BYU-I Horticultural Gardens

I was going to take the kids to a playground today, and Chris suggested that we just go to Rexburg with him since he only had one class. (one more week!!!!)

Just a little tidbit about Idaho; at a lot of the public schools they have free lunch for children 1-18 during the summer, I think the one near us has free breakfast too. I’ve never taken advantage of this, even though our school is within walking distance. In Rexburg they deliver the lunches to Porter Park; the park with the spray park, playground, and carousel. The kids and I were there, so I decided to try it out. Another point for Idaho for this perk. Idaho-2 Pennsylvania-925,898! If I was really keeping score Idaho would get 100,000 points for no humidity, 50,000 for Costa Vida, and 10,000 for fry sauce.

Then we went back to BYU-I, and walked around their gardens for a bit.

Strawberries in a gutter, genius!

I liked these raised bed gardens, no bending for weeding.

And a pretty nifty way to keep bugs off the veggies.

And, lest you think my days are picture perfect; my children were stinkers for the playground. Savannah mopped around because she couldn’t find a friend. Elijah asked to go to a “big huge pool” every five minutes. Lily was a peach, even without a nap. Both the kids asked for more food five minutes after they said they were full, before they finished half their lunches. I wish they could understand that it’s not exactly a walk in the park when I take them places by myself. It would be easier for me if we just stayed at home. I think my children are becoming a little spoiled, and I really think we should nip this thing in the bud before it gets to be a bigger problem. I think I need to trip to the library for some parenting books. I don’t think that I spoil them, they only get gifts on their birthdays and Christmas; unless it’s from grandparents. Savannah does get an allowance, a measly $1 only if she does all her chores for the whole week. Somehow they are acting a little bit entitled. Or maybe they are just as done with this semester as much as we are. Elijah is, he’s been crying for Chris a couple of times a day. That makes me feel like a crummy mummy. I just realized today that Chris works 6 days a week 2 weeks a month, the other 2 he works 5 days a week. Yea, maybe we all just need a break!! Everyone just needs to relax! :) In happier news, Chris has really good grades and we hope he will qualify for half tuition, where the school pays for half his tuition. Every bit helps!

a favorite spot

I was on a mission today. To exhaust two out of three children so I could play catch up on laundry or weeding or mowing or maybe just maybe read a chapter of a book that is not Farmer Boy. I took the kids to our new favorite spot, the pond. I packed up the bikes and stroller and away we went! Elijah was complaining a few hours in which meant I did what I set out to do, make him tired! We come home, I heat up leftovers, and then plopped the two littles in bed.
I quickly put away some laundry (confession: I haven’t put Lily’s laundry away in over two weeks. She has a lovely habit of emptying out her drawers, so what’s the use?). Then I start watering the garden(with a blow up toy meant for children to play in) and I decide to try to read outside, it’s lovely out. 12 seconds later Elijah comes out to join me. So now I’m watching him play. Good thing I love that boy. Can he stay three forever? I love three.
But! You all know that I have wanted a red headed child. There are many things that I want my children to inherit from their dad; red hair, hard worker…etc. The one I have not wanted them to inherit is his smart mouth. So far we have two smart mouths! Children! And Lily can’t talk but oh boy that little girl is already giving me a run for my money. I’ll talk about her a little bit later, it’s a very good thing she is cute!! :)

I wrote this post a couple days ago but I wanted to add some pictures of our new favorite spot. These pictures are from a couple visits.

Everyone loves to throw rocks. Chris is the king of skipping rocks.

It’s our favorite place to ride bikes. It is relatively new and hardly very busy. It’s my favorite place to run, I mean trot.

It’s like nature’s playground. But it’s man made.

After a run, or a trot. You can see Chris in my glasses laughing at me.

Wanna take bets as to which child will fall into the water first? My money is on the three year old. He gets distracted the easiest, his new favorite obsession is pointing out and exclaiming about sprinklers.

After another run, while the kids road their bikes beside me.

We sure are blessed with these three blondies!

Ah, I love summer! 3 more weeks of this semester! I can’t wait.

father’s day

On Saturday we went on a bike ride, not our normal bike ride around the river because it’s really busy and busy with people who don’t know what “Passing!” means. It drives us crazy. But we found a different, lesser known about part, that we love. Not as much as we loved our trails in PA, but you know, this will do for the time being. We brought the kids’ bikes and let them do an easy part after we rode for a bit. It was really cute, riding along side the kids. How did they get so big?! Elijah, that boy! He is so strong and I think he’s getting muscular. We need to start saving our pennies for football. If we pushed him, he could be riding a bike without training wheels by the time he’s 3 1/2. I don’t think we will, push him that is. He has great coordination and balance, and it comes so naturally for him.

I didn’t take the camera because I was a major grump at the beginning, but the bike ride mellowed my mood out, for a bit. Of course, I wished I had brought the camera. Next time!

As Chris was tucking Savannah in on Saturday night, she said to him, “I can’t wait to give you the shirt and tie we got for you!”

I tried to take a picture of Christopher and the kids on Father’s Day.

This is what Chris thinks about having his picture taken.

Chris’ Father’s Day wish was to go to Cress Creek to do the hike and have a picnic dinner.

And then I stopped taking pictures because we all just wanted to hurry and finish the hike. It was HOT! Please take Arizona off my list of places we could live after graduation.

It was that hot.

Did you know that Yellowstone is a Hot Spot, it used to be a huge volcano. Most of Idaho is on that Hot Spot. The grey on this rock formed when a volcano erupted 3 million years ago, this is what the ash did. Christopher learned all about volcanoes around here in his Natural Disasters class.

Idaho has windmills. Some people like them, some people don’t. The energy goes to California. I think they are neat.

I’m almost caught up. I hope. I don’t want to see another 4th of July craft until next year. I had wanted to do one more, but I’m so over these things. Please don’t tell my Grandpa B that I’m using my beautiful hope chest to put my crafts on. :)

I started running a couple weeks ago, if you can even call it running. It’s more like a trot. I ran a couple times this week at night, because sometimes it’s just impossible to wake up at 5 am. So I had to take the kids, on their bikes. Elijah loves it. He’s competitive, which made me go a bit faster to keep up with him. But after tonight, I’m thinking it’s not such a great idea.

Today I’m thankful for Clorox wipes. Why can’t children tell you when they have ‘accidentally’ peed all over the bathroom floor? No, they wait until your feet find it and then you have to try to discover what the huge puddle is. Gotta love 3 year olds!

it’s fun to blow dandelion seeds in your neighbor’s yard

Scrub a dub dub, three Nazelrod children in a tub.

Elijah at the temple.

Remember how fun it was to blow dandelion seeds everywhere when you were little? Now I cringe when the kids do it, but I bite my tongue. What is a little more weeds going to hurt?

We went to Sandra’s so Chris could try to fix her garage door.

Then the spring that Chris was working on flew back and knocked him in the lips.

This was a day later, the first day his lips were HUGE.
We are just thankful he didn’t knock his front teeth out, again. He needed 3 stitches. That brings his stitch total up to…? We don’t know, but it’s up there. Sandra felt terrible.

She felt so bad that she sent us home with a tag along (just kidding, she was going to give it to us anyway). I’ve been coveting a tag along for years, that and a nice Trek bicycle. I can not wait to try it out with Savannah, I’m just not sure if Savannah will ride it.

Chris tried to fix it, right after the stitches!

This was a week ago. I think peas are so neat.

In case you need a Lily fix. She is pretty sweet.

Who is that white trash mom that keeps her kids in pajamas all day long? Oh right, that’s me!  I actually have a very good reason for that; Lily still crawls and we spend a lot of time outside, so she gets filthy. I’d rather have her ruin pajamas than other clothes. Plus this way she can’t take her socks off and sunburn her feet or scratch them up on the driveway. That’s another reason why we need to live in the country, so no one knows when the kids and I stay in our jammies all day.

I don’t have a good reason for why Elijah was still in pajamas. The big kids are trying to collect ants.

That cast is cramping my style. Just a little bit longer, I hope.

The kids still love to play swing ball with Chris. I try to play it with them, but Savannah tells me that Chris is better. I think Savannah tries to kick the ball over the fence because she likes to go and retrieve it.

Some funny things Elijah has said lately.

*When Lily does something ‘naughty’ (which is never because she’s an angel and she’s a baby) Elijah calls her Lily Margaret! But! he can’t pronounce his L or Rs. So it sounds a little something like this; WeWe Mawgawet. Haha, cracks me up every time he says it. Which is about 50 times a day.*

*A couple of weekends ago, Chris went to put the kids to bed and they were clinging to me. Which is super weird because they love that dad, especially when that dad is in school and they never see him. I told Elijah that dad could sing to him, too. Elijah said, “NO! Daddy just does this hhmm hhmmm hhhmmmm!”*

Well, my husband just came home an hour early (scared the crap out of me when the door opened and I wasn’t expecting it!) with ice cream. So, I’ll end here. I love LOVE LOVE this talk.

World’s Okayest Mom

Today I did not style my daughter’s hair in a heart shaped fashion, we did not eat cute little food cut into hearts, and I didn’t even dress my children in spiffy red clothes. A lot of my Facebook friends did one or the other or all of them. The Michelle from 4 years ago probably would have felt a little inferior or she may have tried to keep up with the heart shaped french braids. The old Michelle did try to reemerge when I first saw all the cute little heart shaped foods but that lasted for about 3.5 seconds and I reminded myself that I am not that kind of mother. And I don’t feel the need to try to keep up with anyone (I do try to keep up with my own ideals, in my own head).

This Michelle is much happier than the Michelle from 4 years ago. This Michelle doesn’t stress about every little thing. This Michelle watched from the back window (with a sick babe on her hip) as her son licked the snow off his truck that had been buried all winter, and she didn’t freak out. Heck, she’s even okay admitting that we eat cookies for dinner once a month.

I don’t know when it happened, probably around the time Elijah was born but I’m glad it happened. Boy, I’m glad I don’t compare myself with other mothers anymore (at least not on a regular basis). Now I know better than to compare my behind the scenes with someone else’ shinning moments. I mean, do you ever hear anyone put on Facebook, ‘I sat in the corner and cried for 3 hours while my children watched 12 episodes of Max and Ruby’? Nope, you only see heart shaped food and heart shaped braids.

(I mean no disrespect to heart shaped anything, I’m just using it as an example.)

I often wonder what motherhood must have been like before the internet. Then you only had to compare yourself with your own mother and your handful of friends, not 500 ‘friends’ that you haven’t seen in 10 years.

(Chris’ cousin posted this on Facebook, and I love it)

I totally need one of those! I don’t drink coffee but I would proudly drink my Diet Coke out of it!

Dominoes are a pretty big hit, for about a minute.

Elijah wore those pajamas for a full 48 hours before I finally changed him, or maybe Chris did.

And that’s okay!

Mother of the Year?

I think not.  I said it before I’m not trying to be the perfect mom anymore.  But being 9 months pregnant really makes me feel like a bad mom.
Exhibit A-

This picture was taken about 3 pm.  It looks like she was having a rough day.

At least she is happy??

Seriously.  I should write a letter to the maker’s of little girl jeans. A 2 year old should not have to worry about plumber’s crack.  Or I guess I could invest in a belt or maybe try to fatten my skinny little girl up. These jeans are going to the trash very soon. 

Still very pregnant

I’ve been drinking Raspberry Leaf tea

and I think it’s doing something.

It’s not supposed to induce labor

but helps to “tone” the uterus.

20 days until my due date!!