Birthday boy

Yesterday was a certain boy’s birthday. He started the day with waffles before he went to a holiday show with jugglers, acrobats and trained pigs. After lunch we had birthday singing, presents, cake and ice cream.

Moo had the first taste of the Lightening McQueen cake

After cake and ice cream we went to the village market for a free horse-and-carriage ride and then back home for resting time.

We had dinner at Texas Roadhouse, where he had his favorite, a hamburger. Then we all gave him a big birthday ‘yee-haw.’

Catching up

OK. So it has been a while since I've posted. Just to bring you up to speed, here's a little sample of the latest, such as it is.

We got our Christmas lights up before the weather got miserably cold. We even managed to wrap lights on a couple of trees. This was the learning year for that and boy did we learn a lot. But they look OK and all the lights work. If I get a picture of the yard, I will post it later.

Our garden had a pretty good year, but we were ready to end the season. We picked the last of our snap peas about a week before Thanksgiving. There is still lettuce under a row cover, but I haven't checked it lately to see if it is still alive.

Our youngest chickadee has returned to the nest for a while.

Correction

OK. I made a little error in the previous post and now I have corrected it. So if it didn't make sense to you before, read it again. If you hadn't read it before, just take it as it is now.

Thank You

I listened to an interesting presentation about actual vs. perceived value today. Here are two thoughts gleaned from the video.

“We have plenty of opportunities for impulsive spending, but none for impulsive saving.”

“We need more appreciation for the things we already have.”


click here for 16 minutes of fascinating, thought-provoking and very funny observations. (You can always click “pause” if your free time doesn’t come in 16 minute chunks.)

Handy (wo)man

In the interest of providing a post for all you blog-deprived readers, I submit this trivial episode from today.

This morning, at about 10:30, when I went to the curb to bring in our green waste can, I noticed that quite a bit of water was running along the gutter and into the storm drain by our house. Being a bit of a don't-waste-water stickler, I looked up and down the street to see what was going on. Several houses up the street the sprinklers were running.

Later (at noon), that neighbor happened to come by my house and commented that her sprinklers had been running since six in the morning and she couldn't get them to shut off. She had phoned her husband, who told her to "push the red button twice," but that hadn't solved the problem. I suggested she push the red button and wait several seconds before pushing it again. When she got back to my house, the sprinklers were still running.

After we finished what we were doing (nearly 2:00 p.m.), I went over to her house with her and looked at her timer/controller. The display said "OFF." And, amazingly, I knew what was wrong! Most of you would know what was wrong, too, but I usually depend on my own personal sprinkler man to solve any technical problems with our irrigation. Somehow, I must have overheard enough manly sprinkler talk to deduce that if the controller was off but some sprinklers were running, there must be a valve stuck open. Mumbling random phrases about solenoids, grit, cracks and debris, we went in search of the valve box.

After searching the entire yard without finding the valve box, we gave up and called for help- "Honey, where is the valve box?" And then my little Scottish friend and I, with some dashing through the sprinklers and climbing behind bushes, uncovered a valve box (buried under a layer of mulch), pried it open with an assortment of screwdrivers (it didn't want to open because chunks of mulch were jammed around the lid), found the right valve submerged in several inches of murky water (yuck! I told myself that all the spiders that were in there had probably drowned) and turned it off.

Of course, I have no idea whether I broke the valve, or made things worse, or what. But at least my neighbor's soggy, boggy lawn is drying out.

The valve will have to be a job for her own personal sprinkler man.

Tally-ho!

Today I went to a lesson with one of the boys. (I was going to refer to him as 'J', but we have three Js. I guess we could call them Big J, Middle J and Little J. Big J was the pupil today.)

Big J is taking riding lessons and he is quite the horseman. He had missed about 6 weeks of lessons because of his trip to Japan, but he still remembered everything he was supposed to do.

With a saddle


Uncinching the saddle (look closely, those are his legs by the front legs of the horse)


Bareback


The final dismount

The little rat that could

As mentioned before, we have a little house guest- NoDoze the rat. She doesn’t live in the best of circumstances because the only place we can keep her is in a small cage at the far end of the kitchen counter.



Since her cage is small, we have to give her other opportunities to get some exercise. One way she gets exercise is by spending time rolling around the house in a large plastic exercise ball. Sometimes she'll explore and other times she will follow us around. She loves company and attention. Twice now, she has surprised us during exercise time.

The first time was a few weeks ago when she had been rolling around for a while and it was time to put her away. I went looking for her and this is what I found:

Exercise ball open, no rat in sight!

Fortunately, as I turned around to look for her, she poked her nose around a corner and waited for me to pick her up.

Saturday, she was having exercise time again while O and I were working in the garage. She has a hard time getting the ball to go over ridges and bumps so we don’t worry about her getting over the thresholds and out the doors. We had the door to the garage open because we were going in and out a lot. Suddenly we heard a clatter at the bottom of the garage steps. Somehow she got her exercise ball over the (rather tall) threshold and must have overshot the steps because she landed at the bottom of the steps without rolling down them. She didn’t seem worse for the wear. All we can figure is that she must have had the smarts to know she needed a running start. Too smart for her own good, I guess.

A fun visit

We had extra company on the Fourth of July: relatives from my side of the family.
What fun!

Goodbye, old friend

I mentioned the tragedy that struck our willow tree in April. It’s been a great tree, providing welcome afternoon shade on our driveway. We been trying to find time to remove the tree, and finally the weather and many peoples schedules came together.

Going . .
Going . . .





But not really gone.

Is that Jesus?

The little guy spent the day with grandma a few times this spring. Once, we went to Uncle D and Aunt K’s garden to take care of a few things. The fence between the garden and the yard next door is a short chain link fence, so you can see the other yard really well. Uncle D’s neighbor was on his back porch, off and on, sitting in a chair or standing and smoking. His thin brown hair was pulled back and tied behind his neck and I think he may have had a slight beard. He was thin and seemed weak. He was wearing a simple, thin, mid-calf length robe and slippers. A couple of times he walked to a shed at the back of the property, and Little J watched him with interest each time the man was outside. Then, while the man was walking to the back of his yard again, little J turned to me and asked, “Is that Jesus?”

Cute, humorous and thought provoking. Here are a few of my thoughts.

First, J is two, but he has a mental image of what Jesus looks like. And he thinks it’s no big deal to see Jesus walking around in the yard next door. Second, why do so many artists portray the Savior as emaciated or feeble? Third, why is my first reaction to chuckle to myself when J asked the question? I mean, aside from the cigarette, why couldn’t it be Jesus? That’s probably the attitude that caused problems for people during Christ’s ministry.

Maybe, when I’m irritated with someone, or feeling superior or judgmental or whatever, I should ask myself, “Is that Jesus?”

Junior Gardener

JJ is learning to be a great little garden helper. He developed a passion for picking strawberries last year, and still loves to check the berry each time he comes over.




One day in early June, he helped me pick sugar snap peas and strawberries.

The annual barbecue

We hosted our annual Memorial Day barbecue and had a nice time. Good food, good weather and good company.

Three days with the boys

There was a special day in late May. In the morning, we attended a special presentation of music and readers’ theater. In the afternoon we went to the graduation ceremony for a special group of pre-schoolers.




We also got to enjoy two days of soccer with our biggest boys before they went to Japan. Talk about tough on the field.

Give us this day our daily salad

Before we started our road trip I told my neighbors that they could come over to our garden and help themselves to our lettuce. I figured the weather would warm up and the lettuce would get too mature and bitter while we were gone. So I figured someone should use it up while it was still good.

When we got home, it didn’t look like anyone had taken any lettuce (it turned out they had once, but you couldn’t tell). And the weather never got warm while we were gone so the lettuce grew and grew, but didn’t get bitter.





So we ate our way through it, one tasty salad at a time.

What a difference 19 days make

When we left on our trip across the country, there wasn’t much happening in our yard. Some of the trees were leafing out, the grass was starting to green up, some of our shrubs and other plants were getting buds.

I went out into the yard the morning after we got home and look what I found!

In case you missed it

Some of you have heard about the destructive snowstorm we had on April 15th. Trees that were in bloom or already leafing-out held on to so much snow that they were damaged. Lots of broken limbs, split trees and tipped trees. I didn’t have time to write anything about it then, but if you weren’t here to see what happened, here are a few pictures.


Looking east from our front porch


Looking northwest from our porch



The willow that shaded our driveway. It was too badly damaged to leave in place. We will have to remove it and plant a new tree.


Loading up what broke away. It is early evening and most of the snow has melted.



A few other trees in our neighborhood

Road trip- day nineteen

We slept in today. After breakfast we went to the Sierra Trading Post outlet store and browsed for a while. We each got a few things and then we got back on I-80 and headed for home. Once again, we saw lots of antelope and lots of grazing land, but almost no farming land because Wyoming is dry and hilly and rugged. We arrived home safe and sound in the early evening.

Two people, 3413.1 miles and 11 pounds. Overall, a very good road trip.

Road trip- day eighteen

Today we went to the Winter Quarter’s temple in the morning. It is one of the small temples but it is built into a hillside so there are two stories. This temple has beautiful stained-glass windows.



After the temple, we changed our clothes as the Winter Quarter’s visitor’s Center and hit the road again.

Nebraska has some of the flattest landscape that I have ever seen! The only thing that blocked our view of the horizon was the trees that grew along the rivers and streams.

It was very, very windy for most of our drive through Nebraska and into Wyoming. The car would bounce around in the wind sometimes and our average MPG dropped from 27 to about 20 because of the wind. Every time we passed a big truck we could feel the car speed up a little while we were in its ‘wind shadow’ and then slow back down again once we finished passing the truck. The wind wasn’t so bad by the time we got to Cheyenne and we stopped there for the night.

Road trip- day seventeen

We started home today. On our way out of town, we drove through Sheboygan Falls to look at the upper and lower falls on the Sheboygan River. Pretty, but not tall falls like we have in the west. They are more like rally big riffles and short drop-offs. After a quick look at the falls we took the back roads through farm country until we reached the freeway.

Once again we saw lots of planting going on. In the fall there will be lots of corn to harvest. Another thing that the farmers in Wisconsin and Nebraska harvest is the wind.

There were lots of farms with windmills on them. Sometimes you would see a factory or warehouse with its own windmill.


When we stopped for the night in Omaha, we went to the pioneer cemetery by the temple to take pictures of a sculpture. The sculpture is a couple standing over the open grave of their child. Behind them the roots of grief reach up for them.


The sculpture sits over the graves of an unidentified child and several other pioneers.


Wherever there was a marked grave, the paving around the sculpture was placed around it.