More Updates

I've replanted a lot of my plants that died during our May frosts. I bought some transplants from a local greenhouse for about $2 for a 4pk and also started some things by seed. I also planted some sunflower seeds up on one of the top levels.

These are various kinds of tomatoes and bell peppers. I also planted some green bush bean seeds.

Here I have more tomatoes, Armenian Cucumbers, Green patty-pan squashes and Okra.

This big one is a pumpkin. Behind it is spaghetti squash. I also planted some yellow sunrise squash and gourd seeds in the blank areas.

Here I have some tomatoes, broccoli and lettuce. I also planted some burgundy bush bean seeds. I don't think the broccoli and lettuce will do much because they're cool weather plants though.

Finished some more dinosaur signs...

Paige with her cousin Maya - the ballerina girls

Darci with her first braids...

Overload....

Well, where to start? It's been a while... Tad is still off work. His eye is healed up, but hopefully he'll be home until the middle of June before he has to go back and deal with all of that stress. And hopefully he'll be able to find another job or at least the hopes of another job before then. But there aren't too many jobs here in Albuquerque unfortunately. But we spend nearly every day filling out new applications. It's amazing how difficult some agencies make it to apply for a job.

Last week we took an impromptu trip back to Thatcher to see the new Gila Valley Temple open house. We didn't take any pictures of it because there were always a ton of people standing in the front, but here is a good article with pictures here. It was really beautiful. We also rented Avatar from Blockbuster and ended up losing it the next day. And we saw 2 scorpions in the house and one of them was on my foot!

I put up a little shelf in the boys room so now they can have some of their favorite dinosaurs up.

On the side of our house, some flower bulbs have come up. I'm not sure what kind they are and am suprised that they bloomed because I never water them, but they sure are beautiful.

Darci is a silly little girl that now likes to climb on and around everything.

We've been working on our yard. I've planted several things and then we got 2 or 3 big frosts, so I'm not sure if that original planting will make it, but am going to plant some more tomorrow and will post some pictures of that soon.

This hail storm was in May! I can't believe how long it's taking to warm up this year. We weren't expecting this and like I said I think it may have froze a lot of by veggie plants.

We finally put some storage into the closet under the stairs. It was actually pretty easy to do, but next time we build something we are going to invest in a stud-finder...

Now we just have to work on increasing our food supply...

Tad likes fixing the girls hair to see if he can put more ponytails in than the previous time.

Videos

Here is Derek trying to get Darci to talk.

Darci has learned to say her name now.

Derek won his jog-a-thon by running the most laps in his class. For a prize he received some Chuck E Cheese tokens. I sure hope they have insurance on their games.... Am I a bad mom for thinking this video is absolutely hilarious?!?

Ouch - Warning graphic photos ahead

Tad was blindsided and assaulted by an inmate at work the other night. He was punched in the face a few times and he had to take the inmate down while his partner was standing by frozen. He got a trip to the ER, a few stitches and a few days off work with pay. He showed great restraint by not really hurting the kid.

At the ER:

The next day:

Day 3:

He can now open his eye about halfway and is doing better. He did make the news. Check out the following link to see the news story...

http://www.koat.com/video/23251813/

This week at our house

We haven't been up to much lately... we rototilled our backyard and will be planting some seeds and plants hopefully tomorrow. Derek ran 15 laps around his entire school at his school's jog-a-thon (I think he ran 7 but got credit for 15). Anyway, that's a long way to run. I don't think I would've made 1 lap. I pledged $1 a lap thinking he would run about 3 so now I owe $15.... Paige got to go to a friend's princess birthday party and she had a blast. Kevin is still learning his words. Darci is just Darci. She loves to eat apples lately. She can chew on an apple for hours.

I made this Irish Wheaten Bread tonight to go with our soup. I got the recipe off of this blog. It turned out yummy!

I originally bought all the boys dinosaur stickers off of ebay or something like that for about $10. The other day I was at the Dollartree and found the exact same stickers for $1. So I bought a few more and now their room has a few more dinosaurs climbing up the mountains.

I also found some disney princess stickers there as well. I had ordered Paige these posters from allposters.com for about $3 each and I found these frames at Hobby Lobby damaged for about $4 each. I spray painted them black and ta-da! Don't look close though because the frames are actually a little bit too big but I didn't notice until after I spray painted them.

At the end of each day, Darci has crazy hair from her pig-tails.

Thank You

Darci has several words that she says and likes to sing in the van as we listen to music. She has learned to say Thank You really good. She's not a performer though and its been hard to get a good video of here, but here is her saying it a few times.

I made Posole tonight for dinner. This is a New Mexican dish we had a few months ago at a friends house, it was really good, so I thought I'd try it. It uses frozen hominy-like corn and pork. Just to play it safe I followed the directions on the package of frozen corn. It turned out OK, but now that I kind of know how to make it I'm going to experiment a little. I think it will be really good with green chili next time... Darci sure liked it. She's still a little orange even after having a bath tonight.

Darci loves the girly things. She likes to walk around with a purse during the day. Today at church she spent 30 minutes taking everything out of a friend's purse, putting it back in and taking it out again.

She loves to get Lulu's leash and pretend to walk her around the house.

I made some flower rings for Paige the other day. They were destroyed by the end of the day but sure were cute while they lasted.

This year for general conference we went to the chapel for the morning sessions on both days. In the afternoon we stayed home and watched it on the computer while Darci, Paige and Kevin took naps. Derek built the Albuquerque Temple out of Jenga blocks while we was listening.