Recapping July

So July has been busy!
We shingled the playhouse roof and have spent a lot of time working in our yard and Grandma Earl's. For all you non-relatives that read this, Grandma Earl turned 90 this year and she's still going. She lives in her house with her widowed brother Uncle Karl. They have some one who comes in and helps around the house and a little in the yard. Some one mowes the lawn, but most of the garden has been left to go totally wild for the last 5 years but it was starting to go wild from the far corners in about 5 years before that, and since she has about a 1/2 acre lot thats a lot of yard!
Well we've started to reclaim the yard from nature. It's totally like The Secret Garden there's still a lot of good stuff growing under the weeds and creeper vine, we just need to give it some TLC. And maybe you've heard those jokes about "Nature's a mother!" well some days thats how it feels working out there, and then John whips out the weed eater and 30 minutes later we go oh well maybe that's doable. I'll have to do another Grandma's yard post after I get the pictures off the camera.
Little John and I started a once a week mommy & me tumbling class, he loves it. And we're in the last week of our mommy & me swim class, which it sooooo much fun!
We keep canning: cherry pie filling, blueberry pie filling, raspberry jam, tomato juice, maraschino cherries (non-alcoholic), danish cherry sauce, and just canned raspberries. And we froze the ecsess purple carrots from the garden, because we don't have a pressure canner.
My mending and alterations bussiness is picking up a little, I just altered a wedding dress for a girl.

Recapping May and June

So May was a good month because school got out.

Ben went to his first ever fancy dance on a date. He took Amanda Wendel from down the street, they look so good!

My grandma Earl (she is actually my Great-Grandma) had her ninetieth birthday so we celebrated with a great huge part with all the reletives from out of state that we don't get to see very often. Someone found out that you can get amazingly good deals on huge orders from Maddox so we got the food from there. YUM!!! Two different flavors of cake. After the lunch we had an open house so that all of her friends and neighbors could come and see her.

We made and frosted donuts, chocolate and vanilla frosting!

Little John decided the sand box is more fun with water.

We started buildingLittle John a playhouse in the backyard, we modified some plans off the internet. John's parents came over and helped a lot. The weather was hot not foggy, the fog in the pictures is Little John's fingerprints on the camera lens but no one noticed until too late.

We enjoyed a nice picnic up the canyon.

We made jam and our sticky helper is so cute!

We went to the zoo and Little John was mezmerized by the elephants, they are deffinately his favorite animal.

We ran the Race For the Cure 5k with my Aunt Juli and her daughter Kate. It was awesome! I hope to do it again next year. Maybe next year I'll jog part of it with the stroller instaed of just power walking with the stroller.

My brother Ben graduated from Box Elder High School and Seminary. At the high school graduation things were getting boring since the speakers just go on and on and on. Then all of a sudden, at the back of the students there was a great commotion with everyone looking all over and looking under their chairs. It turns out that someone had let loose a mouse. Ben appreciated the break from the monotony. After a while they caught it. Then there was some more commotion because they had let loose more than one mouse. It kept the audience very well entertained. It also kept the sutdents awake. Oh, and some guy wore a kilt, it was cool.

We spent a lot of time working on the playhouse.

We took Ben for a ritual "last meal" before shipping him out to boot camp.

We spent a weekend with my sister Heather in Loa, UT (near Capitol Reef Ntl Park), for her baby shower.

We made arricot, pinapple apricot, and apricot plum jam

Little John ride his trike a lot.

For Father's day I helped Little John collect stuff and we put it in plaster to make Daddy a paper weight (I gave it a few coats of sealer to protect it).

We are loving your year pass to the Jensen Historical Farm (where we went to Baby animal days) We saw lots of chickens and washed clothes.

Little John loves bubbles!

My Mom entered an online contest and won a Pizza Party! So we had a bunch of friends and family over. The kids loved the backyard.

We took Little John to the pool.He lasted about 10 minutes because once the wind picked up it got cold.

Nana (my mom) lets Little John get away with things sometimes. Like making the backyard a nudist camp. He decided sitting naked was a mistake, but had fun doing everything else.

Typed by Sarah Snow the cooliest ever!!!! ('Cuz I don't type, I chicken peck:D)

So I'm still here...

Wow I knew it had been a while since I blogged but I didn't realize it had been almost a month. So I've been busy, here's the basic rundown and then I'll do some more blogs on the more interesting stuff afterwards.

Spring has arrived, complete with it's fickle whims of crazy weather. It beautiful, it rains, I wonder where my shorts are, it snows, its beautiful again. Over all this is great for the yard, but I lost a blueberry bush :(. The most obnoxious part of that is for best fruit you plant 2 different varieties and I'm not sure which one died so I'm not sure what to replace it with. This weather is not so great for Little John, he just doesn't understand why he can spend 3 days living in the backyard and then has to be cooped up for another 3.

Spring break came and went for Mom and Ben and it was nice to have them around for a few extra days. We went to baby animal days, drove to Idaho to see cousins, and just hung out. (Blog with pics soon to follow)

General Conference weekend was great! We loved the speakers. We DVRed it and I put it on DVD and mailed it to my friend Clerie in Iraq (the internet there is too slow to stream the feed). We also (mostly John) got the railing on the deck out back, between sessions. I worry a lot less about the little guy playing out there now.

We finished the Man Cave, it's all decked out and John enjoys using it. (Blog w/ pics to follow)

Easter Sunday we got together with some cousins and did dinner and an egg hunt. Little John loves to find the eggs and for quite a while didn't care that there was stuff inside them. He got upset at the city hunt when we made him wait till they said "go" to start finding them. (pics blog soon)

We joined this fruit and veggie co-op thing (it actually started in AZ) and the produce is great. We got the italian pack and I made 6 cool whip containers of sauce and froze it (I added the tomato paste/sauce and some spices but most everything else came in the pack). We also got 40 lbs of pink lady apples that I'm in the process of turning into apple pie filling and canning it. I will be doing this for a while because 27 apples gave me 7 qt jars of filling and there's 115 apples in a 40 lb box plus the 13 I also used 'cuz they'd been in the fridge for a while. So I figure I'll end up with between 30 an 35 jars of filling. And I made a pie from the jar that didn't seal- delicous! Here is the link to the co-op if anyone is interested. (The only UT places right now are Brigham and Clearfield)

I have been stage managing a show at the local community theater. It's a straight play (as in not a musical) called The Women. It's basically Desperate Housewives, set in the 1940's. The author got all her material sitting around in hair salons and pwder rooms and women's shop just listening to ladies gossip. The play is fantastic a lot of drama but still funny. Opening night is tonight. (More stuff in following blog)

My mom went to the doctor for a rash on her face that started to swell and was told it was shingles. First of all she isn't old enough to be having shingles! Second, because its by her eye she has to keep a close watch 'cuz if it gets in her eye she could go blind, I'm not sure how likely that is to happen, but just thinking about it freaks me out! So I'm praying for her alot, feel free to join me :)

So see I'm so busy doing things worth blogging that I have no time to blog :D

Hobos and doctors and laughs oh my!

So I'm going to smash a lot of stuff in this blog, since my sister was home from collage last week for spring break.

I almost had a shower with a hobo! I was running the water to get warm and this giant hairball gets floated up to the other end of the tub AND THEN IT UNCURLED A BUNCH OF LEGS! And it was a hobo and it was big and John wasn't home so I had to smash it myself. It still freaks me out to think I could have gotten in and been bit 'cuz I never would have even seen it 'cuz I don't wear my glasses in the shower.

So I'm not sure if you're familiar with the "man cave" so I'll explain it a bit. It's a guy's personal space for working or playing and stashing or displaying things like comic book collections or high school ball trophies. They tend to be smaller than bigger unless most of the kids are grown and gone. Well for John's birthday he is redoing the closet under the stairs for his man cave. Before you freak out, he picked the space and is very happy with it, even though it makes me think of Harry Potter. He painted it silver and I did the floor a marblized blue and green finish and we're going to give it several clear coats to protect it. I designed and built him a set of shelves (with lots of building help from everyone) as a suprise and after we get it all finished I'll post pics.

Sarah had her wisdom teeth out. It went well, very little swelling, and no need for the heavy pain pills.

All the stores are having seasonal clearance to make way for the spring clothes, so Sarah and I did lots of shopping. I did really well with my budget though and didn't go overboard. I got some way cute stuff but only if it was cheap.

Now that our insurace has kicked in I found a new pediatrician for Little John. He's great, he used to be head of peds at a big hospitals but went back to private practice because he likes it better. So poor Little John got all caught up on his shots and he's been under the weather since and pretty cranky.

5 out of 6 Hizers are born in March so we had the everybody birthday party this last weekend. It was lots of fun. We took advantage of the nice weather and BBQed until the wind drove us inside.

Sarah's ride back to college was in Salt Lake so Ben and I drove her down there for the rondevouz. We had to hang out there for a bit so I helped Sarah reveiw her anatomy flash cards. She's working on muscles right now. I was asking a lot of "identify the muscle that originates at... and inserts at... and does such and such" questions and while she'd think about it Ben would make random guesses. So Ben's last five guesses had been "your rump?" when the question "what is the insertion of the gluteous maximus" came up and I was waiting to tell him he'd guessed right when he said it again. But instead he says, with this funny look on his face, "Its called sex, and you should never, ever do it!" And his face goes all red. Sarah and I luaghed ourselves silly! And when we finally stop laughing he says "So what's a gluteus maximus anyway?" He had no idea it was a butt and we started laughing all over again.

I went to the chiropracter today (my first appointment was last week) and he worked out the whatever I did to my shoulder over the weekend. My mom talked me into going after my shoulder had been bothering me for a few weeks. I was kinda resistant to the idea, because some of those guys are quacks. But I googled the one my insurance said it covered in our area and picked the guy who did mostly sports injury stuff because he seemed very unquacky (so does his office partner). And he was very professional and none of this "I'll need to see you 3 times a week for 6 months ot fix it" stuff and no wonky promises like "I'll cure your athletes foot by feeling you skull". The day after I was pretty sore but overall much better. He also worked on my neck and lower back. He says I carry all my tension in my neck and shoulders and I didn't realize it until I felt so much better afterwards. My back hasn't felt right since I was pregnant (which he says is really common) and it feels tons better now. So now I'm sold on chiropracters. I know a bunch of you have raved over how much good your's has done you but I had to try it to belive it.

So that catches us up to right this very second, so now I need to go do stuff to blog about.

Happy Belated birthday Rick

So we haven't been up to much lately, just normal everyday stuff. Diapers, groceries, bath time, ect. That's why I haven't blogged, nothing to blog. But we did something interesting this weekend so I thought I'd share. We went to Salt Lake to hang out with Rick for his birthday. His birthday was weeks ago but bad weather has kept us from getting together. So we checked out his new apartment and took him out to lunch at Famous Daves. We got a garbage can lid full of food and shared it all around and there was still enough for Rick to have some leftovers for lunch today. Then we went to a couple stores and walked off lunch. It was a good time. And the other interesting thing was that we talked in church last Sunday. We both spoke on the atonement and it went really well.

Elder Hizer arises from the internet

So I experienced a small miracle today. (If I had been checking my email daily I would have had this miracle on Monday. I get emailed when anyone comments on my blog.) I got a comment from a guy in Wamego, KS, where Elder Hizer is serving right now. This guy's family have a dinner apointment with Nathan tonight! And they wanted to make him feel at home, so they googled for him and found my blog. They asked what his favorite foods were. (You can read the comment on my post "Ode to Elder Hizer" in Oct)
I am so excited. I told the guy what Nathan likes to eat and asked him to email me a pic of him and his companion. How awesome is all of this?! Next time I feed missionaries I'm going to have to google them, who knows what can happen. I knew God worked in mysterious ways, but I never realized that could mean google.

Thanksgiving part 1

Well its all over now and most of the leftovers have been eaten. Yesterday I disected the rest of the turkeys (we had 3) and froze a lot of it. And tonight I will use up pretty much everything else to make Thanksgiving pizza (recipe at bottom).
But our Thanksgiving was great! We had 22 people (hence the 3 turkeys) and we managed to fit them all in the living room to eat together. We hauled the piano out to the garage and fit 2 long folding tables in the length of the living room. (By the way if anyone knows some one in the Brigham area who wants to buy a piano message me!)
We ate and then took down a table and people broke up in little groups to visit and play games. And of course there were leftovers and plenty of pie and other desserts for munching. We all had a great time.
John's parents, brother and his wife came since Nathan's on his mission and their usual plans were disrupted. Heather came and announced her engagement to Evan Smith (who came and his familly too). I was nice to meet everyone, we like them all, and he is really nice and sweet to her. And of course Sarah came up from school. And Rick came. And my uncle Mike. And Grandma Earl (my great-grandma).
It was great to have every one and it was so nice just hanging out talking and playing games and things.
And before you freak out about the cooking involved, we did: pies, turkeys, rolls, stuffing, taters, and veggie tray. Everyone else brought potluck drinks, side dises, and desserts. So we didn't do all the cooking (thank goodness!)

Thanksgiving pizza
1 Grease a cookie sheet and cover it with a thin layer of roll dough. This can be leftover frozen dough or comes in a can dough or make your favorite rolls dough. I usually use canned cresent rolls dough.
2 Pre-heat the oven to whatever you cook the rolls at.
3 Cover the dough with leftover mashed potatos or if those are all gone whip up some instant.
4 Cover that with the leftover gravy
5 Sprinkle generously with leftover stuffing or whip up some stovetop
6 Top with little bits of leftover turkey.
If you'd rather you can put the gravey on last. And you can add anything else you'd like or skip anything your kids won't eat. (But I wouldn't skip the gravy 'cuz things dry out in the oven)
7 Now bake the whole thing for as long as you would bake the rolls. Check if the potatoes and turkey are warm. If not pop it back in the oven for another 5 or so minutes. Serve and enjoy. And even though its called pizza it eats better with a fork.

Ode to Sarah

So Sarah hasn't come home from college for weeks, mostly due to homework, and she was going to come home this last weekend, but she couldn't get a ride. And she had lots of homework. Well she has these research papers she has to start working on so I volunteered to help her out. So I googled her topics and then sorted through the results and sent her a list of websites that actually have relevant, usable information. That gives her like a 3 hour headstart on her papers. Well 'cuz I'd spent so much time thinking about her while doing that, I got all depressed that I wasn't going to see her again till Thanksgiving break so I decided I was going to drive down to Ephruim. Google maps says that should take 3 hours and 1 minutes, but that doesn't factor in rush hour traffic in Provo (where the freeway becomes a parking lot).

But I did finnaly get there and it took so long everyone called Sarah to see if I was there yet (which spoiled the surprise, but I felt loved to know they were so worried) and I got there about 20 minutes later. Her boyfriend came over and we had pizza and hung out. And after Tyson left we stayed up late being all giggly. The next morning we spent being giggly and folding laundry before breakfast.

This is Sarah being silly.

And this is us on the beanbag in the living room (it came with the apartment).

And this is Sarah doing some of that homework. While she worked I read her the Illiad outloud, she has to read it for some class she's taking and decided she could listen and do calculus at the same time. I don't think I could manage that but kudos to her.

This is her roomate's (illegal) pet mouse, it's named cow. They keep it in a cage, bathe it regularly and it rides on her shoulder in the car. Personally I think mice are mostly gross, but I've never seen a cow spotted one before.

Sarah gave me a tour of campus and the town. Campus took 5 minutes and the town took 10 because we drove from one end to the other and back. This is me in front of a neat looking building.

This is Sarah in front of the front of that building.

This is the boat in the yard near her apartment. People who've been in it say the room in the stern is full height and there's a smaller room in the bow. How cool is that!

Sarah in the Malt shop.

Me by the Malt Shop's jukebox. I took Sarah to lunch before I had to leave. And if you're ever in Ephraim this is the place to stop. The food is great and the prices are decent. And for when the weather is nice there are picnic tables and a swing set outback.

It's a cute little town with lots of historic buildings, and little shops on an old fashioned kind of main street. Snow is a nice small college too. Sarah really likes it there and I had a great time visiting her, I just wish it wasn't such a long drive. But it's a pretty drive (except for Provo traffic) and I had radio to sing along with nearly all the way there.

And I didn't miss Little John too bad even though it was my first night way from him, and boy was he happy to see me when I got back :D.

UEA adventures

So UEA hosts a teacher confrence every fall and there's lots of booths that are fun to see and lots of free pens and notepads and other small tidbits to collect. But the best part is the 4 day weekend. We went down to UEA with Mom and looked around at everything Thursday. It was fun. The not so fun part was when we stayed overnight in Salt Lake so we could get there early before the convention got crowded.


We stayed at a nice hotel at a good rate because they were doing a dicsount if you were with UEA. So since there were 4 of us and the baby- Mom booked a 2 room suite. Well it turns out to be just one room with a king size bed. However, do not despair! Despite my love of adventure and "winging it" when we couldn't verify via room description if the couch was a pullout bed we brought the air matress and some sleeping bags. And of course thr porta-crib.


As a perk the room had a jacuzi tub, which Little John and I enjoyed since the pool was freezing and the hot tub was out of the question for him. He loved the jets. Alas the jacuzi tub is not in the bathroom, it ocupies a coner of the main space. For those of you who have not attempted to sleep 2 people on an air mattress, you spend all night rolling into each other because it dips into the center. So we got a roll-away bed from the front desk. But because of the jacuzi tub there is barely room to walk and no room for the porta-crib. So it ends up like this: John, Little John and I in the king size bed, Mom on the queen size air mattress, and Ben my 6 foot plus tall brother on the roll-away bed.


I don't think anyone got any sleep. Little John had an ear infection from his cold and had just started antiboitics that day. He was up 3 times that night and even when sleeping took up a lot of the bed squirming. Ben might as well have been sleeping on rocks there were so many springs in his mattress. John and I where hot. Mom and Ben were cold.


So after the provided breakfast which was actually really good, we check out. And Mom explains about expecting 2 rooms and only getting 1 and they finally determine that a jacuzi suite and a 2 room suite are the same price and the recently hired employee who handled the reservation booked it on price not description. So thanks to the mixup no charge for the roll-away bed.


A few few days latter and after some decent sleep we think this was quite a funny thing. But we definately learned a few things. 1 travelling with sick children is a dumb idea. 2 double check all reservations before you leave. 3 if there is a reservation problem fix it before bedtime or right at check in if possible. and we relearned the importance of this last one 4 if you can't fix it, laugh and enjoy it or you only make yourself more miserable.


But we didn't let lack of sleep keep us from having a good time at UEA the next day. And The Mayan (areaaly cool theamed resturant that can be seen in the movie The RM) was across from the convention center so we had lunch there. All the boys LOVED it.

Loading the car

This is where a picture of the over stuffed hotel room should go but I was to frustrated to take a pic at the time.

In front of the Mayan

In the lobby

By our table

Picnics

OK so I promised a blog about picnics and here it is. Apparently picnics are an endangered species. Most of you reading this might be surprised by this news, I certainly was. While driving to Utah when we moved, we pulled off for gas and lunch. Anyone who has traveled with a small child in a car seat for more than 2 hours understands the need to let them out for a pit stop. So any time we road trip we picnic when possible (weather permitting). We just expect that's what we'll do.
So we get our sub sandwiches, haul our picnic blanket out of the trunk, and eat outside the restaurant on the grass. (For anyone road tripping I highly recommend this: you get some fresh air and kids can run and squirm and yell and nobody cares)
Well, we're there enjoying ourselves and these 2 guys come up and ask to take our picture. They are doing a research project/presentation about the decline of family values (or something very similar) for a college class. They are just gushing about how they can't believe people still have picnics and how this will get them an A for sure. We let them take our picture and if I had been thinking I would have asked them to take one with my camera too.
We just thought the whole thing was so random and funny, but apparently we are an anomaly in the world because we picnic. So since most of my readers are in AZ and this time of year is the best weather I invite you to picnic. It is an extinct tradition worthy of a "strange and peculiar people".

Little John's birthday

So we had Litlle John's birthday party. And it was so fun. He liked the ballons best, followed shortly by cake. He did so good opening his presents and I couldn't belive it but he even read the card :D I have tons of pictures but I'll keep it limited to the best ones for posting. The whole thing wore him out so he and G'ma had a nap after we cleaned up.