landscaping

Hello all! I am feeling better, after starting a new, supplemental medication…I am feeling more like myself. I am hoping this will prove to be sustainable for the long-term.

This week has been crazy, per usual! Join Kelly et al with the link up for more craziness, awesomeness, and excitement!

{ONE}

Swimming!

The kids started swim lessons this week. I actually only signed Bellie and Spike up for class, Evvie and Junior and I just hang out in another pool while the lessons take place. Like most children, mine love water and the pool has been one of the most fun activities they have had all summer!

{TWO}

Olympics viewing!

We have a tradition of watching the Olympics as a family, and Junior (especially) is really intrigued. We are having a blast watching swimming (and Michael Phelps again making history) and gymnastics. Going to see the Olympics in person someday is definitely on my bucket list. Hubby and I honeymooned in Greece two months prior to the Athens Olympics in 2004, which was close, but hopefully we can actually attend some events at one in the future! Ultimately, we aren’t a very “sportive” family, we don’t watch much football or baseball or basketball on TV, but we are really impressed by the historic precedence of the Games and athletic ability of all the athletes.

{THREE}

100_9362

Meet Joshua the Bunny, the newest addition to our family! We adopted Joshua (or “Josh” as the kids call him) from a local rabbit rescue in June. He is just the sweetest guy, so good with all of the kiddos and really friendly and cuddly. We had been a rabbit-less household for several years, following the death of 10-year-old Cosimo in 2012. Cosimo, a little white and brown-spotted dwarf rabbit of some sort, and I had been companions since I got him as a singleton in Duluth, Minnesota when I was young and thought defying the landlord to keep a pet in my apartment despite the rule that NO PETS were ALLOWED made me a rebel. Cosimo got caught under the radiator one day and we thought he was going to be stuck under there forever, but luckily Hubby (before he was Hubby) came to my rescue and rescued the bunny. [This is how I knew it was True Love.]

Anyhow, we are all really enjoying Joshua and hope he is having a great time acclimating to our home!

{FOUR}

Da Kilt

I was looking through boxes of keepsakes my mom had saved and discovered a trove of baby and toddler dresses from my youth (cue 1980s music). Luckily, I think some of the dresses can be seen as “vintage chic” now and Evvie will be able to wear them. Including this completely awesome kilt ensemble that my parents brought back from a trip to Scotland for me in 1982. (That’s me pretending to be a Scottish lassie above). It is still in excellent shape and I am so happy that Evvie will be able to wear it soon!

{FIVE}

100_9366 The $60.00 Fire Pit

So, one of the things I had really been wanting was a fire pit so we could sit out in the evenings and just relax. In June, resourceful Hubby made my dreams a reality by creating this fire pit using mostly stuff we had just lying around and the borrowed skid-steer of a friend for earth-moving. Ultimately, it only wound up costing us $60 for a welded, forest-service style fire ring. We have some landscaping to do in terms of plants and mulching, but I am just glad that for now we just have a place to roast marshmallows and drink hot cocoa on cool summer nights.

{SIX}

100_9365 Sometimes your oldest son’s bike helmet is missing. And sometimes, just sometimes, you find it in the fridge next to the beer.

{SEVEN}

100_9566

I am heading to Antiques Roadshow Salt Lake City on Saturday! Super Duper Excited! (I am a PBS nerd…no other excuse) I applied for tickets back this spring and they are awarded on a lottery basis…and I was randomly selected. Obviously not everyone who attends ends up being taped for the show, but ticket-holders do get to have two antique items appraised for free with the Antiques Roadshow team of experts. I am bringing an antique Elgin pocket watch from 1902 that belonged to my great-great-grandmother. Hubby wants me to take his 1969 vinyl commemorative recording of the Armstong moon landing. I am such an history and antique nerd so this should be just like Christmas!

K, all, hope you have a great week!

So excited to link up to Kelly’s 7 Quick Takes for the first time!

ONE

Blessed to have celebrated an awesome Easter with family and friends.

TWO

My favorite Easter brunch cocktail: Mimosas, need I say more?

THREE

We’ve been moving trees at The Ranch. Hubby was lucky enough to find a retired gentleman with a tree mover machine (known alternately as a “tree spade”) who is charging us a very affordable rate for his services. We own over 50 trees, which we discovered (after we bought our property last year) are not quite exactly on our property. More on this annoying situation later, but in the meantime, we are moving all 50 of them to bring them within our boundaries and also spread them out a little more across our whole yard.

FOUR

My life is constantly going at a crazy jet-speed pace and I can barely keep up with my kids, let alone my pets (elderly wiener dog Winston and mouser cat extraordinaire Orca), but when spring comes and those little baby animals are everywhere I really want to get some chickens. And goats. And possibly a milk cow. Sigh. I have completely unrealistic fantasies that I am a farmer. Hubby reminds me that it is all well and fun when the weather is nice, but I need to remember that cows still need to be milked in the subzero temperatures of winter mornings. Eh, not so romantic sounding now.

FIVE

I am starting to keep a Word document on my computer entitled, “Things as a Parent I Never Thought I would Say”. The most recent contribution is courtesy of my 3-year-old son, “Spike”. (Actually, most of the contributions there are courtesy of Spike). He was running around the house the other day, refusing to get dressed. He wanted to play with the dress-up clothes and wouldn’t listen to me. “I just want to be a doctor!” says the 3-year-old. “You want to be a doctor? Well, you have to put your on pants first, “I replied. This led me to wonder if my grandmother had ever said this to my dad (who was a doctor) when he was a lad.

SIX

Starting to tentatively plan EUROPE VACATION 2017…Fingers crossed that this actually happens! It will have been 13 years since my last journey to that continent and I have been eagerly waiting for another opportunity to go. So far, just trying to narrow down the locations. Probably will only have about two weeks to travel, and there is so much to see. I am also slightly nervous about the current political/social climate over there, terrorist and otherwise, so we shall have to watch that of course.

SEVEN

Completely loving Lauren Daigle’s new album How Can It Be. I never used to listen to Christian music. I irreverently always called it “Jesus music” and made fun of it, but in the last couple of years I started listening to SOS radio (mainly because…no commercials. But then, I also appreciate that I can listen to it in the minivan with the kids and they are not asking me about questionable lyrics) and realized, Hey, Christian music is actually good. But Lauren’s song “Trust in You” has kind-of become my anthem for 2016.