Also that week, when I lifted a pot of Mac and Cheese off the stove to strain out in the sink, my little chef helper, Ashton tried to touch the pretty red burner and blister burned his four fingertips on one hand. He hurt too badly to sleep at nap time and wanted to cuddle most of that day. Poor little guy. I hope he learned not to touch things anymore when I say "HOT".
That weekend Todd put the Christmas lights up on the house. He owned a professional little holiday lighting company to help get through school when we lived in Pocatello and loves to do fun things with the lights. This year he replaced every other white C7 light with a red one and the house is all lit up like a peppermint with mini red lights lighting up the pine tree in front. I really really like it!
Last week, my good friend, Lisa had her birthday. So some friends and I threw her a little dessert buffet party and mingled a bit Tuesday night. That same day the pellet stove repairman came and revamped our pellet stove so we've had a toasty holiday. Ashton repeats after me every time I point to it saying, "Hot." And he hasn't dared touch it!
For the Thanksgiving holiday, we went to Todd's mom's house for dinner and games. My sister, Rachele, had plans to eat with the family of a friend of hers. So we made our own Thanksgiving dinner the next night to include her and also to have LEFTOVERS. I always get assigned my jello salad to Turkey Dinner with Todd's family and having only jello for leftovers all Thanksgiving weekend just doesn't do it for me. We had gone to see the new movie, Australia, for date night, and had the turkey roasting at home, but that movie is LONG!!! The turkey was done by the time we got back and I hadn't started on the other things like mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. So it was a late meal. But still worth all the leftovers!
On Thanksgiving Day, Ashton started showing some pink eye. My mother in law is a nurse and knows all kinds of health care tricks. For anyone else who didn't know, Johnson's tear free baby shampoo applied to the eyes with a soppy wet wrag every hour or so will get rid of pink eye in under two days. But as soon as his was gone, Brielle started with it. And her throat started hurting enough that she didn't want to eat ANYTHING. Then both kids started to come down with fevers and cold symptoms. My mother in law looked at their throats and said Brielle had Strep Throat. So we spent two hours at the Dr. office yesterday waiting with the crowds to be seen for that. I brag too much that my kids don't get sick and then it comes back to haunt me. Ashton had strep, pink eye, and an ear infection all at once. Brielle "just" has strep and pink eye. Good gravy. Hopefully they can get it all over with at once!
I'm starting to get insomnia. I can't get my mind to settle down to sleep. Maybe too much is going on, but it doesn't seem like it. This week we did get a counter offer on the offer we made on this land we like so much. The counter offer was terrible! Hardly below what he was asking in the first place, which is quite a bit more than market value.
We own another plot of land that we bought very cheaply with a group of people and split off our portion for investment property. But it hasn't sold in the almost two years it has been on the market. We could build our house on it, but it's further from town than I want to be, not as appealing looking of land, bigger acreage than we care to take care of, and in another ward's boundaries. Which, yeah, wards split, but I'd rather split with SOME people I know rather than start ALL over again getting to know everyone and getting all the same callings over again (I'm so terrible). Anyway, for the first time in all that time, we have a family calling asking about that land and saying they are GOING to make an offer. But their realtor thought the offer would get written up over the weekend and it didn't. I guess the family got caught up in holiday events. Then he said they'd have the offer in by today and it's still not in. So if they ever DO make an offer the land, and the seller of the piece we want to buy won't sell at a price we'll pay, we may be in a sticky predicament of selling off what we don't want and having no options in the end. That does kind of create a little anxiety in the background of my mind when I'm trying to sleep. I'm trying not to let it matter enough to stress me out. It is just land. But land is such a drama here. This must be the last town in all of the USA where people's prices have hardly dropped from the economy's pull. Yet nothing sells. Sellers just WONT budge. The bank won't appraise poperties for those prices. And loans are far too difficult to obtain creatively to try to not have to fork over the remainder of the cost of things above what appraisals allow a loan to cover. If I didn't know EXACTLY what this guy paid for his land, EXACTLY what the bid to develop it was (before when oil prices for paving were actually more than they are now) and how much it costs to run the project through the county to approve it, MAYBE I could be fooled into thinking the seller really needed every dime he's asking for the piece we want. But we intended to buy it and made our offer two hours after him. We're offering him the amount we would have charged had we been the owners of it and developers of it. And it's not really worth THAT now either. My sister in law is a realtor and gave me comps to make my offer with, it was more than a fair offer. The banks and every builder/developer I've talked to has said not to offer more than what I offered because it is not valued at any more than that in this market. Vent vent vent. I pray he'll just come to his greedy senses and take our good offer so we can be done with this.
On to more positive things!!! Today, Amber (my sister in law) and I through a baby shower for our other sister in law (Katrina) who is due to have a baby boy in two and a half weeks. Her first. It was a lot of fun, but very crowded! Usually nearly half the people you invite can't make it. But nearly everyone on her guest list came! Over 30 people! It was held in the community rm/conference rm. at Todd's hospice office. It has a large conference table in it and is large enough for crowds. But there were still so many poeple that we BARELY fit in the rm with chairs along walls and in the doorway. I spent a few hours today making baby bingo and we couldn't even play it because there wasn't enough surface space to play on with that many people! But that's always a very good sign gift-wise and she did really well with the amount and variety of gifts. We had a lot of Todd's cousins/aunt/grandma there and I haven't seen them in a while. It was great to catch up with them!
I had sewn a little hanging diaper caddy for Katrina that matched the bedding she made for her nursery. It was a fun project and it turned out really cute. But it reminded me how much I miss my mother. We just weren't meant to raise our own families far from our mothers. This year alone I've brought myself to tears too many times in the frustration of wishing she were closer to teach me the things I never took advangtage of her knowing before.
We started our food storage this year. I got a wheat grinder this year and started making whole wheat bread from scratch. I've had to learn the art buying and using food storage from the internet, other women in the ward, buying books on it, and have even asked a lady in our ward to set up a mini bread making class so I could learn her delicious recipe, but there's still so many mistakes that I make. I wish my mom was standing next to me to correct me before I ruin the recipe ten times over!
I bought lots of dry goods for our food storage that I inteded to can with a sister in my ward who promised to call me when she got ahold of the stake's canning machine and she forgot to call me when she did it. I don't know the first thing about using it on my own. Then in canning season I picked 3 boxes full of apples to make applesauce and another lady in the ward promised to have me over when she made her recipe so I could learn how with her. She never returned my calls to see when she'd do it. She did it without me and my apples rotted! We ate a lot of them whole, but I just don't know what to do with them. My mom made yummy applesauce when we were kids. She could teach me.
Now with sewing, she MAJORED in it in college. There is so much she could teach me, she's a GOLD MINE of knowledge and I finally want to learn. I'm a late bloomer with the whole domestic world out there. But I love it and want to learn. And only moms take the kind of interest in someone like me who is dying to learn it ALL now. If I could stand Alaska in the winter and if Todd could talk his family into moving their business there, I'd go live down the road from my mom in a heart beat. My kids just LOVE my parents. They talk about wanting to visit them again, LITERALLY almost every single day. Brielle draws them hundreds of pictures and asks to call them all the time. We were just meant to not leave too far from home. But I feel like Fruitland IS home. Nowhere else feels like Fruitland does to me.
Gosh I need to sleep more, I can tell I'm turning into a big baby on here! Back to the shower! As soon as the shower was over, I rushed to our ward's Christmas enrichment night and caught the lesson at the end of the dinner. Elder Nattress of the Seventy is in our ward and his mother came from UT for the holiday. She was the guest speaker and she was awesome. I had to break away right after THAT, to be home for Todd to leave for our ward's men's basketball game tonight. Brielle snuggled up with me as I finished her Strawberry Shortcake movie with her and then she went to bed. If I'm SUPER smart I'll be headed off to bed soon too!
One last quick story. The other day Ashton came in to see me hollering in total frustration and a little pain. He had gotten into the cupboard under the bathroom sink and found Brielle's old potty training toilet seat that you set on top of your regular toilet seat. It has a foam padded seat top and a plastic under side. He had smartly tried it out as a hat and couldn't get it off his head because the hard underside made it difficult to slide back off his head. I'm sure the pad made it seem so easy to put on! It was actually really hard to get off his head! We pulled a minute on this side then that. I put water on it to help slip it off. It did come off after a minute, but left a toilet ring and a sort of rash like rug burn all across his forhead and made him holler pretty hard. We all get our share of toilet ring.... but who gets it on their HEAD! Only Ashton...
Here's a few pictures from yard work this past weekend!
1 comment:
Oh my goodness! They look like they are having so much fun! You took great pictures!
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