for a present was a "scary" costume. Again, his preference would have been the Green Goblin, but as they don't carry those at Wal-mart, this was the next best thing. He seemed to be pleased with it anyway.

I say this every year at every birthday, I just can't believe another year has passed. Seriously, these kids are growing up so fast. It's kind of sad.
Ben's such a little mama's boy. He wants to be at my side or cuddling with me all day long. It's probably a good thing that I'm his main lady right now because he's very much a lady's man. He loves to raise and lower his eyebrows and wink at girls. He also has some mean dance moves, so ladies, WATCH OUT! He'll be grown before we know it.

Summer

I really cannot believe summer is over. And I can't believe that I didn't blog all summer long. So, if you haven't given up on my blog by now, here's a quick rundown of the last few months.

The first thing that kept me so busy? Our garden. Below is a picture of about half of it at the first of the summer.


We had an infestation of earwigs in the garden this year, due to the chicken coop, I think, and they were eating everything. I didn't want to put down any dangerous chemicals to kill them because my slaves kids spend a lot of time in the garden, weeding. So, I would go out every night around 11 or 12 (they only come out at night), and spray them with soapy water. It takes about 10 seconds for them to die, and I must say, I found much pleasure in watching them die. I really, really hate earwigs.
In the end, it paid off. Our tomato plants are all taller than me and packed with tomatoes. We had one plant that was at least 10 feet tall. Look at this monster roma. All of our romas are about this size.


The next thing keeping me busy was The Pizza Cart. We opened a wood fired pizza business this summer, and it was SO much more work than I anticipated. Last summer I posted about Jason selling pizza at the fair. This year we decided to try and make everything legal so that we could sell on the street. After all the licenses, bonds, inspections, and a million other details, we were finally legal to sell. In the beginning, we figured Jason would just run it himself, but after our first day in business, it was obvious that it was a 2 person job. We sold out in 4 hours, about 50 pizzas! It has continued to grow and become more successful, so far, then we ever dreamed. We sell on Monday, Friday, and Saturday, and Jason is going to school on Tuesday-Thursday.





That pretty much sums up my summer. We did do one camping trip to Manti to watch the pageant. It was the first time camping as a whole family since Ben was a baby, and it was a success.
We also spent almost 2 weeks up at my mom's. I think it was the highlight of the summer for the boys. My mom took us to Lagoon, Thanksgiving Point, movies, The Lion King at Capitol Theater, swimming, and many other fun thing. They were also able to spend plenty of time with their cousins and see some old friends. I told my mom we wouldn't visit for another year so that she could recover from the financial loss of having us visit. Thanks, mom, it was a great time. She took lots of pictures, but I haven't go them from her yet.
Here's a few other random pictures -

There's nothing like playing naked in the gutter during a rain storm.


When Uncle Chris comes to visit, he always buys the kids some Henry Weinhard's root beer and cream soda, and boy, do they live it up!


Here's 3 out of the 4. Aren't they a good looking bunch?


And Spencer. He's still a new person every day. Here's one of his latest- Mission Impossible.