Surgery Smurgery...

Sammi is going in to Primary Children's Hospital tomorrow to have surgery.

Matt told her she could pick whatever she wanted to do today and she chose a drive up the canyon to Silver Lake. We took a picnic and walked around the lake. She goofed off with Riley and Olivia and basically had a good time. They stuffed grapes in their mouths and posed for pictures.

Then we came home and she picked a book to bring to the hospital to read and got her ipod ready. The kid is a trooper. She's not nervous at all!

The Partridge Family

Ok, so I'm not really even sure what kind of birds they were... but look at the cute little nest I found when I pruned my old dried out poppies!

I wish I'd have known they were nesting there, we could have kept a closer eye on the flower bed and maybe seen some babies. This nest was right in the front yard under the living room window. Sneaky little guys aren't they?

String Lake, Wyoming

well. i'm back. we'll see how well i keep up this time around. i'm just quickly putting up some pics from our trip to my brother's house in Jackson, Wy. One day we went to String Lake and the kids had a good time playing at the edge of the water. i was really happy with some of the shots i got.
in a later post i'll talk more about the trip and show off some more pictures.

Olivia

Cousin Bruce

Riley
Sammi & cousin Mia
Cousin Stewart

Queue Ode To Joy

OK, I haven't blogged in a loooong time. But I have something truly blog-worthy.

3 weeks ago Riley & Olivia were goofing around in the kitchen. I had been unloading the dishwasher and got a phone call so I left it open and went in the other room. Riley was running backward and tripped over the open door and fell right smack on top of it. Oh joy. After looking it over and doing a test-run we discovered that the door was bent and it now leaked. Again, I say, oh joy.

After much debate and many phone calls we determined that it made more sense to replace it than fix it. It never was a very good dishwasher so we had the circuitous debate.. spend a few hundred to fix a crappy machine, or put that money toward a better one. Fish? or cut bait? Dad helped the decision along since he called one too many times and got the response, "I'm washing the dishes" when asked what I was doing. So, Merry Christmas! We got our new dishwasher today and I'm running the first load right now. It's SO quiet!

I've been humming the Ode To Joy for the last hour. After 3 weeks of washing dishes by hand in scalding hot water, (yes, I know I should have bought gloves but it just seemed like such a woosie thing to do) and 2 cut fingers by grazing knives in the scalding depths, and dry cracked hands and peeling fingernails.... I am truly in a joyous mood.

I can't wait to make chili and put the bowls straight in without washing them out first just to put it to the test.

Ye olde crappy, wash-the-dishes-before-you-wash-the-dishes machine.

The new fabulous, quiet machine. Not quite fully installed, still has the protective plastic on the front and no handle. But even at this stage it was splendiferous!

Ahh... 4th grade...

Sammi is in the 4th grade, you know what that means... time for the unit on Utah Native Americans. She had to pick a type of Indian dwelling and make it. She picked an Earth House, which of course was one of the hardest ones to find pictures of on Google.

We helped her plan it out and gave her suggestions & instructions from time to time. We also cut the sticks for her and manned the hot glue gun for her, but other than that she did the whole thing herself. My favorite part is the little ladder. She glued it together and then tied grass around the joints.

She should get an A... as long as the teacher believes she did it herself. Kind of sad when you wonder if you should have to do something crappy looking just to make sure it looks "kid made". hehe.

Millions of peaches.. peaches for me...

Well I just finished bottling all my peaches today. I kind of spread it out over the last 4 days, which worked out pretty well for me. So now I've got 49 quarts of yummy peaches. They're so pretty I don't know if I'll let anyone eat them!

Thanks to Catherine who didn't get irritated (or at least didn't show it) when I called her for my yearly bottling questions. "ummm... I forgot how much sugar. And how many vitamin C was that again?" I actually did write all that stuff down last year... but let's just say my organizational skills need work since I couldn't figure out WHERE I'd written it down.

Ok, peaches down. Next up... Applesauce!

Visitors

Last week we got to visit with my nephew, his wife and their cute little boy. The nephew has been in town on some sort of medical rotation at the hospital here and they came by a few times to use the computer. I had a good time chatting with them and the kids really loved cute little E, who by the way speaks Russian. Little smarty-pants. He kept saying something and I couldn't figure it out so I asked his dad, who replied, "Oh, that's Russian for *blah*". Sorry I couldn't actually remember the word. hehe.

Wow. My kid looks like a shrimp next to him. I know part of it is the fact that he's a little closer to the camera... but... these two are actually 2 years apart in age... and size-wise... I'm not seeing it in this picture. ha ha.

Speaking of my shrimpy family... I had to go to the Jr. High to talk to Riley's teacher today and I got there just as school was getting out. BIG MISTAKE! I was practically run over about 10 times and most of the 8th & 9th graders were TALLER than me! It felt like a huge surge of sweaty kids fighting to get out, and since I was coming in... too bad for me.