Mother's Day Dirt

For Mother's Day, Susan wanted dirt. She wanted me to get a truckload of dirt for her flowerbed out front of the house. So I went to the cemetery and got a load of dirt for her (for some reason, cemeteries generate dirt by digging holes and filling them in and not needing all the dirt to fill them in). And no, we haven't found any bones in the dirt. Anyway, we got the dirt into the flower bed and yesterday we had a work day. (and no, that's not all Susan got for Mother's Day!)

Mandi, Vicki and Susan worked yesterday to plant flowers in the flowerbed. It's looking lovely. We used to have a Bleeding Heart plant by the door, which would come back every year and get huge. Last fall, Susan ripped it out. Yesterday we both decided we miss it, so we'll probably plant another plant out there. And some roses. But the girls got a start on it.

I have been in a remodel project for, oh, about 6 months. Mandi wants the basement family room refinished and began spearheading it. Yesterday I sanded down the taping on the sheet rock. The whole room is white now. Everything. Floor. Tools. Shop Vac. Counter. Fan. Everything. Including, at the time, me. I wore one (actually, I went through two) of those masks that everyone is wearing now so they don't get Swine Flu. I still had white chunks in my nose. I used some shop glasses, but they were worthless pretty quick, since I couldn't see through them. But the walls are smooth (fairly) now. I now have to figure out how to do the corners, then I'm done with the sheetrocking and taping. Then it's time to texture... another DIY that I hope doesn't become a "shouldn't have"!

We have a lot of wildlife in our yard right now. We have a robin's nest in our pine tree with three baby birds. We also have a pheasant nest in our back yard. I am so hoping the animals leave it alone, as we've had dogs and cats after it so far. There are 10 eggs in the nest, so if they all hatch and survive, it could really be cool!

We cut down our two dead quakies. We had four (actually 4 trees, but growing two and two). We have one left. It seems to be healthy. I hope it lasts! Anyway, we'll have wood for the firepit for a while now! I have also been secretly planning to cut a limb off the apricot tree by the dog kennel. It has made it impossible to drive the lawn mower under the tree, so it's been a weed-whacker pain. In the midst of cutting the quakies down, I mentioned to Susan what I wanted to do and she said, "Let's do it." So I didn't wait for her to decide otherwise. We cut the limb off (major limb, about 8" across). Of course, it had loads of other limbs growing off of it. The thought of cutting it all up (we don't have a chainsaw... just a bow saw) doesn't appeal to me, especially all at once so we could get it off the "grass." So I dragged the whole thing with the truck back by the fire pit.

Mandi finished out her dance season last Saturday with a recital. She did awesomely! They took first place for each dance in all of the competitions they went to and their dance company took overall champions at each competition. She has bruises on her knees from dropping, but she loved it. If you haven't seen her dances, they are are You Tube. Search for "rickatredrock" and it will take you to my videos. You can watch Mandi's dances at one of the competitions.

I went on a fieldtrip with Victoria last week. We went to the California/Oregon Trail museum at Montpelier, Idaho. School bus traveling at its finest! I rode the "girls" bus, which I was afraid would be unbearably loud, but turned out to not be too bad. Sound-cancelling headphones probably helped! The museum was interesting, except for the county museum in the basement and the DUP part upstairs. Then we stopped in Soda Springs so the kids could taste the natural soda water (I tried it a few years ago... never again!). Then we went to the Soda Springs geyser. In my opinion, it's a rip-off. Since it was having a negative impact on Old Faithful (stealing some of it's steam), the gov't made them cap it and put it on a timer. So now it "geyses" out of a short pipe (so much for "natural") every hour on the hour (but it's electronically timed). Then we went to a DUP museum in Soda Springs (boring). The kids all thought so, too. But it was fun to spend the day with Victoria. We did have fun!