frustrating

ok, still no oven, but the good news is that the landlord did come over and take a look at it. he's ordered a part and we'll see if that's the problem.

the neighbor knocked on the door yesterday morning with a complaint about the kids. apparently, the kids are getting into their garage when they are not home. AH! so i had a talk with them and tried to get them to understand that they can't go in there. i was told by taylor that if they would lock the door, they wouldn't get in there! he's way too smart.

oven

there's something to be said for taking things into your own hands, i.e. threatening. i've tried to get a hold of my landlord for over a week because the oven doesn't work correctly. it won't get up to the level of heat it needs to. so, i finally sent a letter that said i was going to wait until jul 1, and then i was going to call a repairman to come and fix it and take the costs out of my rent payment.

the landlord showed up today. he's going to try and get it fixed. yeah!!

sad and depressing

when i was in pocatello, i had a group of good friends. there were four of us. one of the group is getting married in 3 weeks. her bridal shower is tonight, and shopping for lingerie was this afternoon.

the sad and depressing part is that my babysitter bailed on me, and i am currently sitting at home with the kids instead of shopping with the girls. i even had backups lined up, and they fell through as well.

bug bite!?

so, taylor last night had a visit to the ER. the only reason i took him in cause this thing kept growing even after i gave him benedryl.
i know this pic is hard to see, but right at the hairline, there's a mosquito bite. it's swollen clear to his eyebrow and past the smaller bite in the middle of his forehead. not only that, but it was at least 1/4 inch tall, maybe 1/2 inch.
the dr said he was fine, there was no anaphylactic reaction, and sent us home.

shaun gave him a blessing before he went to sleep, and when he woke up this morning, there was no swelling left! thank goodness for the power of the priesthood!

elizabeth turns 4!

okay, elizabeths birthday was last thursday. and today we had a small party for her. grandma and grandpa and nana and kaitlyn were also there.
here's the pile of presents she got
there were some coloring books, some socks, a princess set with a tiara, a necklace, a ring, and some earings, a headband, and a second helmet. we will return the second helmet. we had her go back to her bedroom while we pulled things out and brought in the bike. she walked out and matter-of-factly said, "oh, my bike." like she knew it was there the whole time. weird!!

some pics of her with her stuff. . .






























i was going to borrow a pan from a friend who has her own cake decorating company, and make her a doll cake. when i called to ask her, she said that she'd do it in exchange for some of my close to my heart paper. OK! i can handle that! so, here's a pic of the big girl with her cake.

dishes

so, i was washing dishes this afternoon and stabbed myself. with a fork. it hurts.

magic school bus

i take the kids to the library once a week. they can get 3-5 books depending on how i'm feeling, and 1-2 movies. their favorite movies are the magic school bus series. they watch them all the time, and then they start quoting them around the house. right now they are saying, "hey, mikey, come in!"

i think i might start going insane!

teeth!

it's official, the youngest member of the family has teeth now. her bottom teeth broke through the gum yesterday.

MICE!

so, we just had an interesting experience. earlier today, shaun thought he heard a mouse munching and scratching on something in the house. we went looking, but couldn't find anything. later when shaun went downstairs to get something, he heard some squeaking. he shut the door, and we tried to figure out what we could put down there to kill mice. (sunday, no money, therefore, no d-con) we called his mom to see what ideas she had, just d-con, which she brought over, she had a couple at home. shaun proceeded to go down to try and get what he needed, and found the poor creature in the glue spider trap. it was just a little thing, but still a mouse. little being the key word, there has to be more of them, this was just a baby.

so, we replaced the trap, put some d-con down there, and we'll see what happens.

can't afford to move, but in light of recent discoveries, don't really want to stay either.

new words

we were laying in bed this morning playing with shannon, and could swear that she spoke. she consistently babbles, and some of them make sense. but this one was obvious and after some coaching.

she frequently babbles da-da, but shaun coached her to say taylor, and she did a pretty good job.
WOW!

grades are in!

i am happy to report that both shaun and i passed with flying colors. i got two c's, two b's, and one a. shaun got two b's!

it would appear that staying up all night long and turning in late assignments worked for shaun this time. next time it may not, but it did this time.

YAY!!!

children of god

so, our houseguest is no longer with us. i'm not quite sure how i feel about it. in one way, it was way past time. in another way, he was kind of nice to have around. when i needed extra help, i could always ask him.
however, i grew to love him as a brother of god and will worry about him constantly.

home evening

so, nadia did home evening by herself tonight. was supposed to be planting the garden, but since no one was helping, it will have to wait until later. besides that, i didn't have the seeds anyhow.

so, here's what i did do.
i made sure the ground was nice and dug up(again), i got my rows started(each row will have a diff veg in it), and i started the water so that it's wet when i get around to planting it.
these used to be about 8 feet long, and are the boards that enclosed the garden spaces. when we combined them we dug these up and put them off to the side. imagine nadia out there with a hatchet trying to chop them in half so that they can put out on the curb and hauled away with the rest of the yard trash.(about 20 minutes into my pounding, shaun brought out the circular saw for me to use instead. it was my first time with that particular power tool. :)

shauns finals

ok, i have just spent the last 3 days trying to help shaun with his classes. i spent one entire day finding reference for him, and the last 2 hours organizing with him. hopefully (fingers crossed), he will pass this one class and still be able to attend next semester. if not, he will probably be looking for a traditional job, as the art has not come to fruition like we had hoped.

today is the last day to turn anything in. he's working on a few late assignments and then will do the final. we hope that this will work.

projects

don't know if you can tell or not, but my fingernails are a bright pink. i have been making homemade paper, and decided to color some red. because it requires my hands to be in the goop, they turned pink.














a friend gave me some strawberry starts. so i got this planter cleaned out and planted them at the back of the house. they won't produce this year, or they aren't supposed to, but will next. can't wait. in order to clean out this flower bed, i had to dig out a bunch of tulips. since the strawberries were not in a pot, they had to planted today. unfortunately, the flowers had to go, so here they are drying. (if the wind doesnt' blow them away, they'll still be there.)














on the right is the garden spot. there used to be two seperate planters here. we yanked out the wood, and combined the spots. now i just need to get the seeds and do some work in it.










this one on the left might seem a little weird. this is where the garbage can goes. it was a dying grass spot, but i didn't like it much. so i found as much stray brick as i could and built a little tiny patio for the can to sit on . it's just barely wide enough, and not quite long enough, but it works for now.

above it, you can kind of see the brick that goes around the front flower bed. one of these days, when i can afford it, i plan on ripping that out and replacing it with red scalloped brick. and at some point, the railroad ties will also be replaced with the same thing.

one of these days, all of my projects will come to fruition. course, it might take me just short of forever and a million bucks!

pics

okay, as promised, here are some long overdue pics

this is taylors chin after it was sliced.



and this one is with the bandaid on it. i
didn't want him picking at it.

this is characteristic of the attitudes of my children lately.
this it the cute baby girl. she really does like to sit in the high chair, she's just not seen the camera much.

If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.

yum, fresh strawberries

crazy week!
so, elizabeth had her cavities filled today. everything went fine, until she woke up. all she could do was cry for daddy (daddy wasn't there. it was just us girls). the only way we could get her to calm down was to tell her that in order to go home and see him, she had to stop crying. got her home, and she slept for about an hour, and then was perfect. taylor slept the entire day away when he had his done, she's up and running around like it's a normal day!
i had taken the kids to the library last week. they can get a few books and a movie each when we go. the books are 3 week rentals, and the movies are 1 week. they didn't get back in time, so we have fines that need to be paid before we can borrow again. such is life. then, i went to return them, and they close at 6p on friday! i wasn't too happy.

broulims has a fabulous sale on strawberries. it's about time too. my freezer jam has run out, and we needed some more. they were $10 a flat, ($17 normal) so i bought 2! however, they were all out of freezer pectin, and no one else in town has any. seems like i may have to freeze them all whole until i can get some pectin to make the jam.

stitches (again)!

we just had an interesting day. the kids were playing outside, and taylor comes into the house crying. he had been at the neighbors house and the screen door flew open from the wind, and knocked him in the chin. he got a cut about an inch long, and about a quarter inch deep. there was a lot of blood. i cleaned him up a little, put a rag over it, and ran him up to the er.
they were able to glue it shut instead of using stitches. when i get a chance, i'll take a pic and post it.

Isn't she great?

My wife's a sweetheart. Give her a kind word and keep in touch with her. We don't want her to live only in the dry and sometimes miserable atmosphere I generate. Oh, and if anyone wants a painted family portrait, just let me know. :) Otherwise I do science fiction and fantasy stuff.