??weather?

Yesterday it snowed. Then it rained. Today I have a tshirt on, because it feels like April outside. And I could hear birds. Truly. They were tweeting their little hearts out in the tree outside my kitchen window :) I think they know that the great bird-killer [aka Jared] is away, playing evil genius again ;)
On that topic, since he's in a dead zone [cellphone-wise] I have no idea what's going on. I'm sure he's enjoying every single second, though. Since it involves rabbits [one dead, one not], and everybody *knows* how much fun rabbits are :P.

He went hunting Friday w/some friends, and they were pretty successful :) Brought back 5 pheasant [some of the guys didn't want the meat], and we had pheasant noodle soup Saturday, and roast pheasant Sunday. :)tasted like chicken. And I feel better about him shooting these birds if we're using the meat. Because, unlike the rabbits [which are considered pests and therefore always in season, but dangerous to eat because of disease], the pheasants are just going about their birdy business. Silly, but true.
Walker posing next to his dragon; which is his current interest. We've read "Dragonrider", "Eldest", and quite a few other 'dragon' themed books here lately. and I just have to interject that he 'borrowed' some dirty dishes from the dishwasher so the dragon would dry in a cool pose. :)
We have an author! She wrote a story yesterday: "Journal of a scorpion" and it made sense, and was pretty legible, with cute little ink drawings of the scorpion and its family. LOL the mommy scorpion had hair. Oh, and totally melted my heart w/the dedication: "to my mom who teaches me everything" - awwww!
He's showing me his big muscles LOL. I have several poses, all w/the shirt *on*, thankfully! Oh, and today he locked me in my room with a forcefield to 'keep out the bad guys.' Gee, how thoughtful ;)
This one is copying things he sees now. Scary, and completely fascinating, to *watch* him thinking :). Oh, and he climbs up to the TV and pushes the power button over, and over, and ... you get the idea. He is *such* a guy- loves buttons and pushing them to see what happens ;)
That's a quick update- now I'm off to enjoy the warm and sunny day while it lasts!

Ahhh, books!

This is my addiction: what I spend more money on than I should, what I cannot do without, and what I have a hard time letting go of :)

And, as you can see, I have a huge amount of reading to do now :) which makes me so very happy!
Okay, there are a few books I won't be reading, per se. I'll open and thumb through and use the shadow puppets book. But that's more for entertaining my kids than for me. And the evil genius book is for Jared. For a reference guide for his job, not because I think he's an evil genius... even if he does have a lot of unexplainable equipment lying around our house... *grinning*
Already read the Number Devil book- funny, and probably more info on math than some people would like, but definitely interesting!
The two David McCullough books are more serious, and yet absolutely fascinating! I've been reading 1776 slowly, because I have to take time to digest what I'm learning from it. Definitely one I'll be keeping, however. As is the John Adams book. I had to look at it, just to see, and have now banned myself from picking it up until I've finished 1776. Otherwise I'd never get anything done *grinning*.
Plus I have a few magazines to flip through and bookmark. Garden tips to try, crafts to make, recipes to cook... *sigh* So much to do, so little time!

tag!

I've been tagged by Kristina to answer the following questions:

A: The rules of the game are posted at the beginning.
B: Each player answers the questions about themselves.
C: At the end of the post, the player then tag 3 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
**but, I've never been good at following rules; so I'm changing the 3rd one to read: at the end of the post, all the readers must stand up and run away from the computer. Last one up gets tagged LOL!!

10 years ago: I was pregnant w/my first wild hooligan, I was working full-time, married to Jared and living in a huge old house in Provo while he finished up his BS- I had already finished mine, but he took 2 years off to go to Korea.

Things on my to-do-list today: make lunch for hooligans, play "war" with Hyrum, laundry- sort, wash, dry, fold, etc, whip up some dinner, finish a LO and take pics and post at 2peas, make hair appt, read a magazine [if time], clean the house... i'm stopping there, otherwise I'll get overwhelmed and go hide in my room with a book... oh, one more: make bed!

What I would do if I suddenly became a billionaire: oh, where to start! Ummm, buy land very very far away from a town. Build a helicopter pad on land. Buy a helicopter. Learn to fly helicopter. Give Jared money to buy cows. Invest the rest, so we can support the cow habit [ranches aren't always good at making money...] Oh, and build a house on the land :)

3 of my bad habits: reading too much and forgetting to finish to-do-list, eating too many brownies [or really, anything chocolate], forgetting who is listening to me and cussing, starting projects and never finishing them. oh wait, that's four. :) not following directions :)and that makes 5!

3 places I have lived: SLC Utah, Nevada[the town] Iowa, Fallon Nevada[the state].

5 jobs I have had: volunteered at the hospital, CNA at a nursing home, janitor for the Dinosaur museum at BYU, traffic clerk, mommy[the hardest]

5 things people don't know about me: gee, I'm pretty good at announcing everything there is to know... I own a pair of Ropers [cowboy/girl work boots], there is a dragon sitting in my 'in' box, I can sew, I sing Soprano, Alto, *and* Tenor, I have ADD.


Now, run!

Ha ha ha, you're it!!!

You know who you are...

Snow days

We ended up with about 1 foot of snow from that storm on Wed. :( It started to fall, and the wind was blowing it sideways, and we ended up with a hard layer of almost-ice underneath the snow. My wonderful neighbor came over w/his snowblower and cleared out the driveway for me. Then I spent an hour chipping away the icy slush that got pushed into the driveway by the snowplow. grrr. And another grrrr because he cleared the center of the road, but left 3 feet [actually it's about 38 inches. I measured.] between where he stopped clearing and the curb of the road. And my mailbox is buried in this drift. My mail-lady [is that a word? she is female...] has to hang onto the frame of her truck and leeeeaaaan out the window to reach my mailbox. And I have to leeeaaaan into the mailbox, and hope I don't slip and fall while I'm trying to recover the letters she delivered to me. *rolling eyes*

And I'm ready for Jared to be home. I lost my sense of humor yesterday [baby throwing up, all-day whining, early out for school], and I *need* to go to Barnes and Noble and pretend I have no responsibilities for an hour. Or three.

But hey, while I was hiding in my craft room to regain my temper, I found this cool site. Very zen. Even more, if you do deep breathing while you solve the puzzles. ;)

Just to change things up, a picture of things to look forward to:

Will this torment never cease?!?

Ack! This morning it was warm enough to go outside w/out a coat. Snow was melting, birds were singing [okay, that was a lie, but the snow *was* melting]...
About an hour ago it began to snow, and it has so far dumped THREE INCHES. Ack. *sigh* so maybe I should stop planning trips to the library/post office/grocery store and start working on all the projects I swore I would finish this month?
hah. That would make sense. And why would I want to make sense?! LOLOL

Crafting away

Believe it or not, I actually let my older kids make their own valentines this year. Okay, I supervised. I let them stamp and fold, and Walker cut his out. Morgen got hers cut by me, because I don't trust her with my cutter she isn't old enough to use the cutter yet. I had these little plastic bags we filled w/my all-time favorite kisses ;), and we cut, folded, and stapled the valentine-decorated paper on. Then we printed little stickers with the "to... from..." on them, and it only took about an hour to do 60 of them!

And I'm debating something. When Jared was packing Sunday [yes, he's gone again], I found the candy he bought me for Valentine's Day. He knows I saw it, but since he's gone I wonder if I should just eat it, or wait for him to give it to me. Normally I'd wait, but it is *chocolate* and everybody knows that the rules change when chocolate is involved ;)

Oh, and one more thing. Just because I was reading a bunch of MEMs [most embarrassing moments] on Pioneer Woman's blog [she's on the sidebar], and remembered a story about myself. Now, I don't really remember being embarrassed about this, but I know my mother was. And probably still is. I was almost 2 years old, and was a very clear talker. We were at church, sitting in our pew, waiting for the benediction [prayer at the end of the service] to be said. I was anxious to get to nursery and play. The man giving the prayer was long-winded. Quite long-winded. *Extremely* long-winded. Even my mother admits to this. And when he finished, I stood up on the pew and said [very loudly, since at the time everything I said was in my loudest voice], "A-MEN! a-MEN! a-MEN!" Then I climbed down and marched out of the chapel. I expect that my mom tried to catch me, but she wasn't fast enough :) and, I have a little sister who is 18 months younger than I am. In my defence, I waited until *after* the prayer was finally finished. And I tried to obey the rules that I understood, while still expressing my displeasure and annoyance for cutting into my precious toy time.
Yeah. I still don't like to wait much *grinning*.

Tagged...

So, my SIL Angela tagged me :P and I'm not going to ignore her [at least not today, right?]. Alrighty, let's get this started :)

1. I am completely addicted to those cherry cordial-filled chocolate kisses. To the point that I tracked down a Walmart worker to ask when their next shipment of said kisses was coming in *hang head in shame*.

2. I hate saving things. But I also hate wasting things. I believe this is the cause of my split personality, cleaning-wise.

3. I start many more projects than I could ever finish.

4. I hate admitting that I cannot do something. *grinning* Which means I'll spend an absolutely ridiculous time figuring it out 'on my own' before I'll ask for help.

5. I have never in my life been completely caught up on my housework. [although I am not sure this is actually possible...]

6. All of the things about other people that bug me? Yeah, they're all things that I do. Oh, the shame!

And, instead of tagging anybody, I'm giving you another random fact: I absolutely *loathe* getting all those forwarded emails- the chain letter kind. In fact, let me just shout here what I always feel like sending back to the original poster: WWW DOT SNOPES DOT COM!!!!! Please, before you forward anything, check the snopes site to see if this is real or not. Please, before I reach through my computer screen and throttle you!!!
Okay, I'm done.
Now I'm off to wind yarn into a ball.
Stop laughing, I know you're jealous :)

Same snow, different day

Just had to spread the misery around. You know, because it makes *me* feel better. Shiver away!

Awww, now I feel bad! Okay, warm up with this: nothing like a huge cup of cocoa on a blustery winter day.

You'll never

guess what *I* woke up to this morning!



Yes- SNOW! Wait-- :( how'd you know?!?!

So I made another list of the good things in my life.
1. 4WD is awesome. And pretty necessary here.
2. Hot cocoa. For warming all those cold spots.
3. Naps. Had me a good one yesterday, changed my whole attitude ;).
4. Nice, warm, snuggly couches.
5. The crisp blue sky after a snowstorm.
6. Warm apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.
7. One unpacked suitcase! [still working on the scrapping supplies...]
8. A washer and dryer, so I can do laundry inside in the winter.
9. My husband. Even when he falls asleep at 8:45pm LOL.
10. And my kids. I love them!

Ahhhh

I had a wonderful weekend in Iowa, scrapping with a bunch of friends, staying up much too late, and enjoying every second. I got to see Clint and Emily, and their kids [Hi guys! Thanks for the buried treasure ice cream cake!]. I also practiced knitting some more- if I wasn't so picky about how it looked, I'd have finished five little hats by now LOL. The day I left SLC, it snowed enough to make driving difficult. Jared and the kids dropped me off at the airport, which took 45 minutes longer than normal because of that snow. :)And the whole way there, Morgen was anxiously asking "How long will this TAKE?!?" and reminding us all "I have to be to school ON TIME today- I'm the Star of the Week in my class!" [Jared said they were a bit late, but her big moment wasn't till 12:45pm, so it was all good.]

Anyway, the day I left Des Moines, it snowed there. And when we landed in SLC, it was snowing as well. Monday? Again, it snowed. All. Day. Long. Today it is supposed to snow, but hasn't yet. So, in honor of the extravagant amount of white fluffy powder, here's a snow picture:

I'd post pics of my hot cocoa, but I drank it all already :)
Edited: just noticed that a few posts down there is another pic of the swing set. There's a lot more snow on it now. That's because it *snowed* here. Really.