oops

Last night when Neil and I were out in the garden (weeding, planting more beans and piling dirt around the leeks), I pulled up a handful of carrots and cut the last of the broccoli, planning to feed it to Abigail for lunch the next day.

Abigail woke up when we came in from the garden and needed to be comforted. So I finished washing the dirt off the carrots, then went in to kiss her back to sleep.

Which means I forgot to wash and check the broccoli, but mentally categorized it with the carrots as "ready to eat."

Oh, and since Abigail prefers all her food raw (for instance, lunch for her today was raw broccoli, carrots, an apple, alfalfa sprouts, and a string cheese), nothing got cooked.

Which meant the little green broccoli worm crawling around on her plate when she'd finished gobbling the broccoli was very much alive and very active.

Which led to one very surprised little girl screaming like a banshee: "Mommy, there is a YUCKY on my PLATE and it is ALIVE!"

Oops.

if i had a million dollars...

...I would buy this bed (from Sweet Pea and Willow).

Seriously, I love all things Louis XVI, like medallion chairs and this pretty little cabriole-legged dressing table like this (from Graham and Greene Co. UK)...and eventually that's what my bedroom will look like. Some day. Some day very far away.

For now, I'm pretending I don't see the treadmill, computer desk, and piano that are filling my supposedly serene haven.

Anyway, just a random note, because lately my bedroom has been driving me INSANE. It's like a focus center of industry and chaos, rather than somewhere that I can really relax and feel at peace. I don't like exercising and paying bills in the same room where I sleep--it makes me nervous and jumpy at night, because I can't seperate my "to-do list" self from the "go to sleep self."

Do you care if there are other things in your bedroom besides a bed and a dresser and the like? Does your room now look like your ideal haven, or is it perhaps a work in progress?

In other news, I've been cooking like a crazy woman who hasn't had her kitchen for the last two weeks. As we were doing the dinner dishes Sunday, I ran outside to the garden and picked an enormous sheaf of basil leaves and made a batch of pesto. Then while Neil washed the pesto dishes I started making zucchini pineapple spice bread. Yesterday when I made whole-wheat bread the smell of it baking made my heart do a little jump. And when I made dinner on Saturday and realized that I was using zucchini, green beans, onions, cucumbers, and peppers from our garden that I'd picked just a few minutes before...ah. So satisfying. And lovely (even if the garden is not doing as well as I had hoped it would do this year...kind of hard to go on vacation in July, and we've had a really wet and cold spring).

Another thing I've been thinking about: can you believe Juliet will be a year old next week? I totally can't. I went to buy her a present this morning (not that she really cares, but whatever) and it was so strange to realize that my baby is nearing the end of babyhood and walking towards toddlerhood! Neil's parents will be here this weekend, so I think we will probably celebrate her birthday then, since on her actual birthday she gets to go to the hospital and have surgery on her little ears. Talk about fun, eh?

And lastly, I haven't blogged about this yet, but every year at my birthday it's a time of gratitude for me, because it reminds me of the cancer diagnosis that my grandmother was given when I was a teeny baby, and how she prayed that she would live to see my first birthday. And now she's been able to celebrate 25 birthdays with me, and I can't even tell you what an enormous blessing it is to have her in my life. She's a very real presence for me--she writes me every week and calls and always lets me know she's thinking about me and how much she loves me. A very real blessing.

What's been on your mind today?

happy birthday to me

Apparently the two times I ate at Cafe Rio while we were in Utah just weren't enough to satisfy the craving, so we had sweet pork salads for dinner tonight. So. Good. And simple--I put two pork roasts in the crock pot with a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, brown sugar, and water, then went off to church. Then I made some tortillas when we got home while Neil whipped up a cilantro dressing, chopped lettuce and tomatoes, and then I proceeded to eat four of those babies. So good. So, so good.

I've been thinking, now that I've hit the ripe old age of twenty-five, about what I've done with my life so far and where I am. I'm happy to report that overall I'm pretty satisfied. There are definitely things I want to do and areas that I want to improve on, but I'm going on six years of being happily married with two adorable children, I've finished my master's degree, and I'm starting my fifth year of teaching university this fall. I'm blessed with good relationships with family and friends, a knowledge of the gospel, and I have enough leisure time that I can indulge in things I really love to do (like reading and blogging).

Speaking of reading, this is my birthday request from all of you! As we all know, I'm perpetually reading and always searching for something fun and exciting and thought-provoking to read. So please, please, please leave a comment telling me your favorite book, or a book you love to read, or a book you think everyone should read at some point in their lives.

And I'll start you off with a few: Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway), The Shipping News (E. Annie Proulx), Middlemarch (George Eliot), Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), The Hero and the Crown (Robin McKinley), Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell), The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver), The Shell Seekers (Rosamunde Pilcher), and the Anne of Green Gables series (L.M. Montgomery). And I'll stop there before I go on for another hour.

Seriously though, please comment, because I always love to know what people are reading or have read. And I'm always interested to see who's reading my blog!! Plus, it's my birthday--are you really going to deny me on this?

Last vacation post: Yellowstone National Park

Old Faithful erupting
The last few days of our vacation, after we left Idaho, were spent in Yellowstone. This is probably going to be a fairly words-light, pictures-heavy post since all the pictures are uploaded and I need to leave for church in ten minutes.

We came into Yellowstone through the west entrance and stopped near Gibbon Falls to eat our lunch. It was absolutely beautiful, and Abigail was entranced by the scenery.

We perched Juliet on top of the car to eat, since there were no picnic tables (it was sort of an unplanned stop due to the increasing noise volume from the back seat indicating extreme hunger that couldn't wait for a picnic area).

Abigail and I clambered down the slope to get a good look at the river--totally worth it.

After we got to our campsite (Canyon campground) and set up and realized the mosquitoes there were the largest and fiercest and swarmiest we'd ever seen (the rangers told us it was because there'd been an extraordinarily wet/late spring), we decided to drive up to Mammoth and let the girls nap on the way. About halfway there, we hit a traffic slowdown, which in Yellowstone means there's some kind of wildlife up ahead.

We woke up Abigail just as the buffalo was passing our window. She glanced up and said, "buflo?" and immediately went back to sleep. Oh well.

When we got to Mammoth, the kids were still pretty tired, as you can see here (oh, and notice that rip on my shirt? You'll be seeing it a lot, since I wore the same shirt the next day. I slept in it that night too. It was just too cold to change clothes, although I mercilessly stripped the kids down and put them in clean clothes. But I decided to be dirty and warm. Plus, my clothes were already covered in bug spray and campfire smoke--it's not like anything clean would be clean for long. Anyway. I digress).

Mammoth is pretty cool. Last time Neil and I were there, we set up our tent in the middle of the night (we had to enter from the north since the east entrance was closed due to wildfire) and so when we heard feet crunching over the gravel in the morning, I was REALLY irritated, since I was so tired. I said to Neil, "Can you believe how noisy these people are? They must be on their way to the bathroom or something, but man, they are NOISY!" Then somebody brushed against our tent wall, from BOTH sides, and I was so mad! I was just getting ready to start yelling when Neil told me to look out the tent window, and I saw these huge elk hindquarters. Our tent was completely surrounded by a herd of elk. So for the next few minutes as our tent rocked from side to side, we sat there and watched the elk go by. Pretty crazy. That's what I love about Yellowstone.

When we got back to our tent, the devil mosquitoes were out in full force, so I took the kids inside the tent to set up our beds while Neil started a fire.

We cooked our tin foil dinners (kielbasa, potatoes, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and carrots), which Abigail refused to eat and Juliet threw to the ground (which we then had to clean up because of all the bears) and then the monsoon began. I've never seen it rain like this in Yellowstone--holy cow. The mosquitoes fled, we put the kids in the tent, and got completely and utterly soaked moving gear to the car. Pretty nuts. We were all pretty grumpy, and nobody got a good night's sleep.

The next day was much better. We started off with a drive through Firehole Canyon, which was absolutely beautiful.

Neil and the girls in front of Firehole Falls

...and then we stopped at the Fountain Paint Pots and checked out the sweet colors (the fountain paint pot itself is bubbling mud). Abigail really liked these.

...checked out some geysers...

We drove to Old Faithful and watched it erupt--Juliet stared in the other direction the entire time, but Abigail was suitably impressed. Then we walked over to the Old Faithful Inn (below) and thought very seriously about staying there that night instead. We wished we'd remembered to grab some cash out of the car to get huckleberry ice cream. We wandered around the inn (dates from the early 1900s and is absolutely gorgeous--all wood with a crow's nest up in the ceiling, about 8 stories up, from which an orchestra used to play before the 1959 earthquake (now you can't go up there)).

It was kind of dark, but maybe you can get an idea of what it looks like.

Then we drove out to Yellowstone Lake...

...and Hayden Valley to see the huge herds of buffalo.

We ended up at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Most of these pictures are taken from Artist's Point. At some point, Juliet unbuckled my watch and it fell off. I looked all over for it, but to no avail...I was pretty bummed about this, since I just got a new watch after about a year of not having one. Sad day.

This is the lower canyon--all the colors are from the geothermal activity.

I can never remember which falls are the lower and which are the upper, but here are the other canyon falls. This is how I distinguish them: the falls where I lost my watch, and the falls where I fell going up the stairs and almost dropped Abigail, but didn't, just sliced up my wrist instead.

Some pictures at our campsite: these were the last pictures I took because then the camera ran out of memory and I didn't feel like getting the laptop out of the car to upload the new ones. Would you believe that I took 470 pictures on this trip? Be grateful I'm only posting about a hundred of those. And you thought there were a lot of pictures on this blog...

One of the new things Abigail learned on this vacation was about swordfighting and and shooting guns (due to her male cousins). She threatened a lot of trees. I have some pictures of her bashing trees too, but I didn't upload those. I'm not sure yet how I feel about this new behavior--it's funny when she's challenging someone with a Twizzler, but not so funny when dinner's green beans turn into small pistols.

The other new thing about Abigail from this trip: we nicknamed her Pyro. She was pretty much obsessed with fires, and kept going off into the woods to collect her own pile of sticks, with which she would then "build" a very careful fire next to the one Neil had built. Oh, and we came home with an imaginary friend named "Jaxna." No idea where that came from either.

Speaking of pyros...Neil and I spent a long time that night messing around with the fire (and the camera). I was really glad we did in retrospect, because we were planning to camp another night in the Black Hills (and we'd already paid for the campsite) but then as we were driving to it the next day, an absolutely magnificent hailstorm started and there was ice and rain everywhere...so we kept going. And stayed in a hotel, which had actual showers, which was pretty exciting since we hadn't seen a shower for three days.

And then we drove home. The end.

Vacation again: Idaho

On Sunday afternoon (after church), we drove up to Idaho to visit my grandmother. She lives in Rexburg, and visiting her house was one of my very favorite things to do as a kid. My dad and his eight siblings helped to build the house--it was made of, among other things, an old schoolhouse that my grandfather hacked up and they hauled the pieces out and built their house. As you can imagine, it took quite some time to build, so they either slept outside or in the "summer house" (in addition to the main house, there are various outbuildings--a "little house," which is sort of like a guest house where various family members have lived at different points in time, the summer house, assorted animal outbuildings (no animals any more), etc.) In short, it's like paradise for a little kid.


side view of the house, taken from the garden

Some of my favorite things about the house:

1. bridges over the drainage ditches--I spent countless hours here "fishing" as a little kid, and I was so excited to do the same with Abigail!
2. the "loft room"--a room that has this bed-sized loft built into the wall (over the stairs), so little kids can climb up there and sleep (or big people too, which Neil and I did when we visited a couple of years ago--Abigail slept there this time (at least in theory, in reality she kept climbing down and sleeping with Mary Beth))
3. from the east bedroom (where we were sleeping this time) when you wake up you can see the Tetons in the distance
4. from everywhere in the house, you can hear the elk bugling in the morning (long story made short: the neighbors raise elk, and when people decide they want a trophy elk head in their house, they buy an elk from them for trophy-hunting purposes)

some of them thar trophy elk


6. the house is primarily made out of exposed wood, so not only is it gorgeous in terms of walls and rafters, but my aunts and uncles wrote their names (using nails) across the ceiling rafters in the living room

the living room (no rafter close-up)

7. there are books everywhere. EVERYWHERE. I love this. I absolutely love it. Bookshelves fill the stone-flagged entryway when you first come in. Books are lying loose on most flat surfaces. The basement bedroom is lined with shelves, as is the sewing room. There are just books everywhere!!! You can totally tell the house belongs to English professors. I love it!

Neil perusing the books in the entry--check out the sweet doors into the house! these featured in many a "pretend we're in a castle" game.



8. the attached greenhouse--one thing I REALLY want in my dream house
9. the ground in front of the house is covered in concrete slabs with the hand/footprints of everyone in the family at the time the house was finished, plus miscellaneous drawings, etc. All the grandchildren's names are written in the concrete forming the patio outside the greenhouse.

Lots more cool stuff, but I stopped taking pictures because I was too busy having fun with my aunts and uncles and cousins and sisters and parents and grandmother. Oh, and that man I married and my kids.

On Monday, we decided to head out into the desert and go cave-exploring. My dad, Mary Beth, and Elise came with us (we brought both kids). You may not know this, but the desert around Rexburg is a pretty happenin' place. Not only are there the St. Anthony sand dunes, which are miles and miles long and wide, but the desert is full of random ice caves and lava flow tubes. It's pretty exciting.

Since Abigail and Juliet were with us, we went to one of the tamer caves (i.e. you don't have to hack your way through the ice with an axe and then lower yourself down on a rope). This cave was designated a "civil defense cave" during the Cold War. Presumably the Rexburgians could evacuate there, in case of a Soviet missile strike, and live happily underground. We wondered as we drove out a) why the Soviets would ever target Rexburg and b) how on earth an entire town could be evacuated over a potholed bumpy dirt road, but whatever.

So here we are.

And here's the cave.

And Mary Beth and Abigail descending...

Elise and Neil (with Jules) looking for the best way down (the cave floor was either perfectly level, or covered in enormous tumbled slabs of rock)--the entry happened to be one of those rock-slab places.

Once we got into the cave, it was too dark to take many pictures. You'll have to take my word for it that it was really cool--lots of fun lava flow things and broken rocks and the like. One interesting thing was that near the entrance the floor was covered in sheets of ice from spring runoff, and we were all FREEZING, but towards the back of the cave (about a mile in), the air was pretty comfortable and no ice. Fun fun!

Elise--the flash was kind of exciting. This was when Elise and MB and I climbed up on the rock shelf at the very back of the cave and thought about eating our granola bars, except we'd already eaten them, so we just sat there and got wet and cold (from dripping water) while Neil and Dad ate granola bars and Abigail tried to go to the bathroom on the floor of the cave (not successful). She's adventurous like that.

Dad and Abigail

When I said "desert," I really meant desert. No potatoes here!

Elise posing by one of the cairns we thought might be marking an ice cave (we started looking for more on our way out)

next up...Yellowstone Nat'l Park, home of the biggest swarms of mosquitoes you've ever seen, or "devil birds," as Neil began calling them.