More Pictures of the back yard.


Here are some more pictures of the backyard. The first one is Robyn and Grace standing in front of the peas. They were really tall until they went behind them and knocked them over. Turkeys!

Colin is still camera crazy. He took most of the pictures that I posted today. I don't really know who took the pictures that he is in. Probably Robyn or our cousin Brandon. I took the last two with the strawberry jam. Colin has been experimenting with sepia and black and white. Some of his pictures are pretty cool.

We finally finished the backyard! (Well, almost.) Randy worked really hard this weekend and hauled a bunch of soil aid, sand, and pea gravel in to finish the yard. (We are still a bit short of pea gravel, but I can't see that part of the yard from any windows so I am happy.) We finished just in time to have a picnic in our backyard with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Shelly, Uncle Arthur, Katie, Brandon and Jacob to celebrate Memorial Day. It was very fun!

After the picnic we went to Great Grandpa Reeder's grave to place some roses before ending up at Grandma's for another picnic with more people. Monday was a busy day!

On the way home from Grandma's house, I got pulled over my a cop for speeding. (I missed the sign. What can I say?) It is the first time I have been pulled over in 13 years and only the 3rd time in my whole life. I got my first ticket. It was for failure to provide proof of insurance. I faxed in proof of insurance this morning and the ticket was dismissed. Whew!

Strawberries!!

The kids and I made jam this morning from our very own strawberry patch. It was so fun to have real help this year. I love it!
We picked enough strawberries for 17 8oz jars of freezer jam with enough left over to top our angel food cake for desert tonight. YUM!

What has Colin been up too?? Oh, my!


He has been camera crazy lately. He loves to take pictures. He loves to upload pictures to the computer. He loves to burn the pictures to picture CDs. He loves to watch his pictures on the TV.

His latest is this adventure in Adobe Photoshop. He took this picture of himself.

Then used photoshop to change the picture on his shirt to be an image he found on the web.

Very impressive. I asked Randy when he taught Colin to use Photoshop and Randy said that he hasn't taught Colin Photoshop.

Colin said, as I was posting this, that Randy taught him to use the eraser in Photoshop when they were programming their game with Phrogram (Kids Programming Language V 2.2). They used a picture of one of our fish and used the eraser to erase the tank from around it. He said he just figured out how to use layers himself.

Being the mother of highly intelligent, wonderful children whom one loves dearly, is not an easy task. It challenges me daily to be a better person than I otherwise would.

A few weeks ago (I know it has been forever since I last posted - my boys just can't leave the operating system alone!!), we were reading the about The Passover in the Old Testament Stories book for family scripture study. As most of you know, the last plague was that the oldest child in every Egyptian family would die. The Israelites were to put lamb's blood on their doors to keep the destroying angel from visiting their homes. As the oldest child, Colin was very interested in that. We talked about it for a minute and, of course, I assured him that we would certainly have followed the Prophet and painted our door so the sickness would pass over us because we loved him so much.

After the kids went to bed, I pondered that for a time - was I really "painting the door" of our home to keep the destroying angel away??

A few days later, I was studying my scriptures and happened to reread the Word of Wisdom from section 89 of the Doctrine and Covenants. I have read it many times, however, this time I read it, I was struck by the very last verse which reads "And I, the Lord, give unto them a promise, that the destroying angel shall pass by them , as the children of Israel, and not slay them. Amen." Wow, how powerful is that! I have spent a lot of time pondering that for the past few weeks and I realize that I do have a testimony of that truth!

Randy and I discussed it shortly after I read it. We have different views of the Word of Wisdom. He focuses on the don'ts and I focus on the do's. It was an interesting discussion. I have never had a problem with the don'ts, so I don't think about them too much. Randy has not ever had a problem with them either, but has been more exposed to those that do. The week I was reading this, he attended the funeral of a cousin who had shot and killed a bail bondsman and then was shot and killed himself by police. Randy pointed out that if Tony had been obeying the Word of Wisdom and avoiding the alcohol and drugs, two men would still be alive. That is pretty dramatic. We read the newspaper that week and noticed that most crimes are a result of not following the Word of Wisdom. Interesting.
We talked about how most frequently the destroying angel comes as heart attacks or illness and is not always a sudden as being killed quickly. Many news stories are about diet related illnesses that could be prevented by following the Word of Wisdom.
I had Chronic Fatigue from 1996 until 2001. Colin's birth in 2000 was what forced me to face the fact that traditional medicine did not have the answers and if I wanted to be the mother that this child needed, I would have to figure it out myself. Turns out that following the Word of Wisdom was key to turning away that "destroying angel." As long as I stick to it, I feel great.
Colin has been my motivation to do better and be more obedient from the beginning of my quest to follow this law. He has had food sensitivities since he was six months old and has challenged my abilities ever since. At six months old, he developed a rash on his toes. I took him to the doctor and he gave me steriod cream to put on them. I didn't like that option very much. I had an appointment with an ND for my chronic fatigue about that time and I took Colin with me. He told me that we both had dairy allergies and I had Candida. I quit drinking milk and went on a "Candida Diet." It was amazing the difference. The toes cleared right up and I felt sooo much better.
As Colin got older and was eating more and more foods, we discovered more and more sensitivities - wheat, corn, dairy, food dye, peanuts..... I had to completely change my menu planning. The really great news is that I have since learned a lot more about food and cooking and he can now eat the foods he is sensitive too in moderation without breaking out in a rash. I certainly have a long way to go, but it is good to look back and see where I came from.
I have been slacking quite a bit lately, but I am now re motivated to keep trying.

Just yesterday I read an article about autism. Autism is a very complex disease that no one really knows the cause of, but many people have raised very good questions. This last article I read talked about how autism is a genetic defeat that needs an enviromental trigger to manifest itself. No one is exactly sure what that trigger is, but it is very possible that it is related to food sensitivities in certain individuals. It made me wonder if all my early efforts helped prevent my son from developing autism. What would have happened if I had just applied the steriod cream and kept doing what I was doing?? I guess I will never know.

I think it would be easier to paint the door with lamb's blood and see the immediate results of your efforts the next day. It is not easy to endure to the end. :)

My current goals toward "painting my door" are:

Work on the do's of the Word of Wisdom through more prudent research and proper menu planning.

Follow the council to have three months of financial reserves by staying in my budget.

Keep working at daily scripture study focusing on:
Personal Study: Reading and studying my lesson guides for Sunday School and Relief Society, and using the topical guide to research personal questions that I want answers to. This to be done in the afternoon before I start my other studies.

Couple Study: Read Understanding Isaiah in the mornings before Randy leaves for work or school, so we can get through 2 Nephi with some insight.

Family Study: Currently Old Testament Stories to be read as a family before bed.


Okay, there it is in writing. Now I have to do it right?

Puzzle Masters!





I knew Grace was good at puzzles, but I wondered if some of it was that she had all our puzzles, and all the nursery puzzles, memorized. It's not, she's just good.
On Monday, I bought her a brand new 24 piece Dora puzzle at Walmart and she had the whole thing put together within minutes of opening it without so much as a hint from anyone. Wow!



Some of the credit must go to her puzzle mentor - Robyn! I got Robyn a new 100 piece puzzle at the same time. She worked on her puzzle through the afternoon and the next morning between other jobs and projects and finally finished the whole thing all by herself!

Here are the pictures of the Mei Tai. Grace likes this one better than the first one. She says this one doesn't hurt her legs and it's not hot.

One of the features of a Mei Tai is you can still use it while pregnant. I don't think I want to use it too often though - that's too many kids to carry for too long. :)
I am 29 weeks pregnant in this picture.

Notice the lovely patio my husband has created this past month. I love it! We still need to put the sand in the cracks, but it is a HUGE improvement over the dirt that the patio has been for the past two years.

DISCLAIMER

Jeremy doesn't like to read my blog due to lack of proof reading. I realize that this is a problem and I will work on it. In the meantime, if I waited to make everything perfect (or even close), nothing would ever get posted! Between interruptions and computer glitches, I am happy to get what I get to post. Someday I will be an awesome writer, be patient with me. :) If my sentences don't make sense or my spelling is off, know that I am enjoying motherhood and my kids are more important than blogging. I will always be able to blog, but those darn kids keep growing up on me and someday they will have their own homes and interruptions.

What have the kids been working on this week while I have been studying myself?

Colin has been studying Scooby Doo. A few weeks ago, the librarian gave him a Scooby Doo book to try. He loved it because Scooby talks funny. When he finished it, he put everything Scooby Doo on hold with his library card. He has been reading Scooby books, watching Scooby movies, and playing Scooby computer games this week. They are not exactly classics, but he is learning. Tonight when the kids were playing babies, they were going on a trip in boats. Colin asked Robyn what kind of boat she had. She didn't know so he suggested she be in a gondola like Scooby and Shaggy. So she and Grace were in gondolas and Colin was in a canoe.
He has also been playing with numbers a lot (thanks to Robyn's current obsession with math). Now that he "gets" place value, he can add huge numbers together. Randy gave him the problem of 123456 + 654321 and Colin thought is was great that the answer was a bunch of 7s. He spent a lot of Sunday figuring out how to write problems that would add up to a lot of the same number like 1234 + 4321 equals 5555. He even noticed that the number of numbers is one less than the number (ie 1234 +4321 = four 5s). He is very good at saying the numbers he creates too like 617528 is six hundred seventeen thousand five hundred twenty eight. Fun Stuff. He has also been playing a bit with multiplication. He likes the 11 times tables and likes to times by 10.
Legos have also been big this week. He has been building cars and pyramids. Very cool.

Robyn has been crazy about math lately. I bought her a Primer level Math U See book in December and she is almost through the whole book! She said the other day, "I just love math, Mom." I love to hear it. My visiting teachers came over and she was working on her Math U See book. One of them asked if she was doing school. Robyn just gave her a really funny look and said, "No, I'm doing math." It was pretty funny.
Robyn has also become a voracious reader. On Monday, she read to Grace for over an hour. It was awesome to watch two little girls just sit and read for that long. They like to sit with me while I read my books and they read their books.
And of course she has been playing babies. Playing babies everyday is a given.

Both girls would live outside if they could. They love to swing and do tricks on the bar of the swing set. It's been pretty windy this week, so they haven't been out as much as they would like to have been.

Grace has been doing her "math book" too. It is really an old preschool workbook that I bought at Walmart a million years ago. She wants to be a big kid so she does what the big kids do. it has been fun to watch. She learned to write several letters doing her "math."
She LOVES books. She spends hours being read to by whomever she can get to read to her and hours just looking at the books. Her favorites are her Winnie the Pooh books by AA Milne and the Magic Tree House series. (She likes to get out the whole Magic Tree House series, not just one book at a time.) They are not exactly two year old kind of books, but that is what she likes. She likes to look at the words and find letters. Today she was "reading" the Rainbow Fish and she asked me, "What does B U T spell?" I love it!
She has been spending a lot of time playing babies. She is frequently lost and she is in her room or in the hideout playing babies by herself. She likes to read to her babies and play games, like Memory, with her babies. And, of course, plays babies with Robyn a lot. Grace has more time for babies because she just little and doesn't have quite as many jobs as Robyn does.

It is so fun to watch them inspire each other.

We are loving Spring! Here are some pictures of the spring gardens. Weeding is on the list for tomorrow! We are currently harvesting radishes, lettuce, parsley, cilantro, chives, and a few other herbs. We have garlic, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, potatoes, cilantro, parsley, sage, thyme, catnip, lemon balm, chives, and radishes growing in the gardens now. And probably a few things I can't remember right off the top of my head. The fruit trees and the berries are looking pretty good. Robyn told me yesterday that she found blossoms on the strawberries. I can't wait for fresh berries!! It is very nice to be harvesting food again. I love that, even if it is pretty limited right now.

This is part of the veggie garden. The white stuff is frost cloth - it is awesome!! I only have two pieces so only the peas garden and the center garden have been covered - there is a big difference in the plants in those two over the plants that haven't been covered.
A lot of the "weeds" in the path are lettuce and cilantro - Grace helped a lot with the planting. We will have a yummy salad for lunch tomorrow after we get the weeding done.



This is the herb garden. We tried to make it look like a wagon wheel because the pioneer women used to put an old wagon wheel down to plant their herbs in so the men folk would know that those plants were the herbs and wouldn't walk in them or let the horses eat them. Not that any of that is relevant to our back yard, but it was fun anyway.