Terdy the Turtle

Would you believe me if I told you I have tried to do this post at least three times, but every time I go to upload my pictures my computer freezes up and I start calling it bad names. In my head of course. My picture problem may have had something to do with putting the SD card in the computer and shocking it at the same time. Not sure, but it was an awfully big spark.
So the first picture I would include is one of our turtle. We have had him for about a month. He is a water turtle and lives in a tank on top of Jacob and Beau's dresser in their room. He's about the size around of...a small jar of peanut butter...maybe slightly smaller. Our neighbor gave him to us because his granddaughter was neglecting him, and Jacob had the honor of naming him.
"Terd! I want to name him Terd! Terdy!"
So we have a little turtle named Terdy. He lives with our two fish who never received names because we didn't think they would survive. Our other neighbor gave us the fish. I think the neighbors would prefer that we had small aquatic pets and not a big chocolate lab that barks.
As I said Terdy lives on top of Jacob's dresser, about 4' off the ground. We had only had him for two or three days when one afternoon the kids came downstairs yelling that Terdy was not in his tank. I didn't believe them until I had looked in the tank and raked the small layer of rocks at the bottom aside.
Terdy was gone. GONE. How does a turtle escape from a tank with a lid that sits on a dresser four feet off the ground?
I have NO idea. We searched for him. Bekah said a prayer. I tried not to burn dinner (which of course was cooking simultaneously). We looked some more. Bekah cried. We delivered dinner to a friend that just had a baby. I called Rus at work - as if he could somehow tell me where the turtle was. I racked my brain about that stupid turtle. I mentally put my children in a lineup and tried to figure out which one would have let Terdy out...but they were all so distraught (and Beau really wasn't tall enough - thank goodness because otherwise he would have really been suspect), that I had to count them all out. So then I added a few of the neighbor kids to the lineup - ones who had been over that day. It's still an unsolved mystery.
Rus came home from work. He went upstairs to look for Terdy. Seriously five minutes (FIVE) he yelled down that he had found him. I was both parts relieved and annoyed.
Turns out Terdy had escaped the tank in true Mission Impossible fashion and deployed himself to Bekah's room, under her bed in the corner.
The whole thing still puzzles me...
Okay now on a different note my other picture would include one of Bekah in dazzling pink cubic zirconia EARRINGS. Rus took the boys camping and so Bekah and I had a dream-girls night out. My friend Taffy and her daughter joined us and we got pedicures. We went out for dinner. We pierced her ears - an idea that sprouted from Bekah after school that same day. (She was nervous but didn't cry or anything - just flinched.) We bought and ate ice cream with friends. And then she got to sleep in my bed. We woke up and watched Phinneus and Ferb on netflix from my bed. We ate popcorn at Target. We took a nap. It was - as Bekah says - really really really really fun. Lots and lots of fun.
Obviously this will only happen once in a blue moon...maybe once a year if we're lucky. But it was great. The boys came home dirty and happy with Jacob proclaiming that it was the best camping trip ever.
Hopefully you can picture all of this...till next time when the computer works like it should...

*Clay and Mary - I loved seeing you this weekend. Not the circumstances, but it was refreshing to see you and your wonderful sons. All of you are like aloe on a sunburn and I LOVE YOU!

The Big Picture

Here it is...the completed puzzle. (I am sorry it's blurry - I didn't press hard enough when I scanned it because I didn't want to crease it.) Rus got home last night and loved it, hooray! It features me sewing a toy bomb for our baby girl, Jacob handing a tool to Rus, a box of useful household chemicals, Rus in his "safety third" shirt holding some wires, Beau with his pockets and dump truck full of dynamite holding the wire in his mouth, the wire going into the box labeled "Danger:Explosives," Bekah painting and decorating the box, and Colonel digging a hole (something Rus hates about Colonel) to bury a stick of dynamite.
Payne Family Night at its best. :) The stick of a tree behind Bekah's head is identical to one in our backyard: Colonel chewed it to bits and then miraculously when spring came it actually grew leaves. I thought for sure it was dead.
It is now matted and framed and ready to hang in his office.
Happy Birthday, Rus!

Rus Teaser Day 3

Three pictures for day three...Beau sucking on...bomb wires...I'm sure there's an actual name for that (nonel?)
Jacob, Daddy's helper

Rus the Birthday Boy...In Arkansas

Rus turned thirty-three yesterday! He celebrated by waking up at four-something and catching a flight to, as he would say, "the middle of BFE." It simplified some things for me, like making him a cake and a nice big dinner, but it's never much fun when he's gone.
I decided that since he had to up and leave for his birthday then I could have a little fun giving him his birthday present - which thanks to our pure, innocent children, he already knew about. He had asked for a drawing of our family for his office, and since he works in such an interesting field (where things go BOOM), I had a lot of fun doing his drawing. I scanned it into our computer in sections and I'm sending him pieces at a time. To add to the fun they are blurry...Here was yesterday's:And then for today:I didn't want to be pregnant forever in this drawing, so this is a future baby. If she turns out to be a "he" I'll come up with some way to correct it. :)

Finally Finished - Grams Scrap Quilt!!

Well the project that began last fall (September maybe?) is now officially complete and sitting in my closet with my other blankets. (Although I have brought it out to show everyone from my friends to the UPS man.) This quilt began as strips of fabric rolled around toilet paper rolls - enough rolls to fill a really large (clothes size) ziplock bag. Rus' grandma had saved every scrap, it seemed, from the last 20 or 30 or 40 years. Some were only a few inches long and some were only 1/2" wide. There were scraps of every color and pattern and the real time consuming part was sorting all of the different strips into similar colors and sizes. I sewed the strips together to make a piece that was at least 7 1/2" wide and then cut it into square blocks. There were enough scraps left over after making all of the blocks to make a 3" border around the whole quilt (my favorite part, I think). The backing is brown and cream and is folded over to make the binding. I quilted this on my mother-in-law's long arm quilter with a random squiggly pattern. Given that it was my first time quilting something I don't think I did too bad, and really it wasn't very hard. I think when I have a guest room with a guest bed this blanket will go on it.
Hooray for a finished project!!

Happy Mother's Day

"I love you mom because you make me dinner. You paint me pictures. And you care about me, Jacob, and Beau before you think about you and dad. Love, Bekah"
(My favorite part is that Bekah drew Rus with sideburns and no hair. LOVE that!)

Pink=Girl, fyi.

Believe me when I say that I did not mean my last post to be confusing in any way. (I also didn't intend to wait this long before posting a follow-up.) Pink=girl, right? "Having" referred to a baby, not dinner, and while my kids would love cookies for dinner, the pink cookie was my subtle yet somehow confusing way of cluing you in to the results of my ultrasound. Rus, my mom, Bekah, and Jacob made a fun little crowd in the ultrasound room and the kids waited as patiently as they could to see the "boy parts or girl parts." We actually saw neither and the tech declared that she was 75% sure it was a girl, "but something could be hiding." My kids aren't great with "maybe it's a girl," so we've just declared that it is a girl. If it comes out different, we'll let you know. The best part of the ultrasound was when the tech showed the baby's heart and showed how blood was pumping through the heart and Jacob whispered in a worried voice to Rus, "There's blood in the baby's heart?! Is that okay?!"
We celebrated afterwards by going to a bakery with the intention of buying pink cookies...and came away with cupcakes, easter egg cookies, and one pink cookie for Beau.
And now for some pictures from Easter:
Beau hunting for eggs.Beau and his cousin Ben sharing the rocking horse after our Easter dinner.Our Bunny Buns that we made from the recipe in the Friend. I really liked them. Rus thought they were just a glorified roll. The kids shaped them and really enjoyed eating the eyes, which were edible...slightly creepy to see a bunny bun with only the eyes chewed off, but...And here is a volcano that Jacob convinced me to make last week. It has a bottle inside that we filled with baking soda and water and then added vinegar to give it the bubbling/erupting effect. I think Jacob would have preferred that it exploded and not just erupted. The foam is blue because we didn't have red food coloring. Ahh...fun stuff. I have really enjoyed feeling good the last several weeks - still tired but not huge or sick - and with fun distractions like helping my friend's daughter get ready for prom, making a robot/dinosaur/planet blanket for Jacob, canning strawberry jam again with Tara and Taffy, trying and quitting potty training Beau...
And in just a few weeks we begin work remodeling the kitchen in our new house...I can't wait to show you the "before" pictures - I'm sure you'll all fight over the curtains.
Have a great week!