Baseball

Well we took the girls to their first baseball game last night. It was also the first time either Stu or I had seen the Bees play, as well as our first baseball game in like, well lets just say a very long time. It was a blast. Though I think we learned a few things about taking the girlies. Next time we won't show up to the game so freaking early. Even if they did continuously have fun. It was very, very hot.

So not only was it their first baseball game, it was there very first train ride. And they really loved that. Chuggington is a favorite show of the girls.

Anyway I think the rest is best said in pictures so enjoy!

This would be both going to and coming from the game. They absolutely loved the trains!

The game!

Fireworks after the game. They were pretty impressive!

(I finally figured out how to do collages to make the picture heavy posts not so crazy. Now I just need to figure out a few more things to make it just that much better...)

Food Art

So I have been trying to figure out ways to get Audrey to like trying new foods. At times it seems like she has a huge fear of "new" foods. Sometimes it is just that we haven't had a certain food item in a long time and she had forgotten that she used to eat this. Other times it is a food that she eats regularly but it looks different, such as pizza from Little Ceasar's vs. pizza from Dominoes vs. pizza from the freezer etc. And when she doesn't want to eat a specific food it won't happen. And when she gets into the I'm dead set against it and you try to make her eat it, she WILL throw up. No if's, and's or but's about it. Nothing will stop her from throwing it up.

Lately I have been trying to get around that problem. I will warn her before I start making dinner that I will be making something new. (Mostly this something new is just a different sort of pasta, she seems to think if it isn't Spaghetti noodles or Macaroni and Cheese that it will not work.) She hates new shapes of food. I have tried explaining that noodles are noodles no matter what shape they have, they will taste the same. I have even gotten her to taste different noodles without sauce. She says yum, and then will have no more of it. I have had her help me cook it. And help me put it together so she can see all that goes into it. But no matter what she will not generally try it.

I still offer the "new" foods to her. Just recently I started the, "You must try at least one bite, before I make you other food. But if you don't eat all of this "new" food, you don't get the treat of your choice for dessert." And this worked the other night. I don't know if it will continue to work. Though it did work on getting her to eat some Shells and Cheese that we made the other night. She even asked for it for dinner the following night. Score!

What I would like to talk about next is that I tried letting them paint food yesterday afternoon for lunch. I found 14 different flavors of food that were "paintable". I filled a muffin tin and 2 bowls with the flavors. Some of the flavors were of things they had tried before and some were not. We had peanut butter, applesauce, ketchup, chocolate malt sauce, caramel sauce, whipped cream, powdered sugar, shredded cheese, ranch dressing, grape jam, homemade (hm) strawberry jam, hm raspberry jam, hm peach goo, and reduced sugar strawberry jam. The paint brushes were carrot sticks and the canvas was a flour tortilla shell.

 The girls thought this was pretty cool. And I had Audrey promise me before she could start that she would eat whatever she made. I decided that I should join in to get them started and show them what they could do. And the party started.


They were trying new flavors, and eating carrots. They were having fun. Ellie ate a few nibbles of her tortilla. Audrey and Ellie tried the applesauce and ate some of it.

 I unfortunately ate a few carrots and had to take a benedryl, so after my 2 tortillas were done I left them to their own devices. And this is where things went wrong. Neither of the girls ate any of their artwork. So I had to put Ellie down for her nap. But before I put her down they figured out a way to get peanut butter on the walls, and applesauce on the door behind them. Oh well it was mostly a success as they did eat something and tried other things. Yay!

Sippy Cups

So I generally let the girls take drinks down stairs with them to watch tv. And generally I will let them take a snack down to munch on as well. But I will ask them to bring their plates/sippys/other eating paraphernalia. I will generally ask them to do this when I am doing the dishes. And usually they will. But on occasion I will ask them and Thing 1 will say that she doesn't see any or she is too tired or some other excuse. Now, I will generally remember having seen at least one or 2 sippys downstairs. And they are generally in plain sight. So I will go over and let her know that I know that she can see the sippys. And after I coerce her to bring them up, which will usually involve a threat to turn off the tv or just turning off the tv, she will bring up some of the sippys.

Where this takes me is to tonight. When I left to go to a Relief Society get together, the living room was in a slight bit of disarray. And I knew that I should go through it and clean it up but I figured it could go another day, probably. As of late I have been able to get Audrey and Ellie to do some cleaning up.

In fact I was able to get Ellie to do some clean up earlier today. But Audrey would start cleaning and then stop, and with her big sister for an example, Ellie decided to do the same thing. So I turned off the tv. But that didn't encourage Audrey at all this afternoon. In fact she went right on playing what ever game she had come up with, with Ellie. But they did end up cleaning up a little bit, they put away all the crayons and stacked up the dishes that they had seen.

I came home from the aforementioned meeting and found that both girls were still awake and the room was scary messy. Well I put the girls to bed and then forgot about the front room until it was time to feed the cats and put the dog to bed. And I had to walk through that scary-ness. So I figured why not clean it up now and make the next day not so hard on myself.

Well long story short. I ended up bringing a laundry basket full of stuff from the living room (that is supposed to stay in the girls room), the tote of crayons (regathered), 2 bowls, 3 plates, and 8 sippy cups. Yeah you read that right 8 SIPPY CUPS!

I had been wondering where all the sippys were disappearing to. And for this round they went to the living room. Oye. At least all were found and not any of the sippys that go to the living room are milk filled. Go me, I guess. :)

Well that is my ranting for the evening. One silly thing that I have noticed recently with Audrey, is that she is starting to want to clean things herself. So I will find her wiping off items that have been colored on, or are just dirty. So one of the items I found downstairs was a wash cloth, Ellie has found a love of cleaning as well, but she is like her mother and likes wipes. So she will take the baby wipes downstairs and clean things off with those. So there were like 10 wadded up wipes on the floor that needed to be thrown out as well. It is kind of funny the things that make you smile, or proud of. Even if you have to clean up the mess. :)

An odd thing happened yesterday

So I had an experience yesterday. Figured I should write it down if only to make sure I know what happened and keep my story straight.

My mom came over and so we had the kids upstairs watching tv. Ellie was napping and everything was fairly cool. I had opened the garage door so I could do some cleaning and have fairly easy access to the garbage cans. Our laundry/storage/cat room(kitty litter and food) flooded on Monday so I had put down rice and baking soda to help clean up the mess. Of course it left a mess too so I needed to get that cleaned up. So we had been down there for about an hour. Audrey started to come down and pester us so Mom was trying to get her out of my hair and suggested that they go outside for a treat or something like that. Next thing I know my mom is calling for me and things sound serious. I don't hear any crying so it isn't that someone is hurt. But my mom is calling for me and something in her voice told me she needed me now. So I went upstairs.

And standing in front of my kids and her at my front door is a guy. Something feels off, but I hear him out.

He was on a trip to go to a family reunion in Vegas. And on their way back to Idaho their car was impounded. They have been staying in the homeless shelter, and he has been trying to earn enough money for bus fair back to Idaho. He only needs 25 more dollars to get the tickets tonight. He was wondering if I had any work he could do around my house, like mowing my lawn, pulling weeds or anything like that.

Now keep in mind that my garage door had been open for a good hour previous to this. And at the moment it is half full with the stuff from our basement until we have it painted. And there were definitely things that could have been stolen had my mom not seen him out there before he had a chance.

But since he was willing to work for some money I said I would pay him to mow my front lawn. It was about 2 or so in the afternoon. So pretty hot out and I had been planning on getting the lawn mowed. I also had the feeling that I should give him the whole 25 dollars to do it. Then he wouldn't need to ask for any more and he could just go home.

Also, he couldn't start my lawn mower. I had to show him how to start it. Which was a little weird as well.

I realized that I don't have 25 dollars on me in cash and ask him if he can cash a check. Figuring that he wouldn't be able to. Come to find out that when his car was taken all of his luggage and all of their i.d.'s were locked in the car. And they can't get into the car with out i.d.'s. The impound lot will however let them in to the car if the Idaho driver's division will vouch for them. So his father in law is working with them to try to get them to let him into the car. But they still need to get to Idaho to get this all the way done. Okay. So I talk to my mom and she is okay with me going and getting the cash from the bank.

So I drive away. I am a little nervous. Some stranger is mowing my lawn and I just left my mom there with all the kids. So I pray that everything will be alright. And I pray and I pray the whole time I am driving and such. But I just keep getting a good feeling that everything will be alright. That I am doing the right thing and everything will be okay. That is the answer I get.

When I get home he is done and standing on the side of the driveway with a glass of water and the garage door is closed. Weird I had thought about closing the door when I left but I didn't. So I give him the money and we talk for a bit. He asks me what the fastest way to the college is. I ask him if he is talking about SLCC as that is the nearest college to our house. And he says uh, yeah. So I tell him that it is about 2 or 3 stop lights down the road from us on Redwood Rd. And he can get there pretty easily from the bus stop. And I try to direct him to the nearest bus stop. And I gave him 3 extra dollars for bus fair. Because there was no way on earth I was going to give him a ride.

Every time I tried to direct him east to the bus stops there he would insist on going west to redwood rd. And almost at the end of the conversation he mentioned that he had first gotten here by Trax. And he hinted that he had gotten to the college from trax as well. Well the only trax station near my house is on the other side of the freeway from my house to the east and past my husbands work. Weird. My mom came out in the meantime and she was also trying to direct him to the nearest bus stop but he continued to insist on going west. So we directed him towards redwood rd and watched him cross the street to leave the neighborhood. And this was a bit after 3 when this happened, I think.

Now I have to say that while I was standing outside talking to this man. I saw my neighbor across the street. And I knew that he was watching this guy. Our neighbor is a very good man. He watches out for us and generally helps us out when needed and so on. I also watched him leave. He drove away. Before the guy had left.

My mom and I stayed outside the house and worked a little out there and talked about what just happened. I cleaned my kitty litter outside. (Which I normally do because I can't have the dust of the kitty litter being kicked up inside the house because of the germs that could get Stu sick.) My mom pulled some weeds. I cleaned out some stuff from the garage that needed to be thrown away. We were out there for a good 30 mins. And we watched to make sure that guy didn't come back. Then we went inside and finished up downstairs. Went through some food downstairs to see what needed to be used up. And then I ate and cleaned up my kitchen and started to make some rice crispy treats.

Stu came home at 4:20 and I was surprised. I told him about the guy. And then finished up the treats. The kids ate them and then at about 4:30 the neighbor from across the street rings the doorbell. The first time I had checked the clock it was about 3:50. Time was passing in an odd way yesterday. I couldn't really figure out how I made it to dance only 3 mins late. Because I didn't get Audrey dressed until after we had talked to the neighbor. And my mom was still there, after that she left. But some how I was driving away from the house at 4:45. With both kids in the car and everything that we needed for dance class at 5.

He wanted to know if we had seen anyone suspicious around or if we had noticed anything suspicious. Because between 3 and 3:45 a car was stolen from their driveway. Not his car. But a Red Honda Accord. That his sis in law was driving around. (She had moved in over the weekend.) And this wasn't even her car to begin with. She had been in an accident and this was a friend's car. But there was no broken glass on the ground and she still had her keys. And he felt that the guy was scoping out his house when he was mowing my lawn. So he got a description of the guy and wanted to know what he said. So I told him basically what I just wrote down here.

The guy was about 6', brown hair, scruffy beard (looked like he hadn't shaved in like a week maybe 2), he was wearing a bright blue shirt with print on it, un-tucked, jeans that looked new-ish. He was overweight, (he had a potbelly), and out of shape, (like I think mowing just my front lawn about killed him). He was probably in his 30's. I wanna say he was older than me. I don't remember the color of his eyes but he seemed to have honest eyes.

But my neighbor could only think that he was a "shady character" and had the feeling that he was looking for easy targets in the neighborhood. Now if he was really just looking for "easy targets", my mom had left her windows rolled down in her car, her keys in the car, and her wallet. Out in front of my house. if you are looking for easy targets that is one of the easiest. And he had spent a good deal of time in front of my house that if he was looking for that he would have seen it. Also if he had just wanted to steal my garage was open for an hour before we had seen him. And nothing was missing.

Another odd thing, my neighbor, who isn't afraid to call the authorities, didn't call the police. I never once saw a police car over there. No one but the neighbor asked me about the guy. Which is part of the reason I am writing this down. So I can remember.

A few other odd things happened last night. However, I still feel that I did the right thing, in all that I did. Somehow we were kept safe, by my actions and the actions of my mom.

Just to let you know, if I had been alone at home I would have said no to the guy. But I wasn't the only adult here.