Ode to Becky

Okay, it isn't an ode. I don't write poetry, but I miss you already, Becky! We had the substitute instructor at class on Monday and she kicked my hiney with her workout. Besides having us run the floor, I think my jaw dropped a couple of times as she jumped all around the bench. I couldn't keep up, let alone figure out what she was doing! And there were 5 new people there today I'd never even seen. So, at least I wasn't the only one who had no clue what Pam was doing. Man, she can shake her groove thing like nobody's business! Someday I'll get it. Well, I'll never be able to shake it like her, but I hope to be able to actually move my feet like her at some point. And now, I'll never be able to do an abs workout without thinking of this. Have fun in your new home, and know I'll be thinking of you MWF at 9:50 when she starts abs! :)

BD quote

This is just WRONG!

http://www.twilightlexiconblog.com/?p=1148

I knew the Alaskans would come in sooner or later, but I don't have to like it.

Ouch! I've been tagged!

Okay, technically, Jill tagged me on this about a month ago. What I slacker I am. And not only am I a slacker, I also have a terrible memory. Unfortunately, blogging is my only form of journaling and I haven't been doing that long enough to answer most of these questions. Even I was bored reading this post. Feel free to skip!

20 yrs ago - Uh, I was 11, so I have no idea. My youngest brother was a year old. My parents were in the process of building a new house (that they still live in).

10 yrs ago - Again, uh, I have no idea. I was 21, so I guess I had just graduated from the Y in Provo and was working at Big Planet.

5 yrs ago - J was 1 and I was pregnant and constantly puking with D. Brad was starting his second year of med school.

3 yrs ago - You know what, this is really hard for me. Uh, I think Brad had just finished getting his MBA. I was glad to be done with that!

1 yr ago - Oooh, oooh, I know this one! We had just bought our first house and moved out here to start Brad's intern year. This day specifically, I was registering D for pre-K.
this year - Hmmm, more medical stuff. Imagine that. He finished intern year and is now an official resident.

yesterday - We had some new friends over for dinner.

today - Swim lessons and hopefully get a sump pump put in our backyard to avoid future floods. Happy birthday, Resa. We love you and miss you!

tomorrow - Brad's on call, so probably nothing that is exciting. My cardio class. The Y with the fun baby pool. Movie night with the kids.

next year - This is still up for debate at this point, but if we decide to have 4 kids, it would probably happen late next year. And yes, more residency stuff. Aren't we exciting?

Now you know how boring I am and how bad my memory is. :)

Yeah!

Blockbuster sent me the first two Monk Season 6 discs. Just about died laughing during the first two episodes. I'm so happy right now.

EW!

Ewwww! Am I the only one that thinks this picture is gag-inducing?

http://www.thetwilightsaga.com/blog/stephenie-in-the-media

I think she is gorgeous, but he looks awful! Button your shirt, dude!

Monkie Junkie!

Do you know what today is? July 8th! The day Monk Season 6 comes out on DVD! YEAH! Of course, my local video stores doesn't keep Monk in stock, so I'll have to wait to get it in the mail. If I just had cable, I wouldn't have to wait to see my new Monks for so long!

Phew!

Okay, I just called and a local bookstore is indeed having a midnight Breaking Dawn party. What a relief! I was getting concerned!

So, if any of you local ladies would like to do a dinner, or a party or some such thing before heading over to pick up a book, please let me know. The store party starts at 10, but I don't care if I go to that at all. I just want to be there at midnight. :)

For the record, I never said I wasn't a nerd.

Happy Mother's Day!

What? It isn't Mother's Day, you say? Oh, well, I got my Mother's Day present yesterday. Brad let me buy flowers for my yard! Well, flowers, trees, shrubs, etc. I'm so excited!

My yard angel (aka Debra) gave me a tour of her yard and gave me lots of ideas. Truthfully, before we even went shopping we'd probably spent hours in planning. We arrived at the store, and the fun of looking around began. So much to chose from! I didn't have the biggest budget in the world, so when the first smoke trees we saw were close to $90, I foresaw some problems. I really loved choosing the plants though. I wanted to bring them all home! I have lots of places to put plants, as we were pretty much starting from scratch, but I needed to buy just enough to get some color and interest as this is a work in progress. Next year, more can be added.

In order to work within my budget, we bought smaller size plants. It allowed me to get more and get more variety. Now I just get to wait patiently for them to grow.

So, this is what I got:

1 Blue Prince Holly
1 Blue Princess Holly
1 Variegated English Holly
2 Dwarf Spruce
2 Young Lady Smoketree
1 Molten Lava Flowering Crab
2 Red Heart Althea (hibiscus)
2 Red Prince Weigela
1 Purple Butterfly Bush
2 Lavendar Doll Daylily
3 Prairie Blues Little Bluestem
7 Cleome (Sparkler Blush, Cherry Queen, Sparkler Lavender)
4 White Nancy Spotted Dead Nettle
4 Um, I can't find the tag, but are the same color as the nettle, only triangular
pack of Celosia

So, all of that and some peat moss and I only went $30 over budget. Not too shabby!

We got started getting the plants in their places and even managed to get a few planted before Brad had to leave for work. That's when it got crazy. C found holes filled with water to be quite irresistible. She got pretty muddy. She thought my white shirt made a nice canvas for her muddy hands. I think D got a picture or two of me where you can see it.

After a few hours and lots of craziness with kids running around, we managed to get all of the plants in. It took a lot of bugspray too. And we still got some bites!

It was fun because I think we had probably 10 people stop to tell us what an amazing job we've done with the house. We get a lot of dog walkers and occasionally a few bikers that stop to compliment us, but we had a few that actually stopped their cars to tell us (really! check out D slideshow). Most of these people we don't even know, or we met because they frequently stop to compliment us. It's fun. I'm excited to see the changes as the plants we put in mature. Of course, for all things plant the kudos go to Debra. She put in hour upon hour in planning, shopping and then planting. Her knowledge was invaluable and I know it wouldn't have been the same without her. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! Every time someone says how wonderful our yard looks, I'm going to think of you. :)

Now, on with the pictures. The first slide show has the pictures that I took. The second, D was behind the lens. It has a ton of pictures of me, which is quite rare. There aren't a lot of pictures of me. And for good reason. But, now that I've lost 40 pounds, I might as well put some up. Yes, I'm wearing my 40 pounds ago pants, but it isn't like I want to ruin good pants! Might as well wear pants that are too big, right?

Okay, this was pretty funny. It is from an LDS (Mormon) guy's perspective.

http://mormonhusbands.blogspot.com/2008/02/twilight-series-for-dummies-and-totally.html

http://mormonhusbands.blogspot.com/2008/02/truth-about-edward-from-twilight.html

Bad memories

Ugh. So another storm, and another lake in our back yard. Ahhhh! I'm running out of ideas here! At least the ditch kept all of the water from the gutters and the sump pump away from the house. That makes me happy. No we have to find what to do with the water that drains to the lowest part of the yard, which is unfortunately at the door of the walkout.

We were at Wal-Mart during the storm, and Brad found this hat he can wear for surgeries. He said he liked it because it reminds him of me. Awww.

Too funny

Hilarious story from Latter-day laughs on Meridian Magazine:

At a recent testimony meeting, a 5-year-old girl stood up and bore her testimony. After mentioning everyone and everything she was thankful for, she ended with this: "I am especially grateful that our house has been much happier since our family stopped using the "S-word" and the "F-word." As the little girl proudly walked back to her seat, nobody could say a word. Needless to say, they were a little shocked by what the stake president's daughter had just said. Quickly, the red-faced stake president stood up, smiled shyly, and went to the podium: "I feel I should make a clarification as to what my daughter meant. In our house the S-word is shut-up and the F-word is fart."

Y am I telling you this?

I'm not sure. But I got a lot of comments about my decision to join the YMCA near my house, so I thought some of you might be interested.

It has been lovely going. I've really enjoyed it. My boys love their swimming classes, and that alone would be worth it to me. I get to take C to the child care while the boys are in class, so I go play racquetball. By myself. Seriously, anyone want to play twice a week for 30 minutes? It is good practice for me, but I'm afraid I'll get used to playing alone and stop getting the ball before that second bounce. Even when I go by myself I love it. There is nothing like the feel and sound of smashing a ball with a large instrument to ease stress. :) And unlike baseball, I don't have to chase the ball down after I smash it, it bounces back. We've also been going to the zero depth pool which has been a blast. It has dumping buckets, sprinklers, etc. And it is really really warm. The kids love it. C is a bit of a fish. She'll walk as deep as she possibly can. She'll keep going until it gets up to her chin. And if the water isn't deep enough to reach her chin, she'll bend her knees until it does. She gets mad if I take her to more shallow water. Sometimes she'll trip and go under completely and it doesn't even phase her. She just wants to be a deep as she can. Scares me more than it scares her!

And I started going to a cardio class with some of my volleyball buddies. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I've really enjoyed it so far. Well, not so much today. Yesterday we went to Hawk Island for a couple of hours and while I remembered to slather my kids, I forgot to get myself. In other words, I have a really painful, awful red subburn that is causing me great pain. I decided to to go to cardio anyway as penance. I'm actually a little anti-sun (melanoma has caused my family a lot of pain, not to mention Brad's stint working for a surgical dermatologist removing skin cancers), but someone I forgot to put sunscreen on me. Probably because it is stressful trying to lather 3 kids in sunscreen and keep an eye one them all near a body of water.

As if volleyball weren't hard enough with a nasty sunburn, last week I played with that lovely blister. Apparently my brain was on hold, because on the way there I was thinking, "I guess I won't be spiking much today." It wasn't until I got the ball to serve that I realized the blister might hamper my serving ability as well. Thankfully, no one has kicked me off the court yet, though I haven't been 100% the last couple of weeks. It is crazy what I'll endure to play some volleyball. :)

Did I mention already that Brad is in his final days as an intern? YEAH! He'll officially be a resident on July 1st. We are quite excited about that.

I think that's about it. The next couple of weeks will be spent trying to grow some grass and hopefully getting some plants in! We'll stay busy!

Seeing green!

We have been super busy on the yard, and I'm excited to say that we hydroseeded the lawn today. YEAH! I'm finally seeing a color other than brown in our yard.

Here are pictures of all the changes the last few weeks:

Show #1

Miscellaneous pictures of kiddos and such.

Slide #2
Leveling out the dirt and getting the right grade. The retaining walls just before finishing them.



Slide #3
Chipping the berm, inside the trees and sidewalk. The yard is leveled. The retaining walls are finished!



Slide #4
The hostas in their new home. Yes, those were the cause of my nasty blister. Don't use a hand trowel for an extended time. Just so you know. And the hydroseeding. YEAH!




I hope the next slide show I add will be of lots of grass! And we are hoping to get a couple of plants in sometime in the next week or two. I HOPE I HOPE I HOPE!!!

Sidewalks part 2

Okay, here is the first half of the sidewalks, the pouring. I don't want to show you the rest right now because you'll get the wrong idea of how it will look in the end. So, enjoy this part!

Well, it was a really crazy day to say the very least. But, I survived it. Yes, C fell off while watching, but at least it was before the cement was poured. D and J thought Kevin was cool because he had a hat and a bandana on. They asked me to take pictures of him.

Y not?

I forgot to mention this earlier, but we signed up for the YMCA this week. My boys had a blast at the swimming lessons last week, so I got them signed up for classes this month. In order to get to the pool, you walk by the racquetball courts. I started salivating. Oh, how I LOVE racquetball. The problem is, it requires having multiple friends/help. One person to play with and one to watch the kids. So, if any of you out there know how to play racquetball and want to play, PLEASE let me know! You might need to be a little flexible with me as I'm at the mercy of Brad's schedule. I'm also very open to going to other classes or workouts or whatever. I'd just love to have some company. I'd rather not go alone. If you are looking for a workout buddy, please let me know!

Plethora of pictures

There are waaaaaay too many to add individually. You can pick which slide shows you want to see. I'll never know if you skip one anyway! :)

I feel the need to preface these pictures. Most of them are blurry to some degree or another. It irritates me to see, so I can only imagine how annoyed other people would be seeing them. Our camera is older than Daven, and if all our money weren't in the house, we'd probably buy a new one.

First we have J graduation from Kindergarten. He will be in school all day next year! Sigh... We sat in the very back, and we have no zoom, so it is really hard to see. Heavy sigh. It was sooooo hot too! I felt like I was in OK again.

Next up are the pictures of the sidewalk. We've come a long way! We hope to pour on Tues, but rain is complicating things. We'll just have to see. If you notice in the picture of the house (#7 I think), the tree has 2 trunks branching out. That is the tree that broke in the following storm pictures...


And here are the storm pictures. You thought I was kidding when I said we have water issues? I wasn't. Now you see the necessity of the ditch. And why we should have finished the ditch before starting on the sidewalks. (Check out the storm we had last year!) We only had one more down spout to connect to a pipe and run to the ditch. We even had the pipe laid (it has now floated off)! All we had to do was glue it together, drill a hole into the ditch pipe and then cover it all. Now we'll have to wait for the water to dry up. But it won't stop raining. Ugh. And I also wasn't kidding that we took down 20 trees. And now you see why too! I don't want all of those huge branches landing on my house! We cut down all of the trees closest to the house. Such a wise investment!


C provides a lot of entertainment for the family. She is such a cutie! She was playing with a can of soda for about 10 minutes before dropping it on a rock and then enjoying the resulting shower. The restaurant pictures are a great place we just found and fell in love with. SOOOO YUMMY! We asked to be seated on the train part. It was great. Right before we left, a train went roaring by on the track. The kids loved it! We were shaking! It was awesome!
I guess my jealousy is showing. I'm soooo tired of all of the brown and dirt in my yard that I went across the street and took pictures of my neighbors' yard. Technically, the house is abandoned months ago and a foreclosure sign was put up yesterday. I'm tempted to go steal all of the flowers since no one will care for them anyway (no, I won't). They have a cute pond that had a fountain too. But now the frogs have taken over. Most of these are blurry as well. Feel free to skip.

Okay, so those are the pictures in the last week. It has been really crazy this week, as you can see.

Just some random pictures

Not many updates on the yard work. It has been raining too much. Having said that, we did get the new gutters installed the day it really started raining. They weren't hooked up to the drain system yet, so when Brad got home, he got in some shorts and went into the mud to hook up all of the down spouts. I think he enjoyed sloshing in mud barefoot.

As I speak, they are doing forms and getting ready for the sidewalk. It is still pretty wet out there from all the rain the last 2 days.

The boys said their Webkinz wanted to watch them drive the Jeeps, but I didn't want them getting dirty. The frog and duck were J birthday presents from Aunt Brookie. The pig and monkey were Easter gifts from Grandma Jessie. The dogs and elephant were acquired last week while my family was here. Grandma Jones couldn't resist getting them some too!

The clip magnets I made this week. There is a "This Week" "Next Week" and "Spicy Kitchen"

Ahhh, the wonders of a laminating machine and hot glue gun! My favorite part is the glass chili bead I have on the bow. I've had them for over a year wondering what to do with them.

Did I already mention the picture I got for $12 at a garage sale? It looks very Kinkade-esqe to me and I love him. It hangs above our piano. And you can also see why I'm so desperate to get the wallpaper down and paint. But alas, the yard is the priority right now.

We found this in our backyard yesterday while eating breakfast. I have friends here that frequently have herds traveling through their yard, but this was my first time seeing one in our yard.

D graduation

Sick of my posts yet? Don't answer that... I told you I had a lot to catch up on.

Here are pictures of D graduation. Before you ask, no, I have no idea why he is doing a peace sign. He did it for the first 5 minutes. And yes, that is C sitting behind D. Someone, who shall remain nameless, was in charge of C so I could record the evening. We apparently have different ideas of what that means... ;)

More Twilight

Okay, don't hate me if you don't like Twilight, but check out this clip of the dance studio scene!

http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/06/01/watch-our-exclusive-twilight-clip-from-the-movie-awards-preshow/

Week of work!

Wow. I thought I'd have time to get this post done, but C thought I'd have more fun if she removed her diaper and scattered its contents throughout her crib. Lovely. And stinky. No, this isn't C. I didn't think to take a picture. But you get the idea.


It was wonderful having my family here. Thankfully our renter moved out the day before they got here, so they had the entire rental to themselves. It was my parents and brothers Jeremy and Gerrick, by the way. Gerrick got home from his mission to Alaska last year and we hadn't seen him in years. It was nice to catch up with him before he gets married this summer. Jeremy has an extremely busy social life out in AZ, so we are grateful he took the time to come and help us. And get my boys to belly fight. Sigh.

Anyway, we got so much done! They got 3 ceiling fans installed. And by installed, I mean cutting open the ceiling, putting in the track and electric box, running the electrical and assembling and installing the fans, oh, and adding another switch so the light and fan will be on separate switches. That alone should have taken a week. But they also repaired the fan in the master bath (one switch had no power and the other ran both the light and fan), ran electric for the light on the master porch, figured out what was wrong with the electric in the closet (we had never been able to turn on the light) and no one was seriously shocked. Yeah! Outside, we got walls put around 4 trees, the utility box, and along the side wall. We still need to finish them off, but we are light years ahead of where we would be if it was just me and Brad working. Oh, and the patio in back is started too. That will take awhile to finish yet. We are hoping to get the sidewalks in this week (I can't wait to have a functioning front door again!). Then level the yard and start grass before it gets too hot. So, there will probably be more pictures to come in the coming weeks.