Jon and Elbow...continued.

Thanks to Bonnie, I was informed that they are "Tiger barb" and that they need 'oxygen' to stay alive. Oops. I thought you could buy a bowl, stick a fish in it and watch it swim around. I guess the "bubble makers" (filters) are necessary. SO....being the fish pro that she is, brought over a MUCH better and fancier tank (pink, but i don't think the fish will mind) to move Jon and Elbow into. Bubble maker and a light too! Jared even bought little baby marbles to decorate the bottom. VERY cute. I have to say, they are definitely MUCH happier. They eat their food now and swim around. (You may be asking yourself, "they weren't doing that before!?" Well, no not really. They just sat at the bottom of the tank. (I was slowly killing them and Eli had nothing do with it!) Now....I'll happily extend their "life span" to about 1 month from the original 1 week. That may be stretching it, but I'm feeling lucky.

My baby's 1!

For my little one's birthday I decided I wanted to make a cupcake caterpillar. Instead, I made an "inch worm" out of miniture cupcakes. It was so fun to do and he definitely loved it.

More please!

Tastes better when it's smeared ALL OVER the face, hands, clothes, feet....!

We got him this little John Deer tractor to ride and push. Gotta work on those walking skills that he's starting to do. He loves it. Couldn't wait to get it out of the box. It honks and plays music and reves the engine.

Jon and Elbow

With Eli's obsession with fish, (today he watched "coley fish", then pretended that EVERYTHING he played with was a fish or fishing pole.) I bought him and Ashton two fish. "Elbow" belongs to Ashton (They've been learning about the letter "E" at school) and "Jon" belongs to Eli. I kept asking Eli what he wanted to name his fish and sometimes I just can't understand what he is trying to say. The closet I could come up with, with what he said was "jon". SO....Jon it is! I give them 1 week. He's already tried to give them a french fry. I also had to hide them on my counter behind the bag of bread and a box of crackers and told Eli that they are taking a nap and that I put them in bed. He looked at me funny and went looking for them in all the beds. NOW...it's 'out of site, out of mind'.

Bridal Veil Falls

...a sunday walk with the kids.

Ashton's "cold" face.

Warming their toes!

Water got a little deeper and Eli lost his footing...

Yours truly

1...2...3...4....(5 was with me.)

waving traffic down

Love this picture of the two of them.

Love this one too.

Offical signs of fall. (Alisha, I think it's safe to put up decorations now.)

...reap what you harvest.

Well, I did it! I've stepped into the canning thing and actually succeeded. With the help of Jared and Mykael we got two batches of 7 bottles done last night. I had noticed the day before that our pears had fallen off the tree and decided that we needed to can them before they were unsalvageable. This is the first time doing it without my mom and it's been years since that happened so Jared and I were quite pleased with ourselves to have such an awesome turn-out. (Although, my mom did get phone calls up until 11pm with questions I had during the process. Thanks for letting me keep you up!) One bottle didn't seal so we had it for breakfast this morning. For some reason, Eli thought they tasted better dipping his hand in and pulling one out, as opposed to me dishing it out in a bowl for him. Big surprise, huh?

He made it before his birthday...

For a while now, the kids and Jared have told me that Dylan "walked". Of course I always shot that down not believing them because deep down, I wanted to be the one to see him do it for the first time. I've seen him take a step and then fall, but nothing like this. It wasn't until I captured this that I saw how WELL he walks. Results from "practice" I suppose. So it was proof enough that he probably has been walking here or there for a while, but with me out of the room each time. I'm gonna give the credit to the one that claim to have seen him first. Mykael!

Pampered Chef

Yesterday evening I had a Pampered Chef party. (Feel free to order something if you'd like. My party closes wednesday.) I've been working on getting my house in order for quite a while now and was able to make it clean enough to host a cooking party.

I was excited to see what that would all intale seeing that I've never had/nor done any kind of party like this before. I sent out invitations and even put up fall decorations and had my house smelling like cinnimon and cloves. It was/still is (for the time being) awesome! I love a clean house!!!!

The "consultant" came early to set up and then we waited for guests to arrive. Angelle (friend since childbirth) came early also to help get ready.....And was the only guest to leave when it was over. I'm bummed that no one else came. But we still had a good time. It was probably more relaxed than if all the invited people had shown up. My parents were here, Jared was here, and the kids were here. SO...it wasn't like an empty house. The guys hung around and played with all the fun gadgets

and the kids were able to help. They LOVED it. (Poor Eli didn't do well with chopping the onions. If P.C. only had something to cure onion tears!)

We made french bread pizza

and these super yummy mint fudge cookies. REALLY EASY!!!

I'm Grateful to those who helped me clean. I'm beyond words to express my gratitude towards you!!! I love you!

Ashton had asked me earlier if I could help him up the tree and I had said no because I was needing to be in the house and couldn't watch him. Later I looked out the window and saw him doing this....

Before I could say anything, his comment was this, "mom, it's safe!"

My question?..."Under whose definition?"

*note. My mom was out there with him so he was sort of being supervised. My guess is that she had told him that it was not safe and that resulted in him telling me what he did.

Happy Harvest

I felt like I needed to go check on my garden today because it's been awhile. It's a good thing that I did!

Cherry tomatoes, Yellow tomatoes, and squash.... LOTS of it! I'm thinking the tomatoes are going to be coming for quite a while. The amount of blossoms I STILL have, only means more maters.

Utah State Fair

Jared and I took the three little ones to the fair this morning. I'm such a fair junky it's ridiculous. Growing up our parents took us to the fair to see the tractors, animals, and of course the "commercial" building. We never really ventured over to the rides, (as a parent now, I think I've figured it out.

All those "carnies" pitching their best schpill on WHY we should pick their VERY overpriced-can't-win-for-the-life-of-you game which you keep forkin' over the doe just to prove them wrong! HA! Who's the one laughing now? Them of course!!!

Now I can't afford that $4.00 funnel cake I was SO craving when we first arrived. No, I'm not mad, just really REALLY bitter!)

Sorry, we got off on a tangent there....back to the 'family memories in the making'. Once through the gates, we happened upon a NEW (can you believe it, something NEW at the fair?) show/act/exhibit... whatever you want to call it. "Tigers from India". Actual bengal tigers ALL the way from.... you guessed it, Florida. WHA Wha wha. (FLORIDA? What's with the India?) I'm not going to ask, I'll just assume that they are there for the winter. Ya know, like all the other snow-birds. Right?)

It was cool to see that there are so many different colors of bengals.

And being a sucker for cats (you'll see in the next blog posting) that I wanted to run into that pen to cuddle, hug, ride, and feed those amazing beasts too.

Next, we decided to devulge our pallets into all that....greasy food. Jared had a hamburger, I had SUPER yummy pizza (I really wanted to go get another piece, I was having a continuous argument in my mind about should I? or shouldn't I?) and the kids...corn dogs. (Ok...so you're probably wondering what happened to the funnel cake I was going off about earlier, but to be honest, I have never had one...just used it as an example to make my point. It worked because everyone knows about those funnel cakes.) We did have kettle corn, (Insert Homer-Simpson-seeing a doughnut sound effect here...) ice cream, and fresh lemonade.

I finally made it to the crafts building and the first thing I noticed was three women making lace. (Be sure to double click on the pictures to get a closer look!)

I have never seen it done homemade the way that they were doing it. I was shocked to see how detail oriented it was. I've seen my mom crochet doilies but nothing like this. I HAD to take a few pictures just to show YOU, my blog stalkers, what they were doing. Talented, that's for sure.

This woman was so sweet while I bombarded her with questions.

When asked, "how long does it take you to do this?" She said, "Usually 1 inch per hour." WOW!!! I don't think I will EVER have that much patience. The particular piece she was working on, (I assumed it was a lace collar) she was hoping to have it finished by christmas. I thought that she had plenty of time, but her goal of one "loop" (in the picture above, a loop is one 'scallop') per week was far from being reached. She was still on the same "loop" three weeks later. (Maybe Christmas isn't so far away.) Hats off to these women for continuing an old tradition of hand woven lace.

After walking around for a while longer we were starting to feel the heat and sore feet and decided to call it quits. Good thing, the crowd started to become more congested as we pulled out of the parking lot. All in all, it was an ok visit. Next year, maybe we'll make it over to the animals.

Which is worse?

Ok...Tonight I was playing with the kids in the living room and Mykael decided that she was going to move Dylan's bouncy car to the middle of the floor so she could "chase" him around it. (A game he likes to play.) Well, when she moved it, there was a rather large (and by large....it was about quater size) hairy spider sitting there. I couldn't quite tell what it was but I wasn't going to try to identify that nasty little invader by any means. I was yelling for a shoe! Jaden brought me one of Ashton's and the thought that came to me was, "he couldn't have gotten a BIGGER shoe?" Well I sucked it up and grasped that shoe in rather strategic way (probably holding it like it was a stinky diaper) and requested a tissue to wipe up the remains. (I had to be COMPLETELY prepared. If I had thought about it...I would've had them bring the trash can in to, NEXT TIME!... *random thought- 'I'd probably make a good surgeon. I'd make sure I had all my instruments.) Back to the story... I wacked at that thing hard enough to only have to do it once and the 'butt part'... (sorry, not a scientist...don't know what the official name for that is, and quite frankly don't care!) ...SCATTERED! Being a mother myself, I knew what that meant. "GET ME THE VACCUM NOW!!!!!! I had the kids scrambling SO fast. Luckily, the"spiderlings" (Yes, that's official....looked it up) couldn't get too far because it was on the carpet and their little legs probably couldn't reach from one fiber of carpet to the next, but I definitely made sure that every one of those offspring joined the rest of the dust in my house. Locked up tight in the Vacuum. (At least that's what I keep telling myself. Can they crawl back through the hose and out? Please say no!)

After some thought, during my 'calm down' phase... I wondered to myself, 'What's worse? Spiders or cockroaches?' I've dealt with those dirty bugs too but wonder if I had to choose to live with one species what would it be? Right now...I'm leaning more toward La Cucaracha. That Spider mama and her babies was really creepy. I was considering posting a picture of this spider (btw... it was a wolf spider) and even found a picture of one carrying babies but thought 'No way, I don't want to look at that nasty thing everytime I log into my blog because it will just continually make me examine each little step I take and plus that image is forever engraved in my mind. So instead, for our viewing pleasure we will look at this, (more so, that I can have good dreams):

Cute, isn't it?

Eli

Now that school has been in "session" for a few weeks now, Eli and I have been able to develop a "routine". We walk the kids to school, come home, and Eli picks a movie. The one that usually makes the cut is, "The Spear Carp Project". Now some of you may not have heard of that show before, but in our house...it's a HUGE hit. It's about a guy that goes 'fishing'. Eli L O V E S fish and we were given this amazing film to preview from the producer, himself... Coleman/Uncle Coley.
Here are a few more examples of Eli's obsession with fish:

*He brings me a piece of paper and pen so I can draw him a fish. He then takes that sketched fish and puts it in a pan. (Guess we're going to have fish for dinner!)

*He goes hysterical, and I mean hysterical, whenever we go to Cabela's to see the fish tank. He makes sure EVERYONE gets to see THAT fish.

*He has broken ALL of our fishing poles because he climbed up to where they are kept in the garage and tried to go fishing in our front yard. I have had to make him a "non-destructible" pole (I thought) in which he found a way to break it!

*He has a stuffed animal fish named "Bish the fish".

*And then there's this picture!...


Eli, Bish the fish, and the in-destructible pole.

I told Ashton to put his shoes on so he could go play outside. He couldn't find them and finally decided, "Mom, I'm just going to wear my feet."

So, Jaden came home from school today and when Jared asked him how his day was, he said that it wasn't too good. Jared inquired some more and Jade said that during recess there were some boys that started reciting mama fat jokes and adding the "daddy's" too. Jaden took great offense to that because he felt that Jared, me, Bonnie, and Randy (Bonnie's BF) were all being insulted. Mykael said that Jaden had his hand in his fist and was ready to start punching. (Sweet little thing, protecting the parents like that!) But thank goodness for that bell!!! I didn't want a phone call from the principal today, or ANY day for that matter! I explained to him that those kind of jokes really don't mean anything and I (for one) was not insulted. So I started to tell him a few more just incase this little occurance continued tomorrow. I told him that if they started up again, he would memorize some more so he could say, after one of the boys told a joke, "Oh! Here's a good one, listen to this.....(You're mama...)" That way, turning a possible aggressive situation into a more "guy friendly conversation." That is why I'm on the internet now, I'm "researching"!

Mandatory Harvesting...

After getting home from the camping trip, we encountered a storm that lasted until about 3pm. today (monday). During which, a lot of my corn, and sunflowers were blown over in the high winds.

It's ok because we needed to harvest them and this was just a slight shove in that direction. I'm happy with the outcome.

Our happy little farmers.

The corn was delici-ous!

Dylan thought so too. He chomped on this little piece until I pried it out of his hands and gave him another to work on.





For those of you who remember all the way back when we planted our garden, that I mentioned how Jared planted 49 melon plants? Well....Here's the one melon we got!!! If the odds are 1/50. Then next year we're going to have to quadruple our plants to get enough for one meal! It was sure a little one, but really sweet.






I'm excited for the sunflower seeds. We'll definitely get a lot. Also...you can only harvest the giant sized sunflowers.



Luckily we had plenty of those too and we'll get a bunch of seeds from them.