Things you remembered as a child

When I got home today and we were about to eat, I asked Jed if he could go tell Alyson it's time to eat. He proceeded to stand there and yell at the top of his lungs, "ALYSON, IT'S TIME TO EAT!" In my mind I am hearing my mom say the same words that I said to him. "If I wanted to yell I could do that, go upstairs and tell your sister it's time to eat." Then I recalled my brilliant response so long ago when I was probably approaching my teenage years - "Then why didn't you?" Oh the joys of being a parent and remembering what your parents told you and you did the exact same things your kids are doing.

One of those days...

So, has anyone else had one of those "Okay, I don't know that this one will MAKE it to puberty..." moments? Okay, so this week I've been working on my garden. I dug it, I put the walls together, I hauled the dirt and filled it in. Woo Hoo. In the course of all of this, I pulled a muscle in my neck and back. It's bad enough that I went to the doctor this morning. Not so good when he feels your neck and says Ow. Anyway, so that's where we start. I went to my parents to take the truck back, thinking "No sweat, I'll rinse it out and we'll be good." Well, it rained yesterday. So the remaining dirt basically turned into black cement like sludge in the bed of the truck. I had to dig it all out, then sweep what I could out, then I took it down to rinse it. Again, sludge. Well, the last step is the only one I had to do in the driveway, and the driveway was all black, (just the bottom. I did it so that I would get as little as possible dirty) and at the end, I'm thinking... okay, this water is working so good. The landscape guy had been using a leaf blower before for this kind of job, mom and dad have one, bingo! So, the "shed" has things packed very tightly against the walls. You have to be very careful to get things up and down. I got it down (It's on pegs above my head.) and then I call to see how to turn it on, and they say not to worry about it. (that's another story I won't go into right now. :-) So, I go back in. Well, in order to get around the other stuff to the pegs, you have to kinda do what looks like a pirouette move. So picture me, stiff arms, neck and back, holding up this huge leaf blower over my head, in the pirouette move, and trying to get it back on. Enter Jed, scream in that "my-sisters-hair-is-on-fire-and-the-world-is-ending type scream. "Mommy Mommy!!!!" Of course, I'm thinking something must be wrong, so I freeze in that pirouette stance, blower in mid air, "what's the matter, honey? what's wrong??!!?!?!" He stops, and says "Can I have some candy?" And that's when the moment happened. I think if I weren't hurting so bad, that leaf blower might have left my hands. Good thing. ;-)
Anyway, I hope it gave you a chuckle.

The escuela

For all my Spanish speaking amigos...

I had my advisement today and it turns out I need 7 more classes to graduate. I am taking four classes in the fall and three in the spring. My senior seminar will be in the Spring. I am excited beyond all words and just wanted to let the 3, er, 5 people that read this blog know. Cheers!

Alyson's Two!

Well, it's official! Alyson is two years old. We had presents, and cake and ice cream. I made a Princess Blanket for her, and she got her first barbies. It was a very fun evening. And we got to spend the day together doing fun things at home, which was nice. Here are a few pics.

Okay, so this is our new house! They are in the middle of putting up our fence now. When we finish getting the rooms inside put together, I'll add more of those. Enjoy!

30 days in...

I'm amazed... More than 3! So, we've been here for a whole month now, with no more big disasters (knocking on wood now) and we're getting ready to have our meeting with them to give them our list of things that need to be fixed. Yay! We're doing pretty well. Alyson is going to be turning 2 on Saturday, and we're going to just have a nice dinner, cake and icecream here at home. I'm making her a blanket for her new big girl bed (we took apart the bunk beds and put one in each of their rooms.) She loves Jed's and tried to "borrow" it regularly, so I'm making her one of her own. It has pink, purple, yellow, polkadot, and arguyle squares, and a panel in the middle with Belle (who is her current favorite princess), Aurora, and Cinderella. (I just finished the front. I'm planning to get the back pieced together today.) The back has blue polka dot, blue princess print with Cinderella, aurora, belle, snow white, and jasmine, and then I have leftover of the other fabrics from the front to put throughout. Anyway, I'll post pictures of that and the house when I'm done. I'm so excited! I think I'll have some material left over, and I might make some little blankets with it. Haven't totally decided that one, but I'm thinking about it. Anyway, I hope that ya'll have a great day!
Shannon

New Home

Well, here I am at last, all 3 of you that stumble across this blog. Shannon and I finally sold our house in January and closed on our new house on Friday, February 13th. The Elders quorum helped us pack up and unpack. It took about 5 hours from first loading to unloading the last box from the truck. So we unpack just enough to survive and go to church in the morning. I begin to hook up the washer and dryer connections. I hook up the water and start the first load. After getting it started, I then go downstairs and begin to unpack the car. I get upstairs and Shannon starts screaming bloody murder. There was about 1/2" deep water in the laundry room. Brilliant me forgot to put the drain hose in the pipe. We use every single stinking towel to get the water up. We then get in the car to go to Shannon's parents house and find the water has leaked around the drainage pipe where the washer sits into the garage and starts leaking from the light bulb in the top and from the power outlet...Great! Wonderful! All on the first complete day of owning the house. To make matters worse, where I parked the car is where the automatic garage door wire is hanging down because I hadn't gotten the time to install it so when I got out of the car earlier, the wire got shut in the door acting as a wonderful way for the water that leaked onto the top of the car to run off INTO the car, Both side pouches of the car were full of water as well as about 1/5th of the seat. So I finally get that cleaned out and semi dry. By the time we finally got home, the leaking water was now a very slow drip. A ring appeared shortly thereafter around the light. Day is finally over.

So after breaking in our new house, we finally get unpacked enough to cook. Shannon begins to make eggplant parmesan. First time using the over so we get the over preheated and ready to put in. It is in one of the tin pans and as Shannon is putting it in the oven, you guessed, it dropped. So we cleaned it up, added more eggplant and scooped out as much from the oven as humanly possible at this point. There is of course some that is already cooked into the oven so there is nothing we can currently do about that. Once we get done it's too late to do a self clean because you really need to clean it immediately after. The next day is Sunday so we put it on for 4 hours and go to church. We get back and most of it is ash left over but scrubbing was still necessary to get some of the more stubborn portions off.

One week later, we finally got internet service. Of course, the hardware was supposed to arrive the day before. It didn't. We got it the day of, after the AT&T guy set it up. And now, here I am, listening to U2, on the fifth song, Sunday, Bloody Sunday, finally getting this post finish. Enjoy our tales

Till next time...