William's first racket ball lesson

We have two tennis courts and three racket ball courts in the back yard. I guess I should mention that our back gate opens into a twenty acre city park. William has watched and retrieved tennis balls when he was with his cousins, dad, and Aunt Debbie. Yesterday Mom was being ambitious and decided it was time to pick up her racket and do some teaching / demonstrating. Mark had both set of keys to the truck so this was the best alternative to sitting at home. It's amazing the creative things that arise when your transportation is limited.

We decided to hold our first lesson in the racket ball courts for a couple reasons. I wanted to contain the balls within a much smaller surface area. The tennis courts were in full sun while the other courts were in the shade. William and I would count how many times in a row i could hit the ball successfully against the wall. My objective was to get to twenty. I wanted to make it easier for him to count :):) I only made it to seventeen. He quickly grew tired of the activity but enjoyed picking up all the balls i hit over the court. He would say "let's go get the balls out of the jungle". After about twenty minutes we were finished with tennis.

William must have been tired because he made himself comfortable in the basket under the stroller. Next week Grandpa Gardner's going to start real tennis lessons. Grandpa Gardner learned when he was at Standford getting his masters degree. Tomorrow Uncle Robert is going to show us some of his expertise.

We went for an aimless walk. He sat on the top of the stroller and EJ was in the car seat attached to the stroller. We trekked up a very step climb to Island View Drive. They call it Island View Drive because you really do have a terrific view of Antelope Island. The whole way up the incline I would say, "I can't make it...I can't" because William did the role reversal... and said, "Yes you can Momma, hold my hand. You can. You can do it."

We tried to give our new neighbors some goodies. They were gone. It was so hot we tried dropping by at our friends but she was vacuuming and the doorbell was too soft for her to hear over the buzz. So when we finally made it home. Uncle Robert (my brother; William's Uncle) was dropping off our table. While we were having lunch Aunt Debbie dropped by.

It was turning out to be a great day for visitors despite our unpleasant disappointment with the missing key issue. Later that afternoon Anne Russon stopped by to drop off a little toilet seat to put over the top of the big seat. William was anxious to try it out and had his diaper off in minutes. He was too quick because I was finishing up the task at hand and before I could get him to the toilet he did have a little leakage... before the experience was over he had another leakage on the floor and none in the toilet. Lots of tears and then I was frustrated for having to clean the floor after he sat and cried on the toilet. When his dad came home last night he did much better. He had a successful experiences going pee pee in the toilet.

I've been enjoying my slow jogging at the park. Every night when the boys are supposedly sleeping and Mark's home I go out back to do my eighteen laps. Yesterday I ran an additional half mile just because I wanted to hit the fat burning forty minute zone. My third and fourth mile were eight minute pace. Usually I'm just lucky to keep one foot in front of the other.

After my run I went to Smiths for milk and eggs. Unfortunately I came back with over $150 dollars worth of merchandise more. I picked out a few things I would love. I started feeling guilty so I made a great decision to wait four weeks and give them to Mark for his birthday. I spent forty dollars on a new umbrella for our picnic table, fifteen on a new ironing board pad, cover, and fasteners, and eleven more for yellow jacket traps. So that's fifty one dollars plus the twenty four I'm calling Mark's present. It's all justifyable.

Smiths has the cutest shirts. I love the empire waists with the tie in back. My wedding dress had an empire waist. I may have to buy them and give them to my mom to give me for Christmas. I hope they stay in style for a while.

Speaking of Christmas...I explained Santa Claus to William yesterday. He's so very excited. He brought up his name at least half a dozen times. When Grandma was on the phone he wanted to talk with her about him. When dad came home he mentioned something about him. I told him that Santa is coming to our house. He'll come threw the chimney. For some reason William was searching for Santa through an electrical outlet (same difference). I had to explain that we needed to have Halloween and thanksgiving before Christmas. When we were deciding on activities later that day he would say "let's go to Halloween."

Our views from our lot in Mt. Green

Mark and I invested in some property up in Mt. Green. Our lot is in phase two of the Cottonwoods development. The pics are both the ranges we capture from our property. The below pic is the back side of the Snow Basin ski resort. Snow Basin hosted the down hill super "G" in the 2000 Winter Olympic Games.

As you can tell it's easy to fall in love with the area. The difficult concept grasp is the distance between there and Mark's office in Salt Lake. It would take him about 50 minutes both ways under ideal traffic conditions.

When we're up there it's easy to get wrapped up in the excitement. I try and suppress those feeling when we drive home to Centerville. Mark's time is in demand these days. I hate to compete with the time an additional commute would take. Who knows what our future will holds. We go more by the seat of our pants philosophy. In the meantime we'll continue our little Sunday drives and keep dreaming.

Lately we've been having fun entertaining. Last week we had the Jensen's over Thursday night. Friday night the Tally's came over. Last night we had three other families. Saturday will be Mark's big extended cousin party. You've probably noticed that we like to take advantage of the pool and our spacious back yard during the summer.>1+027.jpg">

Cute baby alert. I will kick myself if I ever forget how pleasureable it is to have a baby. I love EJ's sounds, smell, anxious kicks/twitches, smile, and giggles.

Hogle Zoo

gratitude list
1-William's feeling better and eating again. He was sick during last weekends family reunion.
2-My Mom accompanied us to Hogle Zoo yesterday.
3-Our friend Dallan Jensen helped Mark install our new water heater. We all got cleaned after four days of going without. We really enjoyed the pool baths during that time.
4-Last night Corbin, Stephanie, and their little girl Ashland Talley came over to swim, visit, watch a video, and eat pie. Stephanie was my roommate and teammate at Weber State. Both her and her husband are so gun hoe about running that I decided to go running last night at 11pm after they left. Despite my lack of sleep I'm going to attempt to exercise. I can run as slow as i did when i was 39 weeks pregnant and still feel like i'm accomplishing my objective (four miles a day).

Sheri Layton dropped of a Marie Callendars Kie Lime Pie yesterday. She wanted to let us know how much the girls appreciated their time in the pool last week. It's almost like she feels it was an inconveniece rather than our pleasure.

5-Mark made me lunch. He used the chicken and satae marinade we had a few nights earlier, added it to garden zuchinni, crook neck squash, tomoatoes, basil, leftover rice a roni, and green onions. It was so delicious especially since he made it.
6-William went pee pee in the big boy toilet.
7-Strawberries are on sale at Smiths. Mark loves my strawberry green salad.
8-I can resist the temptation to subscribe to "cooking with Paula". I received one free trial. It was good but i think i can wait until Mark's new start up company is bringing in revenue.
9-From the front yard we can watch our corn stalks waving in the wind above the fence line.
10-Cleaned / organized my house before our dinner guests arrived thursday night. We moved mark's home office downstairs and William moved back upstairs where the office was prior to the move. In William's short life time he's had seven room moves. Four of seven have been with in the last year in a half. Mark's sister Debbie lived with us for a while, EJ arrived, now Mark is claiming an office. I think william's resilent to the changes.

Lee family reunion

Sleeping in a tent for two nights with two kids has taken its toll on me.

found the gofer hole

The Gofer's got to go. I suprised him this afternoon when i was out cutting some fresh basil. He flipped out and back into his hole quicker than I could react. Finally I have concrete evidence and know where his hole is.

William decided to put on my Valentine heart socks before going to the library. His redeeming grace were the blue spider man crocs he slipped on over his knee highs. We had all intentions of taking them off before dad returned however we were too late. Dad teases relentlessly. William let his Daddy remove them when I got in trouble if i even suggesting the idea.

William got several new books at the library. His favorite two are: "there's a nighmare in my closet" and "the wolf is coming the wolf is coming". We've read both of them over twelve times in the past two days. He has little of no interest in the remaining library books.

Monday night i decided that Mark and EJ have a rythmic "breathing" pattern when they sleep. Mark complains that EJ's too loud when he sleep because he's little nose is a bit stuffed up. I choose to sleep with my head at the bottom of the bed for this reason. Mark refuses to believe that he snores so we call it heavy breathing during his sleep.

Yesterday I spent what seemed like a while vacuming out the pool. Luckily Jesse, my neices and nephes, Colleen, William, and I got to enjoy it before the canyon winds blew all the leaves and debry into the clear blue water. William enjoys telling me to "go under deep". He proceeds to walk on my face before i can come up for air. It's a blast. For him that is. It's amazing what we parents will do to keep the kids entertained. Becca my neighbor held EJ during our little swim.

Been using my garden veggies. Made a small batch of salsa, and a thai red curry chicken dish for the family reunion dinner saturday night. Tonight i plan on making a pepper jelly with the serrano peppers Stephanie Ivie dropped off.

Finished Stephanie Meyer's second book "New Moon". It was better than "Twilight". I suspect the third one "Eclipse" will be the best one yet. They have been hard to put down. My rule of sticking to books less than 300 pages has been altered.

EJ is still receiving gifts. Last week Kim Lilbok gave us a blanket and two burp clothes that her mom crochett. This week Rob dropped off a blanket my dad dropped off from my Aunt Marylou. We're so grateful for everyone that has been sharing the excitement of EJ's arrival.

My FORD 150

Today I took my shower at 5pm and finally got dressed and out of my big baggie basketball shorts. We were slow going today. EJ and I have a cold. My tasting abilities disappeared yesterday while i was trying to enjoy Becca's birthday cake. I've been munching on hamburger buns all day as a result. I figure it's as good as anything under my taste less condition. This afternoon I had to sweep up all the sesame seeds i scattered on the kitchen floor.

We dropped off a loaf of banana bread at our new neighbors house. William loves their fish pond in the back. He spent a good fifteen minutes trying to touch them.

Mark got home before nine. He's outside painting the house. I'm so lucky he's so ambitious and wants to fix up the home and make it look nice.

EJ already thinks his Uncle Robert is a comedian. Robert had EJ giggling and giggling. That was the first time I recall him laughing for that length of time. Our cheeks were all aching after a while because we were all having so much fun smiling.

I cleaned the Betta's bowl without having any dramatic event. This was the first time since Goldie's arrival that we accomplished this task free of danger. Maybe I can hope for less anxiety in the future bowl cleaning experiences.

As a mom, my shirts get really dirty. William uses my shirt like it is his napkin. Today I had on four different shirts however they were dirty from my lack of coordination. We use our bathroom sink to soak our stains. It was filled with my clothes and EJ's. I'm going to attempt to finish my sloppy Joe with a clean shirt. I'm tempted to do what i do for William. I remove his shirt when he eats Popsicles and other messy foods.

For those of you that are curious about the comment option on my blog you're in good company. I must have done something and I'm still trying to figure it out. If you know what I did to take the comment option off please educate me.

Now that Mark will be commuting to Salt Lake we decided to trade vehicles. The kids and i will be sporting around in Mark's Ford 150 pickup. It's big and slow. I think it may cure my speeding tendency.