Luke's day out

Ah yes, it looks like Luke talked Grandma into what he loves best...eating treats and playing on the computer! Man, when I heard all that Grandma let him eat, I was glad she was the one putting him to bed! That monstrous cookie is apparently from some secret recipe that a friend of my mom's made up...they were so good!! One day, I will be talented enough to make up recipes on my own and then laugh at people when they ask for the recipe, telling them it's top secret, and I could tell them, but then I'd have to kill them. :)

Luke's new favorite website, Lego.com. I catch him all the time playing this when he's not supposed to. I'm still a little scared about letting him play on the Internet, especially when it's not PBSkids.org.

Mitch n' the grandparents

Okay, to be honest, my mom took this picture, and I have no idea what's in the background...any guesses? :) Oh wait, my mom just barely called and told me it's the car wash. Yep, Mitch got to go with Grandma to the car wash...pure entertainment for anyone under the age of 8.

In the week before school started, Mitch got to have his special day with Grandma and Grandpa Wall. My dad has been collecting Thomas the Train track sets (what?! my day collect things?!) and Mitch made a track around the whole downstairs. Please note the Cougar fan shirt...isn't it fun to have a good team again?

Running in the rain

My run this morning, what started out to be a six-miler, turned into nine miles!! Why?! Because right as I was approaching the six-mile mark, it started pouring rain and I got this infusion of energy! It was so awesome!! Okay, so first of all, I love the rain (hmm..I miss Cleveland...) but I love even more being out in the rain, especially in huge downpours! My body wasn't even tired, I just kept running around my neighborhood until finally I figured my family was probably wondering where I was. I was completely soaked but loved every minute of it. Made me want to move to Forks, WA (maybe catch a glimpse of the most beautiful man/vampire alive...?).

I think I'm insane

As if I didn't can enough last week, I took on another huge, 4-day long canning project. This time grape juice. And since I had a juicer, I offered to do grapes for three other people! Which is good, it's way more fun to do stuff for other people than it is for myself. My kitchen has been out of commission since Thursday. But right now, as I type, the last batch is cooking and finishing up! Yay! I did almost 5 dozen quarts, which feels great!

I started reading Twilight last week (well, that got read in a day, but I've been working on book two all week)...so my life has been nothing but grapes, Bella, Edward and Jacob lately. Good thing Loren is here to help take care of the kids and the house! But seriously, what more could you want from life? :)

We push and we shove, and we hurt the ones we love...

That's what Luke's been singing all weekend...feeling bad about his little push that sent Elise biting the asphalt at our ward camp-out! The band aid is covering the scratch, but it was pretty big. She cried and cried and cried...until twizzlers were offered, then she was better! :) Candy always seems to do the trick for Elise!

So yeah, our ward camp-out was last weekend, and we had such a great time!! We were so lucky that Aunt Amy was in town the same weekend, so she could come and hang out with us there. I volunteered to be in charge of the dessert Friday night, and in asking my dad how I should go about getting people to help me with making dutch oven desserts, he just offered to come and do it for us. Of course he went all out and it was awesome! Amy was a lifesaver though, how many times in the night did I wake up to Mitch or Luke crying out and Amy being the first responder to take care of them! It was freezing cold!, and by the morning, Elise was in my sleeping bag, and Mitch was in Amy's! I love ward camp outs because everyone has small children that don't sleep, and there's no way to isolate your tent enough to not be heard by everyone else...when my own kids weren't crying, waking me up, it was all the other crying children around! I don't think I got much sleep at all! At breakfast the next morning, we were all discussing and laying claim to the cries we all heard throughout the night! It was so funny! My favorite is, after the kids are in bed, the "big kids" get to hang out and have fun! I played a little BS action with the teens, then joined in on the fireside stories and laughs with the adults. I love the people in our ward, so many fun people!

Mitch was such a huge helper (when he wasn't complaining)! After Amy and I put the tent up and put all of our stuff inside of it from the car, Mitch did all the work of unrolling the pads and sleeping bags and organizing the inside of the tent! I love when children start getting old enough to be helpful.

I can can

Whoa mama! I am the canning queen! Peaches, pears, apples, plums...who knew I was capable of being so domestic?! Not me, that's for sure. But it's nice to feel like I'm a good ol' fashion housewife sometimes. Actually, I was feeling quite good about myself tonight, feeling like I work all day long and hardly have any leisure time (most times I want to pull my hair out because I feel overwhelmed, but tonight I felt empowered). While I've been canning/cleaning up the kitchen, I've watched Pride and Prejudice twice and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days twice (I laughed out loud almost the whole movie, it was so funny!). So now I'm totally hooked up with peach jam, dried pears, canned pears, apple/pear sauce, canned peaches, peach pie filling, plum jam, pear pie filling, and frozen peaches. If my tomatos and tomatillos ever ripen in the back yard, I can get some sweet salsa and marinara sauce! I'll probably be too burned out by that time though to do it.

Oooo...I wanna dance!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwBbMXYDsXw&feature=related

Watched this movie today and got me in the mood to seriously rock out! What do you say, Footloose dance party at my house this weekend?!