Hair cut!

I decided to let go of my long hair...it was time. Luckily I recently found an excellent stylist who I knew would do a great job. She started by literally sawing off about five inches from my hair with a really dull pair of scissors. Then she laid the sad looking bushy tail on the counter in front of me. I had a few minutes of really conflicted emotions while a sad montage of "pictures" of my long hair ran through my head. And then I told myself I was being dumb, and this shorter hair is going to be great, and it will grow back anyway.
The end. (Of the ridiculously detailed account of my haircut).

Funny Faces

Last night we were having a little bit of fun with Marianne at the dinner table. She is such an expressive little girl, and we exploit that as regularly as possible for our own amusement.

The best part about last night, though, was taking the pictures of Rus making the face, and then Marianne making the face.

Priceless, I tell you.

Lucky for Rus, he knows every picture I take is fair game for the blog, so he totally saw this coming.

 

Rus: "Marianne, show me your teeth!"

 (sorry for the mess on her face, we didn't take care of that soon enough...)

"Marianne, show me your lips!"

"Blowface!"

 "Fishy lips!"

 

And then the fun ended because Marianne wanted the camera, and I wouldn't give it to her...So sad!

Please don't let me be a mean old lady...

 I was at the grocery store a few weeks ago and Beau and Marianne were happily chasing each other around the produce section. I visit the produce area last, and by that time they are usually done with being in the cart and I am done with them playing with my newly acquired food items. And honestly I think they are both super cute and fun, so I allow them to run free while I quickly grab the last few things that I need. While they were merrily running around, they found themselves in the path of an elderly woman and her cart once or twice...and I apologized and smiled. But only a few minutes later I saw the same grumpy old lady whisper and roll her eyes with another old lady...about my children. It really made me grumpy. And self concious. And I couldn't help but pray, please help me not be a mean old lady someday! Please don't let me forget that children are loud and careless and slightly wreckless, but that's just because they are bright, happy little souls who haven't had to learn to quiet themselves because of mean old people. Please let me be one of those sweet, doting old ladies who tells young mothers that their children are so beautiful and so precious!
Anyway, there's my rant. On to more important things, like Jacob losing his tooth. It was epic. Rus tied a piece of floss to his tooth and then to the back door, and then Jacob slammed the door shut...and experienced a little yank, but the tooth hadn't budged. So he opened the door again, stepped back again, and with help from dad, slammed the door shut again. And before it even slammed, the tooth was out and Jacob was suddenly scouring the floor, saying, "Where'd my tooth go?" Then he grabbed it and ran to the bathroom to see the gory mess his victory had caused him. He was so proud. Rus and I were so proud. We recorded the whole event on the ipad and I had to watch it a half dozen times that night. I still had little chuckles escaping my mouth when my head hit the pillow that night.
He's such a handsome boy!

It just so happens that Beau and Marianne are becoming great friends. I have enjoyed capturing their little moments together the past few weeks. Marianne adores Beau, but if anything in her world goes wrong, she'll exclaim "Beau!" in a chastening tone. She's really got the intonation down on that one.

Beau is great at reading to her...if I were able to photoshop the boogers off his nose, I don't know that I would. Those boogers are an accurate representation of four months out of our year...Marianne loves hats and shoes. She is constantly pulling on hats and kickinf off shoes. She prefers Beau's boots (which incidentally are light up - how cool is that), to her own mini-tennis shoes. If you can't find your shoes in our house, you're not crazy - Marianne has relocated them for you.

 A few weeks ago Bekah had to dress up as a person from an autobiography. She picked Laura Ingalls Wilder - her favorite person, pioneer, and author. She wore an old Laura Ashley dress of mine from England that is missing half the buttons in the back, and we sewed her a bonnet. We knew Marianne would need a bonnet of her own.

 

 We also made a corn husk doll to mimic Laura Ingalls Wilder's doll Charlotte. Bekah wanted the doll...the boys wanted hawks and jaguars. I am now convinced that corn husks are not the proper medium for making hawks and jaguars.

 Marianne will be really grateful when she is older that she has a super stylish aunt who can't resist buying her clothes. That is how this beautiful dress came to be Marianne's. DeAnn bought it for her at Target. I am so in love with it. I want one in my size, please and thank you. I'm also in love with the adorable little spitfire in pigtails. She totally ROCKS that dress.

 As you saw in previous posts, our backyard is a work in progress. This past weekend it progressed a little further, thanks to Rus and his mad muscles. While I cut bricks on the tile saw and shuttled kids to and from birthday parties, Rus laid the bricks. He paid the kids a dollar each to carry the bricks from the pallets they were on to a location nearer to Rus. It was comical seeing Jacob book it from one spot to the other, running as fast as he could because the brick was so heavy.

But by the early afternoon, our work was done! Here are our gorgeous raised beds, with chair and bucket decor provided by the kids. Our fountain is half up in this picture...the top of it is on the ground to the left.

 Next up: Dirt! We need to order dirt to fill those lovely boxes. And between now and the time we actually plant something, we need to come up with a plan to deter the deer and rabbits from eating whatever we plant.

Farewell Infinite Soccer Season

I like soccer. I like my kids playing soccer. I even like the whole AYSO organization at makes it super cheap and possible for my kids to play soccer.
I could just do with about four weeks less of the soccer season. I miss my Saturdays. I really don't appreciate watching my kids play in bad weather. And AYSO should really invest in some heavy duty stakes, because I'm not a fan of having to actually stand and hold the goal posts down to keep them from blowing away in 100mph winds.
With all that being said, I think that being a part of a team was really good for my kids. The other kids and parents on Bekah's and Jacob's teams were awesome. Bekah and Jacob didn't like the bad weather either, but other than moaning about that, they never complained about actually playing soccer. I think they really enjoyed themselves. Here are a few pics from their last games last Saturday.
If Bekah could have had it her way, she would have been goalie for every period of every game. And she was pretty good at it too! There were about three games in a row where she didn't let a single ball past her whenever she was goalie. We called her the brick wall.

But when she did get her turn playing the field, she did a great job. She wasn't really the one to take charge of the ball and score a goal, but she always played her position well and paid attention to what was going on on the field.

 Her team was the Tigers. I took my face paints to their last game and gave them all tiger eyes. They were a super good bunch of girls.

Jacob's game was after Bekah's game. It was late in the afternoon, and we were just doing our best to be there. That's why we arrived with a kid wearing a cape, a giraffe with some worn off face paint, and a girl with tiger eyes. Oh and Jacob had leopard-print arms.
His team was the Decepticons. (He was a big Transformer fan at the beginning of the season...now all I hear about is animals).

Jacob was an AWESOME defender. He loved to hang back and make sure that absolutely nothing from the other team got in their goal. (He's in U7 - they have smaller goals and no goalies). The other teams got past him some of the time, but for the most part he really kept the ball rolling the other direction.

And now for some pictures of the giraffe. Marianne LOVES this giraffe costume, and it was just her luck to find it as we were walking out the door. The weather had turned a little chilly and I figured all the fur was just some extra insulation.
She hugged her dad, (note the crazy remains of face paint),













played with Bekah,

And did some good ol' fashioned tackling with Beau and Bekah.

 We'll be out there again in the fall, but I really am happy to have my Saturdays back!
 

Blessing Baby Maverick

Rus was in shock the night his good friend Clint called him up out of the blue to invite us to the blessing of their new baby boy Maverick. Clint is not really the type to pick up the phone and call an old friend. He's not much of a talker face to face (unless it involves vehicles, guns, or redneck stuff), so phone conversation is really a stretch. So when Rus hung up the phone he said we were going to Safford the next weekend because Clint called and asked.
And we did. And it was a great trip. We didn't want to descend on them with our entourage, and we knew they had a lot of family in town already, so we decided to stay with Rus's parents in Lordsburg (Only 70 miles from Safford). I know I've already mentioned the shooting range in Roger's backyard...we all were able to enjoy a little target practice.
Each kid got a chance to shoot Grandpa's .22

Bekah...

Jacob...

I love this multigenerational pic, these men (+boy) right in their element.

 Beau...

I wish I could explain Beau's face in this picture...

 I even got a turn...I am shooting Louise's single action rifle in this picture. I really liked her gun.

We spent Sunday with Clint and Nicole and their family, going to church, eating good food, and visiting. I had to take Marianne out of sacrament meeting to change her bum, and as we were walking out she loudly exclaimed, "BYE!!" And waived to everyone we passed. I just tried to keep my head down as I laughed embarrassedly, but I heard later that the bishopric got a kick out of her earnest farewell.
I loved holding Maverick. He is a sweet baby. I painted a picture for Nicole of him laying on the floor, sucking on a stuffed animal goose. (Top Gun. If there is a Maverick, there must be a Goose.) I also raided Louise's fabric stash and sewed him a stuffed goose. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of both.
Here we all are...I'm amazed how Rus, Clint, Nicole and I have evolved from four single kids to two married couples to two full grown families. (Ooh - you can see the picture I painted sitting on the shelf on the right.) Jacob is holding Maverick. Marcy is sitting next to Bekah and Merry is next to Clint. A picture of their angel son Marshall is on the shelf.
I dearly love Clint and Nicole. We have traveled quite a ways with them, some roads pretty rough. Our relationship is pretty special.

It was a great trip...hopefully we'll see more of each other in the future!!

 

Easter

The weather was forecasted to be really nice for Easter, and I was just itching to use our brand-spanking new patio, so we invited everyone over for a ham dinner. By everyone, I mean all the family we could possibly claim in the area. Jason and Joy and their five, Carla and Doug and their four, and Jake and DeAnn and their two. (That's a lie, there are more cousins and relations in the area we didn't invite, but they have grown children and wouldn't appreciate the special dynamic that fifteen children under the age of nine provide...) Doug and Carla also invited a coworker and her mother; we were happy to have them over too.
Carla had found a great way to teach about Jesus' resurrection with different types of symbolic foods. She prepared all of the foods and then had the kids come up, one by one, to help her explain how they symbolized a part of Christ's death and ressurection. It was really neat; perhaps a new tradition was born. 

 Of course we carried out the traditional Easter egg hung, complete with "don't touch any cactus," and the requisite pair of tweezers for the children who got poked anyway.

 I just realized that Jacob somehow managed to be absent for this picture. I'm not sure if he's hiding or simply not present...We are also missing Joy's baby Wyatt.

 Joy and Rachel

 It was a really fun and special day, thanks to good family and a loving Heavenly Father.

Our New Patio

I am so sorry for the weird half-done post that has been lingering here the last few days. I wanted to post about our new patio and Easter, and now I have pictures from Clint and Nicole's blessing of baby Maverick, but technology has betrayed me again and so some of that will have to wait.
I'll start with the concrete...
Rus and I have been looking for a van to replace mine for the last six months. We bought (and temporarily enjoyed) Big Mama, but decided we needed something that fit us better. (Not so big, easier on gas...) So we scoured craigslist and the newspaper and the lemon lot on base, but couldn't find a good fit. Then one day while Rus was bemoaning not finding a van and I was bemoaning not having a back yard, he came up with a brilliant idea - I drive his van, he buys a junker, we keep my old van until it dies (but don't really drive it because it's not reliable), and I GET MY BACKYARD!
Voila. He bought his baja bug, and I ordered concrete. We had the talented Armando and his crew come set up the forms and pour the concrete. I would give Armando nine out of ten stars...he lost one because he couldn't speak a word of English and so I had to have my lovely cousin Joy come be the translator. She was so wonderful to have herself and her kids here every time I needed to talk to Armando, and to be the go-between on the phone, and then to hang out all day when the men were pouring concrete.
So our new patio extends fifteen feet further into the yard than the old one. It runs the length of the existing one which is about twenty five feet. We also had a ten by ten pad poured right outside our bedroom windows because eventually we hope to put French doors there instead. We had a three foot wide sidewalk poured down the length of the house in Colonel's dog run so that he won't be tempted to dig up alongside the house. Also it makes it nicer for the kids when they have to clean up his poop.
The actual day of pouring was fun and interesting...just picture three moms (myself, Joy, and DeAnn, who thought she was joining us for an Easter egg hunt), and our collective ten children...then add in four Mexicans, a concrete mixer truck, and hundreds of square feet of "off limits" area directly between the kids and the wide open desert where the kids wanted to play. If you take that all into consideration, maybe you'll be surprised that the kids only stepped on the wet concrete four times. That's when I learned how to say "I'm sorry" in Spanish. Four times
Here are all of the pics of the event:

Here are some more pictures of the finished product:

 Our new patio outside our bedroom windows. I signed "Keri loves Rus 5 more" in the concrete on the right hand corner of the pad next to the house. Someday there will be french doors there so we can actually access the patio from our room. And someday flowers will grow and my sad lilac bush will look like a happy lilac tree.

 Another view of the patio. I would like to insert here that I am the digger of that beautiful trench you see. I spent a few hours a day for a few days digging that trench. I was determined to get it all ready so that Rus would lay the pipes for our future flower beds and fountain.
[And now that it has been weeks since I took that picture, I can happily tell you that the pipes are laid and just today we filled the trenches in with dirt. Raised flower beds - here we come!!]

 Here's a shot of the sidewalk that now adorns the inside perimeter of Colonel's dog run. It's nicer for the kids to walk on to pick up poop, and now Colonel can't dig up against the house. The kids signed their names on the concrete right next to the ac unit.