September Happenings

It's time for my monthly round-up of miscellaneous stuff for September:

Bryan's feet have been bothering him.  I've always teased him about his jacked up feet!  His feet are shoe-eating feet, I tell you!  His shoes wear out so quickly and I just don't get it--he usually sits at a desk, so how the heck do they wear out so fast?!  But his work shoes are usually totally falling apart after a year or two.  (I have shoes that I got 20 years ago that are still kickin'!)  PLUS, when we go shoe shopping, it is excruciating finding a pair that feels OK to him.  (I won't go with him shoe shopping anymore.  It's hours of trying on 5 billion pairs because none feel normal to him.)  

Anyway, I finally talked him into going to a podiatrist for his jacked up feet!  Sure enough, they're jacked up all right.  He has something called "skew foot."  He has a funky z-curve shape that is not normal.  It's good that he went in now because the doc said if left untreated it would likely cause all sorts of knee and hip pain and probable need for future hip/knee replacements!  He got some custom orthotics and they have made a huge difference!  It's been so interesting to hear how they have affected his body.  The first day or two, his feet killed him!  Then his feet felt fine, but his ankles hurt really bad, then his knees, and he then even had really bad pain in his hips.  After that, all was well (all was re-aligned!) and now he loves his orthotics.  Whew.

In other news, Miles and Bree are in soccer this Fall.  (Tess is taking a break from soccer and she's playing volleyball with a club team.)  Miles is doing well.  Bree is a riot.  It's her first year, and she's just happy to be there. :)  She runs around the whole game, always just behind the gaggle of 5 year old girls.  (She is not aggressive and won't usually try to kick the ball.)  But she'll follow her cute little teammates all over that field.

This is just a random picture, but I walked out of my room and saw the 3 kids (+dog) snuggled on the couch together and thought it was cute.

And finally, Tess and I were invited to go down to the Conference Center in SLC to watch the General Women's Conference with our neighbors and friends Renee and Lauren Ashby.  We had a great time!  We went to dinner first and then drove around forever looking for a nearby parking spot; finally parked far away and walked over.  Then waited in line for security forever!  (I asked the security guy if it was always this slow and he said just for Women's session--because of all the dang purses!)  Ha!  By the time we made it inside and sat down, there was only about 30 minutes left!  Oops.  Oh well.  It was still super fun.

Harvest

A few years ago we planted a peach and 2 pear trees.  We have been excitedly waiting for the year that they would produce!  We have been pruning little peaches off (which is so sad!  It's awful to just pull baby peaches right off and throw them away!)  But it's necessary for the remaining peaches to get nice and big, and also so the heavy peaches won't break the branches off the tree.

So you'll imagine my reaction when I looked out the window at our beautiful peach tree and saw this!

"Nooooooooooo!"

Bryan was out of town, and that dang branch was heavy but I knew I couldn't leave it like that.  I googled a bunch of youtube videos about how to fix broken branches and they said that quite often the branch can heal itself if you re-attach it quickly.  They suggested drilling a hole right in and then putting a big bolt with a nut on the other side to keep it together.  I didn't dare drill through it, but I just lifted the branch up and propped it up with a few 2x4s until Bryan got home a few days later.  He has re-attached it, but I guess we'll have to wait until next year to see if that branch lives.

That one branch had about half our peaches on it!  When we harvested all the peaches we were thrilled to get about 4 bushels from that one tree!  We ate them like crazy for a few weeks and then I bottled the rest (we still had enough to bottle 40 quarts!)  Yum!

Our pears also gave us a little harvest this year too.  Not as much, but hopefully next year we'll get more.  We got enough to bottle about 16 quarts.  We haven't really had a veggie garden the last 2 summers, and I've felt like a big slacker.  So, having these pears and peaches from our own trees felt good.

My Handy Man

Bryan is awesome.  Sometimes I get little bees in my bonnet and I want to change or update things around our house or yard.  (Like last weekend I was just so dang sick of our huge unruly butterfly bush that I dug the stupid thing right up!  And cracked a little hole in our flower-bed sprinkler soaker hose.  When Bryan was out of town.  Oops.)

Anyway, I would love new carpet in our upstairs.  The stuff that it was built with is not great, and after living here almost 8 years, it's super worn and dirty in a few areas.  However new carpet is a big expensive project, so I compromised and suggested just re-doing the floor in a few heavy traffic areas.  We were lucky enough to have a partial box leftover of our laminate from the kitchen and main hallway upstairs.  Bryan said there would be no way that I'd be able to match it, but--Eureka!--it was not a problem at all!  Apparently this size/style/color of wood is popular enough that they still make it. :)

Here is the "during" shot.  The doorway in the left of the picture goes to the laundry room and out to the garage, while the bottom of the picture shows where the existing wood is in the kitchen.  We just needed to do that little triangle (and inside our coat closet.)

One thing I love about my hubby is that he does little hidden, romantic gestures any time we build/renovate/finish basements, etc.  In newly poured concrete of bathroom floors, on 2x4s behind sheetrock walls, and now on plywood sheets under new wood flooring, he leaves these sweet little love notes.  (They have been left in every house we've lived in.  Probably never to be seen by anyone, but I know they're there and it makes me smile.)

...Almost done!  (Not to toot my own horn, but I do try to help as well.  This time my job was pulling off baseboards, ripping up tack strip, and, after the flooring was done, re-nailing baseboards, along with puttying, painting and caulking baseboards.)

Here's that same spot from the other side.  Finished product.  Parker approves.

We did one other spot as well--the little hallway by our front entry.  This small hallway connects Bree's and Miles's room.

I'm so thankful for my handy, handy husband!

Fall Pics 2016

I always take the kids to Target in September for pictures, because ya just never know how the 1-shot Lifetouch photos will turn out at school.  Plus, the packages are cheaper at Target and I get to choose which ones I like best!

Here are this year's Target Pics...

(People ask if Tess and Miles are twins because they are practically the same height!)

And, hey, whatdya know?  The school pictures actually turned out pretty cute as well!  (I hope I don't get arrested for posting these copyright protected pics??  I promise I didn't copy and print them anywhere!)

Inspiration Point

After Tomato Days, Bryan was itchin' for another Jeep ride.  We went up to Inspiration Point above Mantua.  It is always so beautiful to see all across the valley.  To the west, you can see from Tremonton clear down into Salt Lake County (the kids love watching the teeny tiny boats on Willard Bay), and then turn around to the east and see up into Cache Valley and Eden/Liberty area.  Super pretty!

Our little long-suffering Parker Dog joined us for the ride.  He stood very still while the kids decorated him with rocks...

Then we went for a short hike.  We let Parker off the leash to just run around a bit.  The kids were so nervous that he'd just bolt and be lost forever, but we promised that he'd stay near us.  He would always run ahead and explore, but sure enough he would always come on back to where we were.  He's a good little dog.

On our way home we got burgers at Calls' Family Drive-In in Perry.  A great end to our fun Labor Day weekend!

Tomato Days 2016

I love our little small town Hooper celebration "Tomato Days."  It is held every year over Labor Day weekend.  They have several sessions of a rodeo (which we do skip due to Bryan's severe horse allergy), they have silly little contests like a dog race, "bed races" (which is what it sounds like--people who enter the contest must push their teammate down the street on a bed on wheels!), even a cow-plop contest where people can pay a dollar for a space on a grid of the rodeo grounds...then they let out a cow and it wanders around until it craps and the spot it crapped on is the grand prize winner who gets all the money!  Ha!

There is a beautiful baby contest ("Little Miss Pink Tomato") and of course all of the fair-type-exhibit entries of home-grown vegetables.  They have a Farmer's Market, petting zoo, fishing hole, and booths to buy stuff, along with lots of little kids' games (ring toss, spin the wheel, etc.)

My favorite part is the dinner in the park on Saturday night.  For only $1 per person they have a really good pulled pork & corn on the cob dinner at the awesome Hooper park.  The kids play and play, the parents visit with neighbors and then they do a really good fireworks show.  So much fun!

Monday begins with a Parade.  Lots of candy, lots of horses, lots of tractors.  Yeehaw!  :)  Then we head back over to the park for all the fun stuff I mentioned above.  The kids always choose to do some fun activities too.  This year, Tess chose the rock-climbing wall:  (here she is right before she rang the bell at the top).

Both Tess and Miles chose the giant bungee trampoline.

Miles chose the human hamster-ball-on-water-thingamajig and it was fun to watch him try to stay upright.

(hint:  he didn't stay upright for long...)

Bree loved the big slide and the bouncy house.

And the 2 big kids did the inflatable obstacle course as well.

At the BACA booth, they got tattoos, balloons, and a photo-op on a Harley.

Bree won all sorts of little trinket prizes from the little kid games.

We love Tomato Days!

Dixie Chicks

My sweet husband is such a trooper.  He knows I love the Dixie Chicks, so when my cute Gramma J got us concert tickets for Christmas (at my suggestion!), he was a great sport.  Dixie Chicks were never really his first choice of music growing up, but I've played enough of my old CDs that he now admits he likes a lot of their songs. 

We were there with my Dad, Charlotte, my niece Bayli and her boyfriend Ryan (along with Ryan's mom and niece too.)  It was such a fun night!

We waited and waited for the show to start at Usana.  They had 2 opening acts that were OK, but we--I--got super excited when the Dixie Chicks finally made it out on stage!

They put on a really great show and I loved how their screen behind them didn't just show them singing, but it was more of a music video that played along with the songs.  The Dixie Chicks are still not shy about their political leanings and I say good for them!  It severely damaged their career when they spoke out against the President in 2003, but they still stand by what they believe, and I think it's great.