SHUT THE DOOR!

I'm so sick of telling the kids to shut the door this summer! So I devised a plan. We got a swing hing and replaced one of the hings on the front door. It won't close the door completely so it latches but it will gently swing the door closed. It's enough to keep $50 worth of air conditioning floating out the door every afternoon and the hair on the top of my head from being pulled out. (I'm exaggerating but you get the idea.)

Just an observation...

Have you ever noticed that a girl rarely has Jr. attached to her name? I've seen Robert Downey, Jr., Dale Earnhardt, Jr. but rarely if ever a girl? There's no Evelyn Wells, Jr. or Susan B. Anthony Jr. Weird. If you think of anybody, let me know.

Happy Birthday Juliet...

Because I have awesome friends, Juliet had a birthday party today! Juliet has a friend in sunbeams that almost has the same birthday. Her Mom, Val, asked if I wanted to do a party together! I agreed and it was fantastic.

Juliet wanted a pinata for her birthday and Maxine wanted to do paper mache this summer so we killed 2 birds with one stone. (You can say it, the princess head is a little creepy. It's more motivation to smash it.)

Here's Val concentrating madly on the cake!


There was water and slides and general birthday happiness. Maxine and Jack even said they had a great time.

The best part, in my opinion, was when Val's older daughter put the smashed pinata head on her own head and started doing funny things for the kids like cartwheels and somersaults.

Happy Birthday Julie!

Sleeping outside...

I remember sleeping out on the trampoline all the time as a kid! I thought it was great fun, especially when my Mom would forget to turn off the sprinklers. So the kids asked if they could sleep outside and I said sure! Around dusk, Maxine started to get scared and didn't think it was a good idea anymore. I assured her that she didn't have to but Jack and Juliet were still enthusiastic about the idea.

Around 10 o'clock, Jack and Juliet started to get scared and Maxine had braved up by then. So I said I'd sleep out on the trampoline with them. Big mistake. I must be getting older because I'd wake up constantly and my shoulders would hurt or my tailbone was asleep. Looking over at the kids, they were all asleep like logs. Around midnight, the wind kicked up so the sound of my neighbor's wind chimes and sliding garbage cans kept me up the rest of the night. At 5:30 Maxine got up to use the bathroom and the other two woke up. By this time it was getting light out and the kids weren't afraid anymore. I said, "You guys can do whatever you want but I'm going inside to my bed." I slept inside until 8 o'clock but felt like I was dead all day long. The kids weren't much better. By midday, it looked like a crime scene at our house, bodies lying everywhere. We still had fun. :)

My theory about Fast Sunday...

I am fairly certain that during Fast Sunday I do not consume less calories, but rather divert calories to a different part of the day. :)

Straight from the UK...

Tonight...The Stig rides a bike...

His identity will never be revealed...

(If you don't get it, then you just don't get it.)

Summer fun...

Yea! Summer's here and we've been doing our share of lazing around. But there are a few things we've done so far!

Maxine decided she wanted to make a solar oven. She'd seen one on PBS and took off with the idea in her head. She made one and we tested the temperature of water in the oven and a control water on the ground next to the oven. It was in the morning and her plans are slightly flawed but her water in the oven was 10 degrees hotter than the control. I have plans to make a different solar oven tomorrow or Friday and cooking dinner in it. :) Pictures to follow.

And Jack learned to ride his bike today! There's a girl across the street that learned to ride her bike last week. I guess Jack decided he'd waited long enough. (For some reason, there's no audio from my crummy camera phone video.) :)

We also have plans to pull taffy this summer and do a book discussion as well as swimming. Are you doing anything fun and interesting this summer?

Feeling a little productive...

For a Personal Progress Project, I decided to learn a new skill of decorating. Ohmigoodness. It is not my strong suit. So I settled on a budget of $50 and set off to the back of stores like Ross and TJ Maxx, looking for stuff to go on top of my kitchen cabinets. I wandered around and hated everything. I came home frustrated because I wanted the top of the cabinets to look nice and be a reflection of ME but not like I stepped into Tai Pan Trading. (That's hard to do, btw.) I decided on orange, yellow and green for the color scheme and found some flowers that I liked and went from there. I also wanted to keep my punch bowl and cake stand up there because they're kitcheny. :) This is what I've got so far.

The pictures for the picture frames are ordered but haven't arrived yet. The frames are up there so I can get an idea of how it'll look done. All of the pictures are of my family in eating or of orange food.

Also, the oval orange sign is going to say Jamie's Cafe. It just doesn't yet. My kids came up with the name. (I love orange, it's almost red but not.)

There's a grassy bush thing on the left and a vase full of fake oranges, lemons, and limes. This experience has taught me something: I loathe 90% of all fake plants. URG! Silk plants look so fake to me. I went with the grassy thing because it looked real and the other green thing has a variety of succulents in it. (It seriously looks genuine!)

Moving on, I decided to make the curtains that I've been thinking of making for 3 years. Their main purpose is to black out my bedroom windows at night. They work great. I had all the fabric for those so final cost was zero. I don't think they're particularly cute but they do the job.

I bought those blinds because I liked the bamboo. I didn't realize that they filter, NOT BLOCK, sunlight. I'm pretty sure my neighbors could see in at night as well. Sorry neighbors.

My garden is looking good. Especially the peas. (left) The tomatoes are looking healthy and I've got carrots and onions doing well. I tried lettuce this year. Turns out, I struggle with lettuce and the chipmunks like to eat it.

The peas are plentiful! This will be the first year I'll have a pea harvest. I usually get them in late and they burn up before crop but not this year! I've got hundreds in there!! We've eaten a couple dozen of the early ones and they are fantastic!

Merril and I got the grape trellis built today. The grapes aren't tied to it yet, maybe Monday. For now, they're just hanging out down by the bottom. I have lots of little grapes on them! Hooray! This will be my first year for a grape crop!

I tried corn as well this year. I can already tell the wind is making them lean Eastward more than they would otherwise. And something from the squash family planted itself in the corn bed. I have no idea what it is but if it'll plant itself, I'm going to keep it and see what it is.

And then my blackberries are going to produce some fruit this year! Yeah!

The prophet said to plant a garden and I really get a kick out of watching and waiting for my food to grow up. I really, really, really, really do.

I got called to jury duty...

Well, I got a summons in the mail calling me to jury duty. I tried to get out of it by sending back a reply saying I have 2 small kids at home and I'm the primary caregiver. That didn't work. So I sighed, resigned to my situation, and took off to the courthouse.

The other prospective jurors and I waited for an hour and then got called into the courtroom. I was called into the jury box for a DUI case. I was asked to answer a questionnaire (My name, occupation, affiliation with any religious and civic groups, etc.) and also answered a follow up question about whether I knew any other jurors. Which I did. After all the jurors had answered questions, the attorneys talked in chambers with the judge. Afterwards each attorney had the opportunity to throw out 4 jurors each. I was one of them and was excused to go home. I guess I was too much of a wild card, or something. So I got paid $18.50 for 2 hours of sitting around and answering questions. Not too bad. I'll probably go buy a new pair of shoes. :)

My trip back East...

My Mom invited me to a girl's weekend in New York City. I accepted after Merril bought me the plane ticket for my birthday. I went with my Mom, my sisters, and a few other cousins and relatives. We took the red eye to JFK and took right off. We went to the Empire State Building,

St. Patrick's Cathedral,

and looked at Grand Central Station. We went to a show that night called Anything Goes, a show about love, set in the 1930s with lots of swing music and tap and ballroom dancing. It was great!

The next day I did a session at the Manhattan Temple, which is so small but beautiful, and then headed off to visit my friend, Emily. We hit a museum but mostly just gabbed and played at the park with her two cute girls. I took this picture of them before I left and headed back to Manhattan, where I hooked up with my family again.

The next day we went to Hoboken, NJ to visit Carlo's Bake Shop where they film the show, "Cake Boss" on TLC.

That was super fun!

There wasn't a line so we walked right in! There was general mayhem that accompanies a lot of people in a small space but I loved looking at the shelves of pastries.

I bought 2 chocolate strawberries, a chocolate mousse cake, a berry tart, an M & M cookie, 2 sugar cookies and a chocolate almond biscotti. I spent $21, which is fairly average pastry shop prices. I took some of it home to my kids but I ate probably a 1/3 of my purchases.

Then we walked around China Town and Little Italy back in Manhattan for a while until it was time to catch our plane home. I fell into bed at 4:00 a.m. and woke up at 7 to give my kids hugs and presents. Wahoo! Fun times!

We're jammin...

No, we're not listening to Bob Marley but I did make 28 cups of strawberry freezer jam yesterday.

It's Jack's favorite. I like to think I'm saving money by making it but I don't really think that's the case. But this post is actually about something else: my obsession with saving money and reusing items. It might be a disease or at least a clinically treated neurosis. :) For example, I saw a bag of compost on the side of the road all shredded from falling out of the back of someone's truck. I totally stopped and carefully eased into the back of the Jeep so I could take it home. I've picked up 2 very nice beach towels, a swim noodle, and a kid's play tent as well over the years. I also save things that might come in handy someday. I wash and save sour cream containers to put beans in after I cook them and then freeze them. The size of butter tub I've been using lately is the wrong size but I've still washed and saved them. Yesterday I found a use! I didn't have enough plastic lids to go on my glass jam jars. (I wash and save the lids from mayonnaise and miracle whip jars because the lids screw right onto regular mouth mason jars perfectly!) I started covering the jam jars with aluminum foil but wasn't satisfied. Instead, I took the previously mentioned too-big butter tubs and cut a circle. Then used the plastic circle underneath a regular mason jar screw band. Now they can be stacked in the freezer!

I just like to save money and keep stuff out of the landfills if I can. Hopefully it never takes over my life.

I love technology...

Technologically, I feel like we, as a society, are quite advanced. So it irks me when things take longer to solve than I feel it should take. For instance, the BP oil spill took 70 days to cap. 70 DAYS! I scratched my head, dumbfounded, while day after day barrels and barrels of oil spewed into the ocean and a solution eluded us. Really? Someone hasn't figured this out after a day or so? Ridiculous.

However, I'm pleased when technology surprises me. My cell phone was "misplaced" around my house and Merril wasn't home to call it. So I run to my office computer and Google "can't find cell phone, call it" and up pops a website called "Where's My Cellphone?" A free service that allows cell phone users to enter a phone number, select the time to call (Now!, 30 seconds, 1 minute, etc.) and hit enter. The website says, "Your phone is ringing. RUN! Go find it!" After finding my phone and answering it, an exaggerated game-show host voice says, "Thank you for using Where's my cell phone!" and hangs up. Of course you can donate but it's not required.

So, with so many good technologically advanced tools in the world, some things just shouldn't take as long as they do.

Yeah for Easter!

We had a jam packed weekend with Easter Egg hunts, brunches, BBQs and sunshine! We went to 3 egg hunts hosted by family, wards and friends!

Bucket heads are requisite in our family.

Showing off the prizes from the hunt!


We celebrated Merril's birthday this weekend as well! He's 33.

We dyed eggs, of course.

I especially liked Maxine's starry night sky.

This morning we hunted for eggs!

We had a breakfast of hard boiled eggs and toast before dashing off to church at 9:00 a.m.

Okay 9:04 a.m. The egg hunt threw us off. I might have been able to get us there on time but I refuse to get up earlier than 6:30 a.m.

These are their Easter outfits! This is after church so the hair was already coming out and shoes had come off. I love to make a matching tie for Jack. It's so easy and I got the pattern and instructions online here! Ties are all about cutting the fabric on the diagonal and after that, it's a cinch! The dresses worked out fine. Maxine's was too big, then I took in the sides and it was too small so I ripped out the zipper and got an extra 1/2 inch and it fit perfectly. I had to sew her zipper 3 times! The first time I sewed it in backwards by mistake so the zipper handle faced the inside of the dress (woops), second time was perfect but I had to pull it to gain an extra 1/2 inch, third time wasn't as pretty as the first two but oh well, I was done. I wasn't about to pull it again and sew it a fourth time. I think I'm over my fear of sewing zippers now. :)

Happy Easter!

Yeah Kites!

We went to a local kite festival that rewards children for reading and Maxine earned a free kite. A few days ago, it was perfectly windy and we tried out our kites.

Juliet's kite was caught in a tree for a minute but rescued.

Jack's kite ripped a little in the wind and was fixed with tape.

Maxine's kite flew like a champ until it got stuck on a neighbor's roof.

It was a nice day!

School Lunch...

The other day, the little kids and I decided to have lunch with Maxine at school. Yum! Spaghetti!

Spaghetti with meat sauce, garlic cheese toast, and a veggie mix (broccoli, cauliflower and carrots), and then anything on the salad and fruit bar. Maxine opted for cold peas from the salad bar and Jack and Juliet wanted bananas. But this isn't about whether lunch was good or not. It was about how much food gets thrown away!! There were kids who only wanted noodles, no sauce, chocolate milk, no veggies and maybe some applesauce. Then they ate 2 bites and threw the rest away. Frustrating. It made me thankful that my kids eat pretty well.

Jack is my fussiest about vegetables. (He has issues with green peppers, mushrooms, and celery but will eat most everything else.) I wish there was a way to say to the lunchroom kids, "Okay, get a little of everything, try a bite or two, and if you still don't like it, don't eat it." But that's not the lunchroom workers's job. Oh well, I've still got a little while before Jack is eating at the school. He might need me to make him peanut butter and jelly everyday. :)

Is it Christmas???

Okay so it's not Christmas. But it snowed on Friday and Saturday and I was determined to keep my apricots and peaches from freezing. One website recommended putting Christmas lights on the trees because the light gives off heat. I don't know if it made a difference but my fruit didn't freeze.

The kids liked the snow. I was a little cheesed.

Here's the apricot tree with lights and a big plastic bag. Like a little greenhouse.

I might have an unhealthy obsession with my trees. The crop is going to be soooo good this year!

The King's Speech with a new rating...

I originally wanted to see the movie, "The King's Speech" until I found out it was rated R. Bummer. Don't watch those. So I figured I'd wait until it's shown on tv in a few years. While looking at movie listings, I noticed that a theatre in our town has a PG-13 version of "The King's Speech" playing!!! So I googled it and producers of the movie decided to release a tamer version (less swearing) in order to draw in more families. Personally I'm thrilled and will try and see it soon!

Working on Easter...

I wanted to make cute skirts for my girls for Easter. I had the idea in my head and was very excited about it. Then I told Maxine and Juliet and Maxine informed me that she required a dress. I came up with a dress with straps that I liked and pictured her wearing a shirt underneath. She informed me again that she didn't want a shirt underneath, she wanted a dress with sleeves. *sigh* A little irked, we went to the fabric store and argued for an hour about fabric selections. Maxine kept picking blue, old lady floral prints and Juliet kept picking purple retro prints. Jack kept picking out camo. A fabric was finally agreed upon, thread was purchased and I ran from the store with my 3 kids.

That was 3 weeks ago. Yesterday, I decided to start Juliet's dress. I finished it this morning. I even sewed the best zipper I've ever done. (That's not saying much, I've only done 4 in my whole life because they scare me. But this one was GREAT!)

I have visions of corkscrew bows in the colors of the dots: dark pink, royal blue, light blue, green and orange. Maybe not all the colors but a couple of them. Maxine's dress will match except the skirt will be royal blue and Jack will have a tie or vest, depending on how much fabric is leftover. The ribbon by the hem was the hardest part because the hem curves and the ribbon is straight. But I'm satisfied with how it turned out. Yeah! One down.