Baby Emily’s Blessing

We left for Utah on May 28 in order to arrive in time for Emily Ann Wahlquist’s blessing on the 29th.  Emily is Heather and Danny’s newest baby, which makes her our first niece.  We are so glad that our kids will finally have cousins to play with!  Emily and our baby girl will only be a few months apart, so hopefully they’ll be great friends.  If we weren’t having a baby already, I would want one after being around Emily.  She is so incredibly sweet and beautiful.  She’s still in that newborn stupor, so she slept most of the time, a phase which makes babies particularly endearing.  I had the chance to take some pictures of her, but I soon realized that I need more practice.  Babies are hard to photograph!  Fortunately Emily’s naturally gorgeous, so most of the photos turned out just fine, despite my lack of skill.       Heather, she’s a doll!  You did good work!

Random fun thing…

Here’s a fun, lazy meme.  You simply bold the things you’ve done and leave the rest plain.  And you can add random comments like I felt compelled to do. 1. Started your own blog (um, yeah…) 2. Slept under the stars 3. Played in a band 4. Visited Hawaii 5. Watched a meteor shower 6. Given more than you can afford to charity 7. Been to Disneyland/world 8. Climbed a mountain. 9. Held a praying mantis 10. Sang a solo (5th grade in “Amahl and the Night Visitors”) 11. Bungee jumped 12. Visited Paris 13. Watched a lightning storm at sea 14. Taught yourself an art from scratch 15. Adopted a child 16. Had food poisoning 17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty (been there, but the statue was closed) 18. Grown your own vegetables 19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France 20. Slept on an overnight train 21. Had a pillow fight 22. Hitch hiked 23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill  24. Built a snow fort 25. Held a lamb 26. Gone skinny dipping 27. Run a Marathon 28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice 29. Seen a total eclipse (but was it as awesome as this music video?) 30. Watched a sunrise or sunset 31. Hit a home run 32. Been on a cruise 33 Seen Niagara Falls in person 34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors (been to England but not to where they actually lived) 35. Seen an Amish community 36. Taught yourself a new language (learned Spanish, but definitely didn’t teach myself) 37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied (hard question, but I think I’m pretty happy with my life right now) 38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person 39. Gone rock climbing 40. Seen Michelangelo’s David 41 Sung karaoke 42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt 43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant 44. Visited Africa (Egypt!) 45 Walked on a beach by moonlight 46. Been transported in an ambulance 47. Had your portrait painted (does one of those caricature sketches count?) 48. Gone deep sea fishing 49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person 50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris 51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling 52. Kissed in the rain 53. Played in the mud 54. Gone to a drive-in theater 55. Been in a movie 56. Visited the Great Wall of China (soon! I hope…) 57. Started a business 58. Taken a martial arts class 59. Visited Russia 60. Served at a soup kitchen 61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies 62. Gone whale watching 63. Gotten flowers for no reason 64. Donated blood, platelets, or plasma 65. Gone sky diving 66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp 67. Bounced a check 68. Flown in a helicopter 69. Saved a favorite childhood toy (like in Toy Story?) 70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial 71. Eaten Caviar 72. Pieced a quilt 73. Stood in Times Square 74. Toured the Everglades 75. Been fired from a job 76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London 77. Broken a bone 78. Been on a speeding motorcycle 79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person 80. Published a book 81. Visited the Vatican 82. Bought a brand new car 83. Walked in Jerusalem 84. Had your picture in the newspaper 85. Read the entire Bible 86. Visited the White House (couldn’t go inside that day, but close enough) 87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating 88. Had chickenpox 89. Saved someone’s life 90. Sat on a jury 91. Met someone famous 92. Joined a book club 93. Lost a loved one 94. Had a baby 95. Seen the Alamo in person 96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake 97. Been involved in a lawsuit 98. Owned a cell phone 99. Been stung by a bee

Paul’s last soccer game

I love doing stuff with my kids, but I am always relieved when something winds up and frees up some of our schedule.  Ballet ended, preschool ended, and I was quite happy.  Soccer was no exception.  It was a riot watching his games, and Paul loved to play, but I really am glad it’s time for a break…at least until t-ball begins in July.       Enjoying the traditional post-game sugar fest.  No wonder obesity is rising in America although organized sport participation is increasing!  Cupcakes, fruit snacks, Capri Suns, theater-sized boxes of candy, Kool-aid, fruit roll-ups, Gatorade…it was ridiculous.  We were the first ones to bring snacks, and we brought sliced oranges and pretzels.  I guess we’re completely lame, since NO ONE ever brought anything healthy after that point.  I shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw half his team refuse our snacks completely (which was okay with my kids, since they devoured at least an entire orange apiece); obviously fruit is not as palatable when you’re used to being stuffed with sugar.  Poor kids.  Seriously, parents, stop trying to be cool and be a parent!  (Rant over.) Paul really improved quite a bit during this soccer season.  He got to the point where he wasn’t looking at his feet to see how fast he was running, which really improved his speed.  And once during the last game his foot made contact with the ball!  Of course, he just stared at it as it rolled down the field, but even kicking it was a big improvement.  He loved being the goalie.  He actually understood what it was that he was supposed to do as goalie, and he was one of the better ones at it.  I’m sure he would have improved a lot more if we would have been able to practice with him in the backyard, but that is fairly impossible with things torn up like they are.  Next season…

Katie’s Ballet “Recital”

One of the reasons that I really like Katie’s ballet school is the fact that they only have recitals every other year, which translates into a fortune saved in costumes and tickets every other year.  Instead, they have the families come and watch a presentation a few times a year so that the kids get the practice of learning a dance without the stress, and so that the parents can see what is actually being learned and taught.  Katie LOVES to dance.  She’s constantly dancing and has infected her brother and sister too.  Paul has informed us that he wants to take ballet “so I can lift the girls up.”  When we asked Katie if she wanted to take soccer with Paul, she said, “No.  I just want to dance.”  She still had no interest even when we told her she could do both if she wanted to.  Oh well.  At least it’s not money wasted on something she doesn’t really care about.  Here are the pictures from her latest program, The Dress-Up Dance:   Sneaking up to the attic… Finding the dress-up box…   Yay!  Scarves! Oh no!  Someone’s coming! Shhh…don’t tell! And here they are showing some of the skills they’ve learned: Check out that face.  Love it! I really wish I didn’t get some weird glare from something.  Oh well.   We had such a good experience with ballet this year.  I hope Katie continues to enjoy dance as much as she does now, since I think she has a natural ability for it.  Next year should be fun: they begin to work at the barre (is that right? Internet is down, so I can’t proof myself) and it’s recital year.  I love watching my kids grow older and develop new talents.

Curls and cornbread

Two weeks ago Katie got her hair curled for church.  Averi saw this and decided she wanted pretty curled hair as well.  Of course, about 4 curlers in she wanted nothing else to do with it, but I’m a mean mom and made her stick it out.  Poor thing—we ran out of curlers, so I had to redo several so that she didn’t have a lop-sided head, but she was tough.  She’ll eventually learn that beauty is pain. Love those pretty green eyes. I forgot to take pictures the next morning, but it was cute.  Sunday afternoon she was the designated helper for dinner, and she helped me make cornbread and shuck the corn on the cob.    And even a pretty curl in this picture! The other side has some major bedhead from naps.  Oh well.  It was nice for church. And this is why baking takes so much longer with little kids.  Do you really need to life the whisk 18 inches above the bowl?   Oooh, look!  There’s corn inside! Teasing Mom that she’s going to eat it.  Except I think she really did take a bite out of it.

The patio saga, explained

Do you ever have one of those projects that never ends?  Sometimes it’s your own fault.  Sometimes it’s due to circumstances beyond your control.  And sometimes it’s both.  I’m pretty sure that Aaron will never listen to any of my, “Honey, we can totally do this!” ideas ever again.  Never.  This patio has consumed every weekend for the past two months, it seems, and there’s so very little to show for it.  We’ve had the beginnings of a hole (well, just sprinklers moved and a bit of sod pulled up, but still…) since the beginning of November.  NOVEMBER.  That’s how long we’ve been working—or thinking about working—on this project. There are a few things to understand.  First, the area to cover is huge.  It’s nearly 400 square feet.  It runs the entire length of our house and partway down one side.  That’s a lot of everything: digging, crusher fine, flagstone, and back-breaking labor. Second, we (I?  I’m no longer sure at this point) chose to lay flagstone.  And not just the imitation, interlocking, factory cut flagstone.  It’s the real stuff.  You know, the real stuff with irregular shapes and varying thicknesses.  Third, we don’t own a truck.  This was perhaps the single biggest factor in 80% of the delays we’ve experienced.  When you don’t have a truck, you’re at the mercy of someone else: friends who have a truck you can borrow or the delivery guys and their schedules.  And you’re really out of luck if they can’t deliver your base in time for the available two-day weekend coming up because their schedule is booked.  Or if their forklift is broken so you have to wait an extra week to have your stone delivered so the forklift can be repaired.  Fourth, we don’t don’t know what we’re doing.  That means we’re relying on the experts.  So when you tell the so-called experts your square footage, the depth you want your base to be, and the type of base you’ll be using and they tell you to order 2.5 tons of crusher fine and THEIR GUY spreads it out for you and everyone realizes that this is only a third of what you need, then it kind of stinks.  Now you have to wait (see point #3) for them to deliver more base, pay for delivery AGAIN (of course at the highest rate since you’re on the edge of town), and spread it yourself, because you only paid to have the guy spread the 2.5 tons, not the additional 5 tons you had to order. So there it is.  I’m kind of kicking myself for not having just poured cement and called it good.  Of course it’s not going to be as beautiful.  But it would be done, and we wouldn’t have had to do it. Aaron told me that if I wanted this done, then I needed to be the master planner.  So I watched a million YouTube videos on laying a patio and read thousands (I’m sure it was thousands) of tutorials on the best way to do every aspect of the project.  And let me tell you: the bozos who say that this is a weekend project have no idea what on earth they’re talking about.  That point was knocked home when I watch a professional lay a flagstone walkway.  It took him about 5 minutes of an edited video to get a single stone level and perfect.  Remember: this is the perfectly imperfect flagstone we’re talking about here.  And that’s when I realized that even when we got all the other steps finished, laying the stone was going to take forever. So now you have the background.  Here are some photos of the progress we’re making: Our backyard a year after we moved in (2007).  This was progress, actually.  At least we had a picnic table, a hose (for all the vegetation, as you can tell), and we were getting ready to have the curbing put down. That same year after curbing, sod, and a circular patio were installed (not in the picture).  Our grass sure was lush that year; not quite sure what happened.  Of course they get tons of chemicals at the sod farms, so that probably had something to do with it. First forays into gardening in 2008.  Oh how very sad that little bed looks.  Construction begins on the pergola in fall of 2008.  Major milestone!! In 2009 kids’ play equipment comes to the backyard, and they love it!  Structurally everything in the backyard remains mostly unchanged until I have a bright idea in October of 2010.  Then, lightbulb!  Why should grilling be confined to that tiny builder’s slab?  Why should I have to sit on a picnic bench to be outside?  We have that whole empty flower bed by the house!  I didn’t know enough about gardening when we first did our design to realize that that area is almost completely shaded.  Why waste it on a few flowers that probably won’t do well?  What we need is a patio!  And so it began. First we had to move the sprinklers.  And the dog.  Farewell Lando and yellow pee spots in the grass!  So long, poop pickup!  You will not be missed. Then we needed to order fill dirt to even out our very uneven east side.  Next came the demolition of the slab and the south concrete border.  The demolition was accounted for in our plans; the removal of the debris was not.  Did you know that the city of Albuquerque does not accept concrete, rock or gravel at their landfills?  No wonder people just dump it in the fields.  Fortunately we found a materials company that took it for free to make recycled aggregate.  Unfortunately, their hours of operation did not coincide well with Aaron’s work schedule.  Getting rid of all the concrete took quite some time. Since the slab was no longer there, the grill and grill cart needed a new temporary home.  Then we marked out the shape of our patio with hose, staked it with lovely pink flags, and removed excess sod.  Then the dirt needed to come out.  My poor husband.  Then seven and a half tons of crusher fine had to be wheeled from the driveway to the back, poured, spread, and leveled. Then it was time for the plate compactor.  We weren’t sure that this thing was even working after the first few passes, but then we figured out that we needed to wet it down quite a bit, and then it worked great.  The crusher fine compacted very nicely, which made us very glad we decided to stick it out. Then FINALLY the laying!!  I cannot tell you how time consuming it is to level each one of these stones.  You constantly are having to remove dirt, spread dirt, add a little more, and then just a little more, and then remove some, and then add just a teeny bit in and then….all the while checking how level the individual stone is and how it compares with the rest so that your slope is right.  I can definitely see why the labor for a project like this is four times the cost of the materials.  And the materials aren’t cheap.  You’d better believe that my 26-week-pregnant self was down there laying flagstone as well.  We Barnes girls are hardy stock.  We’ve still got a TON of laying to do.  We’ve got a deadline coming up, and we’re going to work really hard to be done by then.  We’ll see!  It’s going to be a long week…