Veg

This morning I went to Market on the Move and got all these veggies for only $10. Nice eh? I'm going to go next week too. It was fun.

Beet It

So here is a convoluted story with not much of a point. Last week Alana's class went on a field trip to a farm and she came home with a bag full of produce. In the bag were green onions, carrots, parsnips (I think), and a lot of beets. I don't use a whole lot of beets in my cooking and I was hoping not to put them straight in the trash so I had an idea to put them in pancakes. Why not? So yesterday I peeled them and cooked them and blended them and got the batter ready for pancakes.

Meanwhile, last week Tessa stayed home from school one day with a stomach ailment, she laid on the couch with her barf bucket and moaned a lot. She was fine the next day. Well, about the time the batter was ready my tummy started twinging. I thought it was the chocolate muffins I made the night before, so I threw the remaining five muffins in the trash and tried to not puke. Between the smell of cooked beets and the interesting look of the pancake batter and the way my tummy felt, I covered the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for another time. No pancakes were made yesterday. I laid on the couch or my bed and told Peter I was out. I thought for a couple of hours that I was maybe, you know, expecting... Aack. Yikes. But when the kids came home from school and Leah was mad because the chocolate muffins were in the trash for no apparent reason and Jeffey was pale and nauseous I was relieved to know it was only Tessa's old bug that he and I caught and nothing more, um, drastic.

Well, Ryan took care of me and made dinner for the kids and sleeping 9 hours helped me feel lots better. So I got the batter out this morning and made the beet pancakes for the kids. I did not tell them what was in them. They were very interested in them because the batter was very red. Sure enough, they ate them up really quick and didn't say anything about them tasting funny. I got them off to school and came home and tried a bite. They taste a little like beets. Gross. I'm going to try to get Peter to eat some now. He just woke up :)

Valentines

We had a nice and busy Valentine's Day. Peter and I made Daddy a candy bouquet with m&m's, reeces, baby ruths, butterfingers, twizzlers, etc. Of course I didn't take a picture and neither did Ryan but you get the gist. We surprised him at work and I think he liked it. The vase came home empty so I guess we did well! Then Pete and I went and collected a friend of his and took her to storytime at the library with us. We love going to storytime. Then we hurried his friend home and had a little time before heading to the school for the second grade program that Alana was in. Yesterday was Arizona's 100th birthday as a state (number 48, baby!). It was an adorable program and she did a great job. Her class played, "Are you smarter than a 2nd grader?", it was darling. That's our girl at the desk on the right side.




They are birthday candles in this picture, isn't that so cute?



Then we jammed home and Pete played with his buddies Axle and Maddox, the kids came home from school, Jeff went to mow lawns at Grampa L's house, Leah and Alana went to gymnastics, while Tessa and I made dinner for our guests and fancy dinner party we had last night. We had both sets of our parents, Ryan's aunt and uncle down from Canada (who cleaned the kitchen after and washed all the dishes and were a fabulous crew, I will have to have them over more often), Jess and Mitch, and Linz and her babies came too. It was a fun night. None of the food was heart shaped like I wanted to make but it tasted really good so it was okay. We had meatloaf, mashed potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower, rolls, fruit kabobs, and red velvet cupcakes. I tried to put the marbles in the baking tins with them to make the cupcakes heart shaped and it worked sort of on a few of them, most of them just looked like someone had bitten them, as Peter sweetly pointed out. Our guests were wonderful and we had a great time.

It was a busy day and I keep wondering what I would have cut out to make myself a bit less harried but I can't imagine what I would have left out so I guess I'm just going to have to go with it and be happy with non-heart shaped meatloaf patties and malformed cupcakes.

Helpers

So yesterday my visiting teaching companion, Phyllis, and I went to the park and had lunch with a girl we visit and we were talking and I told her about what I've been up to and she said, "Well, I'll just send Tom over. Tom is great at roofing and he will have it done for you super quick!" I told her that we were old hands at roofing and it was seriously under control and she didn't need to send Tom (her hubby). BTW, they are great grandparents. Well, sure enough, I got home and started roofing with David, who came by to help for a couple of hours because he is awesome. Well, pretty soon here comes Tom and Phyllis. Tom is all dressed for roofing, he brought his knee pads and everything and he revolutionized our process. He did a fancy stair step technique that I'd seen done on other roofs but didn't understand. Well, he whipped those shingles out and nailed them down faster than you could say, Boo. He laid every shingle but the bottom 15 rows or so, all we had to do was put them in front of him. It was awesome.

He is coming over this morning to help me finish it. He should be here in a few minutes. Just thought I'd let ya'll know that if you do your visiting teaching you will be blessed almost immediately :)

Isn't it so pretty?

Stiff and Sore

So Saturday we ended up finished laying all the underlay over the garage and we barely started the top layer.

The driveway had a huge pile of old roof on it that I loaded up and took to the dump yesterday, three trips. Those roofing materials are heavy and dirty. But I am so glad they are gone. Here's before and after.

Then last evening Mitch and Jess came over to help us lay the top layer peel and stick stuff. I am so glad that is done, now I can shingle the main roof.


David is going to come over today and help me lay shingles. Hopefully we get a lot done. I am so much looking forward to never seeing that ugly pock marked and hail damaged roof again!

What We do for Entertainment

Isn't it hideous? That is our roof. Yes, Peter is up there, he loves it on the roof. I try not to show him how scared I am every time he climbs the ladder and worse, climbs down the ladder.

So these are the before pictures. Shortly after I took them we tore off all the grey stuff. We had a leak there where the plywood shows and replaced that with new, also we put up those new blue boards you can see in the first picture.

Here it is stripped. I guess I should have captured the huge pile of debris in the driveway but it just makes me tired to look at. Tomorrow I get to load it into the little truck and drive to the dump a couple of times. It will be real fun. Actually, I kind of like going to the dump with shingles, it makes me feel like I've accomplished something.

I will take pics every time I go up so ya'll can watch the progress, it will look much better soon. I am just so grateful that we can finally afford to do the roof, that we can do it ourselves and that the weather is so very nice for roofing!

Birthday Bug

Our sweet Leah Bug is now 11.

I can't figure out how that happened. See, she still sticks her tongue out all the time like she did 10 years ago, but she is quite a bit bigger and has a lot more hair on her head than she did even 8 years ago.

She asked for pizza and wings for her party so we had all aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and second cousins who were willing and able to come over last night and had a big shindig.

She loved it. The pizza turned out great and I managed to keep up with demand even though I only have one oven. The wings were great, we had the fryer outside so it wouldn't smoke up the house. And there were lots of fun and happy people over.

Leah was especially happy to have her Sheilds cousins come, she and Oscar are good buddies.

Whit did a photo shoot of some of her more adorable nieces. Jujo is absolutely darling and I'm super excited for Linz to go back to work next week so I can play with her a little bit :). She totally looks like my Grandma Hawker in a couple of her pictures. Cutest Baby since mine were that small.

Seriously.

David's birthday is today! He is such a nice brother. I love him a lot. We partied for him as well last night.

Leah and Ox. Those two are fun together. And there's the cake. Leah got to color on it with the food dye markers and decorate it herself. She loved that part. Saw it on Pinterest.

I made it all from scratch only because I'm cheap and lazy. Cheap because I didn't want to buy rolled fondant when I can make it so "easily". It is actually easy to make, and pretty fun - messy though. And lazy because when I saw I needed white cake mix to tint the rainbow colors and that I didn't have any white cake mixes, and I didn't feel like going to the store right at that moment so I just made the cake batter from scratch too instead of hauling my cookies to the store. Everyone said it looked good and tasted good too! It did. I rocked that cake hard.

Happy Birthday David and Leah, you two are tops in my book.

Thank you for the photos Whit - You are so kind to share your talent with me!