Off with the old...

We're putting the rest of our construction projects on hold while we put on new siding. In this picture, David is removing the first layer of white press board siding. Under the tar paper lies yet another layer of ugly yellow wood siding. We'll be taking that off next.

We also gave Jacob a little hammer and taught him how to pull out the nails. He actually is pretty good at it. The new siding should be arriving in a couple of weeks, so it should be fun. This is going to be one of my favorite projects because it will change the look of our house very quickly, and it won't look like an old house anymore.

Random Ordinary Stuff

These are the tomatoes in our garden, and they're about 5 feet tall right now. The posts are 6 feet tall, and I have wire running in between the front ones and the back ones every 6 inches so that I have something to tie them to.

I don't know what happened, but my hollyhocks grew 9 feet tall this year. Maybe they really like being ignored, because that's what I do with most of my flowers.

Each meal is a new exercise in creativity when it comes to getting Jacob to eat. This meal we tried having his snakes help. It only sort of worked, seeing how that's the ring to the milk jug and not food in his mouth.

Tile and Such

This was our first tile attempt. David cut while I set the tile. It was fun to learn something new.

This is the coat hook piece David made for the entryway.

We tiled the countertop in our bathroom the other day, and grouted it yesterday. We also attached the handles on the drawers.

We still have to seal the grout, but you get the idea. David did the cutting and I did the setting. We found that we can be pretty efficient when we divide up the job that way.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot, Rinse and Repeat

I went to the store today, where I had another unpleasant encounter with a certain clerk. Nearly every time I go in there, she manages to say something insulting by accident. A year ago when I was pregnant, she asked me if "there was just one in there". Granted, I was rather large, but still not a good thing to say to any pregnant woman. Then, a couple of months ago she asked me if I was still feeling good. I gave her a steady look and told her that I wasn't pregnant. I managed to wait until I was home to burst into tears. After that little incident, I didn't go to that store for about a month. I finally decided to venture back, at which point she observed that I'd had my baby. My response was yes, a long time ago.

So that bring us to today. I promised Jacob that he could buy a piece of candy with his money, so we set off in the stroller because it was a fine day for a walk and the store is only 3 blocks away. As I was putting things up for her to scan, I heard, "I can still remember when you were pregnant with her. She was huge!" There was a pregnant woman in front of me, and I thought she was the one the clerk was talking to, until I looked up and noticed she was looking right at me.

What is wrong with this woman!? I can think of at least 47 other things to talk about besides how incredibly enormous I was when I was pregnant, or that I looked pregnant a couple of months ago, or that I must have had a baby because I lost weight. It's almost to the point of being comical it happens so frequently, but not comical enough to keep me coming back for more. I feel another boycott coming on.

Cherries, Freezers, and Gastroenteritis

We finally got a crop off of our cherry tree, so I got a cherry pitter and have been drying cherries for the last two days. The kids like dried fruit for snacks, so it's nice to have some fruit I don't have to buy.

I took the kids to Grandma Quigley's house on the 3rd to spend some time. The Ashby/Rheads were there, and we had a really fun time. The next day we drove up to Boise to be with David's family for the 4th. Just as we were pulling into town, Jacob threw up. We thought it might be the Strong curse of carsickness, but when it kept happening every 20 minutes for the rest of the day, it was apparent that he had a little bug. I got it shortly after Jacob started, and Bridget started symptoms in the middle of the night that night. So our 4th wasn't as fun as we were hoping. This is a picture of Jacob playing in our irrigation water yesterday, after he felt better. I didn't take any pictures of the 4th for obvious reasons, so this will have to do.

On the bright side, we brought back a freezer that we had bought in January that David's mom had been storing for us. I am so excited about this freezer, because it means even fewer trips into town for shopping. Hooray! I try to make it a point not to buy meat locally because it usually turns funny colors within 1-2 days of purchase. It's gross. Now I can make my big trip, and stock up on meat too! I can also make more bread than just the 4 loaves in a batch. I'm making bread twice a week now that Bridget is getting bigger. It's kind of scary that I'm so excited about an appliance, but it really is going to make what I do a lot easier...so hooray for appliances!