Trees

If we continue at this rate of progress on our back yard, we'll be looking really good in about three years. We got trees this week.

Technically we bought our trees on Friday. It was a surprisingly good experience. We went to Cook's Nursery, and we worked with an awesome employee who really knew her stuff. It was so much better than the oodles of employees I've tried to talk to in garden departments at hardware and ginormous stores. Those employees are total nitwits. The folks at Cook's know what's what about plants. She really helped us get a good idea of what trees would work well in our soil and in our terraced back yard, and then she helped us choose the best specimens they had to offer. Most of their stock is 20% off right now since it's the fall, so that was a huge help for us since we bought seven trees.

The trees were delivered on Monday afternoon, and Eric planted them that evening. I took this picture yesterday morning, and I don't have a panoramic option, so I had to make do with using Paint (the photo editing tool of choice for people who are digital-image-inept. This explains not only the vast lighting differences, but also the uneven back fence.)

From left to right, the trees are:

• crabapple, named Krabapple (prounounced Kruh-bahpple, like the teacher from The Simpsons)
• choke cherry, named George
• hornbeam, named Horatio South
• hornbeam, named Horatio North
• Swedish aspen, named Björn
• Norwegian spruce, named Thorlief
• flowering plum, named Professor

Everyone names their trees, right?

Things I'm eagerly awaiting:

• In a few years those hornbeams will be nice and tall, which will block that horrible setting sun that beats down into my kitchen and dining area every evening.
• In a few more years that choke cherry will be big and beautiful and shady.
• Each spring we will have some beautiful blossoms. I can't remember which trees will have which colors, but it's going to be wonderful.
• Every fall that crabapple will have beautiful, bright, red berries. At first we were looking for a non-berry variant of the crabapple, but after seeing enough of the red berries on the trees at the nursery, I changed my tune, and we got a berry variety. We'll just make the children find and clean up the berries.

I'm not sure anyone has ever been quite as excited about trees.

Felix - Twelve Months

He's 1! Felix's favorite things are milk (not from Mom anymore), his brother, being held by Mom, exploring on all fours, wiggling, and bread. He is figuring out how to climb down from things like stairs, but he still hasn't mastered that. He loves to empty cabinets and shelves at any chance, and this month he has learned he can also put toys and other small items into buckets or boxes. He no longer takes a morning nap, but he's a fantastic nighttime sleeper. Felix doesn't say any words, except may "dog." I'm not quite sure about it, though. When he hears the bath water running he comes crawling as fast as he can to join in the fun. Ike has really grown to be a much more involved big brother in the last few months, and I love to hear him try to involve Felix in his activities. He is happy to have Felix follow him around laughing at his antics, and I love to hear the two of them together. I love this little guy. 

(But I sure hope he stops spitting up soon. Enough's enough, amiright?)

Toddler Talk

My boy's ability to speak in somewhat coherent sentences really took off in about May. I'm finally getting around to posting some funny things he's said:

After leaving him playing with a cup of water at the bathroom sink:
"Hi Mom! I brush teeth!"
"You brushed your teeth? Oh dear. How much toothpaste did you use?"
"Um... BIG PIECE!!!!!"

After handing me an inflated ball, "Mom, blow it down." (He wanted me to deflate it.)

"Mom, I stand wight here and watch you," (as he pulled a chair up to the island to watch me cook).
"Okay, sweetheart."
"Sweetheart? Heart? Heart? Heart?"

I showed him a pastry knife and asked him if he could remember its name. Then I reminded him it was a pastry knife. "A pastry knife? No, a pastry MEAN!"
(The great thing about this is I'm pretty sure he knows "nice" and "knife" are different words, so he totally created a word-joke out of it.)

"The moon! Hi moon! How are you, moon?"

"Look mom, the sun! Hi sun! Sun so nice, mom!"
I'm not sure why he's so interested in the sun and the moon, but he is.

After Eric did something nice for me, "Thank, you're a gem."
"Jim?"
"No, gem. Like a diamond or a ruby."
"Boobie????"
And then he walked away without an explanation from me. I don't know what he thinks a ruby or a boobie is now. The word "boobie" is not one we use around here.

Another Weekend in Jackson Hole

On Friday I was featured in the Career Day section of Aspiring Mormon Women. Go check that out if you want to read all about my job.

Also on Friday we headed up to Jackson Hole for the weekend.

I ran (and walked, but mostly ran!) a 5k.

Felix competed in the Diaper Derby. He had a strong start, but he ultimately got sidetracked and didn't quite finish the race. He could have won had that bright yellow finish line not been so distracting. 

Later that day we hiked up to Crater Lake and checked out the benches my nephew built for his Eagle Scout project. It was a very steep hike, particularly after the 5k earlier that day. My brother's new puppy hiked pretty much the whole way. My kids mostly rode in the stroller, but Ike got to help walk LaFawnduh a a few times (but not as much as he would have liked.) And yes, the puppy walked him more than he walked her.

Felix - Eleven Months

People that see my little Felix doing things that pretty much all eleven-month-old babies can do are usually blown away because they think, based on his rather small size, that he is only about six months old. He's just a tiny little guy. I'm hoping we'll blow a few more people away in Jackson Hole tomorrow when we enter Felix in the Diaper Derby (which Ike won two years ago, by the way). Felix isn't a walker yet, so he's still eligible for the competition.

A few other things about this guy:

• He puts everything in his mouth.
• When his mouth is empty, he babbles a ton.
• He still spits up. A lot. 
• He is too busy to nurse very well, and he's weaning himself.
• He is obsessed with Ike, and sometimes they play well together.
• He loves trees.
• He signs "all done."
• When he gets excited, his entire body gets involved, and it's delightful to watch.

A Much-Delayed Project

While reading Happier At Home by Gretchen Rubin I decided I wanted to do more to get some pictures on our walls. I am notoriously bad about leaving my walls bare because I can't decide what I want to put on them and would rather have them bare than have something I don't really care for on them. Eric would rather have something on them than have bare walls, so for the most part the things hung in my home were hung by Eric with the wave of my hand and the "Yeah, I guess," as a go-ahead.

I decided right away that I wanted a "travel wall." I went to great effort to go through our numerous digital photos from our many trips over the past eight years. I wanted to choose photos from pretty much every place we've traveled while at the same time only putting up decent photos. (One challenge with this is that Eric is a much better photographer than I am, so there are many more good pictures of me than there are of him.)

I also knew I wanted a family photo wall with pictures spanning a reasonable amount of time - not just our most recent family shoot (which happens to be when I was barely pregnant with Felix).

I wanted both walls to be pretty easy to update, either by adding more photos and frames, or by simply switching out old photos with new ones. And I wanted this to be done very cheaply.

I printed my pictures at the drug store one of the times they sent a coupon code, which they do about once a week. I bought my frames at Dollar Tree, because everything there is a dollar. With as many pictures as I'd printed, even spending $3-$5 per picture would add up way too quickly.

I bought these frames in mid-June. I filled them with pictures right away. And then they hung out on my kitchen counter for a while. And then they moved to my dresser. And finally on Saturday I got Eric to help me hang them. It's a good thing I didn't do it myself, too, because he figured out very quickly that my original plan for hanging the travel wall pictures over the stairs was not a good one. He remedied it, and the overall effect is nice. We can easily add more pictures as we add more traveling adventures (which we fully intend to do since Eric has so much vacation time now). I love to walk past and see pictures of our different trips. (It was hard to get a good angle on this. Sorry for the lousy picture.)

While Eric finished up the hanging of the pictures on the travel wall, I went ahead with the family wall. Unfortunately I didn't plan the pictures perfectly, so I need to do some tweaking with the sizes, but for now it's fine. I'm just glad to have more than one picture on this rather large wall in my entry.