Alexis

Alexis and I went to the movies last week, just mom and daughter. We went and saw Prince Caspian, it was better than the first movie. She will be 12 this year and is starting to hit the "pre-teen" issues. I'm starting to drive her crazy and I make sure to tell her it will only get worse :) But for now, she still wants to go hang out with her mother, go swimming together and gives me hugs before she goes to bed. Abigail loves her and Alexis is so good with her. It is very cute to see them lay down in Alexis's bed and watch TV before going to sleep. Time goes too fast.

Random pictures

Morning birds

I love listening to the morning birds sing. The awful heat of the weekend looks to be ending, and there is a cool breeze this morning. The corn is growing, the peppers and tomatoes are getting blooms. No luck with the carrots, lettuce or spinach. I will try again when it isn't so hot. The little shoots would come up and dry out. I did start some cauliflower and broccoli...they look exactly the same so I have no idea which is which. The kids love watching the vegetables grow. I will have to add another box next year.

Huckleberries...

I want to go huckleberry picking. There is no where to pick huckleberries in California. The closest place I have found is in NE Oregon. Mom took us berry picking in Grangeville, drove us up the mountain in the station wagon. We listened to John Denver....Some days are diamond, some days are stone. I think I remember there were alot of bees and we had to keep moving around to get enough berries. I loved it up there. I don't remember what we actually did with the huckleberries though..other than eat them plain. I would like to take my kids up and away from the city and let them see how much fun singing and picking berries can be. Maybe next year when Abigail is older I will take them out of school for a week and drive up to the wilds of Oregon and pick us a bucket of berries.

For the love of math

I wished I loved math. I wished I understood formulas and equations. Yesterday I got out my CBEST practice book and began to work on the first set of math problems. The CBEST is a test you must pass in California in order to substitute teach. My desire to pass the CBEST is twofold....substitute teach and get my mind working again so that I can finish my degree through BYU's independent study. I'm like 7 classes away from my degree in General Studies but one of those classes is Statistics. I literally want to cry with frustration that I can't remember how to do these simple problems. Hello, Dad is a freakin genius with math. Where is my genetic gene pool to help me with this stuff? At this rate I will be one class away from my degree...Stats and one section away from being able to substitute teach...again because of math. GRRRRRR.....

Pool toes

Yesterday was the first day of going to the pool for the summer. I took all the kids plus Kaleb's friend. Now, Abigail is turning out to be a fearless child and doesn't scare easily. She ran right for the deep end of the pool, bypassing the kiddie area. She would have jumped right in had I not grabbed her. After moving back to the shallow end she refused to let me hold on to her and wanted to jump off the steps. I let her go for a split second so she could see the water would go over her head...didn't really faze her. Still kept screaming at me to let her go so at that point I took her and Anya to slide on the water slides in the kiddie pool. Anya never went on them last year at age 4..too scared. But my little 2 year old goes up and down with great joy and laughing. In the picture you can see the slides. Alexis and Kaleb go play in the big pool and Anya goes with Alexis for a bit. The actually played very well together and had a great time. I have a bit of a sunburn because it is hard for Alexis to actually cover my back with sunscreen....go figure. The middle is fine, just the sides by the straps are fried. And they all have pool toes...you know, when your big toe turns into ground meat from running around the bottom of the rough pool. Ah, the joys of summer :)

Smells

We moved to Utah the summer before my sophmore year of high school. The church at Dugway was in an old army building, not a "real" church so to speak. And down by the church were alot of Russian Olive trees. They have a very sweet smell, very distinct. It is a smell that reminds me of summer and freedom. It is a smell of Utah. When Sarah and I were driving out to see Mom before she passed away, we stopped in Delta very late at night. As I stepped out of the car, the smell of the Olive trees was lingering in the cool night air. I thought about planting one in my yard, but California considers them an invasive plant.



When I was pregnant with all my kids, I would go to Bath and Body works and get a new super body butter to try and keep my skin from stretching out of place. It didn't really work but the smell of freesia reminds me of Alexis, warm vanilla sugar Kaleb, and Guavaberry Abigail. I don't remember the name of Anya's, just the smell.

I could probably go on and on but that will do for now.

Abby's boots

Abigail loves boots. She has three pairs that she wears everywhere. Her favorite pair are the Dora boots. They now have a horrible smell to them because she wears them without socks. She has a lovely pair of new sandals...completely odor free, but will not use them. Today it's going to be 96 and downstairs Abby is walking around in her boots.

So back to the planter box...Thor made me a 3x8x10 foot box that I filled with compost and bagged soil from OSH. I didn't realize one little box would take so much dirt. Then the kids helped me plant the seeds of corn, spinach, leaf lettuce and sunflowers. Kaleb had grown a bean plant at school so we added that too. Plus 6 pepper plants and 2 tomato plants. Now we can see if anything actually grows. Mom's strawberry plants are starting to die back. I've lost about 5 now for reasons unknown to me. But we did get alot of very small strawberries from the ones that lived. The potatoe bugs liked the berries too, if we don't get out soon enough when they are ripe, the bugs will eat them.

I finally did it, I made my little planter box.