My Favorite Girl

She is my favorite girl in the whole world.

(Even with the Cheetos face and booger nose.)

Idaho Summer

Sometimes you get lucky and get to see this in your own front yard.

Froot Loops with Marshmallows

Surprisingly, his blood sugar was in the 130s two hours after he ate a whopping bowl of sugar with fruity shaped sugar for breakfast.

(I'm not letting Steve take the kids grocery shopping anymore.)

It may not look like it, but we do take diabetes seriously.

Even Saylor helps out.

(It's sad, but my 19 month old can properly insert a test strip.)

Happy Weekend

Our 4th of July could have been depicted in a Norman Rockwell painting.

It was simple, spent with friends and family, and very fun.

The festivities actually started Friday night after Steve brought home what will now be known as the best $34 ever spent.  It was cheap blow up pool from Kings.

Add a few expensive gallons of city water and we had hours of fun!

Sunday evening this man promised my boys that if they got their chores done early Monday morning, he would take them to Target to blow all their money on Legos.  At 6:10 am Monday morning, Carter woke me up to tell me he was going to clean my toilet.  

When asked why he woke me up so early, Carter retorted that Dad had told him to let him sleep in until 7:00, so he woke me up instead.  Nice.

When I rolled out of bed at 6:30, the toilets had been cleaned, the trees had been watered and our front yard looked like it was being set up for a garage sale.  The boys had cleared out the garage so Steve could sweep it out.  

By 9:00 am, the garden was weeded, the garage had been cleaned and Steve and the boys were on their way to Target.   They brought me home a BIG soda.  

I needed it by then!

The afternoon was spent in the back yard "swimming" in two feet of grassy water.

Saylor mostly sat on the benches and enjoyed cold watermelon.

Andrew worked on his siphoning skills.

Carter...well Carter gave a lot of great looks.

I just like this picture.  Say Say loves her feet.

We invited my parents over for dinner and invited over some friends and more family over to watch fireworks and have kids play in the pool...which turned into a gigantic mud pit by the end of the night.

Dinner included grilled chicken, fresh fruit and an amazing salad made by my mother from spinach and lettuce grown in her garden.  Have I said that I love summer?

Saylor is adored by her grandparents!

The best part of the evening was watching neighbor kids and nieces light things on fire.

I'm impressed no one was burned.

We might be creating pyro's here.

We stayed up until almost midnight setting off firecrackers and watching the illegal fireworks set off by people in surrounding neighborhoods.  Steve purchased one BIG illegal firework entitled the 

"Mother Load."

As I watched it light up the sky above our home, I thought for sure our house was going to burn to the ground.  

Steve is lucky it didn't.

We also celebrated Steve's Dad's birthday.  Mike and Chenele brought over Lazy Daisy cake and ice cream.  It was delicious.

Happy Birthday Gary!  

I honestly hope every Fourth of July can be like this one.  It was picture perfect.

This Past Week

This past week has been a busy one.  There has been so much to document that hasn't been.

But what needs to be written about more than anything else is the passing of my maternal grandmother.

Sarah H. Barzee Acor passed away Friday June 24, 2011.

Her posterity included 13 children, 55 grandchildren, 151 great grandchildren and 5 great great grandchildren.

Grandma Sadie lived a very humble life and was a wonderful example of selflessness.  She had practically nothing because she gave everything she had to people she felt needed it more than her. 

Unfortunately, I did not know her well, but it was not her fault that I didn't live close.

I do however look very much like her.

These pictures were taken when each of us were about 16 and were framed side by side and displayed on her mantel.

Some of my childhood memories of visiting my grandmother's home include:

Grandma Sadie always had hollyhocks growing in her garden.

She had five gallon buckets of ice cream in her freezer.

He graham crackers were always stale. (this makes me laugh)

She had an old set of Lincoln logs in her hall closet to play with.

She painted with oils and had her award ribbons from her paintings hanging in the spare bedroom.

She had a picture of the prophet and all of the apostles from the Ensign conference report center page taped on the closet door in her hallway.

She would serve us raw milk and frozen corn on the cob cooked in the microwave when we came to visit.

She had large hands.

Her bathroom smelled like yellow dial soap.

She was always happy.

Her basement scared me to death and it was known fact that the boogy man lived in her food storage room even though she would deny it.

The north wall of her basement was just Styrofoam insulation.  This wall was covered in marker and fingernail scratched grand kid graffiti.  I'm sure my name could still be found on that wall today.

Grandma was honest to a fault.  I purposely left a pizza recipe at her home to hopefully enlarge her recipe box.  Her idea of pizza included bread, ketchup, cheese and sliced hot dogs.  She returned my recipe card in the mail with a lovely note.

She sent me a card with a one dollar bill in it every year on my birthday.

My brother Jared and I spent the night at her home once.  She took us to the store and bought a huge box of Cookie Crisp for us after we assured her our mother allowed that type of cereal.  The next morning, Jared and I admitted to her that our mother would never buy us sugar cereal.  Grandma told us that we would have to take the cereal back to the store...but she couldn't because we had eaten the entire box before she woke up.

Her piano was slightly off tune and was missing the finish on many of the keys.  I remember her playing "Teach Me to Walk in the Light" as I sat on a chair and stared out her front window.

She had a massive wooden fork and spoon hung on her wall.

She was colorblind- a trait that has been passed on by my mother and by me (we are both carriers of the gene) and has manifested with my very colorblind son Carter.  

Her favorite color was lavender.  We think it was one of the only colors she could truly see.

Grandma was buried in the Iona Idaho Cemetery this last Wednesday.  All nine of her living children were in attendance along with many many of her grandchildren and great grandchildren.  It was a wonderful day as I was able to spend time with members of my mother's family that I do not see but every five years or so.  Her life was honored and celebrated and I was grateful to learn more about her personally through the wonderful tributes that were given at the funeral.

She was loved and will be dearly missed.

good advice

Don't take a growing 10 year old to Costco with you right after he finishes swim team.   Because you will go into Costco with the intention of buying bread, milk and maybe some vegetables...but you will come out of Costco $98 poorer.

Hair Do's of Which I Do Not Approve

This morning, the kids went a little crazy with the hairspray and gel.

Due to my lack of desire for productiveness, I went along with it.

Here are the boys' hair masterpieces...

"The Alfalfa" 

 "Spike Surprise"

(the tongue is the surprise)

"The Mockhawk"

(Colby played the conservative card) 

 "The eastern Idaho 'I'm ready for church' slick back"

(There is a history to this one)

"Orlando, you like it?  It's Autumn Sunrise"

(Quoting a movie here...extra points if you know it!)

Colby stopped wanting his hair done, so he posed with kissy faces instead.

"The Horned Toad"

 

Something his mother should have NEVER let him do, let alone take a picture.

"The Darth Maul" 

...minus the red face and pointy teeth.

Sadly, the innocent hair fixing took a turn for the worse.  

I'm guessing the colored pencil taped on mustache makes this flower cap more manly.

"Pretty Boy Colby"

(Chances are, I'm in trouble with Steve on this one.)