Mom

Mom, you did it all! You successfully raised 5 children ( 4 unruly boys and 1 sweet, thoughtful daughter).


You made 3 meals a day. Real meals too. The only time we had cereal was on Saturday morning. How did you do it? My kids have cereal at least half the week for breakfast and maybe a time or two for dinner too, depending on how crazy my day is.


We were well dressed. I mean really, how many moms have a sense of style like that? Those pants were awesome!



You always kept the house clean and neat. Although green shag probably helps keep certain things hidden.




You always made our birthdays special with your specialty cakes and parties. That's something I've tried to do for my own children.


You made all our Halloween costumes. I don't care what all the boys say about it, those costumes were cute!


You taught me to sew. Or at least you tried. And some of it I still know how to do.



You planned and budgeted every year for a family vacation. That was in the days before the internet and you actually wrote the Chamber of Commerce in the areas we visited before hand and had everything planned and organized long before we all piled into the station wagon for our vacation.



You bar-hopped.
Oh wait, that was just a photo shoot on your annual vacation with your sisters. I'm glad you got some well deserved vacation time away from all of us once in a while.


You wrote helped us write our many reports and school projects.


You went to and supported us through many many music recitals, dance recitals, games, etc etc....




You faithfully planned FHE lessons every week. The ones we spent at the State prison were especially memorable.


You spent hours and hours and hours sewing me this dress for the Jr. High dance. Even though I clearly didn't know how to do my hair at that age. Or maybe that was just the style? That's what I tell myself anyway.


With 4 sons, you spent hours and hours at scouting events learning the "round of applause" and "watermelon cheer" among many other cheers and applauses that have no doubt been useful in your day to day life.


You still took us on family vacations and other outings even when we (by "we" I mean my brothers) were obnoxious know-it-all teenagers.

You kept a journal for each one of us. On a TYPEWRITER!
You always held a calling in the church in which you've always done an excellent job.
You took time to play with us.
I could go on and on.

Mom, you really did do it all. And I don't know how. I don't do half as well or half as much as you did. Somehow, you made it look a lot easier than it is, because now I know-IT'S NOT EASY!

I appreciate you. I love you. I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day.

The New Babysitter

That is, the trampoline, not Spencer.
It's been about 6 months since I've last blogged and now I'm writing about a trampoline? Well, if anyone out there is actually still checking my blog, it's too overwhelming to think about catching up on the last 6 months and I seriously doubt that anyone wants to read SIX MONTHS of catch-up, so I'm starting with the latest and easiest. If I get real motivated maybe I'll go back and catch up bit by bit.

It's been a great babysitter so far. Day and night. It takes up the whole back lawn, but who really needs a lawn anyway?



Ben has some stylin moves. Especially when Kacy is taking pictures.


Jason and Joe practicing back flips. It even entertains the adults.
Is there a picture of me doing a back flip? No. Why? Because there's a warning on the trampoline that serious injury or death can occur by attempting such stunts . It's because of people like me that said warnings must be posted in the first place. I would most likely paralyze myself long before I would come close to landing a back flip. Jumping up and down is exciting enough for me, thank you.



It's supposedly the safest trampoline on the market. I guess time will tell. The only thing broken so far?


Jason's glasses.

Harvest Time

This summer went so fast, I feel like I had no time to really enjoy the garden. It came and went before I even knew it. Last week, or maybe a couple of weeks ago (see, I really have no concept of time anymore), we went out to harvest the remains of our garden before a freeze. Here are a few choice photos-

No shortage of tomatoes here. Too bad I didn't have more time to bottle everything.
Anyone know a good recipe for green tomatoes?


A honeydew melon. It didn't taste so good.


An orange fleshed watermelon. It actually wasn't too bad. The kids devoured it in no time.


A giant bell pepper. Too bad it wasn't around at the same time as our county fair. I'm sure we would have taken home a prize for that.




Ben still loves eating tomatoes. Below, are a some pictures from the last few years. We have to get at least one picture a year of him stuffing his face full of tomato. Weston would rather eat dirt than a tomato, which it appears, is exactly what he was doing.

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.

Yosemite

We had the opportunity to go to Yosemite with our friends, Joe and Kacy, a few weeks ago. My wonderful mom came and stayed with the kids, so it was just the 4 of us for 5 days. A ten hour car trip seems like nothing without kids.
We stayed in a motel the first night about an hour out of the park so that we could get to our camping spot bright and early the next morning. There are no reservations at Camp 4, so you have to arrive early to get in line and hope for a spot. The guys really wanted to camp at Camp 4 because of the climbing history. Many famous climbers pretty much lived there back in the day.
Anyway, we did get a spot, luckily. Because if we'd of had to drive in and out of that park every day, I may have gone home. It's a beautiful drive, but it's about an hour of tight winding roads. I was SO sick on the way in and the way home.


We were all blown away by the beauty of Yosemite. Huge granite walls, huge waterfalls from the spring runoff. It really is so amazing.
We spent most of the time hiking or climbing. Too bad I wasn't in better shape. I could have got a lot more hikes in. The hike up to Upper Yosemite Falls about killed me.

Here I am hiking up one of the five million (give or take) switchbacks. It was like climbing a granite staircase for 3 hours straight.

Here's the view of Yosemite valley from the top of the falls.


Here's a view of the upper falls from halfway up the hike. Two and a half million switchbacks down, two and a half million to go.
The falls sounded like a jet plane from here. It was amazing.


Finally at the top. Such an amazing hike, but I was pretty much ready to collapse.



Jason and Joe after one of the climbs. They did most of the climbing, but even I did a few.


Here's a bear we spotted. She had 2 cubs with her. We had to get out of the car and get a picture. Apparently there are a lot of bears and they're not too shy. In our camp we had bear lockers to keep all of our food in. The rule is-if your food is out, it must be within arms reach of you at all times. The bears aren't interested in us, just our food. Jason chased one out of the camp parking lot early one morning. Another morning we could hear one sniffing around right outside our tent and our car had paw and lick marks all over the windows. I guess we should have taken them seriously when they told us not to leave food in the car, not even grocery bags or wrappers.


Here's some safer wildlife. I found him on the rock that the guys were climbing up. He didn't even try to run from me. Cute little guy, I probably would've taken him home if I thought we could keep him alive.

Well, it was an amazing trip. Well worth it. We'd like to come back with the kids someday.
I even missed the kids, though they didn't miss me too much. Grandma is much funner than I am. Thanks mom, for coming to stay with the kids. I think I'll plan a trip for next month if you're up for it.