Tah-dah!

Ok, here's the playset! Finally finished about a month ago. It only took us about a week to build it, chipping away at it a little every day. It took us forever to actually get started! :) But the kids love it and I'm happy they have something to do in the back yard. I decided to try the straight slide because I saw T go down it once and thought, what the heck. It was a little snug on the hips and looked much taller from the top. When I slid down, I hit the hump in the middle and bounced! Only a couple inches, but the bad part about that when I came back down, I hit the sides of my butt on the sides on the slide before finishing my descent! Ouch! I actually ended up with visible bruises on my hips!! Note to self: Fun for kids, painful for me! I told T he should have warned me! :) I haven't gone down the tube slide yet because we didn't put in enough support to hold a full sized adult yet. T says I'm going to get stuck. I'm sure I've been down skinnier slides, but I will have 2 adults present when I try it, just in case! :)

In an effort to be more on top of things (a life-long pursuit, I'm sure), I'm posting. I've been working on my garden and yard lately. It's been sooooo nice and nothing motivates me more than sunshine!! The problem with gardening is that I'm so bad at it. The whole thing is like learning a foreign language to me. Needless to say, I'm not a very quick study. :( I've always killed plants, usually by under watering. What can I say, I forget. It's usually a long, slow, torturous death fro the plant. I bring it to the brink of death only to revive it. I repeat this cycle until it finally croaks. As for the yard, I think the condition of our soil is less than even mediocre. I planted some bulbs 3 years ago and still only get one or 2 of them to bloom. I'm actually glad I've waited this long to plant major things, as I'm sure I would have killed them. I've decided I need to amend the soil anywhere I plant anything! I've taken what will be my "before" pictures of both the front and back yards. The back yard picture isn't that great because it was taken through a screen on the second story while kneeling on a table. I couldn't get the screen off but I didn't try to hard since I didn't want to go plunging through the window. All the rocks in the back yard came out of our yard!! And there's more buried. Anytime we do anything in the yard that required digging, it comes with a huge sense of dread. A 6"x 6" hole will end up 2'x 2' when you're done because you had to remove a boulder or two!



So hopefully I can get some planting done this year. I've started my garden (in the boxes at the top of the yard) and some indoors, but I think it will be another week or 2 before I transplant my seedlings. I do have some beets and carrots coming up, despite the neighborhood cats' best efforts to poop it away!! I've got some plants in the garage to go in soon; raspberries and blackberries among others. I've planted some things in my window boxes out front, but I'm still deciding on what to put around my trees.


I planted sunflowers all along the back fence. I get so excited when I see the dirt cracking to let the seedlings through. Yes, our dirt cracks. I didn't do anything to the soil where I planted them. I just didn't want the hassle. :) I wasn't sure if they would grow, but they are! At least a few of them! :) I'll put up another picture when there is something else growing.

Gone Fishing

Yesterday T took Little T fishing for the first time. He had been asking me, but I told him that really wasn't my cup of tea. Yuck! I guess T's brother, Angel, fishes a bit with his boys so they all headed out to a lake by Potholes Reservoir. Little T caught 4 large trout! Ok, large to me is about 10". My memories of fishing in the Robert Packer Hospital pond only ever yielded 3" guppies, although good times were had by all. There was an exciting day when I caught a 5" small-mouth bass. I guess that made me hard-core! :) After about an hour of fishing, they had caught almost 20 fish all together. Quite a productive day. I'm glad I missed the cleaning as well. Nea was napping so when she woke up I told her what they were doing. I explained that they went fishing and now they were taking the guts out so we could eat them. For the next hour, she would wander over to me and say she wanted to help take the guts out of the fish. They came back happy and stinking of mud. We would have eaten the fish last night for dinner, but T decided he wanted to smoke them with the neighbors. Our next door neighbors bought a smoker last summer. For a week straight, Aaron and T smoked nearly everything they could think of. We would all sit on the front lawn (because that is where the shade is) and eat dinner together while the kids ran around. I think T was pretty excited to be able to break out the smoker for the summer. I'm not as enthusiastic since I'm really not a fan of seafood in general. Sure, I've had a few tasty fish now and then, but they aren't my favorite. But I Know it is always better fresh, so hopefully they will be tasty. So here is Angel helping Little T retrieve his fish and another with his cousins, showing off the spoils of the day. Nea insisted that she wanted to go next time, so we may make another trip out there all together. But I already told T, there's no way I'm baiting any hooks! :)

Morning Breath

Dulcinea crawled into bed with me this morning. I smiled and said hi. She backed up and said, "Uh! Your a stinky mommy!" I told her it was my breath and I was sorry. I wanted her to say it again because I thought it was so cute. So I asked her if I was a stinky mommy and she said, "No! Your a good mommy!" Too sweet!

A Little Play

Ok, one of these days I'm going to get into this blogging thing. Or not... I suppose I should post. I like reading other people's blogs, so it stands to reason that there my be one or two people out there who enjoy reading mine. Mostly it just feel like talking into thin air, which I sometimes do anyway, so why not on a blog. My words will drift through cyberspace and possibly land on sympathetic ears, or eyes. Or not... :) There are a million and one things going on in my life, and nothing really at all. So much has happened this past year that it is hard to recap, so I will try and start with the present. I'm excited about our current undertaking, which is to erect a large playset in the backyard for the kids. Little T has started preschool at the Moses Lake Christian Academy, but only goes a few days a week. As the weather warms, the playset will hopefully be a source of entertainment outside of jumping on the couch. The neighbors recently got a trampoline, so that should help too. T was reluctant to get the playset in the first place. I think he was worried about how much work it would be for him rather than how fun it would be for the kids. I love what my neighbor said when I told her of his misgivings. "He's not the one home with them all day trying to find things for them to do!" Amen, Mary, amen. Although everything is still in the boxes in the garage, we did pull out the 10' slide for them to play on. T propped it against the bed of his truck and the kids can slide down it. Hopefully we don't break it before we get it all together!

We are also really looking forward to a trip to California in May to visit my sister and Grandma. We planned it around my cousin's wedding too, so we will get in a lot of visiting. After that, my older brother, Dan, is coming to visit us here in WA. I'm super excited about that too. We are going to drive down to CA, so there should be lots to see. Once there, Little T requested seeing dinosaur bones. I'm sure we can find some. I told him about the BART and how the train goes under the bay. He's excited about the train in the water. I think I should stress that he won't actually be able to see the water when we are under it. :) My uncle told me about a train ride that takes you through the redwoods, so we will probably do that as well. I bet he'll love the Golden Gate bridge. I'm pretty excited. And, of course, the beach. I'm really not a fan of the ocean. Ok, I really hate the beach. But I do like playing in the sand and I think the kids will have fun. I would say, what kid doesn't like the beach, but I never really did. I think I associate it with the many blistering sunburns of my youth. It's stinky, salty and just feels dirty. I guess that's right up most kids' alley. Nonetheless, I am still excited about the beach!

My annual post

Apparently I will only get around to posting once a year. I use Myspace.com a bit more. Lots of pics and info. Still nothing recent. Hmmm, I was thinking I should post but I don't really know what to say. Same old with me and the fam. Had Christmas with just us this year as my parents and a few of my siblings were in France for the holiday, meeting Autumn. She joined the Peace Corps this summer and has been in Cameroon, Africa. I'm really happy that they decided to go because it's her first Christmas away, and is she ever away. I try and talk to her on the phone every couple of weeks. Dan moved to Fairbanks, Alaska in Oct and is managing a Game Stop up there. He took that store from a hundred and somthing ranking in the region to number 1 in a matter of weeks. I'm so proud of him! Ammon and Christine bought an apartment in New York city. Very excited for them as well. I need to get going on a quilt for them to adorn their new home. I feel kindof weird blogging because I'm supposed to talk about myself. Obviously I just end up talking about other people. The end of the year went by in a real blur. The holiday came and went and I almost feel like I missed it. We are down to one car. I know a lot of families do that, and it's normally fine except T is working the break and I am off so I feel a little trapped. My beloved Honda Prelude was totaled in a car accident on Halloween morning. It was right outside work and I knew the guy. It was pretty nice getting a couple weeks off work and I'm as good as new. The Prelude will live again though. Perhaps better than before. Let's see, I'm awesome, I rule, blah, blah. :) Seriously, (not that i don't rule...) life just keeps trekking on as usual. The kids are getting big. Dulcinea is now babbling constantly and Little T is potty training. Both making plenty of mischief to keep me from anything more than the occasional magazine or a few seams in a quilt. I did just finish reading Eclipse. My favorite of the three so far. Still chipping away at the last Harry Potter. I discovered allrecipes.com and am now addicted. Got the best chili recipe off of it. There are plenty of things I can live without, but the internet is NOT one of them. i think I would go insane. I use it as a reference for everything! Given that, you really would expect me to blog more. Other than that, until next ear, I guess...

Small Change

Ok, first post. I guess I'll just start with the most recent happening in my life. I cut my shoulder length hair off. Totally loving that I could put all my combs in storage. :) Makes getting ready in the morning a bit easier, but no more slap it in a ponytail. I guess there isn't much to tell on my life. I'm still working full-time at Takata, which I'm really enjoying right now because I'm working with a bunch of really cool people. How long I stay there is still up in the air. :) My oldest brother, Dan, is living with us right now and being our nanny. Little T and Dulcinea just adore him. I LOVE having him around. He's so upbeat and fun. Plus, we can make totally random jokes and we get them. Isn't family great? :)