Moments in Time

Sunset Photo taken by Joshua Powell

I spent all day making chili sauce because we used up our last jar. Since you can't buy it at the store and we love it on our roast or meat loaf... I had to make some more. It is my grandmother's recipe and I've never had anything like it except at home. I found a local farmer who sold me about 30 pounds of tomatoes for way cheap and then I went to work with some help from Jared. The house smelled so good! I ended up with about 18 pints which should last us until next summer when I can make some more.

This is one of Rebecca's baby mice that she is holding in her hand. So think of an 8-year-old's hand and then maybe you can picture how little the mouse is. They are very active and curious now that their eyes are open. We have to be careful when we hold them because they scurry fast and tend to jump. They are quite entertaining to watch in their cage.

Dreams of Traveling

I saw this on a friend's blog and wanted to do one myself. I love traveling and have dreams of going to every state in the U.S. as well as all the countries I can get to. I also happen to love maps so the 2 maps below are fun, fun. The red shows the states and countries that I have visited. It looks like I still have a lot of the world left to explore. Maybe my next country will be Peru with David? We'll see.

visited 41 states (82%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or website vertaling duits?


visited 25 states (11.1%)
Create your own visited map of The World or Like this? try: Mapped Web

Sunday Happenings

This morning Adam asked me what day it was.  I told him it was Sunday.  Usually this brings moans and complaints about having to go to church.  He's been my only child to really seem to hate going to church.  Well today his answer was different.  He said, "Oh good.  We get to go to church where they don't have fires."  Poor little guy.  Our neighbor's house burned down a few weeks ago.  It's a family that just lives on the other side of the block and so Adam witnessed the fire and he actually knows the people so it is very personal to him.  David and I weren't home at the time so Adam went with all the kids over to watch the whole thing.  As you can imagine, fire is terribly frightening and very violent to watch.  Ever since then Adam has been so afraid.  He won't go anywhere in the house by himself (he's afraid a fire will start and he won't be able to get out).  He won't go to bed in his bed.  He comes in from outside sometimes in tears because he says he feels sick in his stomach because he was thinking about the fire.  Talk about anxiety.  

I've read some things on helping 1-5 year olds after a traumatic event.  It seems that all we can do is listen, comfort, cuddle, listen some more and eventually the fear should ease up.  If anyone has a good idea out there, let me know.

On a brighter note... Jared received his Duty to God Medal today at church.  I was very proud of him.  He actually finished it quite some time ago but with our move and him being at BYU, it took a while to get all the right people involved and actually receive the award.

And, one last fun thing is our little family of mice.  Remember the mice that were born a while ago?  Well we went on vacation and many different things combined to their demise. The only surviving mouse was the white female named "Rice".  It's too hard to explain here but it was quite sad.  Anyway, Joshua bought another male mouse and introduced him to Rice.  Just about 3 weeks later, she had 9 little baby mice and they are so cute.  I took a picture of them yesterday.  They have some fur and they walk around a little bit but their eyes are still closed.  Hopefully they will grow to adulthood without any problems.  In the picture below, notice the adult mouse tail in the upper lefthand corner.  That kind of gives you an idea of how tiny they still are.  

Rachel's Soccer

Soccer is in full swing. Between Joshua and Tanner reffing games and Rachel and Tanner playing games, we spend a lot of time watching soccer. It's a good thing it's pretty fun.

Rachel is on the Blue Devils team and they are really good. She's having a good season so far. She made their one and only goal in their first game last week and today she made 4 of the 8 goals and had an assist. If I sound like I'm bragging.... sorry.

This girl was so tall but Rachel maneuvered around her and still made the goal.

Goal #2

Goal #4 - notice the ball in the goal below.

Summer Reading

I always do a summer reading program with my kids. We usually have some type of chart to keep track of books read and we have a goal of how many books. This year each book earned a fish in our pond (little foam fish on a poster board) and our goal was to read 50 books. Obviously the little kids read more books than the older kids and mom because Adam reads very short books and the older kids read long books, but everyone has to have a few books on the chart. The reward is generally a fun outing that we only do if we read... it can't be something we do every summer no matter what. So this year the reward was a day pass at Snowbird to do all their fun summer activities: ziplining, alpine slide, bungee trampoline, rock climbing, tram to the top of the mountain, bucking bronco. It was really fun and we all had a good time.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Horseback Riding

A friend of David's offered to take our girls horseback riding and today was the day. David was going to take Rachel and Rebecca with him but Rachel wasn't feeling well and didn't want to go. So I got to go instead and it was awesome.

Rebecca did so well. At first she was just lead while riding on the horse but then she got to be completely on her own and she did really well. She handled the horse perfectly and we were in some pretty steep rocky areas for a while and she did great. I think she's a natural.

We're planning to go again soon so we can take Rachel and maybe Tanner and Joshua who also want to go.

Obsessed with Fablehaven

I heard the author of the Fablehaven books interviewed on the radio a while ago. The books are written for kids (I think ages 10-14) but it sounded like a good story. So I started reading the first one so I could recommend it to my kids. I could not put it down! Once I finished, I started right into the second one. By that time, Jared figured they must be good since I wouldn't do anything else. Once he started he really didn't stop until he finished the 4th one. Joshua noticed that Jared couldn't put down the books so he started too. At one point, Tanner was reading book 1, Joshua was reading book 2, I was reading book 3, and Jared was reading book 4.

Joshua and Jared have more time to read so Jared finished all of them, as I said earlier, and Joshua is trying to steal book 4 from me so he can finish it. I'm almost done... I even read almost all night last night because I wanted to find out how it ends. It is crazy. I even said to David the other day, "I can't get the boys to do anything all day because they won't stop reading those Fablehaven books."

If you want a fun, fairly easy read, you should try these books. They even sell them at Costco.