Sorry no pictures of the garden tonight. It rained off and on pretty much all day. I did pick an impressive 13 cucumbers out of the garden. I am starting to thing that I should open a booth at the Farmer's Market or something! I have so many it is crazy. The tomatoes are doing well too, although I see tonight something is wrong. The leaves are all turning yellow and spotted. If it ever gets dry I need to dust them. I also have about 4 melons that are close to being ripe. I look forward to those!

I had no energy today. Drew was up most of the night. Not sure why, he just couldn't sleep well unless he was snuggling. So I had a nice long nap after Will got home from work. Will crashed early tonight too due to a headache.

Nothing really new to report. Just the usual craziness that we deal with every day around the house. Hopefully tomorrow the weather will be a little nicer and we can get back outside.

1.75 inches of rain and some sort of weird bug...

I found this in the rain gauge the other day when I went to dump it. Very strange looking bug. I didn't care enough to look closer it was pretty creepy looking. Brodie of course wanted to pet it. With all the rain and sunshine my garden is rockin'. I will post some new pics hopefully tomorrow.


Drew has reached a new milestone. Climbing out of his crib. He climbed out of the pack in play up at Will's moms house over the weekend. I was hoping it was a one time occasion. Apparently not. Usually we wake up to Brodie knocking on his door in the morning. He usually doesn't open it he just knocks until someone comes and opens it to let him out. This morning we awoke to the same knocking only when we opened the door it wasn't Brodie standing there but Drew. Then tonight when we got them all tucked in for the night Drew again decided to climb out of his crib to play with Brodie some more. He is so ornery I never had this problem with the 3 older boys. But how could you get mad at this face?


I finally got around to making my cherry jam. It is a family recipe on Will's side and it turned out pretty tasty. I am not a huge fan of the chunks of cherries. I thought they would cook down a little bit more than they did. I am sure I have room for improvement. The older boys aren't huge fans but the little boys seemed to like it.

We had a good weekend. Saturday we took the kids to Colo and Will and I went out for his birthday. We had originally planned to go downtown to the American BBQ but after seeing the prices of what food would cost we decided against it. We then decided to go out to dinner. We got all dressed up and went to the Waterfront Seafood restaurant that just opened in Ankeny. The short story of that experience was it was AWFUL. The service was lousy and after waiting for 1 hour and 40 minutes they brought Will the wrong dinner. We were pretty worked up when we left there. Unfortunately I don't think we will be going back. We did get some shopping done for our trip and went home and watched a movie. It was nice just to be alone and spend some time together with out distractions aka 4 boys.

Sunday morning we thought we would go out to breakfast together before heading to Colo to get the kids only to find that the power was out in Ankeny. We drove to Ames and couldn't find anything there either so we stopped at Cub foods and got donuts and just drove around Ames. It was just a series of mishaps for us. Oh well, we still had a good time. We ended our weekend at a birthday party for Will at my moms house.

Sunday night we got some huge storms. We woke up at 3am to our shutters rattling against the house and the tornado sirens going off. We lost our electricity about 10 minutes later and we sat in the dark till about 11:30am. Will decided to go to work about 4am since he had no way of making sure he would wake up in time to be there. Jake and I spent the morning outside cleaning up branches while Tony and the younger two boys found all sorts of tiny frogs. Most of branches were small, thankfully no large trees. My brother wasn't so lucky. He had a huge tree blocking his driveway. He had alot more work to do then we did. Will's smoker did get blown over but I think it will recover!

Our garden got almost 2 inches of rain last night. Should be a great picking day tomorrow! I got a nice little surprise when I looked out there yesterday. 3 pumpkins!! Hopefully they make it to full grown. It would be awesome to carve pumpkins that I grew!

Yesterday we got lots accomplished. We gave both the little boys haircuts, Will got his hair cut and we got our van taken in to have some work done on it before we leave for vacation next weekend. Today we spent most of the morning playing with Playdough and building a fort in the living room. Then of course I hit up some garage sales. We ate lunch and then I took a nap with Brodie this afternoon! We had a great evening out with some of Will's work friends. We went bowling. Will beat me by a lousy 1 point in the first game and 5 in the second. I am sure he will be rubbing that in for awhile.

This weekend is going to be busy. We are going to hit up the Farmer's Market in the morning and then I am taking Will out tomorrow night to celebrate his birthday. We actually have an all night sitter I am super excited!! Hope everyone enjoys their weekend.

Yesterday was family night at our house and it was Tony's turn to pick. He decided we should go fishing to try out his new plastic worms he bought to take on our vacation here in a week. So we headed up to the pond in Ankeny. The boys fished for about 20 minutes and then spent the rest of the time looking for frogs and throwing rocks into the water. The only thing they caught was some weed bass which Tony proudly shows off in the picture. It was a beautiful evening and one of the better family nights we have had in a while. I brought my bike and the kids trailer that goes on the back and Will and I each took a lap around the lake with the little boys. I don't know how far it is but it seems far with them in tow.

After the fishing trip we headed to Target so that Jake, Tony and Will could dream about all the video games and electronics they want to acquire some day. We headed home and ended our night eating dirt pudding. I made chocolate pudding and then draped gummy worms on top and covered it with crushed oreos. The boys really enjoyed that dessert as you can see from the pictures. The best part was Brodie trying to wipe the "dirt" off of his gummy worm so that he could eat it.

I am very proud of our garden this year! I have actually had time to keep up with the weeding and pruning. I put down grass as mulch and it has made a tremendous difference. It looks like a forest back there. Everything is maturing perfectly a little too much maybe. My pumpkin plant is taking over the entire garden as well as all my other vining plants. My cucumbers and melons are vining all over the place, into the yard and wrapping around the other plants. I am hoping they don't kill those other plants off. I wouldn't think so but I haven't had this problem before. The only thing that isn't doing so well is the jalapeno peppers and some of the green bell peppers. I have included some pictures for you to enjoy :) The first two are of my cantalope plants. There is 3 plants there. They are inching farther into the yard everyday making it hard to mow around them. They are vining over to where the peppers and tomatoes are and vining around them too. The third picture is of my tomato plants that are almost as tall as me. There is peppers in front of them, they are hard to see. The next picture is of my pumpkin. It is way huge right now and you don't get that from this picture. And the last of course is cucumbers. I am going to have a TON of them this year.

Yesterday was busy running kids to and from all day. Jake and Tony both are signed up for a basketball camp this week. Tony's is in the morning and Jakes in the afternoon. After dropping Tony off the little boys and I went to my brothers for the morning. The boys had fun playing with their cousins outside and then Uncle Mark grilled hotdogs and made mac and cheese for lunch. There was lots of picture moments but of course I didn't bring my camera over there. I guess I could have walked home to get it but that seemed like alot of work.

Both boys had a good nap in the afternoon so I got some housework accomplished. Then we had the older boys band lessons in Polk City. After that we went to the Ankeny Library which has become a routine for us on Monday nights. We then decided to go out to dinner at the Chinese Buffet with my step brother.

We had promised Brodie that we would go look for ducks because we have been "looking" for them for a couple weeks now. I have some bread that I have been saving to feed them and our adventure out a couple weeks ago to feed them was unsuccessful because we couldn't find them. Thankfully we found some at a pond in Ankeny and we had a great time feeding the ducks and geese. The geese got a little too close for comfort at times but it was cool feeding them. Brodie really wasn't scared and in fact wanted to pet them but I put the kibosh on that one. Tony got pecked on his finger by a daring goose wanting the bread out of his hand. Tony wasn't too happy about that. There was alot of geese and we even saw 2 white swans swimming on the lake. The only drawback was all the goose poop all over the walkway. So, we pretty much tiptoed around the pond. I could have lived with out that part of the evening. You can imagine a 2 and a half year olds view of that not to mention a 10 and 12 year old.

We had a very busy weekend. Friday started off with some garage sales then we went swimming at my sisters husbands parents house. From there we ran a few errands came home and got ready to go to Colo to Will's parents house. It was Colo Days there this weekend. Last year they had this event were people would herd these pigs around a pen of wet mud and the goal was to get them to the other side and over the rail. Well Jake and his buddy signed up for that this year. It was quit the show and I was impressed with how Jake just took off and wrestled the pig. He was completely covered in mud, every boy's dream. They had some kid rides there and Tony climbed an inflatable rock wall. Then they had fireworks which worked out great because they were right next door to Mom and Joels house so I watched them through the window with Brodie who is a little scared of the loud booms. Of course we had to play a quick game of cards before we headed home.

Saturday we got up early to go to the Ankeny Summerfest parade. We took the 3 younger kids while Jake and his friend recuperated. We ended up staying for the entire parade which lasted about 2 hours. The kids had a lot of fun and got quit a bit of candy. I went to a baby shower that afternoon for my friend Stefany and then played outside with the kids when I got home from that. Saturday night we had Will's parents and my step brother over to our house for more cards.

Sunday was spent relaxing sort of. I didn't really go anywhere. I got housework done in the morning while Will got some work done in the basement in the afternoon. I took a nice nap in the afternoon while Will and the 2 older boy's went into Summerfest to watch a skateboard show. We played outside and then vegged in front of the TV which was nice for a change. Hope you all enjoyed your weekend. Have a great week.

Wednesday was spent running errands and then playing outside. We went to the park and went for a little hike. Jake and Tony had fun playing with their Nerf guns while I played at the playgound with the little boys. We ate lunch at home because it looked like it might rain. Then it cleared off in the afternoon so the 3 younger kids got to play in the baby pool. I weeded the garden a little and even picked 2 cucumbers! It was Jake's family night so he wanted to eat Chinese and watch a movie. He and I went and got dinner from Hy-Vee and then rented a movie from their "Redbox". We usually don't spend the money on movie rentals anymore, we just get them from the library as they are released but this was a nice alternative. $1.00 a day rental. I can handle that. And it worked really slick, nice and easy.

Thursday was a long day. We went to the Y in the morning and then to Wal-Mart. We saw a garage sale sign and of course had to stop at that. Then we came home loaded up the bikes and headed to the DMACC pond for a picnic. It was fun but extremely hot. We had a nice grilled steak dinner and then I headed out to do a little grocery shopping on my own. Sometimes I don't know if it is more stressful going grocery shopping with all 4 boys or going later at night with all the weirdos and crabby folk.

Saturday we spent the night at my in-laws house. That evening we went to the lake and went fishing. Grandpa and Jake caught some fish and then finally Brodie caught his very first fish! Of course Aunt Jenny helped out quite a bit. Brodie was pretty excited about it. Even Drew fished a little. He only threw his pole in 1 time! Thankfully Will was prepared for that and had a hold of the string.

Brodie wasn't nearly as excited about catching fish as he was about the worms. We had 2 containers of worms and he had more fun playing with them than anything else. He was completely content with sitting at the picnic table pulling all the worms out and laying them in rows. He had a really difficult time when it was time for someone to bait their hook. When they pulled the worm apart he would go awww and get this really sad look on his face.

We went back on Sunday and he did the same thing. He just sat on the concrete laying his worms in rows. Both him and Drew were on the ground enjoying their worm games when along came a giant water snake slithering up beside them. Will grabbed both boys by the lifejackets and pulled them to safety. It was a good thing too because I was up on the picnic table. I absolutely HATE snakes. Thank you to Jenny who took a snapshot of the situation. She missed the picture of the snake because she was trying to get a shot of me on the table. Apparently I was more entertaining.

We had a wonderful weekend. Friday we spent all day outside. I worked in the garden transplanting some peppers that were getting overrun with tomato branches. Our garden is doing great and we have lots of produce growing. I have quite a few cucumbers and melons as well as brussel sprouts and tomatoes.

Will got the area around the big pine tree in the back cleaned up. We lost that pine this Spring and Will got it cut down and we burned it this weekend. We will be burning it for awhile I think. While cleaning up the mess around the tree we came upon a bunny den. We didn't know what to do with it at first. Will thought we should just postpone the burning. I wasn't a big fan of that idea. Once we get something started it is hard for me to quit. So, I was left with the dilemma of what to do with the bunnies. We had already disrupted their home. So, I of course, googled what to do with a bunny den. I learned that if we move the den within 10 feet of the original den then the mother should be able to find them. So, that is what we did. We built a new den under the bush in the back yard and reconstructed the original den using the pine needles and the bunny fur that was covering the babies. There werre 4 bunnies. 3 had their eyes open. They seemed to take to the new nest and I covered them up with needles and sticks. I haven't checked to see if they are still there. I didn't want to scare them any more. I am sure it will come back to bite me because they will get bigger and feast in my garden. But, I couldn't just leave them there to be cooked by our fire and I didn't feel right just throwing them in the gully to be eaten by the wild animals. I figured at least I tried. I felt good about moving them.

Friday night we hung out with some friends and had a good time playing Rock Band, grilling and lighting off Morning Glories and sparklers. The weather was beautiful. Saturday we went to the Farmer's Market, got some house work done, and then went up to Will's parents to spend the night. We went to the lake up by their place and fished Saturday night and then went back to the house and watched the fireworks from their garage. Sunday morning Will, Joel, and Jake went fishing in the boat. They caught some fish this time. We ate a picnic lunch with them at the lake and then went back to the house and played a game of cards before we came home. We briefly stopped at home and then headed to my Dad's house where we celebrated my grandma's birthday. They kid's had a blast there playing with their cousins shooting squirt guns and water balloons. Now, I am exhausted and I am off to bed. Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend.

We have a busy weekend planned. Hoping to get some things accomplished outside and spend time with family and friends. Have a safe and happy holiday!

Yesterday I made some chalk/paint and Tony and Brodie had a good time painting the driveway (thanks Maria for the idea). I guess I did a little too. Drew had more paint on him rather than on the stair. Sunday afternoon Brodie and Drew played in the sidewalk paint and painted the stairs. Our concrete is all very pretty right now. I will be bummed when and if it rains tomorrow and washes it all away. I suppose we need the rain though.

Today the morning was spent running errands. The younger 3 kids and I went to the Y and then ran all over Ankeny. 4 stores in just under 2 hours. Not too shabby when you figure I buckled and unbuckled carseats 10 times and then times 2 since I have both little guys in seats. Thankfully one stop was short enough that Tony stayed in the van with them. I probably didn't even need to work out at the Y!

We came home and ate a quick lunch and then headed off to the pool. We stopped up at Grandma Anita's and traded Drew for my nephew who is 11. All the kids had fun. Brodie was very excited about being there and played for 2 hours in the water with 2 hotwheels cars. He was funny. He even made a friend there who played with him.

I myself had a relatively quiet weekend. My older 3 boys were gone for most of it. Will and the two older kids and one of Jakes friends went to Missouri on Saturday with Will's parents and sister. His cousin owns some land there and they had their annual turkey and venison feast. They enjoyed a day full of shooting guns, 4-wheeling and fishing. The little boys and I didn't go. It would have been total chaos trying to contain those little boys and keep them out of everyones way.

Sunday I got up early and did a little grocery shopping and mowed the yard. Then Will, Jake, Tony and Grandpa Joel went fishing at Big Creek. It was Will's first time getting the boat out this year which is sad. He has been trying but with our schedule and all the flooding it has been impossible. They were out all afternoon and didn't catch a thing. They are going to try again this weekend at the lake by Wills parents. Hopefully they will come back with something.