“hot kid baby mum-mum”

we’re off to the races.  girl is eating food.

and it comes out stinky.

my siblings are cool

that’s my little sister natalie (13) on the left and my little brother reuben (18) on the right.  it’s hard to imagine that i used to bundle him up in his snow suit and roll him him off of cliffs.  not to mention gag him and stuff him between the bed and the wall, lock him in the garage bathroom indefinitely, shave him bald in the middle of the night and run him through the dryer with the cat.  that’s why he’s so tough.  and yes, i’m a bad person.  i was much nicer to my sister.  mostly because i moved out when she was four, lucky girl.

but i just love this picture of her.  it reminds me of the song my dad made up for us.  although i think it is really a take on an old jimmy driftwood song about a bootlegger.  they both end up sharing the same chorus.

i courted a horse logger’s daughter.

she thought she could walk on water.

i called her billy and she called me hoss.

her lips were sweeter than tabasco sauce.

i swore one day that i would be her boss.

but the earth first boys came around one day

and i went over the hill.

i’ve forgotten what she looks like now, but i remember her stihl.

i’ve forgotten what she looks like now, but i remember her stihl.

isn’t she cute?  and here is my brother hooking up mona lisa and leonardo.  by the way, horselogging only looks fun and romantic.  horses are evil and only good for enlivening one’s vocabulary.  they are just like children.  either you spend time with them and discipline them consistently, or they turn into spoiled, obnoxious brats.  so if you are going to have horses you had better love horses.  and mona and leonardo are nice enough, but still stubborn as mules.  not to mention that they are afraid of chipmunks and have a tendency to step on you.

i also really liked this picture.  (i’m stealing these from my dad’s blog by the way.)  reuben did this job last week.  he said they built the house around the tree and had even notched out the roof as the tree grew.  so reuben had to take the whole thing down in little pieces.  with his big muscles.

(i don’t know if i’ve mentioned this before, but reuben is in sore need of a wife.  he’s probably free for the taking too, if you know how to make a good taco.)

isn’t it just like heaven?

those are all my baby clothes yo. boy’s on the left and girl’s on the right. all labeled in chronological order; newborn girl, 0-3 month girl, 3-6 month girl, etc. i know, it’s crazy. just to imagine buying all that stuff for one kid is kind of amazing. i won’t have to buy anything for my next four kids.

unless, you know, it’s really cute. or on sale.

anyway, it was a delightful way to spend my weekend. holed up in the back corner of the basement with the spiders. but wasn’t it worth it? previously, when doing the laundry and coming across the match to the baby sock that had been sitting on my dryer for the last month – i would think “ahha, now i can crawl up in the attic and root around in the dark to find the right box to stuff these in.” or i could throw the socks away and try not to think about the whole episode.

now i just feel so dang orderly. plus i painted the spider infested basement. the world is fast becoming a better place indeed.

ho de ho de ho

i got new shoes. three dollar. hooray for yard sale day!

other than that, today i gave my kids matching hair cuts, cleaned the bathroom, washed diapers, swore at photoshop, roasted fake hot dogs in the back yard, mopped the kitchen, pilgrimaged to winco and the bank, put up a new twin bed for hughey, placed a land’s end order (there’s nothing like having retail therapy at your fingertips), wiped up pee four times and was muggy.

all the while gideon followed me around playing a hundred questions with his plaintive voice and faux southern accent. “maaw maaw, why did god make the smugeetos? do flies poop on me? is this how you harpoon an orca? (while jabbing at it with a shishkabob stick.) how come grandma doesn’t live at my house? huh, maaw maaw? can i have honey on yogurt? will you read me this book, why is henry sad?” meanwhile, when jehu wasn’t peeing on things, he would stand there and say “i love you mommy, i love you mommy.” i probably say “i love you” over 50 times a day. that and, “i would eat you if you were food” and “i just want to pinch it, pinch it, pinch it.”

i was reminding daddy the other day, that since he has a girl, he is going to have to start talking it sweeter too. his response, “she looks like a sperm whale. aren’t those the ones with the giant heads and little tiny mouths?”

my mostest favorite recipe

only it doesn’t exist. so it is kind of hard to share not to mention make. i always get nervous when i try to make kale slaw because i have to fake it. i am the kind of person who measures ingredients when i make mac and cheese. but i braved it and made it for a picnic this weekend and it turned out just fine. only i don’t remember what i did. but really, this recipe is hard to screw up. i make it different every time and it is always good. so don’t let me scare you.

here is a recipe approximation. salad: 1 bunch of kale, 2 carrots, half a head of purple cabbage, 3/4 cup roasted, salted cashews, 1 box extra firm tofu, marinated and broiled. dressing: juice of one large lemon, 3/4 cup vegenaise, 4 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 tablespoons sesame oil, 2 cloves garlic, 2 tablespoons, minced, fresh ginger. (sorry, you have to scare up the vegenaise somewhere. i tried making it with mayo once and it was not the same. yick.)

marinate the tofu over night in soy sauce, sesame oil, fresh garlic and ginger. the more you put in the more your tofu will actually taste like something. dump the marinated tofu on a baking sheet and broil about 12 minutes a side. meanwhile, chop up all the veggies and put in bowl. then mix up the dressing to pour over top. last, mix in the tofu and the cashews.

the co-op in moscow, idaho serves up this recipe. i craved it like a madwoman when i was pregnant with gideon. only i couldn’t afford $5 for their little one cup servings. so one day i lurked around the deli, wrote down all the ingredients on the little kale slaw plaque and interrogated the deli worker. then, after a few interesting experiments, i now have something that resembles a recipe.

at our picnic last weekend i was trying to explain to my mom what kale was and why it was so good for you. “it’s particularly good for women, i can’t remember what it has in it, but something women really need…” “morphine?” chimed in my husband. no, actually. google tells me it is a good source of iron, and has lots of calcium and antioxidants, magnesium, lutein. it’s great for nursing women, wards off breast cancer and osteoporosis. in fact, it’s so stinking good for you that it’s not actually food. in restaurants they set your real food on it and it makes for a nice plate decoration. that’s the glory of this recipe, you could eat kale all day and not even notice. but you might notice the ginger. so i hope you like ginger.

garrr

i’m chasing company around these days.  maybe when they leave i’ll scrub my floors and show you my new baseboards.

until then, don’t expect anything too exciting.

it’s a happy birthday

took the boys to a birthday last week. one with a giant inflatable water slide and wet trampoline, which they ignored entirely. instead they stood there and contentedly dumped water from one side of the sand table to the other. those otto boys wouldn’t survive in the wild, i don’t believe.

and here is the other white meat himself, giving max a leatherman for his seventh birthday. is that too young? i couldn’t decide, i just went with my better judgment.

also, some last minute wrapping adventures. it is so fun to always save everything. book covers seem to always come in handy. except for their intended use, which is pure vexation. also, my husband actually saves all the packing peanuts in a little box in the garage. i couldn’t find tissue paper to save my life, so what do you know. i was very pleased with myself.

and you have to watch this video of gideon mutilating the pinata. they opted not to blind fold him because of his tender years and sensitive disposition. you can just hear me say, “oh, do the special ed boys get it special?” as he felled it with his first stroke.

okay, it was a defective pinata. but still kind of funny.

some seriously sweet quotes from my husband’s seventh grade year book.

“if you think you are a stud, i agree. sabrina.”

“marc, try not to kiss too many women. i’ll get you a bat so you can beat off all the women. your awesomeness, brian.”

“i hope you can go swimming this summer so i can admire your wholesome bod. your tall, handsome friend, brad.”

“in school i was scared to say that i love you marc. amanda.” [highly suspect this was also brad]

“hey stud, you are an awesome friend. maybe if you started talking to me we could become better friends. cami.”

“marc, you are a totally awesome stud. sarah.”

“i passionately love you. i hope you will always be mine. love kathy ireland.”

“get a tan dude. don’t forget me. love always, wes.”

“you are such a sexy stud. melissa.”

“you’re a great person and aways will be if your mom doesn’t screw you up. callie.”

“it was so spiritually enlightening to have you in all my classes. not that i would cheat or anything, matt. (p.s. put your shirt on, you’re blinding me.)”

and there he is, voted most likely to succeed, standing next to a guy in a byu sweater and turtleneck. now that is funny.

before and in-between

if you wonder why i never seem to do anything exciting anymore, this is why. i’ve spent the last three days sanding and spray painting this bloody staircase. someone painted normal latex house paint over the original enamel. it was peeling, dirty and worn through in spots. not very attractive. so i sanded every last bit of it, primed it and then covered it with 9 cans of semi gloss. my finger still hurts. in fact, i had to use my thumb to get shaving cream out this morning.

and the mess was enormous. i had to sweep my floors, then vacuum, then mop them three times over and it could still use another go. what is especially bothersome is that i’m still not done. i need to come up with a tile scheme for the landing, put up the trim then paint more white and do a little jb weld on the pieces that are clanking around. not to mention carpet my butt ugly basement someday.

but i am thrilled that my grandpa whipped out new oak stair treads to replace the filthy carpet/plywood ones that were there before. i would about die every time the kids would crawl up the stairs, “don’t touch that! don’t touch that!”

and i am especially glad to have natalie here. i couldn’t have done anything without her. she pulled off all my usual jobs so i could sit on a metal staircase and sand all day. “this is such a pain in the butt.”

“uh, miranda. that is because you are sitting on a little piece of metal.”

“oh.”

to the point

i’ve always liked this synopsis of the gospel. and now he went and made it pretty. very exciting. if anyone else thinks it’s pretty, he’s offering the printable version. just leave him a note.

(and by the way, for once, something on my blog gets big if you click on it. i just find that most things are better left to the imagination. and my floor looks cleaner when it’s small.)

now if i could get him to change that red to fuchsia, i think it would look very nice in my living room. plus it has the gospel on it and all.

but i still think it should be pink.