Beautiful Ellie

Our sweet Ellie is 4 1/2 years old, can you believe it? She is quite a joy to our family.
Her favorite things are still playing with her babies and watching Dora. She also loves to play with her Polly Pockets and her dollhouse. She loves friends and would play with a friend everyday if I would arrange it for her.

She very much wants to be a mommy. She asks me details about how does one become a mommy and how does a little girl get a baby in her tummy. Of course she gets answered on a need-to-know basis, and the answer usually has the phrase "after you are married," in it. The other day she told me that when she gets married she doesn't want to marry a boy with a thing right here and points to her upper lip. "Mustache," we ask, but she said, "no." Then we asked "beard" and she said, "yes," but from her further references she was referring to a mustache. I have to say I was very amused with her good taste...mustaches can be creepy.

She tells me regularly that when she has a baby she hopes she has a girl baby, just like I had a girl baby when I had her. (Funny that was my greatest wish for a few of my childbearing years).

She is very interested in reading. I had planned to hold off on teaching her any reading until next year, but we have started. She is reading funny little books about "I see Sam," and really enjoying it.

She is really enjoying dance and gymnastics- it has been fun to watch her learn.

We love our Ellie!

Some of the things I love about Spring

One of the things I love most about spring is a new garden. We have been doing our garden different than in the past, instead of removing everything and rototilling before we replant in the spring, we just rake the top soil a little and plant the new plants where the old ones had been. Our garden is going great right now. We have a ton of broccoli that we planted sometime in the fall and it is about ready. We also have carrots, swiss chard (yuck), peas, potatoes, yellow squash, lettuce, yellow onions, tomatoes, and hopefully in a few days when the seeds come up, green beans. I enjoy in the spring going out to the garden and checking out the plants and seeing how they grow and sometimes even picking weeds.

Once summertime comes, I am more busy with the kids, it is hot and there are tons of mosquitoes, so I don't enjoy it as much.

Lettuce is a new thing for us, but our kids have been really enjoying eating salad lately (only Caesar, but that's good enough) and it has been nice to go in the garden and have lettuce available to eat.

Our fruit trees we planted last year are starting to get fruit, and I am excited to reap the rewards in a couple of months---they are still small so it won't be a lot, but we have some apricots, plums, and peaches.

This next picture is of a fascinating flower that grows on a vine here, called a passion flower. There are maybe 5-7 that open every day and it lasts through the summer.

This next picture is my sage. I have planted sage before, but it has never gotten this big and flowered. It is so pretty, every time I look at it, it makes me happy. I love to have fresh herbs around, whenever I make spaghetti sauce, I just walk out to my planter and pick some oregano, thyme, basil and parsley and add that to my sauce, it is so yummy. Plus, I think that herbs when they grow large make for really pretty planters.

Recently, Joe redid the stone around our planters in the front yard. All of the other houses in our section had stone all the way around their front planters, except for ours. Joe found this really nice stone, and replaced the small amount of stone left by the builders with it. It turned out really nice... and when you drive up to the house it looks really sharp in the front yard.
It's really nice to have a husband who is not only capable of working, but actually enjoys working. It's really nice to have all the neat projects that he thinks up done around the house!

Rabbits and Goats

Joe has been very busy lately with his rabbits. About a month before Easter he had 4 litters of babies. He had the idea that he would be able to sell more rabbits at about Easter time. Sure enough, he sold all of the babies and 2 of the adults (totalling 18 rabbits) with the exception of one. Originally, all of the rabbits were sold, but I accidentally gave someone the wrong rabbit, and when the person came for the rabbit I gave away, they didn't want the other one that was left behind. That worked out perfectly, because unbeknownst to us, Adam had really wanted to keep a black bunny. So, meet Whale, our new baby black bunny:

("Whale" because he looks like a whale!)

Since Easter, we have had another litter and soon we will still have one more litter, these are the meat type rabbits and so Joe is thinking he will sell some and try to eat some. Hmmm....

Joe originally got rabbits with the idea that he would learn how to breed them so that we could use them as a food source in case of a catastrophic event. Personally, my parents raised rabbits for eating when I was younger and I am not a big fan of the meat, but Joe had never tried any. A couple of weeks ago, we had a rabbit that he decided to butcher for us to eat. I got my best fried meat recipe, cornmeal batter, that works great for disguising the taste of any meat. I fried up all of the rabbit, and tasted a few pieces along the way. I didn't think it was all that great, but it was edible. We sat down to dinner, and Nate thought the meat was great. The older kids were all complaining (they do that for most meat meals). I took a bite and made a barely audible groan and Joe gave me a dirty look. Then he took a bite and spit it out because he decided it must have been a bad cut of meat. I picked out a piece that was probably the best piece of meat we had and let him eat that. I watched closely...he took a bite, a chew and then....he started gagging. He tried once more chew but that was it, he couldn't eat it. Personally, I thought it was pretty darn funny, and he felt a little humbled. (Since Joe is always so certain about his ideas, it is nice when I am proven on occasion to be right).

I guess I need to find a new recipe for the next time we try it, but I am not sure that we will be "trying" it all that often.

Our goats are doing great out on our little island. They were unhappy to be on the island at first (they were pets before we got them and missed the constant people interaction), and even swam across the small span from the island to the land so that they could be with us. (Goats rarely/never swim, you can google it if you don't believe me). Since then, they have accepted that the island is their new home. They are doing a good job clearing the island, you can now sit on the shore and see through the underbrush to the other side of the lake. A few more months and we may be done. Originally, Joe had thought about eating the goats after they had done their job, but after sampling a little rabbit, he has decided that he will just sell them when he is done! (Boy am I grateful for that.)

Bluebonnets

One of the things I just LOVE about Texas is their commitment to the wildflowers in the spring. They don't mow the right of ways on most of their roads to allow them to grow, and it ends up being quite beautiful. We took advantage of some of the bluebonnets to take some pictures.

I told Michael to smile and this was the best he would give me.

Easter Festivities

Easter fell on the same weekend as General Conference this year, so we didn't go to church on Easter. (In our church, twice a year they hold a meeting with the leaders of the church and broadcast it out to all of the members throughout the world, we were able to see it on our TV at home). The kids got to wear their Easter clothes yesterday. Try as though I might, there was always one of the four that wasn't interested in smiling or looking at the camera...does this ever get better?


This year, our small section of the subdivision had their own Easter egg hunt. The kids enjoyed going to this. The older kids ran and got their eggs too fast for me to take pictures, but this was Nate's first year hunting eggs so I got to point them out for him and then watch as he collected them.

Later that afternoon, when we were up at out land, we let the kids do some more Easter egg hunts. One child would put candy into an egg and then hide them, and then they would all run around and gather them. They were pretty upset when after 3 times they ran out of candy!

The bunny babies were the perfect size for holding.

We didn't get around to dying Easter eggs until a few days after Easter, but the kids didn't mind, they just wanted to do it at all.

Hope you had a fantastic Easter too!

Uncle Clell and Aunt Lana's Visit

We were lucky enough to have Uncle Clell, Aunt Lana and their sweet baby girl, Juliana come visit us for Easter. We had a great time seeing them, and the weekend was jam-packed with things that we did that by the time they left I was pretty tired.

The first day they were here, all of the kids had school (except Nate) so we took the toddlers to the mall to play in the tree area. As expected, Juliana and Nate loved it. (Juliana is exactly one month older than Nate).

After the kids got out of school for the day, we went and rode the trolley around the mall area. It was fun to be on the waterway and it was a perfect day. We stopped and got ice cream at the end of the ride.

The next day, Clell begged and pleaded until I gave in and we went to the zoo. I'm not much of a fan because the kids often seem to whine more than they enjoy the animals. Clell rented a stroller for Juliana because they didn't bring one, but then Juliana wanted to use Nate's stroller. That worked well because we found we could fit 3 kids into one of the zoo's one person strollers. There were only certain arrangements that didn't cause tears.

Sometimes, Nate got it himself.

The next day was Saturday, and after a short Easter egg hunt in our neighborhood, we went up to our lake property. We spent the day enjoying the perfect weather, riding the four wheelers and riding out on the lake in the tiny boat. The first time we went out on the boat we had me, Clell, Lana and all the kids. We went to a shallower part of the lake and got stuck on a tree stump for 20 minutes. We couldn't figure out why we weren't moving, and Clell was about to jump in ( it was only about 4 feet deep there), but he figured it out and with some expert maneuvering we were able to get unstuck. The kids visited the goats on the island and the goats really enjoyed seeing us.

We had a bonfire that night and made smores and then spent the night at the "cottage." The kids were pleasantly surprised to find that the Easter bunny found them there. (And I was pleased that all of that annoying plastic grass got spread around there and not all over my house). Clell and Lana left on Easter afternoon, and we were sad to see them go.

We had a great visit and it was nice to get to know their daughter a little bit more. Thanks Clell and Lana for visiting! I was sad to see that we didn't get any good pictures of all the kids together, or Clell and Lana with the kids. Luckily, we will see them this summer so we will have to get some then.

Michael Lost his First Tooth

How do you know when your child's tooth is loose enough to easily come out? When he cries about biting into a PB&J sandwich made out of Wonder bread.

Luckily, Joe was sitting next to him and did him the honors.

Unfortunately, you cannot fully appreciate the missing tooth.... A month ago Michael excitedly came home from school showing us that he had his first adult tooth coming in- behind his other teeth. We felt the front teeth and they were not loose at all. After consulting with the dentist he said to wait and see and sure enough the tooth in front came loose. He already has the replacement grown in!

Adam's first Pinewood Derby

It's official! Adam is officially a cub scout! (Can you believe it?) He had his first pinewood derby last week. He and Joe made the car. Adam drew out a picture of what he wanted, then he used the bandsaw to cut it out. He helped with the sanding and did most of the painting himself. It was a great project for him to work on with his dad. Here is the final car:

The track that we used was an old wooden track. They did each car one against another, the best of three runs. Adam's car came in 4th place overall. He had a wobbly wheel or else he would have done better.

The judges sat at the end of the track and watched the cars. Some were so close that they had to re race them.

All of the cars that raced were pretty neat. This one on the left was a little too light, so some opportunistic parents used a bottle of hand sanitizer to add to the weight.

That same evening, Adam got his first patch, the bobcat patch! I see many more years of scouting ahead of us.

Nate enjoyed trying to destroy the track, or at least the streamers put up to prevent little kids from getting to the track.