The Joke's On Me. And Osmosis Genetics.

Well, it finally happened.  Sleet is slushing from the sky.  A wonderful combination of snow and rain.
Not that I actually enjoy it, but sometimes it's nice when a storm blows through. 

This, of course, affects The Man and his ability to work outside.

So he gets to play stay-at-home dad today.  Which includes making sure the kids are dressed (I have a feeling that matching will be optional today), making sure that chores get done, and then he gets to haul all six to the dentist.

This, of course, makes me giggle inside.

Have you ever sat in a dentist's waiting room while you wait for six kids to cycle through cleanings with one dentist?

I hope he has a good book.

Which I know he doesn't so I giggle a little more.

But truthfully I think the joke's on me. 

If The Man is staying home and shuffling The Circus to the dentist then he needs the Navi. 

That leaves me with... the monster truck.

Seriously guys.

The hood of this monster truck is as tall as the regular truck in front of me.

And the drive-thru window at McD's?

(Curse you McDonald's Coke for sucking me in!)

(Why is McDonald's not endorsing all of my plugs with free cokes?)

They had to reach up to me.

Actually, I got a peppermint hot chocolate this morning.

 

It's the simple things in life.

 

Speaking of the simple things in life.

 

Brynn, October 2002, 1 year old

Brynn, Christmas night, December 25, 2003, 2 years old

 Seriously, I love this crying picture of Brynn.  She just did not want Christmas to end.

Brynn's biker bum, January 2004, 2 years old

 When we lived on the farm, and it was snowy and cold and winter time, and I only had two kids old enough to ride a bike (with training wheels of course) I let them ride inside the farm house.

Baby T-Bug, October 2004, 1 year old

She gets her chocolate brown eyes from Grandpa Dick.

 

We like to say this because it's impossible.  Grandpa Dick is my step-dad so there are no physical genetics crossing over here.  But still, sometimes you have to wonder if things like this happen by osmosis? Because even though my ex has brown eyes, his are more like root beer float than like chocolate.

 

It's the same as how I get my allergies from Grandpa Dick.

 

I don't question it.

Memory Lane: Quincy and the Halloween Dessert

Once upon a time I put granola in my breakfast bowl and went to the fridge for milk, only to find that there wasn't any.
So I grabbed a V-8 and headed to work.
On my way home from work I stopped at the grocery store and picked up breadsticks and sour cream for dinner that night and headed home.
The next morning I put granola in my breakfast bowl and went to the fridge for milk, only to find that there still wasn't any.
So I grabbed a V-8 and headed to work.
On my way home from work I stopped at the grocery store and picked up some fresh tomatoes and a jar of pickle stackers for dinner that night and headed home.

When I got home I realized what I'd done.  Again.

Don't worry, the kids got things like pancakes for breakfast. 

But last night, when I got home and realized that, for the second day in a row, I'd stopped at the store and not bought milk, we rounded up and went to Target for odds and ends as a family... and I finally got milk.

Today I decided that I needed to go through that giant binder that has sorted, un-scrapbooked pictures in it and start posting my old fall/Halloween pictures.

The first one I came across is pretty lame, but I didn't have too much time to rummage through the binder since, as always, I'd left this to last minute and I needed to splitsville to work.

So today you get this:

I look so little.

And I'm thinking my cake skills have come along a bit since then...

Any guesses on how old I was in this picture???

This was October of 2002, I was 23 years old, and about 3 months (?) pregnant with my third child.  I was living in Quincy, Washington on the Hodges farm and I remember having this picture taken.  I'm pretty sure I made this dessert for a dinner that we'd invited people over for?  We were always inviting people over for Sunday dinner, and hands down, this picture was taken on a Sunday because I still have that skirt, and believe me, I only wear skirts on Sunday.

I used to be such a social person, but it seems I'm not so much any more. 

Perhaps I'll make that a resolution.  We need to start inviting people over more.  Game night?  Dessert night?  Plain ol' come eat dinner with us night.  I just wonder if anyone would want to :).

I remember being pretty dang pleased with that there dessert, as you can see by the humongous smile on my face. And the fact that I had a picture of it taken, because frankly, there aren't a lot of pictures with me in them from back then.

Alrighty then... who's coming over on Saturday ;).

Memory Lane: 2004 Quincy, Washington

I have a bunch of pictures from a long time ago that never got put into a scrapbook. 

You know, that hobby I used to have before I discovered blogging.

I don't want to lose these pictures so I'm going to start throwing them up here on the blog.  And I'll try to remember as well as I can stories or details that go with them. 

Just more that I want to keep recorded for my family.

I have the pictures sorted in sheet protectors, grouped into the pages that I wanted to create for my scrapbooks, so I just randomly grabbed a sheet protector out of the pile.  I found it fitting as it takes us back to Quincy (which I just wrote about a little bit here) so it's fun to be able to add some of my own pictures for that place. 

Not that these are great pictures or anything, they hardly do the countryside or farmland justice, but it shows our life there a little bit.

Let's go back to the year 2004.

Cas was 4, Brynn was 3, and Tay was a baby.  I think I took this picture because of how Brynn is swinging.  She refused to do it any other way for quite a long time.  That girl has always had her ideas on how she wants things and isn't about to sway from what she wants easily.  She'd push off the ground with her legs, pull them up, and just coast a long on her stomach until she needed to push off again.

The yard on the other side of the fence belong to my brother and sister-in-law (at the time) and the house in the background belonged to my brother-in-law's parents, who owned the farm.  These were my only neighbors and I loved them dearly.  It was nice to have them around when I got really lonely.

This was the time in my life when my girls wore pink cowboy hats with camo shirts, carhart pants, and waffle stompers. 

I'll be completely honest and say that I don't miss camo.

At all.

This picture was taken on the timer.  I have Tay in my stroller, Cas and Brynn have their baby dolls.  We're trekking out of the house to the mailbox.  It was about a 15 minute walk from our house down the "drive" to the mailbox which sat on the main road.  The main road was paved but nothing on the farm we lived on was. 

I actually didn't mind it. In this picture you can see all the old farm equipment laying around in pieces, but really, this was only a small part of the farm.  Our yard (as somewhat seen in the first pic) was full of green grass and was perfect for growing kids to run around on.  I've never had much of a green thumb, I kill every plant I've ever tried to keep, but this was farm country.  I was obsessed with ridding my grass of dandelions which resulted in the greenest, softest grass I've ever had in a yard.  I tried my hand at tomato plants and was harvesting them by the bushel.  I've not been able to grow a tomato since.

We ate eggs every day, collected from our own chickens.

I don't miss chickens. 

They stink.

Badly.

The one time we butchered a chicken I found I couldn't eat it.  It stayed in the freezer until I finally threw it out with freezer burn.

I'm better off thinking of my meat coming from the freezer section than from my yard.

A thought for today.  I saw it posted on facebook and loved it.  How true it is.

country lessons and city life

I'm a city girl.

Hands down without a doubt.

I've lived in the country so I can say that.  Truly.

Meet Quincy, Washington.

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Obviously this isn't the whole town, but this is a good representation of what it was like to live there. 

Farm Country.

Farm country as in, when it's school spirit day at the High School, and the school colors are green and yellow, everyone drives their John Deere tractors to school. Seriously.  It was pretty cool actually.

Farm country, where 4-H is bigger than FBLA.

Farm country, where you give directions by saying "turn at the first light" or "turn at the second light", because there were only two intersections with lights in the town. 

Where directions also included, "turn off the paved road {you might be a redneck if #63}, take a left at the first barn, and it's the second house with a white fence."

Farm country, where it's impossible to stay clean from the knee down because nothing off the main roads is paved.

Farm country, where the nearest... anything, was an hour away.

Farm country, where the people are there for each other because they know and understand each other.

Farm country, where the produce is fresh and the best you've ever had.  I will throw my opinion in and say that Washington potatoes are better than Idaho potatoes.

Farm country, where, even though I can now say with out a doubt that I am a city girl, I'm glad I got to spend some time with it.  Talk about finding your roots among home grown people.

I think of my time in Quincy with a smile on my face.  The stars were bright and I learned that there is nothing sweeter than the smell of rain mixing with the scent of onions growing in a field. I know when the alfalfa needs cutting by the onslaught of sneezing.  Also, I'm not afraid to admit how much I love a good mud bogging competition.  How grateful I am that my kids learned what it is to eat cherries right off the tree (don't strip the branches when you pick them though) and strawberries right from the patch.

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Some of my favorite people still live in Quincy, and I will never forget them or the life lessons I learned from them.

I remember driving home to Salt Lake, arriving in the valley in the dark of night, when Casidee (only five years old) gasped, "Mom! Look at all those lights!"
"That's the city, Cas."
And every time we drove past lights she would exclaim, "there's more city! And more over there! Look at all of this city!"

My heart ached at that.  I think that was the first indication for me that even though I loved the country, I missed the city more. I was sad that my girls didn't know city life.

From Quincy I moved to Vernal, Utah. 

It wasn't farm country.  But it was still country.

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The roads and most of the driveways were paved.  You could still see neighbors despite the fields (unlike Quincy where the fields were too vast).  And Vernal has a Wal-mart (sad, I know).  That means not having to drive an hour for errands.

When I first moved to Vernal I lived in a mobile home while waiting for the rental to become available (thankfully it was only a month).

That was an experience.  There were hay bales around the base of the home for "insulation". The shower handles didn't work.  There was a hole in the wall in the hallway outside of the bathroom that exposed the shower pipes.  There were handles put on these pipes and you would have to run back and forth from the shower where the water was flowing to the hallway where you could adjust the temp of the water.  If the water changed while you were in the shower you had to yell for someone out in the hallway to help you adjust it.

I'm not kidding.

But once again I found that some of my favorite people lived in Vernal. I love them still.

Vernal is the most beautiful place I have ever lived.

Vernal has strong unity, amazing parades, and no rush hour traffic.

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Between Quincy and Vernal I spent six years of my life with no rush hour.  That part was bliss.

But there's something about living in the city.

I was downtown yesterday for a training and took this picture.

The old architecture just swallows me up.  I love being surrounded by it. 

I love the tall buildings and the diversity.

I went to lunch in an Italian bistro that had exposed heat ducts and was packed to the brim with people in business suits, people in jeans and sandals and dread locks, and two elderly gentlemen in sweaters.

It was nestled in next to a fresh seafood market.

There was a city park full of green grass and trees.  An island against all the cement.  It was the perfect balance.  In the summer this park homes a giant Farmer's Market every Saturday where you can buy fresh locally grown produce, and wares from local vendors.

I love the personality of cities.

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I saw the Petunia the Pig statue, a group of kids eating sack lunches in a courtyard during a field trip, and a small cafe selling waffles and fries with tables to eat at on the sidewalk under an awning.

And all of this was within a five minute walk.

I ate lunch with five people I've never met before, who were a part of the training with me.  They all knew each other, but were so welcoming to me, talking to me, asking me questions, making me feel welcome and included.  Home grown people live in the city too.

And the city is where I want to be.  Even with the rush hour.