Our day today......

So I read on a friends blog that they had gone to this great Pizza place. They just got back from Italy and she said their pizza tasted the closest to what they had in Italy. Mike wanted to take me to lunch so I told him about it and we went. It was called Pizzeria Seven Twelve. They started you off with hummus and the freshest pita bread ever. The waitress told us that they make it fresh everyday.
We had a butter lettuce and blue cheese salad. Very good!

Our pizza was great, it was so fresh, the sauce tasted like fresh tomatoes the crust was thin and chewy, it beat the heck out of Domino's or Pizza Hut!

On to my garden. I am loving my garden I have run into a few problems but I work it out or buy new plants:-) Below in the foreground of this picture you see little cilantro starting to pop up. Cilantro is my favorite of the herbs!

My dad helped me plant 12 tomato plants and they looked good for about a week and a half. Now they look all saggy and yellow. I am really worried about them. I had a garden guy come and look at them. HE didn't know what was wrong with them, but he said the new growth looks good so I'm crossing my fingers.

My peppers look great, but this is after I killed the first group of peppers. I then went out and bought more they seem happy in their new home.

This is a mystery plant. I can't remember what it is. I forgot that I put anything in that square, I'm doing the square foot garden. I planted some lettuce in it.

And 2 days ago I noticed a few of those little plants popping out. Maybe they are cucumbers, or squash, I really can't remember!

So this is a little overview of my garden. I hope I can keep it safe from the critters we have around here. We have deer, skunks, minks, and neighbor kids!:-)

Memorial Day......

I think we found a new tradition for Memorial Day. My friend Michelle told me about a special coffee cake that her family has for breakfast every Memorial Day. It sounded pretty good so I got her recipe and made it yesterday morning. And it was soooooo good. It is cream cheese coffee cake. We probably won't have it very often, maybe just on Memorial Day because it is made with cream cheese and butter. But we all enjoyed it!

Then we headed out to the yard. We had seen two movies this weekend, and today was about yard work. We had rain for a day and a half. We figured if we didn't go out and weed today, we would regret it. While we were outside we had 2 cranes fly over us. They are huge birds to have fly over you. We see so many birds here geese, ducks, ibis, pelicans, magpies. The five of us made a pretty good dent in the weed population in our yard. I tugged and pulled and this morning my collar bones are sore!

Then we went out to Sonic for a burger. Who needs a cookout? We got tater tots and onion rings!

Not to mention cranberry and cherry limeades!

We babysat the girls...

Erin got invited to go to a concert so we watched the girls for her. Elizabeth is at the sweetest stage. She'll just be looking around and then she see's your face she smiles at you and starts talking to you. It is awesome. She just makes you happy. Elizabeth just chillin with the girls.

Erin and Elizabeth

Erin ask Steven to help out with the girls. All of the boys are good with them, but Steven was great.

Steven took care of Elizabeth the entire night he calmed her, gave her her bottles, burped her, rocked her, and I changed her diapers. I said he was great not a saint! Mike and I were amazed at how good he was with her and how much she liked him. She never cried once with him.

In the mean time I took Issy out to water the garden and taught her how to drink out of the water hose.

Later that night I was in the kitchen cooking, and Chris came to hang out with Issy. The boys love to play with her. They say sweet things to Elizabeth and give her kisses. But they play with Issy all of the time. She has all of those boys wrapped around her little finger!

Our ward has a recipe group once a month. I went last week and learned how to make crepes. I was mixing them up and Issy helped me make them. She enjoyed getting the flour and putting it in my bowl.

This was my favorite topping for the crepes. So it's the only thing I offered my family. Nutella and sliced bananas. It is sooooooo good!

another busy week......

So first off I have a little lesson for everybody. My dad did a load of laundry, then threw it in the dryer. Half way through the drying cycle dad realized something was thudding around in the dryer. He went in and checked, it was his cell phone. It was sopping wet, the scene had water stuck in it. He was so bummed, he started trying to dry it out. Put it on the porch in the sun, kept it in the oven with the light on, blow dryed it, he worked for days. After the fifth day of drying he turned it on and it worked fine. It still had all of his numbers, charged well, and he was happy again. So the next time you drop your phone in water have some patience and dry it!




Mom and Dad went home yesterday. They were here for 3 weeks. Dad worked so hard I was a little worried. He, with a little help from the boys, sheet rocked half the basement. Mom spent most of the time checking out the surroundings. She would like to move here. It would be a big change for them. I have 3 cousins who live there and I don't even see them once a year. I am so lame!

Then we went to my cousin Stacy's and visited with them. This is her baby Esme in my parents lap. She is so cute! I really enjoyed visiting everybody.
Then on Friday night we were all here at the house. The kids took some shot's of the baby. She was so cute and happy.

Elizabeth had lot's of patience while her parent posed her. She is just chilling in this picture.

Issy made me give her a bath. She learned the womanly art of persuasion. She said, "bath...please" and pointed to my room. She loves bubble bathes now, so she was so excited.

I love that she if filling out now, and not the little scroungy baby anymore.

And getting ready to go home she was very happy and cute.

On to my garden. We are doing the square foot garden, garden. The problem is it takes a while to get the soil wet enough. I killed all of my pepper plants, because they didn't get enough water. I am soaking the bed down and I will plant new ones. Wish me luck!

Then Mike came home from New York on Friday sick. I picked him up at the airport and drove him straight to Urgent Care. I had him tested for the flu. I am amazed that they can stick a long q-tip into your brain (OK, straight through your nostril, but very deep so it looks like the are touching your brain!) and test it and tell you if you have the flu, and if it is strain A or B. But he didn't have the flu or strep, he has a viral thing. He is miserable, and has had to stay down all weekend. I have been sanitising everything. I do not need to get sick!

Mothers Day.......

On Mothers Day, we had a really nice day. Church was great and after church we headed over to the kids house to bless the baby. She was so sweet. She let me hold her and she didn't cry. Most of the time that I have held her she will start crying. I keep telling her "I'm your grandma and you are going to love me!" So on her blessing day she looked at me and smiled, and seemed happy to let me hold her. It was great! Below is papa holding her, he held her for a while and just loved every minute of it. The baby boy in this picture is exactly 1 week younger than Elizabeth. Monica and Jessica have been friends with Erin since Junior High. They are both up here in Salt Lake being nurses and having fun.

Then A.J. and his wife Jessica have been friends with Erin since Junior High. They got married and are expecting. It's fun to see all of these kids grow up.

OK so I told you that Elizabeth let me hold her, I might have neglected to say I was feeding her a bottle:-) But she was smiling at me!

Jon is holding Elizabeth. Elizabeth wore the same dress Issy wore. I bought it when I was pregnant with Christopher. But as you know I never had another girl. So Erin used it for her girls.

After the blessing the kids started running and playing. Issy went outside with the other kids. These three little girls ran and ran and giggled the entire time.

I could have watched them all night. The little girl in the red and white dress is Issy's cousins she is 5 days younger than Issy.

Mike and I enjoying that baby princess!

Great Grandma and Grampa enjoying Miss Elizabeth.

My dad wanted to be here for the babies blessing, he was so happy to be there.

My mom was having fun holding her too. Babies make things happy!

I'm so behind........

We came to the start of another weekend at the movies. This time it was Star Trek, we all liked it. But we met the kids there and enjoyed the girls. Here is the Princess with her "papa." I loved the smile on her face in this shot. She smiles all of the time, but I never get a picture of her smiling.

During the movie Issy got bored and Erin had her down front on the ground. There is a nice carpeted area in the very front of the screen. so we just take the little ones down there to play. Issy was down there playing and a little boy her size was down with his mom. She tried to get him to go run and play with her but he didn't want to leave his mom. She got her way and got him to go with her. I was watching the exciting movie and notice some movement at the bottom. I look down and see 2 little kids running with each other. I knew it was Issy. I watched them run and play for a while it was so cute. Then I found out after the movie that she got her first kiss! she had fallen down and the little boy told her sorry. Then he tried to kiss her, she wouldn't look at him, so Erin said he is trying to give you a kiss, so she looked at him and he kissed her somewhere on her face. Erin thinks it was on her nose or something. Mike and I cracked up and said, "your in trouble she is already making out at the movies!"

The tiny princess is very sweet. It is fun to see her start to come alive. She will look at us and start to coo or smile.

Then we came home to flowers. My brother Jared sent Mom and myself pretty flowers for Mothers Day. It was fun to come home to a nice gift.

With all of these people living in this house my dad has been helping us sheet rock. It has been going pretty slow, because my boys are not used to hard laborious work.:-)

The guys and their grandpa are getting some quality time together. Also, hopefully, they are learning things from him. He could teach them a lot.

Mike put together my garden boxes. He did it for mothers day.

It was actually a lot of work to clear the ground for it. But I am so excited to have more garden space. We will be eating vegetables this summer!

A fun week..

So Mike and I got home on Friday night and my parents got here Saturday night. I got them to my house a little after midnight. The next day after church, the kids brought the girls over. So mom and dad got to meet Elizabeth. They enjoyed the princesses.

And the princesses enjoyed them!

Then during the week Erin got mastitis. So we picked up Issy and she stayed with us for 3 days. One of her favorite things to do is watch the gummy bear song on YouTube. Below is Uncle Nate watching with her. She slept with us both nights. She started doing everything grandma did every night. She brushed her teeth, rubbed cream on her face, applied chap stick on her lips, but I drew the line at taking a blood pressure pill:-)

I also decided to make cookies. I thought hey, I will make cookies and frost them pink for spring.

After I frosted them, the color looked very familiar to me. Then I recognized it. Pepito-Bismol! I made Pepito-bismol cookies!!!

We ran to the store and the princess rode with Gigi (great grandma). Then mom saw that there was only supposed to be one rider and we tried to get Issy off. She didn't want to get off!

Then Friday morning my grandparent of the year nomination flew out the window. We went out back and started cleaning the yard up. Mowing and getting rid of even more tumbleweeds. The princess rode with her grandpa to mow the lawn. She was so happy.

The yard is big and she rode for a very long time, still very happy. But notice she is still in her jammies.

It was a pretty morning just a slight chill in the air. One of the neighbor boys were out, so they played on the teeter totter. This is where my bad grand parenting came into play. She was so happy riding this little thing. But by this time she was shivering! Notice her little friend had a jacket and hat on, and the princess is just in those jammies. I had to pull her off of the toy, to get her in the house and warm. She was not happy to leave.

Later that afternoon we went out to lunch and met the kids at a movie. Here is Issy riding in the back with Gigi and G-pa (great grandpa).

The movie was exciting but the princess was unimpressed. She wanted to "play" during the movie. So her mother ended up playing Wall-e for her on her i-phone, while the rest of us watched Wolverine.

When we got out it was raining so we waited for the guys to go get the cars.

We had to tell the princess bye-bye so she could be with her family. We were sad to see her go, she is a fun little girl.

We have some ponds near our house. We were driving around showing things to my parents. And we saw tons of these big white birds swimming around. On closer inspection We saw they were pelicans. It was crazy.