Saturday, August 22, 2009

Family Reunion

We headed to our family reunion out at Hidden Canyon Ranch earlier this month. I had finally talked Jeff into coming, but obviously he couldn't make it. Uncle Adam and Uncle Byron took the boys fishing and Byron took the Aidan 4 wheeling. This was Harry's first time reeling in.

Adam caught a fish for Aidan but Aidan got to reel it in. He was so excited the whole time! I wish I could touch fish without gagging because I would love to take him again. Harry was a little excited and tried to steal the pole.

Bob being a Bob. Aidan and Noah kept sucking the jello cups to their faces. When the cups would fall they would have jello bits all over their faces.

Harry loved camping too. He felt like such a big boy. Check out those rockin' shoes!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Lemonade out of lemons...

Been a stressful few weeks and this morning was any different. So when we came home from taking Jeff to work, there was a big truck in front of our house leaving us nowhere to park except across the street. I was irritated, but the boys were so excited about the truck being in front of THEIR house they could hardly contain themselves. Aidan wanted a picture of the truck so I tried to be kind to all those around me and took this cute picture of the boys.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

I am Optimus Prime


If you didn't want to go to the Ranch - you could have just told me!

Sunday night, Jeff and I were cleaning up and got in a good groove getting the kitchen cleaned and the cupboards organized. Aidan's room was burning up so Jeff had gone downstairs to get a fan. I heard a bump and Jeff started yelling "I broke my leg!" I wasn't going to freak out until I saw what had actually happened. His knee just didn't look right. Now let me tell you a little something about our basement. Our house was built in 1930 when people were 5'2 and 112 lbs. Our stairway to our unfinished basement and laundry room is about 2 1/2 ft wide, an overhang you have to duck under and the wooden stairs are extremely steep. I knew I wasn't going to be able to get Jeff out of there and he couldn't even straighten his leg. I had to call 911 for any help with him. 5 minutes later the firemen were there. 2 minutes after that the EMTs got here. There were 7 grown men, 6 of them could actually stand up on their own and 2 of them had to sit on the stairs just to see what was going on. I was out of the situation so I did what my family does in a situation like this because this isn't new - minus the 911 call. I took pictures, called my sister and laughed. Really?! It just figured - sometimes you have to just laugh or you're going to fall apart and cry. Amanda helped me pass the time and the neighbors laughed while I took pictures of the firetruck and ambulance.

Here is the firetruck at the side of the house. The lights obviously brought out the neighbors at 11pm. Usually in our part of town if you see this kind of stuff going on you assume someone has beat their husband or wife or someone's boyfriend is causing trouble.

Here is Jeff in the basement with some of the guys. Our basement has since been cleaned and will remain that way. I'm too paranoid now. The 2 stairs you see behind Jeff are the stairs he slipped down. There was a jacket on them and he stepped on his left leg to catch himself and his leg just fell under him.

After our trip to the ER we found out something was wrong with his kneecap. We all got home at 3:30 am (thank you Flatlands for watching the boys!) and finally got some sleep. 1 MRI and a visit to the surgeon later, we found out that he had a bone spur on his kneecap that could have caused it to weaken the tendons. He tor his kneecap off his patellar tendon and after the surgery on Tuesday morning the surgeon said he had "shredded" his tendon and pulled it a little off his tibia. He will be in a straight leg brace for 4.5 weeks and a hinged brace after that.

Good times ahead! Thankfully Jeff has amazing parents and Judi has been here since Wednesday. She leaves next Wednesay and while the boys and I are down at the family reunion, Chet will be here to help Jeff out. I really don't know what I would do without them.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009


This is a Bob. This is a Bob on popsicles. Jeff bought these new swimsuit/floaty things the other day for the boys to wear to Lava. Aidan wore his almost all day yesterday. So cute! I think he finally feels semi-ok with going in the pool now.

You can see the guy climbing the tree in the background. Aidan was sitting on the counter to watch him better since I wouldn't let him go outside to watch.







This is what we spent our afternoon doing. :) We hired someone to cut down our 2 dead trees. We had powerlines running through the tangled branches of one of them. I was teasing my friend yesterday, telling her that we had a guy climbing our trees like a vampire! Then I found out his name was Kellan! For you non-Twilight fans out there, one of the vampires - Emmett - his real name is Kellan. Just thought it was funny.

Monday, July 6, 2009

EARWIGS!

I have lived with cockroaches extra large and small. I have had a mice scurrying in the kitchen when we lived on the farm. I have disected frogs and worms and had spiders crawl across my face. But nothing - I repeat NOTHING is more slimy, disgusting, horrifying or nauseating to me than earwigs! And we have tons of them here! For the last 3 summers we have had them everywhere in our yard and even some brave ones that decide to go to the basement. Well, I decided to do a little research on these wretched insects. I learned that they don't nest inside - this is very good. I also found a natural way to kill them which I am happy to do.

We put an empty tuna can (we didn't rinse it) with olive oil and bacon grease behind our bbq near our laundry room window. I had forgotten about it. We just put it out last night. Well Jeff came running in the house all out of breath, grinning from ear to ear and nearly prancing like a little girl because he was so excited. He took me outside to show me and I thought I was going to throw up! There were probably 100 or more in that little can! It was completely full! As I type this, Jeff is on his way to the store for more olive oil and bacon. I'm sacrificing full cans of tuna to the neighborhood cats tonight as well.

So - if you have earwigs - do it! It seriously works. I'm just so happy that so many are gone now that I had to blog. How sad is that? BUT I didn't put a picture up with this post because if any of you feel the same way about those things as I do - you would never look at my blog again.

Happy earwig hunting!

A little experiment...

Peff - get ready - because you are fully involved in this one!

Those of you who really know me know that I LOVE the old shows like Dick Van Dyke, I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver...you get the idea. One of the things that fascinates me about them is how perfect the wives and therefore the children are. Now I know there is no such thing as a perfect wife or mother - but I want to try. I have been wondering though - did they have it right? There is a book called Fascinating Womanhood by Helen Andelin that makes some points for moms back then. I'm going to try it out and see if it really does make a difference or if it just leaves me feeling like a slave and unsatisfied.

I've started a blog so I can have somewhere to put my results, thoughts, feelings. If you want to follow me - that would be great. Its always nice to know that I'm not talking to myself. Please leave comments and ideas too. And if you're a femminst - lol may as well not even look.

www.momofthe50s.blogspot.com