Friends!

Last week our fab friends the Leders moved from Oregon to Wisconsin and since we were on their route they stopped for a couple of nights! I know what you're thinking. Watford City, ND is on the way to some place? Well, apparently it is and that place in this case isn't Canada! Last time we saw our friends was graduation day in April 2010 and since then we have both added new additions to our families. It was fun to finally meet Mr. Ezra and to see our friends again! Just move to ND, okay?

Ezra and Loreli

Cute babies.

Loreli loved having Ezra around! It's probably because she loves babies and what's not to love about adorable Ezra? Since he can walk and she can only crawl she spent a lot of the day trying to get to his level. Poor boy had to endure being climbed on quite a bit.

While they were here we visited, played a few games, ate lots of food and went on a walk to the park.

Shea and Carl.

Poor guy zonked out on the way to the park. I just love those cheeks!!

 

At the park Tracey got some really sweet shots of Loreli swinging! Thanks Tracey!

 

 

I know I promised not to post a picture of you Tracey, but this is the only proof there is that you and I were actually there.

Katy, Loreli and Tracey.

We're so glad that our friends came to visit! It was so nice to see them and to remember that we do have friends...just not in ND yet. 

We hope all goes well in Wisconsin!

Oh boy.

You know I tried really hard to come up with some hilarious captions for these pictures, but I was just at a loss.  This is just a combination of bad parenting and babies being babies.

 Yep, that's dirt. Lots of dirt.

She's not dead, so whatever.

Broken Baby

It's a good thing Katy checks on Loreli every 15 minutes or so for the first little while after she goes to bed because things like this happen.

 She is asleep, bent in half.  Her head is resting on her feet.  Good things babies are made out of rubber, and their bottoms are made out of springs. 

 

Silly baby. 

Tomatoes anyone?

We had rather good luck with the salsa we made from our garden tomatoes but really didn't need or want to make more.  But the tomatoes keep on comin'.  So we thought that with this next load we would just make diced tomatoes.  We use them for chili, and taco soup, and chili.  With the salsa you use just as many peppers and onions as you do tomatoes so your amount doubles.  This time we were just using tomatoes so I though that we had a bit over twice as many tomatoes as we did the last time we made salsa and that yielded about 9 pints so I thought that we would get 10, maybe 12 pints at the very most.

24 pints later! So I guess we'll be having chili every week this winter. Yum.

And nothing was ever safe again,

I think that we were just so excited that our sweet little baby was growing up and doing new things that we really didn't consider all the ramifications of standing and walking.

 Katy thinks we should just get rid of all of our end tables because we can't keep anything on them so what's the point?

Oh well.  Maybe we'll hobble the next one. 

Splish Splash

Here's a short video we took the other day of Loreli playing in her little pool. 

The summer here in ND is almost over and it's sad. Bye-bye summer and hello fall!

9 Months!

 Loreli is 9 months old and we can hardly believe how fast the time has passed!
Here are some new things and not so new things that our little lady loves and dislikes now-a-days.

Loves

Kids
Drinking water from a big glass

Cell phones
Bath time

Crawling
Swings

Being outdoors
Going on walks 

  Climbing on EVERYTHING!

 

Books

Destroying her room

 Foods she can feed herself

Dislikes

clothes: the other morning while attempting to feed Loreli her breakfast she protested to wearing clothes and won. She ripped her bib off repeatedly and tugged at her pajamas while screaming very, very loudly. So now she eats breakfast and dinner naked. Hopefully we'll stop this before she gets too old. Yikes.

 bibs

green beans

being spoon fed
the vacuum

Back to the first love I mentioned. Loreli love, love, loves kids! Shea took Loreli on a walk last week while I got some things done at home and on their walk they passed a daycare. The kids were outside playing and when Loreli saw them she got so excited! Shea pushed the stroller closer to the area the kids were playing and she attempted an escape. A few girls talked to her and she got even more excited. Mean ole Shea had to pry her away from the kids making Loreli melancholy.

 Then just yesterday we attended Watford City's Annual Ribfest and Loreli participated in a diaper derby for crawlers. They placed big mats out and put the kids down and raced them. It was pretty funny! Loreli was matched up with a boy about her age and since she's only 9 months old and doesn't understand the concept of competition she just sat there and stared at the kids that lined the mat cheering for her while the little boy smoked her. Oh well, at least she got a free onesie! [pictured above]

Here Kitty Kitty...

It seems we have a sociopath in the making.  Loreli sure isn't afraid of animals but they should be afraid of her. 

So excited!

From home grown to homemade

We have slowly been building up our supply of home grown tomatoes to have enough for homemade salsa.  But we eat one here, and one there so it took a while but we finally had a bunch so we thought we'd give it a try. 

We started with about 4 quarts of tomatoes, all from the garden.  As you can see some are big and some are small but we took 'em all. 

The onions we used also came out of the garden but they were more like weeds.  They just came up all by them selves.  I guess I should say I hope that these things we used were onions...but if it smells like an onion, tastes like, and onion and makes Katy cry it's probably an onion (or a jerk of a husband who hasn't showered in a few days). 

we did have to purchase peppers, garlic, and cilantro but the rest was all us, except the canning salt, lime juice, and tomato paste.  Cut and mix and viola...

 

 6 1/2 pints of homemade goodness.  To can food the acidity has to be at a certain level.  This recipe called for lime juice instead of vinegar to accomplish this which I thought sounded quite good, and I was indeed correct.  Very good. I would even call it delicious.  However a word of warning: you put the lime juice in the jar and not mixed into the salsa so the jar that was only filled half way with salsa was a bit strong on the lime side. I can attest to the acidity of this stuff because I have a huge canker sore on my top gums from a toothbrush gone afoul and boy did that ever sting.  But I guess I won't be getting scurvy anytime soon.  AARRRRR!

Book Report

Remember back in elementary school when a book report meant just telling the class the plot and then if you liked it or not?  Then high school came along and we had to discuss meanings and themes and write essays with thesis statements, ridiculous.  Well I have decided to go a little infantile.  I just finished Stephenie Meyer's book "The Host" and being bored at work, I figured I'd let you all know what I thought.  

First off I want to clarify for all of you that think I'm semi illiterate that I am not writing because this is the first book I have read in years and am excited for just finishing a book.  I have actually read a few books this summer.  Anyway, the last two books I have started to read I didn't get far because of language.  I'm surprised at how many books have foul language.  It's very unfortunate.  So I figured that since Mrs. Meyer is LDS that wouldn't be an issue, and it wasn't.  It was actually funny to read the expletives that the characters use because they are defiantly Mormon expletives. 

I like books that are entertaining and that make you think a bit afterwards.  This fit the bill.  I wouldn't call this a difficult read at all.  I would put it on par with the "Hunger Games" as far as reading level.  The book dances around the issue of what it means to be human and made some good points about said issue.  It also made me think of what I could contribute or how prepared I would be for a end of the world scenario. 

If you are looking for an easy, entertaining read I would recommend this book highly (and I am aware that she also wrote the Twilight series.  I have not read nor will I read that and just because I read this it does not make me any less of a man).