I tried a new Southern food this week, sweet potato fries. They are deep fried, of course, sliced sweet potatoes sprinkled with salt and pepper. So good! A lot of things are fried here that I have never heard of. Say...Oreos and candy bars to name a few. They dip them in sweet breading and fry them. I haven't had an opportunity to try either yet but every teenager I ask says they are delicious. How can an Oreo not be delicious?

My favorite new southern saying is "red hot minute." Like, that bread needs to come out of the oven this red hot minute! (Overheard at a church activity.) Or, you get back in time out this red hot minute! (Overheard in my kitchen.)

Our funniest adventure this week involved a trip to Wal Mart and some ice cream sandwiches. I let all of my kids have a small sample while we were shopping. I thought it would help to distract them and I could get what I needed as fast as possible. I don't know how he did it, but Luke was able to take a 2 inch piece of ice cream sandwich and cover every centimeter of exposed skin on his face and hands with chocolate. Noah was almost as bad, the girls just had really messy faces. Not being a total newbie at this mom thing I had predicted this and grabbed a handful of napkins from the sample lady. Well, sticky ice cream sandwich does not come off at all with a dry crusty napkin. So we shopped and I was the lady with the snotty nosed, dirty kids. I had to laugh, even while I was pushing one cart fulled of said kids and pulling another full of groceries.

 Cute Lukie and Grace cracking me up as she paints...not sure if the mustache was intentional or not, but it makes me laugh!

We adopted a sweet kitten from some people in our neighborhood. The kids named him Leo and he is a trooper so far with all the attention he gets. He has good instincts of where to hide so little fingers can't get him too.  He is a well loved kitty!

Church Stories

Everyone's kids do funny things at church now and again. I just had to record today's adventures because they make me laugh. We are Mormon (LDS) and during our services bread and water is passed around as Sacrament. This part of our meeting is always a challenge for Luke and Noah. They are too young to understand at all what it going on but they see bread broken up into little pieces and cool baby size cups of water. Of course they assume this food is for them. Today as the tray of bread went by Luke got his little piece and promptly popped it in his mouth. But then the buffet just kept going and he shouted, "No, no, no!!!" all the while trying to grab the tray with his little hand. Of course everyone else's children were completely quiet at just that moment and the whole room heard. A mouth full of cheese helped him calm down thankfully and I just chuckled, didn't laugh out loud.

Later Luke was banished to the foyer with his Dad for making undignified noises and I had the other 3 kids in the meeting. The girls were doing great looking at books, quietly coloring and doing stickers. I had my hands full helping Noah climb repeatedly on and off his chair while hearing about 1 out of every 3 words the speaker said. One of the things you learn in elementary school is that if you are really quiet, you can get away with almost anything. Looking over to check on my oh so quiet girls, I heard the young couple behind me snickering. Grace had stickers all over her face! Well, specifically down her forehead to her nose and across both cheeks. This time I'm afraid I did laugh out loud, thankfully it was a quiet laugh. She is such a sweet girl and was just looking at me smiling her sweet smile. For those of you out there astounded by my lack of disciplined parenting, the natural consequence of this experiment did come. Each little sticker was quite sticky and hurt just a bit coming off. Lesson learned...I hope.

Who Gets the Back?

Our family drove to Williamsburg last month on a short vacation. Craig and Dessa were here so we wanted to do some exploring with them.  The world needs to come up with another word for traveling anywhere with small children. Vacation creates visions of sleeping in, eating good food, fun and rest and adventures. We definitely have adventures and some fun with our kids, but no rest at all and eating goldfish crackers and raisins is no better on vacation then at home. (We did try one restaurant on this trip. Luke was screaming and had to be taken outside by one of us the whole time and Grace threw up from drinking too much root beer. But, I digress…)

So, we are cruising along the freeway blissfully enjoying listening to adult music as our kids are all silent in the back watching a dvd with headphones. Who ever designed this feature of our new car should apply for sainthood. Up ahead there was a truck pulled off on the shoulder. Jason changed to the center lane and of course we look over as we pass. Just as we go by, up pops Grandma from the bed of the truck! Grey hair totally frazzled and wind blown, sunglasses on. We were both roaring and Jason says, “Only in the south does Grandma ride in the back of the pickup.” To be fair, I did answer that maybe great-grandma was driving the truck with a baby in the passenger seat. It was pretty funny though. I used the endorphins from 15 minutes of belly laughter well that day.

 

 

The kids were too young to enjoy Williamsburg. Mostly I stayed outside while the boys played with rocks, the girls lasted a bit longer but outside was more fun for them too. I'm not sure what Sophie is wishing for, but I hope she got it!

We stopped at the Jamestown settlement on the way, it was really interesting. So much to learn about history here.

 

The family vacation/playing saga continued this weekend. We went camping with all our kids for the first time. I was hoping it would be 50/50 with work and fun. It wasn't. But the fun was still fun. We went to Greystone Highlands to celebrate Father's Day.

 

Wild Rhododendrons, so beautiful! 

Hello From NC

Hi!
I thought this would be a fun way to keep in touch with all of our friends and family far away. Moving here to North Carolina has been an enormous challenge but has also been full of blessings for our family. I wanted somewhere to share some of the fun/silly/touching things in our lives. It can be crazy in our home with all of our little ones. Who knows how often I will post. It may only be once a month.

For the record, I am just going to use all of our real names. I am not trying to wax philosophical here, this blog will really just be about our family for our friends and family. For those of you I really haven't talked to for a while. Grace and Sophie are 4, Luke and Noah are 1 1/2.

I wanted to use Hardy Party for our title, of course it wasn't available, along with any other variations I could think of! So here is a little explanation about fireweed. It is my favorite western wildflower. Fireweed grows many places in the mountains, but really thrives in the recently enriched soil after a wildfire. After adversity comes the beauty. For the record, I love magnolias also. The huge magnolia trees here just began blooming. The air has been flower scented from early March to now. It is really amazing and a great thing about living in North Carolina.

Joke of the day, by Sophie
What fish swims on a leaf? None of them!