Christmas...almost caught up

Our tradition of taking a picture in front of the Christmas tree didn't go as well as normal.  Ben wasn't there to take it and for some reason I couldn't get it together.  This is going to have to be good enough.  One day I want to get all the different years developed and make some sort of Christmas thing with them.  They are some of my favorite pictures.  And I wish Ben was in them but I had him take the pictures and then all the sudden there was a tradition that didn't include him.  Whoops.  

Our Christmas this year was busy.  We ended up having a big dinner party for the techs that work under Ben.  I made a huge dinner.  Roast, vegetables, salad, sweet potatoes, quinoa, appetizers, sparkling cider...tons of food. Half of the people cancelled!  We had so much left over food it was ridiculous.  It was a good experience to learn from though.  Next year I can tone it down a bit.  Once the dinner party was over we were able to relax the whole week leading up to Christmas.  

I love Christmas at our house.  I love the tree in front of the windows, love the fire burning near by, love the kids waking up SO early, and love that we make it last as long as possible instead of rushing through. Our Christmas began at 4:15 in the morning.  I don't sleep well due to excitement and so I just got up and showered super early.  Turns out I wasn't the only one awake.  Heidi and Kaylee were both waiting in their room and so, to get them to fall back asleep, I had them get up and read scriptures.  We had been working on reading the Book of Mormon together during the year and were a bit behind so we read it from 4:15-6:15.  I thought they would opt for going back to bed but they didn't.  Instead we spent our Christmas morning waiting for Ben to wake up and reading all about the horrible slaughter and tortures done both the Nephites and Lamanites.  Not exactly a nice Christmas story but we were able to plow through Moroni and finish the Book of Mormon on time.  It was an awesome way to start our Christmas morning. 

Way Back When...Butte Creek Mill

About three posts ago I decided to be more dedicating to blogging and taking pictures of the activities we do.  Mind you, we don't do many outings, but I decided I should start taking some pictures when we do.  Way back in October Ben had the idea to go to Butte Creek Mill in Eagle Point.  It is a Mill from when the Rogue Valley was first settled and it is still in operation today.  It's actually pretty cool to see it all working and know that it is all done right there in the mill.

Outside the Mill

Going for a walk after the tour.  The Mill is right along the river, which is it's main energy source, and  so we went for a walk to the covered bridge that was nearby.

One funny thing I realized when looking at these pictures is that Ben is wearing glasses.  In September, Ben took a new job position at the Medical Eye Center.  Now that he is working with Ophthalmologists it didn't take him long to switch positions on Lasik.  He was always hesitant about it before because of the risks involved but now he has had it done himself.  He likes it!  And it is weird to see him with glasses in these older pictures.   

So that completes our Butte Creek Mill trip.  And I have gotten another blog post done.  We are on a roll!

(Although, really, aren't we the most boring people you've ever followed on a blog?)

The Chocolate Cake Way of Life

I have this recipe for a Deep Dark Chocolate Cake that was given to me by a friend way back when I was pregnant with Kaylee.  It is the yummiest chocolate cake ever.  I have since learned to bake it, but not without many mess-ups.  When I make my chocolate cake I want it to turn out perfectly.  But, there were many times that I could not, no matter how well I greased the pan, get that blasted cake out of the pans without it falling to pieces.  When that would happen I would be so frustrated that I would take the entire cake and throw it away.  Many times my family and friends would try to stop me.  They didn't care it didn't look nice, they would eat it anyway!  How could I just throw a whole cake away??  Well, that is just the way I am.  I am not going to serve a cake that doesn't look nice.  This way of living transfers into other facets of my life.  For example, I wanted to update the pictures on my blog.  I sat down to do it and after a few hours, a couple of different headers and a blog that I HATED how it looked, I threw it away.  Just deleted it.  If it wasn't going to look the way I wanted it to then it wasn't going to exist.  I've had a few weeks to calm down and try it again.  

We have had plenty of things going on since the last time I blogged.  I have pictures from the fall, christmas, birthdays, etc.  Today I am just going to post a few cake pictures to start off with.  For Christmas Heidi was signed up for a cake decorating class.  Her goal this year is to decorate all the birthday cakes we have.  She did hers with an owl and then Kaylee's is the deep dark chocolate cake.  It's been fun watching her learn it.  It was hard to get to class each week by 6:00 and have our buckets of frosting ready to go but we learned a lot and it was fun.  She signed herself up for the next class and will take it in a few months.  She is pretty excited.  

Once again, I will try to post more.  And I will (hopefully) not delete my entire blog in a moment of frustration. 

Halloween and a tutorial on cleaning out your pond

Ben and I both enjoy Halloween decorations.  I have learned where I draw the line on scary/creepy decorations that I'm willing to put up.  But the day of Halloween I found spider webs that I had bought last year and forgotten about.  The spider webs turned out to be my favorite part!

This guy was a close second though :)

For as much as I like decorating my house for Halloween it is surprising how much I dislike the costumes.  My kids have come to realize that they are, for the most part, on their own for costumes.  They can use what we already have around the house because I am not spending money on dressing up.  So Blake was spiderman that we got last year for 90% off, Daisy was Elsa that she already had, Kaylee was a monkey that my parents gave us from a yard sale, and then Heidi was a greek god in a costume that she and a friend sewed with nothing more than a needle and thread.  It makes me feel bad when she does stuff like that.  I should be more helpful if it means that much to her.

This year we had all these cool plans for our house on Halloween night.  We had a fog machine (another thing I had forgotten about) and all year we knew we wanted to make our pond glow!  Ben had researched videos on getting florescene from highlighters, which looked like too much work to me, and in the end the guy at the halloween store told us that tonic water would glow with a black light.  Interesting. So we got two black lights and 12 2-liters of tonic water and dumped it in the pond!  

That was the end product.  Not nearly as bright as we were going for but it looked decent.  Worth it, right?  NOT AT ALL!  (But that will come later)

Yes, Dodge is using an ice cream bucket to get candy.  He didn't last long.  I dumped him back off with Ben and finished with the kids.  After trick or treating the kids came home and ate candy while watching Hocus Pocus.  It was a good year.

Now, never, ever, ever put tonic water in your pond.  I am not even sure what tonic water is for but I can tell you that after a few days of being in the pond it began to stink.  Like a dead animal.  I even looked around for a dead animal because I couldn't believe that it was the pond that smelled so bad but sure enough, the pond smelled like death.

These pictures are all sideways and jumbled but what we ended up having to do was drain the pond, remove ALL the rocks out, clean the sludge at the bottom of the pond, scrub the pond liner with bleach, then wash the PILE of rocks cleaning off all the disgusting mud and putting the rocks elsewhere.  We put a few back into the pond but there were so many rocks, about 6-8 inches deep, that it was no wonder the mud had accumulated and that it stunk so bad.  When returning the rocks I just did a single layer and then used the other rocks to landscape around the pool in the back yard.  A few tips for those needing to do this in the future.  

1. Have a pump so that you don't have to scoop the water into a bucket, then haul it to the sewer drain 100 times.  

2. Have a shop vac so you don't have to scrape the mud out with your hands and a washcloth.  

3. Have rain boots so your feet aren't sopping wet with super stinky pond water.

4. Have a few kids helping.

5. Just start buying the pond chemicals that clear up the water for you.  Turns out they are pretty darn cheap.

In the end our pond was still murky (huge disappointment) but the smell is gone.  It was so much work.  Heidi and Kaylee worked for 3 straight hours on their day off of school.  It was disgusting work.  I told them Dad owed them since he was at work while we hauled stinky, heavy rocks.  My mind was quickly trying to come up with some sort of reward because they had definitely earned it.  Nothing I could come up with myself seemed worth the work they were doing but in the end Kaylee volunteered, "Dad owes us french fries!" and that is just what they got!  I even pulled out the big bucks and bought them each a bag of fries at this burger place that has lunch bag-sized orders of fries.  It was a much cheaper reward than I had been planning but they felt like it was totally worth it. So three hours of hauling rocks on Tuesdays, and then another five hours of washing and hauling rocks on thursday and friday.  The kids worked hard and hopefully we will avoid that in the future. 

Posting it is!

Funny story.  Last month I finally made a post, wondering if my blogging days were behind me.  I posted.  I then went about my regular routine.  Dishes, vacuuming, sweeping, blah, blah, blah.  I have a habit of listening to Conference on my phone while I work.  I plug my headphones in, pick a session, and listen to the talks.  I love doing that.  It is actually my favorite part about my smart phone.  So there I am cleaning away, listening to a session and all the sudden the speaker (can't remember which), says, 'a mother that tells her children stories about her life is doing Family History.'  And that's when I knew what I was supposed to do.  This blog is my ONLY family history work that I do.  I do not try to find ancestors, I haven't done indexing in a long time, and I barely even journal myself.  But this blog is my family history.  (And turns out that my friend Katie left a comment with the exact same idea!!  She's so smart).  Now, when I think of my blog I have a different mindset.  I am no longer doing this hoping for comments, wanting to show cute pictures, or even to make my life seems all roses (believe me, there are a lot of dead flowers and occasionally dead rats around here).  Instead my reason in blogging is so that my kids will see these stories and I will have helped to further the work of the Lord by strengthening family bonds.  I love how conference always has the answer for your problems.  

SO...

Back to blogging.  

Sadly, these are from the first day of school.  We are what? 10 weeks into the school year?  Oh well.  

Heidi is in 5th grade.  Next year she moves onto the middle school.  She has been such a blessing as the oldest.  She is just good and so helpful.  I never have to worry about her getting her work done or slacking off.  She is always on the ball.  She ran for student council again this year.  Last year it was heartbreaking when she lost.  This year we had a pretty good ad campaign and slogan.  "Vote for Heidi-she's a SMARTIE!" and then we decorated with smartie candies.  She won :)

Kaylee is going into the third grade.  Like her outfit?  It is HEIDI'S OLD CLOTHES!!!  Yes, she wore hand-me-downs for her first day of school.  Never mind that I bought her a few new outfits.  She wore an old one.  I am going to remember this in years to come when she throws a fit over clothing.  She was really excited to wear that dress with her boots and pigtails.  Kaylee is doing the common core math.  I do not like it.  I know, I am old fashioned and should accept new things but I like doing multiple problems over and over and memorizing instead of this weird array and tape diagram stuff.

Daisy is entering the 1st grade.  She is still in that hard age for me.  I still never know if she is smart-playing-dumb as a form of manipulation/excuse to get out of things or if she really doesn't get it and I need to lower my expectations.  But, she is very friendly and her teacher said that she is doing much better about talking.  She is not academically driven to excel.  She doesn't seem to really care.  She likes when she does learn but isn't going to put her own effort into learning if there is another option like playing dolls.  We've had a few things where I've had to talk to the teacher, a few lies to uncover from Daisy, but overall she does well in school.  I mean, she must be super cool because she had to buy 4 BFF necklaces with her own money to hand out.  

And here is Dodge on the first day of school.  Not fully dressed but happy to be walking.  After the girls leave for school it is me and the boys.  Blake is on a candy land kick and he has been reading sight words from Daisy's kindergarten work.  He will be ready for school next year.

This is the last year that the girls will all go to school together.  I'm so happy I had three girls to start with.  

Next post: Halloween and why you shouldn't put Tonic water in your pond.