Spring Break 2011!

27 March 2011

We had a really great Spring Break. Grandma and Grandpa James drove down from Utah and spent the whole week with us. We are so lucky to have a job where we can take vacations at the same times as our kids. We are truely blessed. We are also blessed to have such great kids to spend our vacations with.

We spent a lot of our time catching up on house and yard work. Jared worked hard on the lawn while I fixed up the garden and painted the living room. Grandma played with the kids and Grandpa went on lots of bike rides.

After we got sick of working all the time we went to the zoo. I've been lots of times before but it was always during the summer. I guess that I just assumed that the zoo was always really hot, muggy and stinky. News flash to Sue - If you go in the Spring it's nice and cool and much more pleasant. Lots of other people had the same idea as us so it was crowded, but we had a really good time. We finally got to see the elephant and the rhino. Those exhibits have been closed for remodeling for a long time.

Later in the week we wanted to go camping. Well me and Derek and Grandpa did and we had already decided to kidnap Grandma, Jared and Tyler and make them come with us. I had been to a campground called Inks Lake State Park and wanted to go there. But...I didn't make a reservation in time to get a campsite. We went anyway. Grandpa brought his fishing gear and he and Tyler and Derek tried to catch catfish and bass from the shore using trout power bait.

It didn't work.

Holly wanted to do some fishing too. But since she doesn't like fish, she had her eye on the ducks.

Derek got mad at his lack of success and decided to take his fishing show out on the water. This is him getting serious about catching some dinner. Holly was just excited to be going along for the ride.

The boys got settled in their canoe. The girls got settled too but made sure to bring along an oreman so that they could float around on the lake in total luxury. When dad got bugged by the wiggley dead weight in our boat, we dropped her off at the shore to dangle her fancy feet in the water with Grandma. [spooky voice] Then we all went off to explore the haunted stream of doom. Ooooooo.

Too bad I don't have a video of us trying to get the boats back out of the dead end at the end. Heh, heh. Lots of yelling and bonking and pushing and poking with oars. It was a silly scene.

And what kind of spring break would it be without a little nudity?

I guess Holly got too involved with playing in the water and lost the privilege of wearing pants.

Oh my goodness. I don't think that we expected this much nudity! Look away!

I have this great picture but I'm having a hard time coming up with a good caption. Can you give me some good ideas in the comments?

So So Busy

26 Mar 2011

My goodness it's been a long time since I put up a post. It feels like all I do any more is wake up, go to work, come home, make dinner, watch TV with the kids for a hour (cause I don't have energy for anything else), grade papers, plan my lesson for the next day, and then go back to bed for 6 hours of sleep before I have to start all over again!

However, we did have a wonderful spring break and I took lots of fun pictures that I'm excited to post. Also, I have found time on Saturdays to squeeze in some gardening. The temperatures here are already in the 90's during the day so we're a good month into our growing season. I have tomatos (hanging and in the ground), peppers, rosemary, green onions, onion chives, garlic chives, beans, yellow squash, zucchini, lettuce, basil, thyme, oregano, cilantro, italian parsely, blackberries, and a potato that Tyler planted last halloween (it just decided to start growing in Feb).

Things are going good with the garden this year as far as bugs are concerned (for a change). I got Celebrity tomatoes to help with disease resistance and make sure to spray for bugs every week. I also put toilet paper tubes around the stems of the squash to keep the grubs out. Oh yeah! I also sifted through all of my soil by hand to get all of the scarab beetle grubs out before I planted anything. It was SO gross. I put them all in a pint size mason jar and showed it to the kids. I told them that it was dinner. Heh heh. They didn't belive me - smarty pantses.

My grubs were this big.

If I had found a grub like this I would have died!

However, now I have garden problems that I didn't expect: sunscald and herbicide overspray. I guess it got too hot too fast and the sun burned a bunch of the tomato leaves. At least I think that's what happened. Also, Jared sprayed for weeds in the grass and I think some of the poison got on some of the tomatoes. Now the new leaves are all wrinkly and deformed. Really weird looking. He said he was sorry. P.S. watch out for manure that comes from cows that were fed grass that was sprayed with herbicide to kill weeds. They cows eat the poisoned grass, they poop it out, you buy the poop and then when you put it in your garden it kills your plants. Just an FYI.

Jared is telling me that I have to stop so that I can clean the shower so that he can caulk it. So I guess the fun spring break pictures will have to wait until later.