[Absolutely not for the sqeamish or faint of heart] Our pampered chickens

Be aware--there is a stomach-turning picture below. Look at your own risk.

We are keeping our chickens in their run because the garden is starting to come up and those girls would love to nip off every tiny green leaf.

For some reason the three human girls decided the chickens need to have some tasty worms despite their not being able to go scratch around in the flower bed for their own.

That means the big girls have been digging in the flower bed in order to find earthworms to feed to the chickens.

See what I mean about pampered chickens?

This is what was proudly shown to me this afternoon (you have had adequate warning):

Weekend festivities

I had a fun end-of-the-week. Thursday night was the the evening Relief Society meeting and we made cards to be sent to military members who are away from their families this Christmas. They might be overseas serving, or in a hospital either here or abroad. The cards will be delivered via the American Red Cross. I brought macaroons for the dessert table.

Saturday evening was C & E's piano recital and these pictures prove I did accompany them.

I practiced hours and hours to prepare a simple accompaniment that went with the girls' melody line. Did I say hours and hours?? Over several weeks?? I am so not a piano player, although I pretend to be for FHE and other such family events. I knew I could play with E pretty well because hers was easier, but at the last minute I asked the piano teacher to accompany C. But when it came time to introduce her piece, he gave me that puppy-dog look and I changed my mind again and played with her. I had to drop a few notes but it went better than I expected.

The girls were cute and the music was great. They went in order of skill, so my girls were near the beginning and culminated with a 15 year old that is already a wonderful piano player. The teacher is a senior in high school and my only dismay is that he'll be off to college in less than a year. We'll never have this kind of sweet deal again when it comes to piano lessons (good price, he comes to the house, the family loves him). Here he is with E.

I brought macaroons for the dessert table. :-)

Sunday night was our ward's annual Christmas music and stories. The children sang first and it just about brought tears to my eyes it was so pretty and perfect. They sang "Angels We Have Heard On High." Ward members were asked to present favorite Christmas memories and they ranged from traditions in a Mexican/American family to a Christmas in the military in Afghanistan, interspersed with singing Christmas carols. Outstanding. Oh, I brought macaroons for the dessert table. LOL And when Conor got home he asked if there were any left. They were a hit!

This morning I got up and checked my email and found a forgotten picture from someone's camera. It's Kevin's graduation day 18 months ago. Today he leaves the Brazil MTC to go to Florianopolis to start the proselytizing part of his mission.

Messiah! (and some weight loss)

I know, I know, I write that every year. It's because I like participating in our community Messiah Sing Along so much! Actually, last night I had two musical performances to enjoy.

C and E's class sang "holiday" songs (3, 4, 5th graders each sang a group of songs). Tonight are the K,1,2's so we'll pick up S's class then.

Right after than was the annual community Messiah sing-along at a church very near ours. Because Conor is here, dh and I were able to send the girls home with him and he and I go to it together. He'd never been to one. Of course, with his being in the Tenor section and my being in the Alto we couldn't see each other, let alone actually sit together. :-) I ran into the several LDS ladies that I always see there. The whole thing is fun, although a little stressful when we're coming up to the songs I know I used to always blow even after months of practice in Gallup's choir. Haha, I guess that is part the the fun too, laughing with the other ladies when we all blow it!

I've hit a milestone in my weight loss; now I weigh what I did when Kevin was born. LOL It's actually been a number of years since I've been down to that and I'm at exactly the halfway point, 22.5/45 lbs lost. In fact, last Saturday the first person who didn't know I've been dieting noticed my weight loss! It's taken just under 4 months, so I assume it will take me another 4 to get to my goal. I've had a change in mindset about losing weight. Eight months seemed much too long to wait before, but now it seems like a change in my habits instead of a hurry-up-and-get-there kind of thing. And since I started in August, I should reach my goal before bikini season. Haha, JK!

Thanksgiving 2011

What a great holiday! We had a fine selection of family here for bits and pieces of the week. Our family gets along really well and it all was a pleasant, intriguing, and fun week.
This picture shows a number of families: my mother with two of her three children, me with my husband and our three daughters, my brother with his wife and child, my dh with his two older sons, including the one who is living with us and the other one with his wife and her service dog.

I'm putting some pie pictures here because some of my Korean friends were wondering about pumpkin pie.
This is what the pumpkin pie looked like once it was cut:
It was a little chunkier than it was supposed to be because I used "homemade" pumpkin instead of canned. Here is a picture of what it was supposed to look like:
Sorta the same, right?? Haha, the taste was the same because I used the same recipe that is on the Libby's website. Mine just had a little more texture. :-)

Things I Know

*It's nice to have a little work-sanctioned break from work to chat with a friend.*

*When Culver's sends you a promotional email it's hard to think about sticking to your diet.*

*Seeing someone's online signature that says, "Being overweight is hard. Losing weight is hard. Choose your hard." makes you glad to have stuck with the diet and have lost 10 pounds so far.*

*It's awesome to hear my daughters play little songs on the piano.*

*It's even awesome to hear them screech out a few notes on their violin/violas.*

*Finding warm eggs in the nest makes the "chicken clean up duty" all worthwile.

*Warm days and cool nights are perfect weather.*

*I'm glad my friend Leigh uses this posting format now and then so I can copy her.*

Homework & piano practice

You will very, very seldom hear me complain about being a mother. I'm so happy to be one that I don't think it's right to complain. HOWEVER, can I just say a few words about homework and piano practice? Time-consuming! I spend most of the time from the end of work at 4:30 until nearly bedtime simultaneously making dinner, listening to the daily chatter from the girls, and cajoling them to do their homework. We eat dinner in the middle somewhere, then back to homework and piano practice. Some of the girls need very direct and firm supervision to get these things done and it's hard to keep on them and do everything else.

Okay, so there.

Now the good part: we have two little piano players in our house! In fact, they are going to each play a piece in the Primary Talent Show this Thursday. Each piece will be performed in sixty seconds or less. Maybe a little bit more next year, but I'm pleased as Punch they are able to perform this year.

And about that homework? I see my daughters reading more each day, learning two-digit multiplication, and learning parts of sentences. Cool. And to think doing homework reinforced it all!

A few of my favorite pictures from our vacation

This is my father-in-law Bob. He's 81 years old and has been an amputee since he was in his 20s. He's always in pain from the effects of the electrical accident that caused his amputation, yet he hikes, camps, plays with grandkids, and is a very funny guy.
And here is my mother-in-law Jane. Those cute boys are her grandsons, my nephews. Jane is honestly one of the nicest people I know. She is thoughtful of others, never wants to give offense, and is a great conversationalist. She raised very kind and thoughtful sons, too. Girls too, but I see such kindness in her sons that I know she did a great job with them.
Here are my three younger daughters. They'll soon be entering 2nd grade (S) and 4th grades (C & E). They are lively and smart and super affectionate. We have a lot of love going on in our family!


I was really happy to take them to this pioneer outpost called Cove Fort. One of my favorite memories of my older children was taking them here at about the same ages. For some reason D didn't go, but I took H and K on a trip here. I hadn't taken too many road trips back then and it was kind of a BIG DEAL to pack up the car, drive there, take the tour, stay in a KOA cabin, tour the town about 35 miles away, then return home to Salt Lake City.

On the way home from this trip I stopped to see my old friend Kathy. Kathy and I met through her mother Peggy. Peggy was my neighbor across the street when I lived in Salt Lake City. She didn't know anyone who wasn't a friend and she gathered me right in. Her daughter Kathy and I became friends some time after Peggy and I met. A year ago Kathy developed some serious health problems and was hospitalized for a long time, then moved to a nursing home. She's doing a lot better, but you can see the vent, and it's reduced her ability to be out and about as she has always been. Her husband Andy is very attentive to her and she dotes on him. They are a wonderful couple. Just a note: I was startled when I came into Kathy's room because she had lost some weight and she looked just like Peggy. Peggy had snow white hair when she died a couple of years ago, but other than that, it was almost like I was looking at her when I saw Kathy. What a nice memory for me.
This is my son Kevin. He'll be going on a mission soon and it's probably the last time I'll see him before he leaves in October. It's scary how often we think or say the same thing at the same time!
And finally, a shot of two of the big focuses in my life--my family (part of it!) and Jesus Christ. Yes, I'm aware that this is a statue depicting Him (LOL), but I really try to live as He wants me to live.

This is where I live

Last Thursday and Friday were vacation days from school for the girls, and since I always check the school calendar before scheduling myself for my second job, I mostly had the days off as well. On Thursday I was looking through the newspaper and saw the national park on the east side of town was offering a ranger-led hike with the theme of Cowboys of the R** Valley. Since C & E have been learning all about cowboys, I knew it was the perfect activity. Friday morning we met at the visitors' center/ranger station at 9:00, then drove to the starting point about 7 miles farther along the perimeter of the park toward the south, then into the park from the south side. [GWP, when we went there, we stayed in the vicinity of the ranger station on the west side of the park.] I thought since most schools were out that day the group would be a bunch of mothers and children, but it wasn't. We were the only family with children and most of the other six hikers were older adults.

Here was our first awesome vista:

Kind of full of cacti, huh? Those cacti are called saguaro and it's not pronounced as you'd think, it's pronounced /suh hwah roh/. Just so you don't feel stupid by pronouncing it /suh gwar oh/. ;-)

The ranger pointed out lots of interesting nature things as well as told the history of the area. This picture shows a nurse tree:

Baby saguaros grow best when they are beneath an overhanging tree such as this mesquite. Usually by the time the cactus is big, the tree has died, but sometimes you can still see the relationship.

Our hike was about 1.3 miles along a pretty good trail. Our turnaround point was this old windmill:

It was put up more than a hundred years ago and it drew water and put it into the two large tanks for a long time. It was kind of jarring to see it there because the old homesteads are long, long gone, and really, the only sign that people once lived there are the fact that the saguaros are mostly about 80-110 years old in that area (taken down by the homesteaders desperate to meet their quota of livestock to prove up their 160, then 640 acres, and then trampled underfoot by said livestock), naturally regrown since the homesteaders left, and a very few remaining stream bed changes made by the settlers trying to change the rain runoff.

My girls were real troupers and had a great time out on the trail. Me too.

What a week!

In addition to the major time-waster below, I spent hours and hours working on an online tutorial for an online project I hope to do. I have a bit more to do before I have any news.

Tomorrow the Pick Up Fairy will deliver two and a half bags of things she picked up from the girls' bedroom over the past week and a half. If everything is put away before noon, the Pick Up Fairy will take her children bowling. There is an introductory bowling event tomorrow with free bowling, pizza, drinks, school supplies for prizes, and so forth. I'm sure the girls would enjoy it. Er . . . the Pick Up Fairy is sure the girls would enjoy it. But after noon, there won't be time to go, so it is to be hoped the girls will get things put away lickety split.

Speaking of pizza, we nearly always have pizza for dinner on Friday. None of that over-priced commercial pie here, no siree! 96% of the time I mix up some crust and let the kids mix it up with the toppings. I came across a recipe in Sunset magazine this week that I decided to try. The twist is that it was baked on the grill. It was awesomely good! The only thing I changed was I used well-oiled waxed paper instead of the oiled parchment paper because I had waxed paper and no parchment paper. It worked fine.