Holy cow!

Two posts in one day! I forgot to mention the other fun thing we've done lately. Also, I will admit first and foremost that I stole these pictures off of my friend Sarah's blog. The Sharps, Domans and Weidauers all went to Fountain Green last weekend to stay at the Weidauer's rental home. It's called Red Apple Cottage and they rent it out to people by the night. It was Lamb Days while we were there. Most of the group went out to the parade and ended up coming home with lots of candy. I stayed home with a sick Kaelin. Tom and Dawn W. ran a 5K in the morning and then Tom and Eric S. went for a mountain bike ride. I, myself, read the entire 6th Harry Potter book in order to get ready for the movie. The little house was very nice, and comfortable too. Justin W. spent a lot of the weekend working hard around the house. We all had a great time and are very glad the Weidauer's invited us to come along!




The last thing I wanted to mention was that when I got home on Sunday I discovered that I had left a hose running the entire weekend. I had turned it on to fill the fountain in the front yard. I made a mental note to turn it off but apparently my brain lost the note. The water overfilled the fountain, seeped into the ground and ran under our walkway then ran all the way down the front yard. We had several inches of standing water down at the bottom of the yard (it is on a slope). Then the water seeped into the ground, ran under a raised flower bed and trickled out over the curb and down the street. I estimate that at least 10,000 gallons were wasted. Oops. :) At least it wasn't a hose in the backyard that would have sent the water towards our house.

There seems to be a pattern here ...

OK, so apparently I am unable to blog more than once a month. Oh well, it could be worse.
Let's just get the gratuitous cat shot out of the way first. Here is Buster taking a nap with a little stuffed elephant. This is a very strange cat!


Next, we have our wonderful dog Stewart. This is the day he came home from having an artificial ACL put in his knee. He had been jumping at the back door to get in and stumbled, fell, and twisted his leg. SNAP! went his ACL. This is the second time he has done it, he had surgery on the other leg in January. The vet assures me that he doesn't have any more ACLs to tear so hopefully that will be the end of his surgical experiences.


On July 3rd our neighborhood had a fireworks show. We had friends come and spend the evening with us. We set up a volleyball net in the park in our neighborhood and played badminton until the sun went down. It was a great evening.


Tom is still enjoying his triathlon career. He came in 3rd in a 'gym' tri last week. It involved using a rowing machine, a stationary bike and a treadmill. At least he got to watch tv for this one. His next tri will be at Bear Lake in August. That works out well for me because I just love Bear Lake and am looking forward to spending time at the lake with some cousins that we don't see very often.
My community garden plot is doing well. I picked a bunch of cucumbers today and made a batch of refrigerator dill pickles. I've never made them before so it will be interesting to see how they are. I also saw some potatoes peeking out of the ground at the garden, it's nice to see things coming along. Soon we will have our peach crop and hopefully get some nice apples this year too.
The kids are getting on each other's nerves lately and therefore are on mine. I have discovered a great new method of getting them to settle down. They scrub the grout in the kitchen with toothbrushes and oxyclean. I'm glad that I have several bathrooms and a mudroom left for them to work on. I'm confident that all of my grout will be sparkling by the time school starts.
I'm crossing my fingers that I will write another post before August. We'll just have to wait and see ...

June update

So, apparently I'm not going to be a prolific blogger. Oh well. Some is better than none, right?

We are getting Evan all ready for Scout camp next week. He was not excited to get the three immunizations that he required. Not that it is all behind him though I think he is getting excited. Tom is going to stay one night there at the beginning of the week. Evan will be taking Archery, woodcarving, leatherworking, archaeology and something else that I can't remember. Sounds like lots of fun!

Tom had his third sprint triathlon last week. He has done really well. I think he enjoyed the open water swim more than he expected to. He took 13th in his age division this time. I think he said there were over 700 people in this triathlon.
Next week is the 24 hour relay race from Logan to Park City. I don't know how many people are on his team but he is expecting to run three legs of the race with the distances varying between 3 and 9 miles. Here are photos from the last tri.



I have just been reminded that hi IS doing one more tri this weekend. That's a lot of racing!

I have ordered some glass so that I can replace the sidelights by our front door with stained glass panels. Some of the glass is a type called dichroic. It was actually invented for NASA. If you look at it with light behind you, you'll see a reflection and color - this one will have a pinkish to greenish reflection (it's way prettier than it sounds!) and if you look at it with the light coming through the glass it is green unless you view it at an angle - then it is purple. So, during the day we will see the green/purple inside with the reflection on the outside and at night it will be reversed. I am really excited to make the panels. The people at the stained glass studio are going to help me when I get to the insulation of the window. I'll post progress reports this summer.

Our rattie girls - Trilli and Wiggles are getting big. They are soooo close to being able to stay in the big cage all the time. If they try super hard they can still fit their heads through the bars though and whatever they can fit their heads through they can squeeze the rest of themselves through. I would sure hate for one of our cats to eat one of our rats so we are closely monitoring the situation.

I'll have to make a yard update on the next post. We did some minor re-landscaping and it looks really nice. We are glad to be done with it though.

Update!

Today I am officially the mother of a teenager! Yes, Evan is 13 today. He promises to not ever hate me. Check in next year for a progress report...


Last week Tom broke his finger. Again. Yes, the same one but in a different location. He was shutting the tailgate on the truck when it bounced back and hit his hand. All of the normal fingers bent and weren't hurt but the finger that was smashed last year doesn't actually bend very well. It got pushed down so hard that the tendon attached to the bone actually pulled a chunk of bone off. Ouch! No surgery for this, the Dr. said the crack would eventually fill in. Does this stop Tom from getting ready to participate in another sprint triathlon? No. Does it stop him from training for a 24 hour relay race? Nope.


We just got back from Arizona. While we were there we had lots and lots of fun. Here are some of the highlights...
We stayed on a little farm and got to feed random veggie crap to some goats every day. They were garbage disposals! Kaelin also got to try milking one. It didn't work out too well but as an added bonus the lady who was milking the goat shot Kaelin in the arm with some milk. Nice shot!

We went through a Cactus Forest. Pretty cool actually. Lots and lots of cactus as far as the eye could see. Glad I wasn't an Arizona pioneer!
Here is a shot of me and Kaelin waiting for the event that we were actually there to see....
The fantastic and wonderful graduation of Jason! He was awarded his PhD in Spanish and is all set to start a fantastic job this fall that seemed to have been created just for him. Major woo hoos for Jason! And a huge sigh of relief for the whole family who can now settle into a more normal life. Well, as normal a life as anyone like Jason could have... ;) (please don't mock the farmer tan!)

The Recital

The kids did really well at their recital on Saturday. They didn't seem too nervous and did a great job playing their pieces.

More pictures

Here is a picture of the stained glass window I made at Holdman Studios where I am volunteering. Holdman Studios makes a lot of windows for various temples and right now I have been able to help with windows for the Hawaii Temple. There is a glass blowing studio there too and they are working on a Chihuly-type chandelier that will use 1500 pounds of glass. The inner frame is made of welded re-bar.
Sorry - gratuitous cat in photo.


I had to throw in a picture of the cats because you can never have enough pictures of cats, right? I like how Delilah is looking right at me but Buster refuses to acknowledge my existance.
Then we've got pictures of flowers with snow. These were taken yesterday when we got tons of rain that suddenly changed to snow.

Spring Bilizzard

We woke up to find many inches of snow today. It apparently was blowing sideways because it coated the south side of everything. There were drifts that were up to my knee and most other places had 4 to 6 inches. I went out to take some cool pictures in the snow, and here they are!
The first is a cluster of flowers on the Yoshina cherry tree, the second is the same tree looking up through the branches.


This is my crabapple tree.

Look at the snow only stuck on the south side of the branches of the peach tree.