Tyler's Joy

6/7/2011

Here is a triumphant picture of Tyler at our ward's Easter Egg Hunt in April.

Jared Is A Good Science Teacher

6/6/2011

I am really jealous of how good Jared is at teaching. Almost everyone in our ward has a testimony of his gospel doctrine lessons, he got all "excellents" on his teacher evaluation at school, and he works for half as much time as me and is getting better grades in our curriculum development class. He tries to make me feel better by saying that he does well because he went to school for a really long time and that I do better than him at taxes. Hmph! It doesn't make me feel better. I want to be totally perfect at everything the first time I try it! I even had a nightmare last night where Jared turned in a paper with three sentences on it and got an A and I wrote over 10 pages and got a 68. (I might have a problem.) Well, at least I didn't have Jared's dream last night. He dreamed that ugly fat witches were attcking our house and casting spells on him :D

For the classes he teaches, Jared likes to make scale models. Here is a scale model of the layers of the Earth's crust.

Here is a scale model of the solar system that he put up on the wall of his classroom. I really liked it. The yellow made his room seem so happy.

Derek the Builder

6/2/2011

Yesterday morning Derek was playing with the K'nex downstairs while I finished sleeping. He kept coming into my room to wake me up and ask me to take little pieces apart and put them together. At 8:30 I finially came downstairs and found the "grandfather clock" from the instruction book almost fully constructed. I helped him connect the three major pieces that he had built together and voila! A pretty cool toy. I'm really impressed in my son's mad construction skills. He told me that his secret to success was to "just follow the arrows Mom."

Jared's Little Bird Told Him...

5/31/2011

Jared bought a humming bird feeder. Now our back porch is a humming bird hot spot! Yesterday we saw five of them all fighting to get the goods. Jared says that he's been filling it up with sugar water every other day. So cool (and a little expensive :)

Die, Die, Die!

5/29/2011

Tyler is such a super kid! This week we found out that he was commended for both his Math and Reading scores on the 3rd grade TAKS test. For all you Utah and Idaho people, that means that he got above a 90% on his end of year standardized tests. In Texas the TAKS is a really big deal and kids and teachers all work really hard to study for them.

We also found out that Tyler was accepted into the GT (gifted and talented) program in the Northside Independent School District. This is a really big deal. It will allow him to take accelerated math and science classes as well as test out of some of the required high school credits. He's very proud of himself and insists on referring to himself as "a genius." We keep telling him that bragging all the time isn't really a genius thing to do...he's still learning...

This week the squash vine borers attacked my zucchini plants. I thought that I could avoid it this year by wrapping the base of the stem with a paper towel tube. I guess not. Every branch I broke off had a wiggly little grub in it. I had to rip out the plants and I was really upset.

Tyler and Derek sensed my distress and thought that they might be able to cheer me up by drawing pictures of bugs dying terrible deaths. It actually worked. When I look at these, I feel so much better!

Ants Under Attack - Tyler (age 9) Killing June Bugs and A Snake With Spray - Derek (age 5)

The Home Depot - An Actual Home?

5/28/2011

Family home evening...Texas style!

We spend A LOT of time at Home Depot looking at poisons that we can use to kill bugs. The kids usually come along and get bored. Not this time!

She Calls Herself "Lolly"

15 May 2011

So my little Holly (or Lolly as she calls herself) is a regular stinker. She's got this wild curly hair that I can't tame. Nancy does a little better than I do, but she usually ends up looking like she just got out of a wind tunnel. She loves to play jokes on us and has a little bit of a temper. The other day I wouldn't let her get in the car to go to the Fathers and Sons campout with the boys. She was so mad at me that she put her blankets in her backpack with a bottle of water, took my phone, sneaked out through the garage and got two blocks down the street before I finally caught up with her. When I did she said, "Go away Mom!"

She likes to stand on the arm of a bench at the top of the stairs and look down at us. It's very, very, dangerous.

Relaxin' with wet hair on dad's pillow.

Holly LOVES to go for rides in the car.
We ran out of baby clothes (and barrels) so Holly had to wear a Little Einstiens drum.

This is my favorite. While I was grading papers I let Holly play with my graphing calculator. After a few minutes she gave it back to me with this message.

Oh dear, my sweet baby, what have you done?!

Poteet Strawberry Festival

2 Apr 2011

Today we went to the Poteet Strawberry Festival. It's the biggest and best festival in South Texas. I was skeptical of something so far out in the country but it was wonderful!

Here is the Poteet yellow cactus flower of Texas. Here is the Poteet hay field of fun.

Here are the kids posing with "Freckles", the Poteet Strawberry Festival's mascott. I didn't want to wait in line to get a picture of his front, so we just stood in the back. It was basically the same.

Derek's first experience with bumper cars. Tyler didn't have as much fun during his turn because the cars didn't have pedals and it was hard to control them with just the steering wheel.

Holly was bound and determined to get on every carnival ride that she saw but she was too short for most of them. She was actually too short for this one too, but we convinced the guy at the gate that we would keep her safe. She LOVED it!

I loved this! I have always wanted to go into a mirror maze and this one was great. I followed the boys through and it was so funny to see Derek running head on into all the walls. Holly kept running into the dead ends on purpose so she could see herself from all sides.

The view from the top of the ferris wheel. Yes mom, I went on the ferris wheel. As a side note, I really dislike ferris wheels. It's not the heights, it's the swinging. I've been scared of them since I was little. This one was okay. It didn't swing too much.

Holly aparently LOVES ferris wheels.

I'm pretending to love ferris wheels. The boys are excited.

Hot and sweaty Holly. It got up to 100 degrees today.

Our last ride was a little kids roller coaster. Holly climbed up the stairs 10 times or so because she was so excited to ride on it. However, we couldn't convince the guy to let her on. So Derek and Tyler went on the ride while Holly stood at the gate crying and crying. The boys said it was really fun. Tyler didn't like the "down and turney parts." Derek said, "It was great!"

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.