The Kitchen House

I loved this book! The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom. I do enjoy historical fiction, so if that's not your thing you might not like it as much as me. BUT...I loved it! Here is a link to Goodreads. Decide for yourself.

There are a lot of critters in Texas

I looked long and hard for the best picture. This was a nice and ugly one. Scary huh??

There are wild boar that live in the woods behind my house. They are ugly. They leave nasty looking poop around in the empty lots around my house. And now...2 nights ago...they dug around my trees and around in my flower beds. I don't like it. They get their ugly little (well big) tusks in the dirt and mulch and root around for grubs or something. I have heard of people that sit up and wait and hunt these little buggers. I even heard of somebody hunt it with a bow and arrow and then roast it. I don't know if that is true, but I've heard it. It supposedly tasted good. GROSS if you ask me, but I don't like them digging up and messing up my flower beds. What to do?? I don't think Scott will be strapping on a bow and arrow to go hog hunting anytime soon, but we may get desperate. Just kidding. I'd pay somebody to do that. Someone said moth balls might help keep them away. I guess I'll have to do some research.

Our scorpion issue, you'll be happy to hear, is much better. Janer recommended this stuff call Cy-Kick. I purchased some off of Amazon. It works like a charm. In fact I just found a little tiny dead one. No more falling scorps from the air vent, landing on Scott. :)

Still NO SNAKES Mom! Have I ever told you the PEOPLE here in Texas are the best. Love. the. people. in. Texas!

Seriously...

Some pictures from the first day (or the first week for some children ;) and some pictures of Hope while we were in Nauvoo over the summer. Just cuz.

My friend Melissa took both of these pictures (Hunter and Hayden) and I like them. Thanks to Melissa for sharing!!!

I love my kids, but sometimes they drive crazy. It's funny/annoying when you can see your own worse faults in your children. I stress out. There I said it, I do I stress out. When I am in a frenzy I'm sure I am very annoying. Two of my sweet, darling, lovable children stress out as well. Hopefully, the younger two will be spared this fault. But oh heaven help us all, between the toner in the printer, stressing over band, not understand something in math, just too darn much homework, AND making everyone "find the time" to read the scriptures and pray together...I am worn out tonight. Spent! Glad tomorrow is another day. Luckily, all ordeals were solved and everyone was calmed and soothed before bed. Including the mother, that internalizes all. I have some Grey's Anatomy to go watch.

I may be approaching 40 but....

Hannah as Mrs. Peacock. She made her little head piece.

At Hope's preschool, to check the kids in and out you have to scan your finger. Last year, I had lots of problems especially in the winter time scanning my finger...it just wouldn't scan. There were others that had the same problem I had, but it happened quite a bit for me. One day, I had this lady (she was older, maybe a grandma) tell me that "as we get older our finger prints fade." :0 What????? As I get older, I'm not that old, I thought!! I think it's just dry skin!!

Pretty much out of nowhere a few weeks ago the bottom of my foot started to hurt. I'm thinking plantar fasciitis. I had taken to wearing my flip flop Crocs to walk over to the school to pick up Hayden and I had some thin little junky Adidas I was wearing as workout shoes, and they weren't of good quality. I had a lady in yoga class tell me, "when we hit middle age tendinitis starts to creep up." Whatt????

Well, I'm happy to report, I have bought myself some Burts Bee's lotion that comes in a handy little dispenser (my homemade variety is a little greasy for multiple uses during the day) and I have had NO trouble with the finger scanner AT ALL THIS YEAR. So, take that lady at the preschool. My tendinitis was good yesterday, woke up hurting again today. I continue to stretch and ice. (Frozen water bottles are a wonderful little tool to use if you suffer from this pain as well...FYI) My stable, but cute Nikes are my BFF's for a while. I went to Kohl's to buy some cute walking shoes, but they were too old lady"ish". I refuse. My Nike's are great, until I find another NON all-white alternative.

I might be approaching middle age, but I'm not going to use that as an excuse to let my body fall apart around me :) Good new?? My triangle is in good shape!!!!

Talk to me Mommy!

I have found myself saying "I used to do this" or "I used to do that". Blogging was one of the them. I'm not going to say that. I still want to blog. Present tense. After you haven't blogged for a while, it's hard to blog again. I have almost blogged so many times, but then I always get side tracked or second guess myself.

Boo! I have blogged again. Goal for today, maybe this week?? To slow down and enjoy the loves of my life. This morning I got a call from a friend. We were discussing YW stuff for church. I talked on the phone 3/4 of the way to preschool. Usually, I try not to talk on the phone when I take Hope to pre-k, it's our time together. But this morning I had some business to discuss. Hope kept trying to say something, and I'd have to tell her "just a minute". Finally, she had enough and she told me to get off the phone, I wasn't talking to her on the ride to school and she missed talking to me!! I immediately got off the phone and talked with my girl. I felt like a crust. It got me wondering, do the most important people in my life feel the most important? Always room for improvement, right?

Summer

Hannah put mascara on Hope because she wanted to see how long her lashes looked. Hannah is my budding photographer :)

Last day of school pictures for Hunter, Hannah and Hayden.

"Mom, you said we are going to the pool today, right? So, I don't need to go out and tan." That was said with a big smile...like I know I'm weird, but I'm still wondering. Guess who said that?

Okay, ready for a quick recap?

Maybe, I'll start with a funny story. The last day of school was Friday, May 27th. I woke up feeling...like I was pregnant, really, but I'm not. I went to Hayden's class party not feeling my best, but not terrible. While there, I started to feel worse, and needed to sit down. My friend Brenda came over and we were chatting. Then IT hit me. I felt really sick really fast. I swallowed and hold Brenda I was not going to make it to my car. I grabbed the garbage can, hid in t he corner, Brenda had my back , literally blocking me from others, and I barfed! Luckily, it was a loud 3rd grade end of the year pizza party so no one heard my retching. Gross. But funny. I grabbed my bag of barf and hit the door. I had just picked Hunter up from his last final so he was with me. He didn't even know I had a problem, so I think my secret was safe. He was too busy entertaining the 3rd graders.

Today is Friday again, one week of summer under our belts. I think I have established summer does not = no bedtime. I think 10 pm is a fair bedtime on most nights, later for sleepover nights. You can read a book in your bed after that, but you need to be in bed. Hope's bedtime has not changed FYI, so I still have to get up and get moving and take Rocky our for a walk. Do they know who their Mother is? Do they really think it will be a good summer if I'm constantly tired and in need of some "Heather" time?

I've got volleyball games, scheduled pool dates, recital, football Fridays, EFY, trek, and vacations all calendared out. (at least for now) Oh yeah, did I mention we are moving at the end of June between our Chicago trip and our Camas, WA trip? The owners decided they wanted to move back into their house, we went looking, and boom we found a house and the rest should be history in a few weeks. I'm trying not to feel extremely overwhelmed. It's not really working but, I taking lots of deep cleansing breaths and packing...books only so far. But, I have a lot of books.

catching up

I found this one day last week. It made me laugh.

Now she has a cell phone AND and ipod touch! Her life is now complete :)

Hannah and her friend Hannah from Washington taking pictures of each other. Hannah came out for Hannah's birthday. It was a surprise for both girls. My friend Shellie and I had been working together. Shellie woke up her Hannah that Thursday morning at like 3:30 am and asked her if she wanted to go see Hannah in TX!!! She was totally surprised. We picked her up at the airport and then surprised our Hannah. Hannah T. and Hope were up on Hannah's bed hiding when Hannah got home. I told my Hannah to go clean her room. She went up (very reluctantly :) and out popped Hannah T. WOW!! Was she ever surprised!

I have an office that never seems to have any pencils. So, I bought a 12 pack of my favorites and told the kids DO NOT touch. Well, a certain 4 year old touched. After a couple weeks, there were only 4 left in my pencil holder. One day I walked in and she had cut the erasers off the pencils. GRRRR!! I asked her why???? And she "didn't know". I told my parents about it a few days later. When they came for a visit last weekend...guess what they brought? New pencils and a pack of erasures!! We had a good laugh.

If you ever feel like you might be spending too much time on the computer...just have your husband wipe out all your "favorites". We have both gotten iphones recently (me:Christmas him:just 'cause he was up for an upgrade and iphones went down to $49) and he was messing around "sinking" (is that how you spell that word) his phone and it got all sorts of messed up. I went to my "favorites" and none of my "favorites" were left. What the what??? I had started (again after we got a new computer after we moved) a nice collection of random websites I liked to check. I was pretty annoyed at first, but now I'm looking at it like spring cleaning for my computer.

Oh well....moving on...Hannah just turned 12 on February 24th. We had a fun party that Friday night. Here, let me tell you all about it. She invited 14 people, so the cake decorating competition that she wanted to have was a no go. So we did a Survivor party. Pretty much the perfect party idea for her and her age group. The girls came in and got bandannas, divided up into tribes and then we started the games. I tried to do a mix of word games, memory games, balance games, physical games, and eating challenges. Just like in the real game. Some favorites: I made mud (chocolate pudding with Oreo and gummy worms) the girls got a glop of it and couldn't use their hands. When I asked the family what gross food thing we should make...pretty much all of them said "a green smoothie". I tried not to be offended. :) So, Scott prepared a smoothie that was pretty disgusting. Onion, kale, radishes, peppers,uhhhhhh what else? I know there is more but can't think of it. No fruit. Oh yeah some celery. It was gross. A couple of the girls got sick. Pretty great.We had something lined up one right after the other for 1 1/2 hours. Then, they all went home. Great party!!

back to nursery I go

Today, I'm going back to nursery. I don't really want to but...that's my calling and I'm going to go and be chipper about it. And try and love those little babies. I was called into nursery six months ago. The first 4 months I worked with the older kids ready to go into primary. And don't tell anyone, but I really got to like it. I was doing all sorts of fun things with those kids, crafts, lessons, books, games blah blah blah. Then in January, I got a new assignment....the baby nursery. I was less than excited about that. They don't do much of anything. First of all, the room is in the back country of the building. I see NO ONE except a few parents. Second, it's the babies and they cry and my back hurts sitting on the floor for 2 hours holding crying babies. I still don't have a helper because apparently this is not a fun calling and nobody will accept it but me. There got that off my chest. I was sick 2 weeks ago and last week was stake conference. So, I'm going back today looking on the bright side.