TAKING OUT THE TRAILER TRASH

Problem: Living in a "trailer park" isn't my dream (though this trailer park looks more like a subdivision how it's set up), so I want to make my "house(?)" look a little less trailer-park-ish.

Solution: Get rid of the cheesy "trailer-park" cement scalloped border around the front flower bed. Create a lanscaped look instead.

It's well on it's way! I'm also digging out some planting beds 18" on each side of the walk since salting the walk ends up killing the grass on each side anyway. I'm researching salt-tolerant plants, so we'll see how it goes.

See, here is where I haven't dug it out yet, and you can see how the grass gets killed by the salt. Wish I had an edger!

Now to plant these bare patches of dirt!

My lawn is the most pathetic of the entire park! The grass is patchy and scraggly and torn up all over. Hyrum was very much against tilling, raking and replanting (after our dirt nightmare at our last place), so I went with the alternative.
First, I aerated my lawn. First time I've ever run an aerator...serious work out, and surprisingly cheap to rent!
Then, I hand-raked the entire lawn to get rid of some thatch, since they didn't have the kind of power rake I wanted available to rent...much to my hands' dismay since I'm sporting some nasty blisters and callouses now.
Next, I seeded it with a bag of seed I brought from Oregon (I was intending to seed the lawn back there).
Last, I fertilized it. Funny thing is, I can see where I fertilized now that it's been a week. It looks like I have a striped lawn! Guess I need to go back and fill in the stripes I missed. Oops!

My garden boxes are almost ready! I'm trying square foot gardening for the first time this year.

The girl I visit and teach gave me some chives, rhubarb plants (which I planted in the front flower bed, though they look pretty traumatized right now) and some raspberries so I got them in the ground and am feeling very farm-ish. Can't wait for it to be past the danger of frost!

MAKING A SHAMROCK MOLD

Remember the sponge I cut into the shape of a shamrock for St. Patrick's day? I covered it with grass seed, and Tilly was supposed to trim it once it grew. It was a school project, and it sounded fine....

until it molded.

It has met its fate in the garbage can.

BEST DENTIST

I love Talea's dentist. He's a pediatric dentist, so he's got everything geared for my kids. The waiting room has a play structure and a TV.

Everything is really beautiful and nicely decorated, yet has fun kid colors too.

Tilly gets nitrous,

so she's always comfortable, as evidenced by her position in the chair.

I think she just loves that she can watch TV on the ceiling with headphones while he's working on her.

She always amazes me at how brave she is when it comes to needles and doctors. She puts me to shame. She had 4 cavities to be filled since I wasn't the best at flossing, until recently, so he did 3 on one side a couple weeks ago and one on this side today. She was such a trooper. Only a slight crooked smile afterward!

DRIVE-IN SEASON

I haven't lived near a drive-in since they had one in Provo back in my college days. Rexburg has one, and Idaho Falls has two! I'm pretty excited about that! We can take our entire family to see two movies for less than the price of tickets for two at the Rex theater in town, and we don't disturb anyone!

Hyrum took out the back two benches in the van, put the couch cushions and pillows down for a bed, grabbed the down comforters, and we took off on our first entire-family movie adventure.

Last Song and Bounty Hunter were playing, and though they were just okay in my opinion, I was having a blast! It felt like camping! We turned the back of the van to the screen, opened the back doors and watched.

It was pretty darn cold, and we'd bring more sleeping bags next time, but it was so fun!

You can even make out just for fun so you can say you made out at a drive-in!

The kids watched a movie in the front on the lap top and then fell asleep on the front seats and the bed. We so want to support this theater so it stays open! It seems like a rarity to find a drive-in anymore.

And just so you know, we are official Idahoans now, since we just registered the van in Idaho and have Idaho plates.

CAKES OF BIRTHDAYS PAST

TALEA

1

Though I don't have a picture of the cake (we were visiting Utah for Maren's wedding, so the store made it), here is the evidence that there WAS one.

2

No cake. We were visiting Utah for Tana's wedding, and Tilly wanted donuts.

3

I know. Completely boring sheet-style cake. I was lucky I made one though! Better than the previous two!

4

My second attempt at a creative cake. A semi-disaster. Just don't look at the back or the inside!

5

Just a plain cake and cheesecake. Nothing fancy here.  I didn't forget though!

6

 I made bird nest cookies for the top of the cupcakes since her birthday theme was birds.

HYATT

1

Booooorrrriiiingggg. But it was my first birthday cake I made (I use the term "made" loosely since it came from a box) for any of my kids!

2

Worms crawling out of the dirt. It was my first attempt at a creative cake.

3

Oops, skipped a cake altogether! Went to a play place instead. I'm pretty sure we had some kind of chocolate goodness two days later though, evidenced by this:

4

Maren made a guilty-pleasure oreo cake.

Flexed my creative muscles and made a dragon cake (from rice krispies).

KIERSA

1 

Alice in Wonderland/heart cupcake tower, courtesy of Maren since I was coming home from the hospital that day with a brand new baby: Paisli

2

Cupcakes making up a turtle. (Last minute throw-together.) Good thing I had some leftover Christmas stocking candy lying around!

PAISLI

1

Made the cake that was pictured on the back of the cake box. That's not cheating, is it?

 How funny! I just realized while doing this post that the cake I made for Paisli and the cake Maren made for Kiersa are the same style of cake, and they were both for the girls' first birthdays!

FROM SNOW, TO BEDS, TO HAIR

On April 20th, it was almost 90 degrees, so I got out the kids' pool and filled it up. They played once, then a cold snap has been here since. Today, it actually snowed!

In other news: I made Talea's dream come true by switching their white sheets to red. She's in heaven.

In other news: I can put Kiersa's hair in a pony tail! Finally!

Okay, I won't lie to you. As soon as it was dry, most of it had fallen out. But for a minute, I could pretend her hair was actually growing!

6! ALREADY?

I'm shocked to realize that my oldest baby is now 6!

I realize that there are people my age who have kids in college already, but still, my oldest is just finishing kindergarten and I'm amazed!

We didn't want to have a big shindig for Talea's birthday this year (we planned on having big "friend" parties on big birthdays, like 5 (starting school), 8 (getting baptized), 12 (starting young womens/priesthood), 16 (can date!), and 18 (finally an adult). This idea came from a Noble tradition that Angi shared with me, and I must confess, it took a lot of planning and party stress off my shoulders, so I adopted it!

The only problem is, last year, on Tilly's 5th birthday, we did it very last minute and she only had one friend to party with, aside from our family and the friend's family. And this year, since she doesn't go to traditional "brick and mortar" public school, so she doesn't see friends all day, we wanted to throw a party for her and some kids her age so she could make some friends and be "social."

Luckily for Tilly, there are 7 kids in our ward right around her age and another friend not even in our ward, so we invited them all and decided to have a "bird" theme, since Tilly is into birds.

For her birthday last year, all Tilly had asked for was a bird bath, and thinking that was a silly present for such a young kid, we didn't get her one, but then we found one later for a great deal, so we bought it and have been hanging onto it for almost a year so we could give it to her this year.

So keeping in theme with the birdbath gift, I made cupcakes with bird nest cookies on top. They ended up a little flattened, thanks to my overzealous shaping rather than thumb-printing them, but were okay still. Too bad I didn't stock up on speckled egg candies at Easter (I don't plan that far in advance), so I had to use plain ol' jelly beans for the eggs. Oh well. It was colorful I guess.

We had Tilly's party the day after her birthday since Hyrum had school and work on Tilly's actual birthday.

On her actual birthday, we celebrated by going to the park, but weren't able to stay very long because I was chilly, and Paisli was asleep in the van, and I was paranoid about being turned in again (like last fall when Kiersa was asleep in the van). Of course Tilly got to be queen and not do any work and got to pick the meals. We had waffles for dinner, naturally. Finally, I took her and Hyatt to see "Alice In Wonderland" at the cheap theater, which only cost me $6 for all three of us! Love the bargains you can get in Rexburg!

Just before the party started, Talea came out with a wardrobe change. She decided she wanted to look beautiful on her birthday and thought this was her most gorgeous outfit (red velvet...Tilly's FAVORITE color is red). Thank goodness for hand-me-downs!

We had a house full of little ones, but it was surprisingly easy to keep under control. We had a blast! They did a birdie hidden-picture game, colored tweety bird pictures, then Tilly opened presents. This is the first time she's had a party like this, so she was pretty excited.

Our present to her, aside from the bird bath (which wasn't that big of a hit afterall-I guess the novelty of one wore off over the last year) was a pair of heelies that I picked up at a thrift store last year. Gender neutral, of course, so Hyatt can use them along with all the girls. Those were more exciting to her.

With the help of a friend (who happens to be JUST like Talea), she tried out her new shoes, in roller skate form.

Then it was pizza time!

Last, we made bird feeders out of recycled materials, such as empty paper milk cartons. I got the idea from this picture.

 Here is Hyatt's. Poor guy got the blended paint so it ended up mostly purple.

They turned out fine, but we had to live off of milk for the 4 days preceding the party, and finally just empty milk into any spare container we could find in order to have 9 empty cartons. We ended up having so much fun that 3 hours flew by and we ran out of time to stamp them or decorate them, beyond an initial painting and gluing the shingles on.

I have to say, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself considering this is the first birthday party I've ever planned. I even made invitations for the first time! This picture was on the front (courtesy of google, not my own creativity) and the inside had the info and Talea's handwritten name. 

Thank goodness for Hyrum and his input and assistance (photography, food-serving, store-runs, gluing, wrangling, etc). I couldn't have survived without him!