The Mundane

We're well into the school year now, verified by the first parent-teacher conferences yesterday.

We're gardening, the picture below is the sweet potato plant in my garden, it's 2 plants really, and I think we will have a ton (maybe literally) of sweet potatoes this year, yeah!
Our chickens have been at it again, no we didn't get rid of them, but I did stop feeding them. Our yard appears to be big enough for them to forage. And here are some of their new babies, aren't they cute! They make Savanah smile as she lets them climb all over her as she does her homework, it's pretty funny to watch!

And Ry has been asking to do the dishes for a long time. Eli is assigned after dinner dishes , but complains horribly about it (thus a new a assignment has not been given) but Ry being the amazing little brother that he is has been asking to do them for Eli forever. So, last night I gave Ry the go ahead to do them, and he just hopped up there, feet in the sink and everything, and just started cleaning. It was great to watch! Although, it took two beach towels to dry up the floor when he was done! Four is such a great age, they are never too young to help!

Bear Canyon Lake

We enjoyed a lot of laughs this weekend as we ventured into the mountains, to do some "primitive camping" with Eli's scout troop and their families. When we arrived at camp we had fun building a fire to cook our hobo dinners. And we set up our make shift potty we made from an upside down bucket with a hole cut into the bottom.

Savanah was the first to use our temporary thrown. She considerately asked her dad if she should leave the toilet paper there when she was done. He said, (thinking she was talking about the roll of paper, not realizing she had left that in a chair before she took a piece to the potty.) "Just bring it back when you're done." So, she brought back a long piece of toilet paper carefully pinched between her thumb and index finger and dangling down about 2 feet from her fingers. Eli asked her if she had used the whole roll, and she said, "no". Then, she went to put the toilet paper into the fire and Ryon said, "Don't waste it, save it so someone else can use it." She looked at him confused and still wanted to put it in the fire, so Ryon grabbed it out of her hand, to save it from the fire. (Thinking it was unused.) Ryon then tried to give it to Eli, (by waving it in front of his face) who had just requested something to blow his nose with. But Eli avoided it like a used piece of toilet paper (which it was!) Ryon said, "It's not like it was used." (Proceeding then to do a charade with the toilet paper as a prop of someone pulling that long piece of paper back and forth between his legs.) All the while Savanah was looking on with her jaw dropped wide open...finally Savanah blurted out, "Dad! I used that toilet paper!" "No you didn't"-Ryon Savanah-"Yes I did! Feel it, it's damp!" Then, Ryon finally understood what he had failed to understand from the beginning. And we all had a good laugh!

On Saturday I asked Ry Guy, "Have you gone pee today?" (Thinking he hadn't and wasn't drinking enough water.) But he responded, "yes." So, I asked where, "In my pants." He said, and he had. We had lots of laughs on our trip!

The mountain air was cool and clean, such a wonderful break from the heat of the valley! The boys had fun catching crawdads, chopping down a huge dead tree, hiking, and discovering treasures that previous campers had lost. We got rained on and hailed on, and when we were leaving it was 45' and when we got home it was 102'. We made some fun memories!

Saturday Biking

For a little variety on Saturday morning, we loaded up our bikes and went for a fun family bike ride (instead of scrubbing toilets, folding laundry, and washing windows) before Zach and Nathaniel needed to be dropped off at Fry's Grocery store to sell scout-a-rama tickets at 10am. Ryon knew about a great park with marked bike lanes, a stream with shade trees, a skate park, and some awesome water areas. The kids loved playing tag with their dad on some of the park equipment. I enjoyed the looks of excitement as even Savanah and Eli were trying to get away. We all had fun riding our bikes thru the "sprinkler" play area before we went home. What a relaxing morning!

Ry isn't in many of the pictures because he was behind me on the trail-a-bike, but there is one shot of him on his bike... I really feel free now that 5 of our kids can balance their own wheels. We have the best time with our family right now! I love everyone's ages and personalties! I wish we could just freeze at this time for a long long time! Life is about the journey...

Happy Anniversary!

Summer time just got away from me and I didn't post about our anniversary... We celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary this year. Time has been good to us and we are so much more in love now than the day we said, "I do". Oh how little we knew what lay ahead of us that first day... Figuratively speaking we've hiked to the virtual top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and to the depths of the Grand Canyon together in the last 15 years. Learning all along the way the virtues of charity, purity, faith, humility, meekness, honesty, knowledge, and integrity. Now we often wonder how amazing a marriage that has lasted for 50 years must be. And how a heart must break after that many years of love when one of them passes away, oh how I dread that day ever coming, and yet as the years speed along, I can only imagine in 70 years that day will be here oh too soon. This anniversary was the best yet. When Ryon looked at me, I knew he really knows who I am. All the many, many interests I have, my talents, my goals, my children, my parents, my desires, my experiences, my failures, my faults, my shortcomings, and everything that makes me, me. And when I look at him I see the father of all my children, his kindness, his generosity, his faith, his strength, his gentleness, his desire to succeed, his family, his past, his future, and everything it is that makes him uniquely Ryon, unlike anyone else, and extraordinary! I know it is frowned upon by our culture to marry young, but I can't see what I've missed out on, yet. Maybe by the time I've turned 50 I'll have gotten wise to what the world knows that I've been missing, but until then I'll enjoy being married for almost 1/2 my life, to the absolutely most handsome, talented, intelligent, capable man I've ever known!

Every anniversary we reminisce about all of our past anniversaries... Our first, we weren't together, Ryon was at his father's wedding (same date as ours)...and his cousin's (Brian & Jennifer). Second...Savanah had just been born, we lived in Flagstaff...went to a beautiful French restaurant ate a 5 course meal, where I commented on the waitress' cute little skirt (the one around the dripping water picture...not to be confused with the cute LITTLE skirt around her cute little bottom-RYON! I hadn't even noticed she was wearing a cute little skirt-BLONDE?) I'm sure you don't really want to hear about all of them...some years we can recall all of them with details and some years we're pretty hazy, this year we didn't miss one. Ryon asked me to assemble a scrapbook of all our anniversaries this year...my first thought was, even if I don't get them all together up to this point we could easily celebrate another 50, it could be pretty fun in a few decades to look back and see what we were up to now.

This year I literally slaved in the kitchen for 8 hours making the most amazing meal any of us have ever eaten! At 5:00pm the boys dawned their suits and greeted Ryon at the door with white towels over their arms to seat him at a beautiful table set with an IRONED (thanks Sister Prince) table cloth, set with 3 vases of fresh cut flowers from our yard, china, and multiple forks for multiple courses! for his amazing 3 course dinner. Which included:

Creamy Butternut Squash Soup
Stone Baked Ecce Panis Olive Batard (bread)

Beef Wellington with Green Peppercorn Sauce
Warm Wilted Winter Greens With Balsamic Vinaigrette & Roasted
Walnuts
Roasted Fingerling Potatoes with Fresh Herbs and Garlic

Decadent Chocolate Cake
Blackberry Reduction (seedless)
Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache
French Vanilla Ice Cream
Whipped Cream & Raspberries

Pretty much everything had a sauce or cream or dressing... Savanah was the accomplished chef of the evening! She pulled everything from the oven on time, assembled beautiful plates that arrived like clock work, and kept the kitchen staff quiet and busy! I was so impressed with her abilities in the kitchen that night! The kids ABSOLUTELY love it when Ryon and I have special dinners when they wait on us and we eat somewhere special away from the kitchen. And honestly, we love it, too!

Labor Day.... Really?

Eli was sorely disappointed with our observance of Labor Day. He felt we worked just as hard, if not harder, than we normally do on a Saturday, mowing the whole lawn with our push mower, redistributing 1200 pounds of wheat, doing 8 loads of laundry, hiking a small mountain... He asked over and over again who Labor Day was for... I read about it's beginnings and well, it really was for construction workers, physical labors, not really house wives and finance guys... Middle class children getting the day off school were definitely not the initiative for the holiday, although for about 18 years I did think that was what the holiday was all about...me.

Tonight we (Savanah & I) go to Yoga again, I LOVE IT! Tonight Savanah is getting her temple recommend so she can do baptisms for a year. It's HFPE tonight and we're learning about gardening and food storage...and tomorrow is solar oven making day at my house, are you interested? You're welcome to come and make a solar oven for your house. The more the merrier.

Saturday's pictures went better than ever! Everyone was smiling...and a few of the poses made me laugh so hard! I'll try to include a few here. I'll have better quality prints in a week or so.

There are more serious ones...but you'll have to wait:).

Pictures

Tomorrow is picture day. Not a favorite for my family. Family pictures are close to torture for them, I've tried to explain the shutter on a camera takes less than a second to click and those clicks can happen really close together, and having your picture taken CAN be fun, but alas someone is almost always 4, and someone else almost always 9 and well, having a constant grump in the picture seems to be a tradition (one that will hopefully be broken this year!!!). This year there's no baby to try to work with, just lots of long legs, 8 bodies to fit into a 4"X6", it's quite a lot if you really think about it. Any great pose ideas for 8 people in a studio? I hate it when everyone is on the floor and it just looks like a big pile of people. Or everyone is standing stiffly waiting for the click... Wish us good photos!