Father's Day

Johnny does it again! A culinary masterpiece for father's day breakfast -


He created a crabby face as a fathers day joke - he's creating the face so you get the idea - scrambled egg mouth, fork nose, english muffin eyes, kielbasa eyebrows and fruit hair - fabulous!

Dave's not a fan of breakfast in bed - he prefers breakfast on the deck! What a wonderful father - 29 years of raising boys - it's a wonderful life!

Jim and Liz gave Dave a kite for Father's day - they had fun flying it in the park on a perfect breezy afternoon. A happy family portrait. We were happy to have our best friends Lisa and Olivia visiting too.

Thanks Davey for being such a good dad and kind and loving hubby - I love you...

I love to ride my bicycle!

I do, I love to ride my bicycle! I realize I look goofy with my red helmet and all - but I'm having so much fun riding around. I want to thank whoever had the foresight to plan so many bike paths -

I can get almost anywhere. I told Dave I want to get a trailer so I can go grocery shopping on my bike. I would much rather save the gas money and buy something fun. He got a little exasperated and assured me that we can afford to drive the 2 miles to Costco.... I'm still going to start saving for a trailer...

Another thing I love - Watermelon!

I have lovely childhood memories of watching wonderful world of Disney at my grandparents house - everyone would spit the seed in the potted plant in the corner. Thank goodness for seedless watermelon, now that its in season I try to keep cut up watermelon in the fridge at all times. I could certainly bring watermelon home in my bike trailer!

I love our grape vines!

The grapes are little but very promising with tons of clumps all over the place. They are so delicious and I imagine myself feeding the family even in times of famine with the grapes, at least for the few weeks they're ripe.

My Grandma Foster had a grape arbor along one side of her back yard. There were stepping stones through the middle of the vines - it was a great place to go on a hot summer day.

I'm going to notice and enjoy all the great things summer has to offer. Oh I almost forgot - I really love my electricity bill since our air conditioning has been out. The replacement will be installed next week but I'm becoming such a granola/earth mamma that I might leave it off. I love saving money - it means I can buy some new shoes...

How does your garden grow?

My grandpa would be so proud of me. He was a master gardener and summer at grandma and grandpas always included fruit and vegetables from the garden.

We'll have apples and squash,

beans and tomatoes and the grape vines are loaded. I'm thinking that if we all plant fruit trees and vegetables we'll have enough to feed everyone in the neighborhood at least for the summer because I'm not a canning person - I'm more a buy a case of canned goods from Costco kind of girl.

Mildensteins invited us over to pick cherries from their trees. We enjoyed eating them for two weeks, not to mention how cute they looked on the table.

I'm hoping I can keep up the garden watering because the cinderella pumpkins vines are looking really good.

It's such a miracle that great food comes from little tiny seeds. By the way the munched on tomato plants are thriving! I didn't even put out slug bait - you might think I'm all about growing organic with no pesticides of any kind but the truth is I just didn't get my lazy self down to the store to buy it - so far I guess the snails have moved on to greener pastures!

Johnny in high school???

Our district does not allow a graduation ceremony for middle school so the awards assembly was the closest thing to it. Here's Johnny with his scholarship award. I cannot believe he is going to be in high school!!

When he was in pre-school we had a son in every school - Steven in elementary, Matt in middle school, Doug in high school and Jim in college. How in the world did we do that?? And how in the world did time go so fast??? It seems like yesterday...

We're so proud of John and know he'll do well in high school even if I have to become a raving maniac to make it happen! Another last time goes into the record books - farewell El Dorado middle school.

I love my new blog counter

I just installed a blog counter!! Don't you wonder how many people visit your blog? I visit so many blogs that are so fun and inspiring but the author never knows I'm there. It's the perfect "fly on the wall" experience!! I don't mind lurkers on my blog - in fact I think it's great - lots of friends you don't even know yet! I recently recognized a person in the store whose blog I read...I felt like I know her so well but she has not idea who I am...or does she? Maybe she recognized me too! It's all so fun and I feel so "in" with the "in crowd" even though I'm on the older side of bloggers.

I read lots of blogs on google reader - I don't think the counter works with that so if you're reading this on google reader if you don't mind clicking on my blog just to make the number go up I'd appreciate it. I'm going to have to stop myself from logging on to my blog to see what the number is because I think that will increase the count artificially....

All My Children

When I was in high school I watched All My Children - the soap opera - every day. I'm not sure how I did this since we didn't have DVR's. Maybe it was on later or something - anyway it was the topic of conversation with my friends.

When I was a young mother I still enjoyed taking a break and catching up with Erika, Pheobe, Adam, Tad and Dixie. At some point I realized this was a big fat waste of time. I was talking about it with my neighbor at the time - an also overwhelmed young mother. She said, "I knew it was time to stop watching soap operas when I started praying for the characters".

I haven't watched soap operas for many years but Friday I had a break at 12:00 so I turned on the TV - I had already seen the DVR'ed episode of "What not to Wear" so I flipped through the guide and there was All My Children.

Honestly nothing has changed in 30 years!! Erika is in prison, Jack is trying to get her out. Adam is trying to mess with everyone. Tad and Dixie are together though it appears Dixie is actually dead and Tad is in a coma but they're happy to be together in the spirit world. Meanwhile it seems that everyone is looking for the daughter of Tad and Dixie whom Tad never knew about because Adam pretended the girl was his from when he was married to Dixie. I assume he had a paternity test done but never told Dixie that the girl was actually Tad's. Everyone is sure that if the long lost daughter talks to Tad he'll come out of his coma.

Seriously it was comical but made for a fun little mindless moment. I think I'll check back in 5 or 10 years to see how everyone is doing. Does anyone know if Pheobe is still with us?

Time passes

How does time pass so quickly? Nothing really exciting is going on - just regular life. I'm amazed at the bloggers who write almost daily and are so creative and funny. They take the most normal happenings and turn them into big time fun. We all have our talents and I don't think that's one of mine but I'm giving it my best shot. Maybe someday a great-great grandchild will stumble across this and find it mildly interesting. Doesn't it slow things down a bit to have a record of the days? That's why blogs are so fabulous!

I know pictures are important for an interesting blog. Videos are even better - we took a video of Dave and Johnny doing a "skit" at the ward party but I have no idea how to "upload" it so until I figure that out here are a few random photos to spice up this entry.

This is us at the A's game - I took many pictures, all of which have Steven drinking from his giant A's cup - he thought that was so funny and well, it kind of is - that's just Steven - he's funny. Hey Steven you should start a blog!!

Here's is what remains of our beautiful 500 year old Oak Tree - it was a most beautiful tree and I love it but two of it's gigantic limbs have fallen and we're just waiting for this last one to fall. Seriously I just don't have the heart to have it removed - I'm going to cry my eyes out when that day comes. My fear that it will fall on a person moves me to have it removed - then I'll write a whole blog - Ode to an Oak.

This is actually an ancestor of ours. Proof positive that we're related to the three stooges. Sorry great, great, great, grandfather - I wish I knew more about your life - too bad you didn't have a blog to record how time passes.