From the Step-mom

A friend of mine posted on her facebook page "One of the hardest things in life is watching someone you love, loving someone else. " by unknown. Then a friend of hers replied, "It could be watching the the children you carried in your belly loving their stepmother. " And that really hurt. I don't know this woman, nor, from her one comment do I EVER want to know this woman, but who the heck does she think she is? Is the step mom abusive to her kids & they love her anyway? Is the step mom mean to them & they love her anyway? Does she neglect them & they love her anyway? Does the step mom speak evil of the "real mom" & the kids love her anyway?  Why is it such a bad thing that her kids love their step mom? Or does the step mom love those kids unconditionally just because they are her husbands kids & the kids love her anyway? Why would this "real mom" begrudge her children love from or for another person? Is her self esteem so low that she thinks that step mom could EVER replace the love her children have for her? Or is she just selfish? Or is she a bad parent and mad that her kids don't love her and is looking to blame someone else for the sucky job she is doing? As you can tell, this statement really bothered me. I'm a step mom. I have two step daughters. They both have mothers they love very much. I come in a distant third! (behind their dad) but I'm extremely grateful that they are able to love me as their father's wife. I've never tried to replace their mothers position in their life, it would be a losing battle and there would be much unhappiness on all fronts. Maybe that mom wants her kids to be like a student I overheard while subbing one time. This student went on to brag as to how she put salt in an open container of pop her mom was drinking and a few other awful things she had done. Really? Is that how we were taught to get along? There are many things I don't agree with in the parenting realm of one mother, but ya know what, there isn't anything I can do about it. They aren't my kids. I can love them as much as possible while they are in my house and care for them and teach them while they are here, but at the end of the weekend, they go home, and I have no say as to what goes on outside my house. So, for those of you that have to deal with a step mom, think about how life would be in her shoes, and don't begrudge anyone that would have love for your child.

Smells of the Season

Sean made a comment the other day that was totally appropriate. I was canning applesauce and he said " aaahhh, the smells of the season." So then we started naming all the smells of fall that we love.

Applesauce

Apple Pie

Pumpkin Pie

Cold Air

Chili

Pumpkin cookies
Candy Corn
Mellow Cream Pumpkins

As you can see, it's all about the food :) Ah, I love fall and the yummyness!

Funny Fruit...AKA the Cucamelon!

We finished taking everything out of the garden yesterday. Actually Sean finished all that. We had taken out most of it 2 weekends ago, but wanted to see if some of the left over tomotoes would ripen. They didn't, so Sean pulled everything. And since he pulled everything, he picked the watermelon. It had grown a little bigger since we first found it, so we were hoping we'd get a little fresh watermelon at the end of the summer. uh, nope! This is what we encountered when Sean cut it open.  No pinkness to be found.

 And it smelled like a giant cucumber. Ugh. So this first picture was me trying to get the color of it. As you can see, one stripe of pink. And this second picture is me trying to not use the flash, but still get a good picture. My photography skills are suspect, let me just put it that way. And I'm not sure about the new set up for the blogger, cause I always have trouble putting my pictures where I want them. If anyone has any hints on that, let me know.

4th of July with Family

On our way back from Iowa we were able to stop in Ohio to see my family for the 4th of  July. I'm so grateful that my aunt & uncle have pool :) it was great hanging out with family. Even my sister from California was able to make it out. So the original reason for the get together is "Cousin's Week." Which I totally think I'm going next year!! I'm a cousin! right?! lol. Anyway. My aunt has all her great-nephews & nieces (my generations kids) over for a week in the summer. It's awesome cause kids that wouldn't usually get to know each other get to hang out and have fun. And since their parents are close to each other (me & my cousins) my aunt thinks our kids should get the chance to do the same. So at the culmination of the week,the parents come to get the kids and we all hang out and catch up.

 Here is my niece & nephew with their dad.

 Bobby is trying to put Grace's hat on, and she's not having it.

 Miss Stella eatin some lunch.

 Miss Grace is not happy about something. I think she wants to get in the pool. That crazy girl loves being in the pool.

 B writing a note. I think. Deep in concentration over something.

 Bobby, Grace and their mom in the pool.

 miss Stella on the swing set. That little stinker got me in trouble. Well, actually she didn't, but made me feel like I was in trouble. ha. She had me put her up on the bar and then I found out she wasn't supposed to be up there. uh, huh. Stinker!

 Wait a minute, that isn't your baby. :) Auntie C with baby K.

 Aunt Edie with K.

 Miss Kate did NOT like the water. Or at least not being able to touch the bottom. She screamed her head off when Ben took her any farther out than the steps. The funny thing was she was so excited to put her suit on she was driving her mom nuts. but alas, this is where she was happiest. on the steps, playing with Ariel.

And Brig, our fashion star :)

 

Needless to say, we spent lots of time in the pool and had a blast. Paid for it later with a lovely sunburn, but wouldn't have missed spending time with family for nothing.

And even more about my garden.

I hope that when this posts the picture isn't as fuzzy as it looks right now. Cause I"m pretty sure I'm not THAT bad of a photographer. Sean is holding one of the tomatoes we got out of our garden. oh, how yummy they were. Huge & yummy. We are kinda tomatoed out at the moment, but still have a few that need fixin. We'll get to them, hopefully before they get yucky.

 And this would be some of the crop. I never did get around to taking a picture of all the ones we had at one time. We gave a BUNCH of them away, and of course ate way too many. Although, i don't think you could ever have too many tomoatoes. But I've probably had my fill until next summer.

 And this would be our surprise addition. We had a volunteer watermelon come up this year. Have no idea how it got there, but eh, we figured, just let it grow. The bean were done and it was in that corner of the garden. After talking to Sean the other day we decided that we would just pull it and get it out of there, so I attempted to do that this morning. uh, what is this?! We have been looking at some of the vines and seeing these little grape sized watermelons. shoot should have taken a picture of that and posted it. They are so dang cute. But anyway, that's all we've seen. So when I started pulling up vines I never expected to see this! holy cow, it's rather large. At least larger than the little grape ones we have. I'm not sure if it's big enough to eat, or if it would be just rind on the inside. Might leave it a while. I just hope the bugs don't get it.

 And then I was pulling some other vines up out of the way, and I found ANOTHER one. not nearly as big as the first one, but a lot bigger than grap size. how cool is that. i might have to start one early next year so we can actually get some watermelon that we can eat. Although, I think they will take up a lot of space. Maybe I'll put them on the hill that Sean hates to mow. now there's an idea!

 And here is the pepper plant that I thought I had killed. And it really did look dead for a while. And yes the picture is upside down, cause I took it upside down. And then forgot to rotate it. Sorry. Anyway. There are about 4 green peppers on it, I'm not sure when to pick them. They are small, but are big enough to actually eat. So, like the watermelon, I'll leave them for a little while longer and hope nothing eats them before I can!

Trip to Iowa

Awesome. I didn't realize I already had some of the pictures from Iowa uploaded. I think that was when the blasted thing was rebelling and wouldn't work for me. I must say, I'm not sure about this new blogger format. It does funny things with my pictures. but the pictures are a LOT easier to upload. 
Well, onto the trip to Iowa to see Sean's family. It started with a trip to the temple for a friends wedding. That we missed. Cause the battery in the truck died. grrrr. So we had to go get a new battery. Then the radio wouldn't work. at all. no cd, no radio. NOTHING. Try driving 10 hours without a radio. not. fun. But we got there. The first day there the family took the girls to the local swimming pool. Holy cow, the thing is more like a mini amusement park! While we went and finished setting up for the party.
Day 2, and of course it's HOT in Iowa. Actually july was hot everywhere, so it wasn't really a surprise. But the boys got out the Slip & Slide, racing version. And the youngest had to join. Meanwhile, all the older girls, from 10 to 15 were in the house.....on the computer. oy!

Grandpa had to show how to do fireworks in a can. I guess they aren't as good as they used to be cause it was a total dud. He tried it a couple times, but no luck.

We are all waiting in our nice clothes before heading over to the church for the part. The girls talking, nonstop. And me reading to the munchkin :) Imagine that?!

And the reason for our trip. To celebrate Sean's Mom & Dad's 50th wedding anniversary. The lovely couple at the table of honor.

After it was over Sean had Abby shave his head. He left it "long" for the party, but once it was over, he cut it off.

 

Girls Camp! Fun for all.

Ooooh, new blogger format, lets see if I can screw up this post :) So I'm finally getting around to posting about girls camp. So what if it was in July and it is now September. Better late than never, right?! Anyway. Our ward has a HUGE group of youth. 22 girls went to camp. We had a blast. Our stake, not sure if it's church wide, actually had 7th year girls. And they were the ones that ran a lot of the day to day activities in camp. Abi, would be one of the 7th years, and her loyal sidekick Kati :)   

  Some of the 2nd & 3rd year. These girls are amazing.

 One of the activities that the girls did was to learn some basic self defense. Part of our stake presidency was willing to get beat up by his wife to show the girls some "moves." Actually he's no slouch himself, but ya know, girls want to see a girl beating up a guy. lol

i was with the 3rd year girls and these are some of the girls practicing what they had just been taught. it cracks me up how much they DON'T want to touch each other.

 And you can't have camp without camp songs. :) This would be "bunny bunny." So incredibly.....funny funny. sorry had to do it.

And this would be "Brown Squirrel" they are supposedly shoving food in their mouths. After camp songs we went canoeing. Great time, right up to the part where someone flipped their canoe. Oh, what fun. The best part was, the girls that flipped it couldn't swim. luckily they had life jackets on, as you can see. It was quite and adventure and a wonderful learning experience for all involved.

The next day some knuckleheads decided to do a rain dance. Boy, did it ever work! The rain started on Thursday and didn't stop until Friday night sometime. jeez!! The dance is hilarious and I actually stop action footage of it, but it's too long to put on here.

Even our fearless leader got into the act. We were actually on a hike and had to turn back early because the thunder started, then we got soaked. My rain poncho was back at the cabin. lol, great place for it.

 The older girls had to teach the younger girls certain skills. Most of which should have been outside, buuuutttttt because of the rain... well, you get the idea. We had been in the cabin for a little while but couldn't stand it anymore, so we moved our "classroom" outdoors. Kati was teaching about making a lean-to which would come in really handy later in the day.

The girls had to learn how to make 2 outdoor meals. We did foil dinners one day and then on the day it was raining we had to do dutch oven dinners. One option was to mix up the food and go to the cafeteria and put them in the oven, the other wassss......Let me just say we had the awesomest girls in our group!! This is what they did.

 The built the lean-to and then a spit to hold the dutch ovens. It was an awesome job. We all smelled like nasty smoke and were kinda dirty and wet afterward, but it was really fun. And the food came out awesome.

One of the fun things the girls get to do during the week is come up with a skit about oatmeal. Don't ask, it's a camp thing :) Anyway, our ward has some incredibly talented girls that come up with some crazy stuff. On the last night they had the finalists present their skit to the stake president who happens to work for a TV station. His comment about the girl in front in the shorts was that she needed to get an agent. Their skit was hilarious!

 On Monday the older girls go on high adventure and then they come in on Tuesday and work with the younger girls the rest of the week. From what I understand the one young lady in the black shirt gets injured every year. poor girl. She went over a waterfall and busted up her knee. So she was on crutches, and being pulled in the wagon for most of the week. But she was a trooper and stayed the entire time. 

 I had such a great time, and can't wait to go back next year!!

stupid blogger

The last post took 3 weeks to get up, since the blogspot decided that it didn't like me and wouldn't post anything. grrr. So, I am going to get around to a few more posts. In the meantime, I'll leave you with the info that we have mounds of tomatoes and I am loving it!! I loovvvveeeee fresh tomatoes. I might even eventually post a picture of the mounds :) If I can remember to do it before we start giving them away or I eat them all.

My Garden is growing :)

So I had a little drama with our garden. We had something eating our veggies. This did not make me happy. So I looked on line to find something that could kill various pests without being completely toxic. sigh. You know what they say about the best laid plans. A few of the websites I found said that you could use Ivory soap with water, spray it on the plants and it will kill the bugs, but not the plant. Well, sweet!! not. I thought I had some pictures of the devastation, but I can only find this one. The soap killed my cucumbers. ALL OF THEM!!! so sad. I was so looking forward to crisp, cool cucumbers. o well, maybe next year. It burned some of the leaves on the tomatoes, but they survived. Same with the zucchini, we actually managed to get a few zucchini out of the garden. Ate them right away. Luckily we haven't been buried in them, otherwise I'm sure there would be a different story. As for the beans, well nothing happened to them and they thrived. See, I planted 5 rows and they were out of control. Not that I'm complaining, cause we got about 3 gallons that we put in the freezer. And that's not counting the ones we ate for dinner and didn't freeze. yum! My tomatoes are loving the sunshine. I just wish they would hurry up and turn red!! We've got lots out on the vine. I can't wait to eat them. I'm hoping to get Sean to make the Roma's into some tasty sauce. The last time he made sauce it was sooo good.

And here is my pet spider :) Actually not my pet, I'm just letting she/him (shim) hang out in the cauliflower to eat the bugs. Shim is getting lots to eat. I was worried shim was gone because I went out and the web was completely gone, destroyed by the storm that rolled through. but nope, shim was just hiding, and rebuilt the awesome web and started catching more bugs.

And these would be some of the amazing bean crop. So good, the first time we picked them Sean and I were eating them right off the bushes :)

I'm workin' on it!

I've been trying to get at least 3 posts up since last week. The blogger doesn't seem to like me at the moment. So, soon there will be posts about our awesome garden, our trip to Iowa and girls camp. Fun stuff to come :)

Abby's School play

Abby had a play the last week of school, and Sean was able to go and watch. It was a play about important people in history and Abby was an abolitionist. Some of the great costumes that the kids got to wear.

Sean said the play was really good, and really interesting. The bad part was it was reallllllyyyyy loonnnnnnggggg :) Over an hour, and it made him late to work.

but it was worth it since Abby was really happy her dad was able to come.