Bobby's Sunday Summary

This past week was for the most part a fairly normal week.  It did, however, start out on a very good note.  Several of my co-workers are amateur photographers and were taking pictures at the Yahoo! party.  When I got to work on Monday I found several hard copies of a great picture from the party.

The co-worker who took this picture also managed to get one with Susan in it

And also a picture of one of the turtles we saw.

Also this week marked the one-year mark for having switched over to Yahoo! from Motorola.  It has really been quite a crazy, but good, year.

On Saturday we went to the Cheese Festival in Arthur.  We went to go to the cheese curling competition.  Essentially you roll a cheese wheel at a target and a teammate tries to help direct it to the target with a broom.  We are not very good at it, but go because you keep the cheese wheel when you are done.  However, it is quite popular with people from our church.  We were one of three teams there from our ward, including the winning team.  Sorry We didn’t take any pictures this time.

Sweet Tooth

Alice was "helping" me update our emergency supplies and she discovered my stash of hard candy (striped mints and Werther's Original). They were all individually wrapped and she had never seen them before, so she didn't even know they were edible. She and I played with them all day, filling buckets, scooping them with spoons, stuffing them in bags and pockets, etc. After her nap, I'm lying on my bed reading while Alice is on her hands and knees next to me piling hard candies onto my nightstand. She stops suddenly and gets very still. She's facing away from me, so I can't tell exactly what has captured her interest so completely. I pretend to keep reading, but I've got one eye on her. I see her head turn slowly towards me and realize she has one eye on me. Her slim, sideways smile can only be described as pure, devious, joy. I smile back, out of curiosity, and she smiles wider revealing a juicy little unwrapped mint sitting on her tongue. Then I see the faint line of pink drool that has dripped down her chin and onto her shirt.

My first thought, "That's a lot of drool for such a short time with candy."

My second thought, "Is this her first experience with candy?"

My third thought, "HOLY COW! That's a serious choking hazard!"

Fortunately for all of us, her delighted smile is SO big that the candy falls out onto my bed and gets lost in the ripples of a loose bedspread. Especially fortunate for me, I see where it lands and throw it away before Alice begins her search. Easy come, easy go. She looks for a few seconds and then goes back to her piling game. A few seconds later, all the mints mysteriously disappear from her stacking pile (that's my doing). It takes a few HOURS for her to connect the dots and ask me to open one of the Werthers. Smart girl. Just for that, I cut off a smidge and give it to her, using the opportunity to teach her the sign for "candy." She can already say the word as well as she signs it, but it's fun to see her do it anyway :) She likes to do it with both pointer fingers, one on each cheek.

CANDY: Twist the tip of your index finger on your cheek.

Wal-Mart Wanderings

Alice and I were out and about this morning and had some time to kill before our next appointment. The babe was sick of her car seat already so I decided we could go for a walk in Wal-Mart. (Note to self: this sort of outing only appears possible with a child so freakishly careful and obedient as Alice appears to be SO FAR...do NOT get comfortable!). We wandered the garden center and she pointed out all the perfect "nay-noes" on the bags of plant fertilizer. The sliding doors magically opened in front of her she looked back at me once, smiling, before walking straight through. She wandered over to the pet section and found the dog toys. She wanted to hug them ALL until she realized they contained startlingly loud and obnoxious squeakers.

Then we came to the toy section and she was all business. She tested a few huge teddy bears for hugability, inspected a pile of bike helmets to be stocked, greeted customers and employees with a cheerful wave and smiley "hi", and noticed a toy out of place. Not just any toy, but a stuffed DOG that came with its own BAG! This girl likes bags (stuff them full, empty them, sling them on her shoulder to go "bye bye", stick them on her head, hang them on hooks, etc.) and she loves dogs (watching them, hearing them, petting them, finding them in books, barking like them, etc.). In fact, "bag" and "dog" are  spoken by Alice almost as often as "tomato" or "Where are you?" these days (but never as often as "Daddy"...few words are spoken with such frequency or such enthusiasm in this household as "Daddy"). She got pretty excited about this particular toy. I was nervous a scene might erupt when it came time to move on, but it didn't. This girl surprises me every day. She cheerfully put the toy back on the shelf in preparation for her next adventure: paint supplies.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week started out fairly normally.  But we had a very busy Saturday.  Yahoo! had a summer party.  They really went all out.  There was a bounce house, a magician, lunch, and boats.  Alice liked the little kids bounce house.

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/BounceHouse.flv[/flv]

We also took a paddleboat out.

Alice really seemed to enjoy it.  We saw lots of turtles and fish.  She even saw a turtle sunning itself, and stared at it as we floated by.  When it slid into the water to avoid us she called out her own somewhat garbled version of “turtle where are you?”

It was a long day, but fun.

"uh-nay-no"

The largest word Alice has attempted so far: tomato. A girl after my own heart :) I took this little video after she had already eaten 6 large cherry tomatoes, half a bowl of plain pasta, 2 small peaches, a slice of roast beef, and a few swallows of milk. She wasn't very hungry anymore, but she sure likes tomatoes:

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/Tomato.flv[/flv]

Orpheum with the Evanses

Bobby's parents were in town this week. I didn't get to enjoy them as much as I would have liked since I inconveniently and unintentionally over-scheduled my life over the last couple weeks. They ended up doing a lot of babysitting for me (thus saving my sanity). Sorry, guys.

We did do some fun things together with everyone in town. I had some free passes to the Orpheum Children's Science Museum (thanks Rachel and Kemily) so we spent a morning there. Alice enjoyed it quite a bit. Here are a few of her favorite activities:

Playing on the teeter-totter with Grandpa

Running up and down ramps:

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/IMG20009.flv[/flv]

Hugs and playing with family:

And of course WATER! WATER! WATER! I'm bummed I cut off the video so soon. She was only just getting started with her excited arm flapping and squealing.

[flv width="400" height="300"]http://evansfamily.powweb.com/movies/2008/IMG20011.flv[/flv]

Body parts in trouble

To entertain herself in the car, Alice has recently taken to singing out random body parts and pointing at them. She was distracted this afternoon in the middle of her song by something on her foot. She promptly scolded her toes, brought her foot up to her face (smelling it? tasting it? kissing it?), and told it "no no no!" before throwing it back down and grinning smugly to herself. She has also been known to scold her baby doll, Lego blocks, and random food items.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was a busy week.  It was girl's camp for our church.  Susan was not a leader this year, but she helped out a few nights with a couple of presentations for the girls.  I think she had a good time.

Also this week my parents showed up for a visit.  Expect to see more about that this week.  Unfortunetly I have to work so Susan will most likely be the one posting anything.

Other then that this week has seemed fairly normal.

I love the imperfect

In a whole package of Skittles, my favorite is the one that glommed onto his brother just before the final glaze was applied. In movies and television, I always fall in love with the bad guy (oh, Juliet, forget that silly Dr. Shepherd and just love Ben back!).

I was quite delighted to find this little beauty in my garden this week:

His little hook at the top was wrapped around the mother limb. Perhaps he's just a little frightened of change?

Prairie Farm

You're telling me this huge ball of fluff is a bunny rabbit?!

Peek a boo! Alice checks out the new toddler play feature at Prairie Farms.

Petting goats was the MOST fun, simply because they were so accomodating

Hanging' with Daisy the Mule. Some people keep mules to protect their goats from coyotes. Alice, you sure you want to be on THAT end of the animal?

CSA Share August 5th---The Last Straw

That tears it!

How can you mess up raspberries?! I didn't even know it was possible, but Bob Brackett served up a whole pint of perfectly dark red, perfectly formed, SOUR raspberries in our CSA share this week. His heirloom tomatoes and bell peppers both were beautiful and sweet. Sweeter than the raspberries.

There are all sorts of issues you need to consider when you're growing, picking, and transporting fresh produce for a largish group of people. We've also had an abnormally wet growing season that has disrupted/destroyed many plantings. Considering these points, I've overlooked many of the quality and quantity issues so far with Bob's produce, but sour raspberries cannot be overlooked.

STRIKE 1: Sour, smooshy strawberries

STRIKE 2: Very little bang for the buck

STRIKE 3: Sour, tasteless raspberries

I will not be returning to Bob next year. Nor will I recommend him to others. Here's the total haul for this week's share:
1 pint SOUR raspberrries

1 cup heirloom cherry-ish tomatoes

1 large zucchini

2 sweet peppers

2 Walla Walla onions

2 small heads of garlic

At least my own garden is producing well. My Amish Paste tomatoes (from Seed Saver's Exchange) are melt-in-your-mouth tender, slightly sweet, and very meaty. Good for saucing/pasting/drying. The Roma tomatoes are less flavorful but more firm. Good for canning whole. My french green beans are coming along nicely, too.

Our Nation's Energy

Here's a fun little quiz (though it takes quite a bit of time to load, depending on traffic) about how the US gets its electricity. The average score is 63%...can you beat that?

P.S. I do not outright agree with nor reject the opinions stated on this website regarding the environment. I do believe, however, that we can do more on every level to reduce our negative impact on the environment. It all starts with awareness and asking questions.

Easier to leave comments now

Okay, we've heard a lot about how annoying it is to register here in order to leave a comment. I know I wouldn't leave as many comments as I do if I had to remember a user name and password for each site. So! This is a test. This is only a test. We have removed the registration requirement for a period of time. If this becomes a problem (spam, mostly, we're not worried about our teeny band of readers getting out-of-hand), then we'll have to go back. Happy commenting!

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was a somewhat normal week again. Alice had a fun week full of lots of new toys.

She got to play in her new teepee this week.

Susan remembered having one as a child and when we went back to Utah recently she and her mother made this lovely one. We finally got posts for it, and Alice loves it.

Alice also learned to play with toys that we never even expected. We only left her alone for a second, but she got bored while eating dinner and decided that it would be more fun to try out some blueberry body art than to finish.

Finally, this week Susan made rain barrels with one of her friends from the ward.

The barrels used to hold pureed jalapeno peppers in them. I can only imagine how it smelled in there for them.