I was having too much trouble posting pics and things, so I kind of stopped blogging for a while there to save myself some sanity.  Justin hooked me up with this new and improved one though, so now I hope to start up more frequently again.

See you at the other site!

On Sunday afternoon we headed out to the Larson parents house, where everyone but my oldest brother Darren and his family were able to make it. (If you guys read this- we missed you lots!)  When we got there we opened some presents from Grandma and Grandpa and the Darren Larson family (who had our names this year).  Thanks everyone for the great gifts!  My parents gave us a food saver, it’s supposed to help out with food storage and such…looks awesome, can’t wait to give ‘er a try!  Russell’s big floor puzzle was a hit – we’ve already assembled it a few times!  And of course Bryn loves her Littlest Pet Shop stuff!

Ash being a stud

Monday we headed out to the sugar bowl for some sledding and had a great time!  Ok, well at least I did!  The kids were whining and crying that they didn’t want to go sledding, but we forced them to so that mommy could go down a few times!  I love sledding!  I also love hanging out with my brothers and their families, so that was another reason we went.   Bryn ended up going down once with Justin and I managed to coax Russell to go down with me a few times.  And even though he laughed both times, he said that it “made his tummy feel funny” so he wouldn’t go willingly one more time.  Oh well, when it looked like the kids were freezing, Justin took them back to the van so I could hang out with my bros.  Despite Justin’s urgings to stay as long as I wanted and have fun, I felt guilty that they were all waiting for me and just went down a few more times.  After sledding was done, the rest of them were going to grab something to eat and go swimming, but Justin and I just didn’t have the energy to take our kids that day, so we just headed back to Grandmas house.

Me and Russell - he looks a little scared

A few years ago, I’m pretty sure it was at Christmas time, we (and when I say we, I mostly mean my brothers cause they did most the work) anyways, we made a hot air balloon.  Our attempt several years ago was successful – we used a dry cleaning bag attached to a Styrofoam plate with candles on it (roughly).  However, as it got higher in the air and started floating across town, our excitement turned to panic as  flaming pieces of the styrofoam plate started falling to the ground!  We ran as fast as we could stomping out the small fires until finally the balloon came down.  Phew!  I think it was this memory that made my mom forbid us “kids” from doing it again this year.  However, we are over 18 and chose to go ahead and try again anyways.  THIS time though, we had a “safety string” attached!

So we found a bag and attached the bottom open end to a half a pop can.  Inside the pop can we made a bunson burner of sorts…rolled up cardboard soaked with fondue fuel!  Our first attempt didn’t fly, and neither did the third, but the second try was a success!  I was going to put up a video of it, but can’t get it to work. Here’s a pic…

Home-made hot air balloon

That was our project for the year…  The kids had lots of fun staying up way too late playing with their cousins.  We adults played a new game Blokus which is really fun and kind of addicting.  It’s a strategy game, but definitely involves some luck!  We also played lots of Bananagrams – my family enjoys word games.  If you haven’t played those games, you ought to!

Bryn!

Christmas Eve we had a massive fondue for supper…very yummy. Normally we read and have the kids act out the Nativity and things like that, but this year everyone forgot! Russell and his cousin were asking to go to bed at like 7:00 so they opened their Christmas Eve pjs and were in bed and Russell was asleep soon after…no talking or goofing around, he just went right to sleep. Bryn was a little more difficult, and Asher was up until probably 10-ish, but gradually they all got to sleep. Us adults stayed up playing cards quite late – “Shoot the Moon” in this case. Justin’s family is different than my family in a lot of ways…one of those being that his family doesn’t seem to get as excited about things (including holidays – which is ironic considering their last name) as my family gets. Perhaps we just have different ways of expressing our excitement? (I haven’t quite figured it out yet.) In any case, Justin’s family is really nice and we enjoy hanging out with them. What I was going to say though was that sometimes it’s hard for me to hold in my excitement in order to fit in with the rest of them…but I think I did ok. 

My kids are usually up by 6-ish but of course Christmas morning they sleep till 7:30!  Why can’t they do that other days?  Russell had asked for a telescope and a few books for Christmas and all Bryn wanted a pink doll (they both got what they wanted). Santa had no idea what to get Asher, but he did ok in the end…everyone was happy! Even I got a nice hoody and a touque with gortex around the ears…NOW I’m prepared for Canadian Winters!! (Well, I guess I still need boots, gloves and a coat…but heck it’s sure nice to have warm ears!) Oh and we got socks…Justin and I traditionally get nice wool socks in our stockings! Justin got a shirt and scarf as well. Justin’s parents made us some more of those bean bag cookers, and are also replacing our Temple clothes that were stolen out of our car, so we’re excited about that.

Bryn opening her beads...this present is a favorite!

Russell hugging his telescope

Asher got some cool trucks from grandma and grandpa.

Christmas Day was beautiful weather wise, so we spent at least a couple hours out there playing. They had a huge snow drift (many actually) and my father-in-law and Justin and the other brothers made a pretty sweet slide down it…complete with stairs. They also helped the kids dig a tunnel through another drift. And what visit out to the farm would be complete without quad rides?? Not this one! Driving around in the snow made my muscles ache the next day…I had to hang on tight! Almost got thrown off it a few times!

Me...heading down the slide!

Justin on the quad.

More quadding...that's me and Justin (check out my sweet new toque).

Russell in the tunnel.

Justin’s sister, who is prego, had come with their little girl who happened to be sick. When we went to bed Christmas night, I was awake all night listening to his sister make trips to the bathroom…apparently she got sick too. At about 4 in the morning, Asher threw up, and continued to do so throughout the night, and by morning I was feeling quite ill. A night from H E double hockey sticks for sure! We got our things together quickly and headed home. The original plan was to go to Stirling but we ended up staying home for a few days instead, to make sure we wouldn’t pass anything to anyone else at my parents house.

To be continued…

We don’t really want to take Russell out of school, and it is a temporary contract, so we will most likely not make any big moves.  However if rent goes up too much here, we won’t be staying…at least in this house!  We’ll see how it goes and make our decisions carefully and prayerfully.  Just the fact that getting out of this tiny place is actually going to happen (even if it isn’t for a little while), makes living here more bearable!  Like there’s light at the end of this very squishy tunnel!  Things around here are really different (extra busy), as I’m trying to adjust to Justin’s 12 hour days.  We hardly ever see him anymore!  As soon as he gets home he tries to spend some time with the kids right before they have to go to bed, and then he’s back to work on the computer preparing.  I expect it’ll be crazy like this for quite a while.  This past week was especially hard though cause I was sick for 3-4 days.  No, not with H1N1…just the regular flu.  Bryn had some high fevers there for a little while too, and Russell and Asher had colds, but we are all feeling somewhat better now.

In other news…Russell made me proud the other day.  In Kindergarten he’s been going to gymnastics – only 4 times, but I was a driver for their class, and it was a good thing.  Russell is quite shy and needs a lot of encouraging to believe that he can do anything.  Especially when it comes go going to new places and trying new things.  Anyways, such was the case at gymnastics.  Long story short, he absolutely refused to go in the foam pit every time…like he’d start crying even when I just wanted to talk to him about it.  On his last day there, I got him to go in!  Woohoo!  (Ok, I’ll admit, part of the reason I wanted him to go in so bad is because that is the only way I would get to try it!  And yes, it was fun…although since Russell would only stay in one place and hanging on to the foam blocks for dear life, I wasn’t able to climb around in it like I had hoped!)  But on the other hand, I was actually really proud of him for going in and just trying it.  Small as it seems, it was a big accomplishment for him!  I only had my cell phone with me so the pics are pretty bad but it’s the best I could do.

Gymnastics - doing some stretching

In the foam pit!!! (If you look close at his hands you can tell he's hanging on for dear life!)

Getting his medal

First Day of Kindergarten

Ok, back to Russell. All summer I dreaded the end of summer! I’m not one to like being away from my kids…not even for a few hours. I was also worried about Russell having a hard time going to Kindergarten – worried that he’d cry when I left, and have a hard time adjusting. Well, I don’t want to speak too soon, but so far so good. I think he was even excited to go! His first day of school was quite funny actually. When I went to pick him up after his first day, I went in to get him and he had this really sad look on his face. I instantly got really worried, tried to talk to him hoping I could cheer him up about his day, but his face stayed solemn. As we walked out to the van I said, “So? Did you like it?” With his head down he sadly shook his head “no”. I was so worried, and after I got him into his seat in the van I said, “Russ, you had fun today, didn’t you??” Then…he burst out laughing! He was totally messing with my head! I couldn’t believe it – what a kid! So he did have fun, and he’s just fine going. I’m sure we’ll have our ups and downs, but he’s doing really well so far.

The jokester after his first day

We went to a Welcoming School Pot Luck down in the River Bottom earlier in the month and talked with some of his teachers. Apparently he is doing well and actually cooperates and participates in things! Woohoo! Oh, and one of the teachers told me that they were quote “flabbergasted” when Russell drew out the entire Solar System on the ground outside with chalk and knew the names of all the planets. If only they knew what he knows about space! He comes home most days with maps he’s drawn – maps of Waterton, Edmonton, Calgary, Magrath, or Russia. He’s also learning some French and informed me on the way to school the other day that “I think that after I learn a bunch more words in French, I will probably switch languages.” I don’t think so Russ! He tells me that his favorite part of school is playing on the playground, but whenever I ask him about his day on the way home from school, he tells me that he “didn’t play on the playground today…I sat with the teacher.” Well, whatever he does, he has a fun time.

The other day there was a field trip planned to the Fire Hall. The previous day when I had talk with Russell about it in the van (trying to get him excited about it), he burst into tears and didn’t want to go. He said, “Please, please, please don’t make me go!!!” So, the next day I talk with his teacher about it and asked if it would be ok to go along with them. They thought that was a great idea, and Justin was home that day, so I went. Eventually I got him calmed down and we walked with the class to the Fire Hall. When we arrived, Russell started to get nervous again and so I said, “Not yet Russell…don’t get scared yet! He said, “What??” I said, “I’ll let you know when you can be scared.” He said, “Well, when is that?” I said, “When there’s a scary part coming!” He agreed, and obviously there were no scary parts and he did fine. He was a little extra clingy but I managed to get these pics with my cell phone camera:

A fireman helping him out of the Rescue Truck

Fireman Russ

He admitted later that he did have a great time, and has been playing firman/rescue truck a little more too.

Birthday Boy

I can’t believe I have a five year old!  Where did the time go?  I’ve done a lot of reminiscing the last few days, about his birth – everything leading up to it, and everything that has followed.  And then I look at Russell and just feel amazed at what an amazing boy he is!  He’s got such a great personality and sense of humor – he’s so much fun to have around.  We think Russell is pretty smart too, but then again, we are his parents!  He’s a decent reader, loves math – he can add, subtract and is now catching on to multiplication…he understands and can tell time, is grasping the concept of money and the worth of all the coins, and loves to measure everything.  Lately he always wants to take a meter stick and pen and paper to the park to measure all the equipment.  He also loves learning about the Human anatomy, and is really into learing about world geography as well as the solar system.  So, for his birthday we got him a measuring tape (which he loves), some posters about the human anatomy, and the phases of the moon, a book about constellations (that glows in the dark…it’s pretty cool), and a kid microscope type thing…oh and a shirt.  The grandmas and grandpas gave him a globe and some walkie talkies (both very popular gifts as well).  He also got some other games and toys and books that he really likes.

Opening Presents

When I picked Russell up from school (there will be a post about him starting Kindergarten at a later date) that day, he said that all his teachers had wished him a happy birthday and that his class sang happy birthday to him in English AND French!  He also said he got to pretend he was Earth and walked around the sun (a candle) five times.  He must have left out some details, cause to me that doesn’t make much sense…oh well.  After school, I took the kids to the new Henderson park, which was kind of a treat cause we’d only been there once before.  While there the kids made some friends (a brother and sister around the same ages), and had a great time.  Actually, I was in on the fun and had all five kids laughing hysterically…it was fun.   Apparently Russell got a little motion sick at one of the things at the park (coulda been partly Justin’s driving on the way home too) – he didn’t feel so good on the way home, but we got him feeling better before everyone arrived for his party that night.  As usual, we had both sets of grandparents AND some great grand parents there, as well as my brother and his family and our Hill friends.  I never thought we’d be able to fit 20 people into this little place (and if you’ve ever been in here you’d wonder how the heck we managed that), but we did, and it was fun!

Cramped Quarters (Looks like the kids were all outside eating)

I had a hard time deciding what to make for his cake this year…I knew I wanted it to be “space” themed, but didn’t actually know what I was going to try to do until the night before.  Here’s the final product:

Jupiter and Saturn Birthday Cakes

The top one, Jupiter has it’s “great red spot” and it’s four main moons (it has 63 total, but that’s a lot of cupcakes!)…Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.  The bottom one is obviously Saturn, with it’s moon Titan.  I think they turned out ok…that ring on Saturn caused me some grief though!  Had I thought of this idea before the midnight before his birthday, I could have made sure the cake I used to make the ring was frozen better…BUT I didn’t, so I had to do the best I could with a partially frozen cake.  It worked.  Russell loved it…that’s all that really matters, right?

Russell with his cake

Blowing out the candles

The poor boy had a heck of a time blowing out those candles!  It probably took a good 3 min for 5 candles…and I think his cousin even blew one of them out!  It was actually quite funny, though I’m sure all our guests didn’t think all that spit on the cake was too hilarious!  Oh well…they ate it!  I hope he had a really fun day…Happy Birthday Russell!

1.  We won’t plant watermelon – it just didn’t work.  I think one of the reasons was that we used too small of a planter and planted to many…apparently watermelon get big!  Who knew!

2.  We won’t pour the carrot seeds out of the bag into the garden.  Though it makes cool looking carrots, they were WAY too thick and hence a lot smaller than we could have had.

Cool lookin' carrot from our garden

3.  We won’t plant the onions as close together either…they didn’t get nearly as big as we wanted, but they were sure yummy!

4.  We’ll plant BEETS!  I love beets, and found out that Asher does too!  He eats them like candy!  That’s my boy Ash!

5.  We most likely won’t plant 5 zucchini plants!  Had we known how big they get and how much each plant yields….holy moly!  We’ve got zucchini coming out our ears!

Massive zucchini plants

Since we re-planted them when they started getting bigger, at my in-laws though, my mother-in-law has made several bottles of zucchini strawberry jam (which I tried today and it was REALLY good), and she’s also made some zucchini loaves.  Today I also made 5 loaves of zucchini bread – three different varieties!  I did just a plain old zucchini loaf, a zucchini chocolate chip loaf (which is extremely tasty!), and 3 zucchini banana chocolate chip loaves.  I haven’t tried the latter yet – but if it tastes as good as it sounds, you can bet I’ll be making more of that!  (This is a few days later, and I tried the banana/chocolate/zucchini loaf – to be honest it was pretty boring!  Won’t be making that again!  However, now that I’m addicted to my zucchini chocolate chip loaf, I may just want to plant that many zucchini again next year! Sadly the zucchini is almost gone from the garden now, and I’ll just have to wait till next harvest.)

My zucchini chocolate chip loaf - sadly it's half gone already!

6. We’ll most likely plant more strawberries, and now that we’ve experimented with a few different varieties, we’ll probably use the one we liked the most.  But I can’t tell you what kind that is.  I hope Justin knows!

7.  No lettuce.  Though it turned out just fine, we way preferred the spinach.  I think we even planted a little too much of that…couldn’t eat it fast enough.

8. We’ll probably try growing some tomatoes.  Justin has been talking about it for the last few years – I’m pretty sure next year we’ll take the plunge.

All in all it was a good planting season!  We’re still pulling carrots and onions out, but other than that, and using up the zucchini, it’s pretty much done!  Now for a long, cold winter…

My birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!!

On Sept. 6 I officially left my twenties!  I feel so old!  Actually I don’t, I still feel much like a, well, a spring chicken must feel!  But when I say, “I’m 30″ – THEN I feel old.  It seems that everyone dreads turning 30 (or 40 or 50..), and I got to thinking…why is that?  My conclusion is that there were a few people who started to “boo hoo” on their 30th birthday, and then everyone just thought, “Hmm…that must be how I’m supposed to feel when I’m that age!”  And so the tradition continues on – everyone feeling sad at 30.  My dad on the other hand, he looks forward to turning another year older.  And though it’s true that he “goes against the grain” (to put it nicely) in some things (aka – idiosyncrasies *it’s ok if I say that, he’s my dad) I definitely appreciate his optimism…I think that’s how it ought to be!

Well, leading up to my big day, I’d talk to Russell about it, and pretend to be all sad that I was going to be 30.  Every time he would say, “Don’t worry mom…that’s not old!”  Thanks Russ!  But then, the day before my birthday, we were having the same conversation and he said, “That’s ok to be 30…that means you can weigh more!”  I said, “What?  What do you mean?”  Russell said, “Oh, well when you get older you weigh more!”  Hmmm…never thought of it that way….bring on the cake!

Bryn and Russell chowing down on my cake

My birthday was on a Sunday this year…which really isn’t my favorite day to have a birthday on.  I do love the Sabbath, but not particularly at this stage of life.  It’s just soooo much work and I never just get to sit and listen and soak it all in. I consider myself lucky if I can close my eyes for one whole prayer during the three hour block.  If I didn’t know how important it was, and that the church is true…there’s no way I’d torture myself like this!  Anyways, in the morning I opened a few presents (thanks Justin!) and then spent the rest of the morning trying to prepare a lesson for YW – I had to teach ALL of them that day.  I decided I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It being the first Sunday of the month, we’d be meeting with the RS first, which would take up 20 min or so, and then I was going to leave 10 min at the end of class for testimonies.  Well, it went as planned…all up to the part where RS took up 20 min.  When we left to go to our class upstairs, the Bishop was there!  He said, “Mind if I sit in your class today?”  I didn’t say out loud what I said inside, and he ended up sitting in.  Lucky me…Bishop there, me not overly prepared, with a lesson on what else but personal purity…no pressure!  Oh, and my object lesson broke so I couldn’t finish that either, which I counted on taking up some time.  Sheesh…what a disaster!  I’ll probably get released soon.

Ash loved the cake too....of course

After church we headed out to Stirling for my favorite meal of all time….at least in the summer time.  A meal straight from the garden – potatoes, beets, carrots, peas, and chicken (not from the garden).  Mmmmm!  The previous day, Justin had bought me a birthday cake from DQ (seems to be a tradition since I don’t really want to make my own cake), and that was delicious too!

I was talking to a friend of mine and she was saying that when you turn 30, people respect you more.  While I could always use a little more of that, I’ve been told I don’t look like I’m that old.  I’ve stopped pulling out my grey hair – maybe that will help!  But let me just say this – if one more person asks me for photo ID with my credit card….I’m seriously gonna LOSE it!!  That really, really irritates me…I’m 30, for crying out loud!  Do I look like a thief?  Huh?  Is that it?  *Deep Breath*  K, I’m ok now.  Anyways, 30 isn’t that bad…feels much like 29 and I’m guessing 31 would feel.

Roasting wieners

Ash relaxing on the patio.

Anyways, I have a bit of an “aversion” I guess you could call it to camping (see my previous post).  However Justin, being determined to train our kids to enjoy camping had the brilliant idea of setting up the tent out there at the farm so he and the older kids could “camp” while Asher and I slept warm and comfortable inside.  I was fine with that.  So they set up the tent and the kids were all excited to sleep outside.  Bryn ended up coming inside around 9-ish I think, but then changed her mind again and went back out to the tent.  I thought it was going to be a long night, but everyone outside slept quite well!  I however was awake all night wondering if they were warm enough, and also trying not to move (Asher is a light sleeper so I didn’t want to wake him up…turns out he woke up twice anyways that night…).  So basically it was a long night for only me!  Oh wait, I think Justin said he was awake a bit too wondering if they were warm enough.  But yeah, that only lasted one night.  But at least they “camped” this year!

Did I mention they even had mattresses in the tent?