A few things...

A picture says a thousand words....Some of my plants are actually growing!  I can't beleive it.  Let's all keep our fingers crossed that they will actually produce food.   Next up is a question:  What do you get when you cross one unlocked bathroom door, one mom in the shower, 1/2 bottle of liquid soap and one "Destructor"?  This is what I saw after I got out of the shower a few days ago...
Now this is after I had cleaned a lot of it up.  After wiping piles of bubbles off the surrounding counter I realized this was blog-worthy.  Luckily the drainage hole at the top of the sink was keeping up with the water flow, it could have been much worse! And below is another victim of Captain Destructo....   Poor Spidey, he never saw what hit him....
Maggie had her first rice cereal last night!  I was hoping it would help her sleep better, but it didn't.  I can't believe she is already almost 5 months old!
Eric took the boys to the Drive-In to see Monsters vs Aliens on Saturday night.  I stayed home with Maggie in hopes of catching up on some sleep.  Here is a cute picture of the boys in the back of Eric's truck...
They had a great time.  Looks like fun!

The Destroyer

To start things off on a light note, here's Maggie this morning.  She is so smiley and I swear she gets bigger every day (at least her head does...)





Among other things, Jacob is know at our house as "the Destroyer."  For some unexplained reason (maybe pent up angst from not getting enough juice boxes), Jacob feels the need to destroy everything he comes in contact with.  I have multiple books with pages or portions of pages ripped out of them, which is why we never go to the library anymore...on more than one occasion I have slyly taped back up a book in hopes that the rips will escape the librarian's eye.  Every book with flaps, well....let's just say they no longer have flaps.  Many DVD's have been thrown in the trash because Jacob gets into them and runs them along the floor until they don't work anymore.  We've also had to "put down" some toys because Jake broke them (including Professor Darkness, the arch nemesis of Ace from Planet Heroes, Chewbacca and an innocent plastic frog--to name a few--who all had limbs ripped off by the Destroyer).  A glass bug jar--this one happened right in my entryway, and of course it had a few bugs in it I had to re-capture.....a new jar of pickles (you all remember this from a couple months ago--the "pickle-tastrophe").....the covering on our patio chairs (okay, this was already wearing thin but it was useable until Jake got his finger in a tiny hole, pulled and...well, you can imagine the rest)...and so many more instances I have lost count.  I think I repress them so that I don't sell him to the gypsies.  This picture is of his latest reign of terror...  a harmless package of colored chalk was sent to its doom.  I just bought this box of chalk a few weeks ago now that it is getting warmer.  They didn't even make it through March!   When I came outside I saw them all over the patio, then Jacob backed up, got a running start, jumped and stomped right on every piece he could see.  That one picture I got of him doing it is priceless.   I guess I just have to resign myself to not owning anything nice until he grows up.  Just another joy of motherhood....

As an added note for those who already read this, I forgot one other thing he destroyed---he put gum in the DVD player.  Yep, it's broken (luckily it is our old one...).

Our Gardening Adventure

Okay, for all who asked, here is a picture of Eric's truck.  It is a great little truck and very handy already for our attempt to build a little garden this morning....Last night we went to Home Depot for our "date night" (exciting I know) and picked up a bunch of supplies to build a garden.First off, Jacob threw some rocks at Dad, so here he is starting our "fun" family activity with a time-out... (isn't is frustrating when you try so hard to have good family activities and they never turn out they way you picture them in your head...argh!)
So on to better things.  Eric dug some rocks out of the corner of our yard and built up a little area for our garden (for those of you who haven't been here, pretty much everything is rocks--3/4 of our yard at least is these rocks).
The boys "helped" Eric mix in some garden soil into the sand under the rocks.  I'm sure Eric appreciated the assistance.
And I had to get a shot of this.  For those who know Jacob, you know how stubborn he is.  Well, this morning there are 2 things he wouldn't let us do (and we decided it wasn't worth the fight at the moment--you know, we are keeping our family activity "fun").  Bet you can't guess what those 2 things are.......
SPOILER ALERT!  The two things are clean his face and brush his hair.  He has a kind of 1980's Flock of Seagulls look going on.  Very stylish.  And I guess he was just saving some of his breakfast to eat later.  And then we filled the box with garden soil and let the boys pack it down a bit.  Tyler asked what the stinky smell was and we told his it was cow poop.  He jumped out of the dirt and said he wasn't helping any more because he didn't want to get poop on his shoes.  We had to take back our cow poop comment and told him we were kidding, but that it really was manure. 

Tyler: "What's manure?"  

Me:  "Manure is something in dirt that gives plants the vitamins it needs to grow."  

Tyler:  "Oh okay, as long as it's not cow poop.  That's gross."  

Right....so here he is after he decided to help again, knowing that it was merely manure and not poop...
And Maggie pitched in too.  Actually it was Jake who thought she wanted to help so he made sure she got one of the seedlings to plant.  It was pretty sweet of him, even if it did get dirt all over her cute bouncer seat.  Look at that big bald head!
And here I am with the boys planting the rest of the seeds (we started with a few seedlings but mostly seeds).  Time will tell if my Black Thumb Curse is still active.  I manage to kill every plant I come in contact with, maybe my luck will change.  I think Jacob will manage to kill the plants too...not because of a curse but because he has already wrapped a slinky around one plant and stepped right on top of another.  I might have to put a fence up around the garden not to keep out deer but to keep out Jacob.
Planting some radishes....
And our final product!  Tyler was very proud, but, once again, Jacob was upset.  He was mad at me and refused to smile because he wanted to stand on the plants (again) for his picture.  Ummm, if this is only the first day of keeping him out of the garden maybe I bit off more than I can chew....  We may have a rough season ahead!
But we had fun and managed to get it all done in a couple hours.  In the garden bed we planted peas, broccoli, chives, radishes, red and yellow peppers, cantaloupe and strawberries.  We also planted a watermelon plant in a large pot, some herbs in another pot and tomatoes in an upside-down planter.  The growing season is long here so hopefully we will reap at least a few fresh fruits and veggies from our little garden.  Wish us luck!

A few thoughts on Motherhood and Life...

Sorry all the pictures are first...I messed up when I was doing this....a few pics of Maggie to start--isn't she getting big?




I just wanted to post a few thoughts on motherhood and such.  With three kids running around crazy, a lot of the time I feel not like a 3 child parent, but like the ring-master of a 3 ring circus! My days get filled with the drudges of life--wake up, get boys fed, Tyler off to school, Maggie fed, grocery, laundry, Jake nap, pick up Tyler, soccer practice, and on and on and on.  I never feel like I am "finished" with what I need to do.  Managing 10 things at any given time.  You all know how it is.  And at times I think that I can't wait until my kids grow up and become more independent.  But then there are those moments when my children are just playing sweetly, Maggie is cooing and I look at them and think my heart is going to burst out of my chest because I love them so much.  I had one of those moments that make it all worth it--we were sitting outside on a beautiful day.  Maggie was in a bouncer chair cooing, Tyler was jumping on the trampoline and Jacob was laying underneath the trampoline on his giant stuffed lion giggling.  It was a really sweet moment.  Of course, a few minutes later, we were back to the circus.  

I have to say that in these rough economic times, Eric and I are doing all we can to stimulate the economy...if you catch my drift.  Yes, we bought a new car over the weekend--a Toyota Tacoma.  Eric wanted a new truck and we wanted another car that the boys at least could fit in.  So, I won't go into details, but we ended up with new truck.  Later that day I was reading the owners manual and realized how soft technology has made our minds--under the troubleshooting section where it said what to do if the keyless remote entry doesn't work.  Guess what it said?  "Use the key."  Haha!  I joked with Eric about it but he said that Tyler saw one of the keys for the new truck that wasn't attached to the keyless entry remote and asked Eric, "Daddy, how can you unlock the doors to the car without the button?"  He was genuinely concerned.  It was cute.

Also, look who learned to ride his bike!  He is getting really good at it--so fast I couldn't even get a clear picture!  Jacob sat in the car and watched.  Tyler even rode his bike all the way to the bus stop this morning!  Hooray!

Sand Fun

Okay, it's been a while, but it isn't that I forgot about blogging, it's just that my life really is that boring.  I figured no one wants to hear my escapades about grocery shopping, the post office or picking up Tyler from school (although trying to do the above with 3 kids can be a little interesting).  So, yesterday after stake conference we went out to some sand dunes on the shores of the dry lake bed near our house.  Someone told Eric about them and we thought we'd check it out.  I thought, "Finally, something to blog about!" and I even grabbed the camera!  Of course we get out there, driving along a sandy wash out onto this huge dry lake bed and I get out the camera to take some cool shots, but the battery was dead.  Ugh!  Talk about frustration!  So, I will briefly talk about what we did and you'll have to imagine the scenery.  We drove out to the lake in a sandy wash (imagery: sand and desert shrubs) and got out to the lake bed (imagery: a huge completely flat expanse of dry, cracked dirt crust)--meanwhile the whole time we are kicking up enough dust that Tyler panicked and shouted "Mom, dad!  A sandstorm is coming!  Hurry!  It's a sandstorm!"  We then headed to the sand dunes on the north side of the lake bed (imagery: sandy hills with more desert shrubs).  Okay, they were somewhat cooler than that imagery but it is a little hard to explain without pictures!  But the boys had a great time jumping off the tops and sliding down.  Tyler even made several sand angels--yeah, you heard me right--sand angels, and believe me, sand gets into more places than snow....  We walked around a bit and tried to stay away from shrubs (snakes, scorpions, red ants, etc) and had a good time.  Tyler kept throwing handfuls of sand saying, "Sand blast!" and then fighting an imaginary villain.  It was pretty funny.  Jacob kept getting concerned when he couldn't see one of us (I don't blame him--everything looks the same and it can be a little disorienting).  After we got in the car the boys took their shoes off....I think we now have enough sand in our car that we won't have to go the beach anymore.  We can build our own sandcastle.  So those are our adventures in sand land.  Next time we go I will make sure my camera works!  There were all different shades of brown, beige, tan and taupe...   ;-)  No really, it was at least something to do that didn't involve tv or computer time.  Now you all have a reason to come visit!