Photo a Day: Somewhere You Went

Monday afternoon was HOT. I don't know if I've ever said that about an Idaho spring before. So I called Pete and suggested we get some KFC and have a picnic at the park for Family Home Evening.

But Monday evening was a little windy, and started to get overcast quickly. We stuck with our plan and got some food and went to the park. After eating, my kids just played and played and played. It got windier, and colder, and even rained on us a bit. But my kids didn't seem to mind. They continued to play in the dirt/mud, slid down the slides and got wet butts, and ran up and down the steep hill in that park.

Not pictured: Brock, because he and Pete left to get some ice cream. Which we still haven't eaten. For some reason I always forget about having ice cream in our freezer.

Photo a Day: 1 p.m.

Today at 1 p.m. was like most of my days at 1 p.m.

Ivy was still eating lunch. Sometimes my kids take 2 seconds eating lunch; sometimes it's more like 2 hours.

I was getting sleepy, because that's what my body does at that time.

And Troy was doing homework, namely, reading to me.

Troy is really good about working on his homework after kindergarten. I am soooo glad that I decided to have him in morning kindergarten this year. He's a morning person anyway. But because he's home for a couple of hours before the other two get home, I can spend some one-on-one time with him, helping him through some of his homework packet that he gets each week. (Some he can do on his own, some he needs help with.)

Lately he's also been getting little books from school as well. He reads each one three times, and we rate how he did with it (was it easy, just right, or hard). He's done pretty well with those, too. Although one of the books today had the word "why" right after the word "happy". I always feel like a traitor having to explain all the exceptions to the English language to my little budding readers, like how one word ending in -y says a hard "E", while the other word ending in -y says a hard "I". What's up with that? So he kept saying "wheee" instead of "why" the first couple of times.

I think it will be so weird when he's in school all day next fall. And then my 1 p.m. will consist of only this one and me:

She's sad because, heaven forbid, I made her sit and finish her lunch that she had been working on for over an hour.

Photo a Day: Inside your Wallet

I once heard you can tell a lot about a person by looking in their wallet, or their garbage can. I really don't know if either of those are true. But here's my wallet:

Pretty empty. Minimalist? Boring? Plain? No personality? Hmmmm.

On the left, my checkbook. Also on the left, in a little side flap, are pics of my kids. In the middle, the change holder (it currently has 26 cents in it), and cards: temple recommend, health insurance cards, my library card. On the right, my license and debit card.

Every once in a while, there's actual cash in there. But it's usually 5s or 1s for kids' allowances. (Which, they don't get paid unless they do their chores. So I don't know if that's called an allowance or a payday.)

I also used to have a credit card, until I realized that having that in there made me spend more money than I should. So now I don't even carry it so I'm not tempted.

And, I'm still old school in the fact that I still write everything down in my check register, including debit usage and auto drafts (even though it's all on my bank account online, which I check every few days). And I have to know where I'm at to the penny (I've tried rounding, it doesn't work for me).

My wallet sits in my purse, which is equally empty. Sometimes there are receipts in my purse-until I get them written in my register, that is. I also have two pens, lip balm, hand sanitizer, keys, and breath mints.

Yeah, I'm going to go with minimalist, to make myself feel better.

Photo a Day: Last Thing You Bought

(Technically, the last thing I bought was pizza on Saturday night, because I was still getting over the awesome stomach bug that Pete passed to me. But this is the thing I got the picture of, so this is what you get to hear about. And it's the second to last thing I bought, so that's close enough, right?)

Pete recently got put in Young Men's as the 1st counselor. They were having a 50s night, and had to dress up. So Pete rolled up the bottom of his jeans, and I got this shirt for him. It just reminded me of the 50s for some reason; I don't know if it was really the 50s style or not, but whatever. We tried to slick his hair back, but his hair kind of has a mind of its own. I should have gotten the really thick black-rimmed glasses, but thought about it too late.

Photo a Day: Flower/Something that Makes You Sad

No, flowers do not make me sad. Let me 'splain.

I love my tulips. Love them love them. They are my first flowers to bloom in the spring. (Actually, they are my only flowers that bloom at the moment. I've had others before, but none that have done as well as my tulips.)

They are my first sign that the long, long Idaho winter is finally melting away. They are so beautiful.

What makes me sad is they are only a spring flower. I would love if they lasted all spring and summer. And I know that's why I need to get other later-blooming flowers. But like I said, whenever I've gotten summer bloomers they've never actually done all that well in the "bloom" or "grow" department.

I do better with bushes. Really hardy, impossible-to-kill bushes.

Photo a Day: Feet

Here's my Ivy, in my Ugg boots. A button had fallen off of one of them forever ago, and Monday I was feeling all ambitious and sewed the button back on, along with a few other small mending/sewing projects.

Ivy fished out the matching boot from my closet, and said, "Look Mom! I'm Puss in Boots!" But then she got all embarrassed when I went to take her picture.

Photo a Day: Kitchen Sink/Window

I tried to take an all-inclusive picture, of my sink and looking out the window, but I couldn't get it to look right (it was too bright outside). So you get two pictures, with a bonus key code thing so you know what you're looking at! YAHOO!!

These pictures are very typical. Sometimes there are more dishes waiting to the right to be rinsed. This pictures was taken on a good day.

A) I have a total of one live plant sitting by my sink. I do not have more plants in my house, because I know I would absolutely forget I have them and they would die from lack of water. Even with the plant sitting right there, I forget to water it most of the time. Thank goodness this plant is forgiving. It was a gift a year ago from the stake roadshow committee; it's called an angel something-or-other. It replaced the other plant I had in there that was shriveling up at the time.

B) The rinsed dishes go on the left, which is weird because my dishwasher is on the right. But when I have backed-up dishes that haven't been rinsed, the longer counter (on the right) holds those dishes; there's not enough room for my laziness on the left side.

C) The to-be-rinsed dishes, or, the soaking dishes. Pictured above is my crock pot, which I use at least once a week if not more. I love crock pot meals.

D) One of Brock's birthday gifts. (Which maybe I should blog about that someday, eh?) He asked for a Venus fly trap. We planted it in this cute pot. I had high hopes for it. But unlike me (the under-waterer), Brock basically drowned it to death. It shriveled up and died. Poor thing. I have not moved the pot, because one of these days I'm going to learn how to really take care of a Venus fly trap, and we will get a new one and hopefully not water it to literal death.

E) Our many, many medicines that we've had to take in the last month-and-a-half. The kids all got this weird fever sickness, that really didn't have any other symptoms except for the fever that always hovered around 102 for about four days. And then it went away. I had sinus infections (plural), and Pete this last week had a stomach bug or something that lasted for about 4 days (but no fever). It's been super fun.

My kitchen window looks out to my backyard. My huge, empty backyard.

A) You can't see it really well in this picture, but figure A is above our trampoline frame. During the winters I didn't take the cover down. So then last summer, the cover rotted through by the rings, and broke. We need to buy a new cover, although I would love to get a bigger trampoline instead-the one we have is smaller, and shorter, which was nice when the kids were smaller and shorter. But now, a bigger one would be fun. So, maybe this summer.

B) One of our spindly little trees. We actually have quite a few trees planted in our backyard. The thing is, we've only lived here about 6 1/2 years, and a lot of our trees are only a couple of years old at the most. I checked, and they all made it through the winter, so that's good.

C) Our ghetto swing set. The kids love it, but it is totally falling apart. The swing chains have plastic covers on them that have rotted off and are falling down. The rungs leading to the little slide have broken through the screws multiple times, and then I've duct taped them in place, and then they have slid down the outer rails. So they are all crooked and jacked up. My kids don't care. But still, I should do something about it, right?

D) Again, you can't see it very well, but we have a row of trees along our back fence. To give you an idea of how deep our backyard is, though, that pine tree back there (which is a good 10 or 15 feet from the back fence) is taller than I am. When I bought it, it maybe came to my waist. So it is growing. And not that being taller than me is a huge feat, but in the picture it looks like it's about 3 feet tall.

So there you go. Kitchen sink and kitchen window.