Author: soggycheerios

Home Means Nevada

By Emma O’Barr

I look out my window and notice the stars twinkling bright,
So I walk outside to greet the desert night.
A cool breeze caresses my face,
I hear the crickets sing at a lively pace.
A tumbleweed rolls across the street,
At the same time, I hear two coyotes greet.
I can never leave this place, I say.
Little did I know, I didn’t have long to stay.
Good-bye, my mountain home,
For far away I now must roam.
Leaving one’s home, is so hard to do,
But my family’s love will help me make it through.

While showering this morning I discovered something horrible.  There was a nasty tick the size of a lady bug on my leg.  It slept with me last night, that thought totally creeps me out.  It took lots of will power to finish my shower and figure things out, but after reading about how to remove them, Danny helped me remove my little parasite.  I guess ticks are fairly common here.  I never saw one in Nevada, negative points for Ohio.  I told Danny that we weren’t going camping or hiking any more.  I’m sure I’ll calm down, but my initial knee jerk reaction is to move to a high rise in downtown Columbus.  I took the girls hiking around a local lake yesterday and I’m sure that is where I picked up my little buddy.  I followed all the rules, I was wearing long pants and long sleeve shirt.

This morning I discovered this little fella hiding in Hallie’s ear.

We were down at a State Park when I found it and there just happened to be the cutest little cub scout walking by.  So I asked him if he had a first aid kit (picture Danny with his large pliers from his Leatherman digging in Hallie’s ear).  This little guy was prepared, and pulled out tweezers and we were able to remove him (the tick not the cub scout).  Then he pulled out a Q-tip with some ointment and we applied it and thanked him.  I will be making Tanner a first aid kit in a fanny pack (lesson learned).

Eva is visiting this weekend.  The kids have been anxiously awaiting their cousins’ arrival.  They were up until almost midnight last night waiting for them.  Today we took off to Slate Run State Park, where they have a working farm from the 1880’s.  Today they made soap, and the farmer was very quick to let the children know that the cute lamb they were playing with would be chops by next week.  The realities of life back then were harsh, but I appreciated his honesty, and desire to educate the children.  There was a cute baby heifer, he told the kids that she would not be beef because she could provide milk.  They had some giant Belgium work horses too.  The whole place reminded me of my Grandparents house and horses in Mt. Pleasant, UT.  The farm house was very similar in layout, furniture, smell and age.  I loved that old house.

The kids played with some of the old toys,  the swing was the most popular.  The two-seater outhouse took some encouragement for the kids to use,  I couldn’t get any of them to share and use both seats at the same time.  I wonder if this is where the whole “girls go the bathroom together” thing came from?

 

Now we are back home and the sound of cousins playing is coming from the basement.  I think someone is pretending to vomit on another child, and they are all running and screaming.  It’s happy sounds hopefully forming bonds and memories of good times.

 

I must be doing OK I finally broke out my sewing stuff.  Alyssa got an invite to a birthday party and I wanted to sew a little purse for the girl and also try out a purse tutorial for some Easter purses for the girls.  I need to work on the size and make some scripture totes also.  Here is the tutorial that I used.  Super easy, but I misjudged how much I would cut off the corners and put the decor a little too low.  Oh well, practice, practice…yeah, yeah.  Now what to put in the purse for this little girl?

The inside is lined with white on white polka dots.
Now to go motivate the kidlets to clean up the mess that blew through the house while I was sewing.

I went to the store today to buy rain jackets.  2 inches of rain is expected today, and I’m pretty sure we’ve already exceeded that.  Rain again tomorrow, I’m hoping with all this moisture spring is going to produce a show unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  Yesterday was a beautiful day, warm and mild.  We went down to the dam, which is a mile or so from our home.  I climbed monstrous steps to the top of the dam and it was so worth it.  I took the opportunity to get some exercise and walked the top of the dam while Danny returned to the bottom to watch everyone fish and let the kids play at the park.  The whole time I was up there I was wishing I had my camera with me.  2 honking swans grazed over my head, fish were jumping out of the lake on my left and the beautiful view of the valley on my right.  I was in heaven.  Next time I will bring the camera.

A bit of a catch up.

Emma had an Irish band concert- it was a class act, full of charm and talent the schools  never stop amazing me

We’ve all had a cold blow through, it’s always a miserable time, but also a nice excuse to  cuddle with the little ones and guilt free watch some movies

We had parent teacher conferences, and all of the kids are doing great.  Aubrey’s spelling words continue to be killer right now they are studying all of the different countries so guess what her spelling words are?  Egypt, Australia, China, along with her normally challenging words.  School for her has been the most challenging so far.  In Nevada 1st graders start to learn to read, but here they expect them to be silently reading chapter book entering the 1st grade, so we’ve really had to step up her reading to bring her to par.

I’m trying very hard to like the house I’m in, but if I could do this again, I would have spent the money to come out and hand pick a house.  This is my biggest regret.  I can’t put into words how stressful overall moving has been.  In my non experienced mind it was a piece of cake, but it has come with many challenges.  We’ve been here for 3 months now, and Danny is officially permanent.  He enjoys his job.  I miss my friends, I miss going to a store and seeing familiar faces, being a complete stranger is an odd sensation.  Luckily the kids have made friends quickly and we feel at home in our new ward. I really do like it here, I don’t regret the move, there were just so many feelings that I didn’t anticipate.

Well now I’m just rambling, so I should wrap this up.   Here’s a few picture of life in Ohio.

Snow day and no electricity=crazy games.  We had lots of relay games, and messy fun games, but this one was called Knock My Socks Off and the point of it was to stay in the boundary of the blanket and try and pull each others socks off.

Young Woman Pinewood Derby- Emma didn’t win anything for speed, but for most creatively decorated.  If you can’t tell what it is, it is a Polly Doll taking a bubble bath.  The girls had a lot of fun.

All of the girls and their cars

Aubrey is studying Monet in school, here is her rendition of Bridge over Pond of Water Lilies.

While I’m posting art so that I can remove it from my fridge for the next batch that comes through…  here is Alyssa’s self portrait, I think it’s cute.

The world is still spinning but we’ve been spinning in one giant gray cloud.  The sun has finally shown himself today and I have the windows open and I’m airing out the house.  Swim lessons continue, as does life of a family with 5 children.  The kids are doing really well in school, and loving every moment that they are there.  I have been trying to take a picture daily, but got behind, and then didn’t know where to start back up.  I have no idea what day I’m on anymore, and am too frustrated from falling behind to figure it out.  I don’t want my blog to become something I avoid because I didn’t fulfill an expectation.  I really don’t want to quit documenting life with photos everyday, I need some new ideas, and need to get creative.  I will post what I have and continue to take pictures.  Any ideas of what I can capture with my camera?

Fancy Nancy party at the local library

Funny story, Hallie has become deathly afraid of baths.  A few weeks ago she…well…pooped in the bath, and of course Alyssa was in there and screamed, and then all the kids came to see what was going on and they all freaked out and screamed about how gross it was–you get the picture right?  Now Hallie thinks she is going to do it again, and cries and holds her bottom through the baths, and if anything happens to float in the tub she panics even more because she thinks she… the joys!

Another odd story.  We have this neighbor who throws all of his leftovers over our fence.  He likes to feed the birds (in my yard).  I have talked with him and explained that I have a dog, and don’t want her eating his leftover sandwiches, cakes, cookies, cheese and anything else he forgot to eat, and he assured me that he would stop… Maybe he forgot, or just thinks that I would forget, but every day his uneaten food is in my yard.  Maybe he hopes the birds will eat it before I notice, who knows but kind of funny.

We live directly across the street from Alum Creek Reservoir.  We hear it is quite the popular recreational place during the summer, but as you can see in the winter it is frozen solid.  The kids wanted to walk out to the buoy.  We cross the bridge almost daily and can’t wait to see it defrosted, full of boats and us on it’s beaches.

Sun came out!  Alyssa took a little jog down to the creek, as you can see she is still wearing skirts everyday, I wonder if she’ll ever out grow it?

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day.  It may surprise you to learn that I didn’t recieve a single flower or piece of candy, no card or even a small token of love.  The day started like any other day, Hallie screaming for her father from her bed, where he stumbled down the hall at 5:00ish in the AM.  Showers, breakfast and kids out the door for school.  I went grocery shopping, had stomach issues, came home before finishing.  When Danny got home, I took Emma and returned to the grocery store to finish up (it was a big shop day).  When I got home, it was past dinner time, so I quickly whipped up some buttermilk pancakes, and we topped them with strawberries and whip cream, bacon and orange juice were also served.  Danny quickly took a few kids to the dining room to get the table set, and that is when I got my Valentine’s Day gift.  I heard Danny tell Tanner, go get 2 pieces of ice and put them in Mom’s cup.  This may seem insignificant to most, but Danny knew that I like my orange juice with ice.  I felt a little teary eyed as I heard him ask his son, and explain quietly why Mom needed ice. As the evening went on, I got Aubrey into a shower while Danny started some laundry and hung up some other laundry.  Then I overheard him helping Tanner with some massive math homework, something involving X and how long it would take him to get to Mars if it took so long to get to Mercury.  Yikes, another teary moment that he was handling yet another problem.  As the evening went on, I noticed as Danny went down and switched yet another load of laundry, and started to wash the dishes that were in the sink that wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher so that I wouldn’t have a load of dirty dishes in the morning.  As I quietly observed all that he did I realized that every day is Valentine’s Day for me.  So no chocolate or flowers were involved, but I had a mighty fine Valentine’s Day.

Kids are sweet–Tanner got this in his box, the boys ripped it out of his hand while he was reading it, and tore it but Tanner held his head high, and didn’t let their teasing bother him.  Hope some little girls heart wasn’t broken, he has to ride the bus home.

When I asked what I should take a picture of today, Aubrey piped up and said my room…so… here is Aubrey’s Room

Before we left Dayton Emma entered a writing contest.  She won third place and $100.  They held a dinner and award ceremony last week for the winners but we were unable to attend but they were kind enough to send Emma her awards and the most important part her check.  She’s going to open a new account and save it.

By midnight we were without power, and temperatures were falling.  In Nevada we had ourselves a little heater and propane.  We weren’t allowed to take our propane on the truck that moved our stuff, so we ignorantly thought we could run to Wal-Mart for some propane, only thousands of others had the same idea.  No propane for us.  Here is Hallie napping in her coat, with lots of other layers on.  When the going got rough I got wimpy and in a very unattractive way, I whined and demanded heat and electricity.  I’m not as tough as I thought.  Guess what we are buying with our tax refund, never thought I’d be excited to say I spent a thousand bucks on a generator before.  I guess I learned a lesson the hard way this week.  Pity was taken upon me and a ward member loaned us their generator.  I must have learned my lesson quickly because our power was restored and there are  people around us without power.  Glad I’m a fast learner.