Flower Power

These are my very favorite flowers!



PEONIES!!!

Lucky for me they are also the Indiana state flower, so they are EVERYWHERE right now. I'm in floral paradise! I love the bright colors and the wild pink hues they come in. Their soft, sweet rose-like smell sends me into raptures. I'm amorous over their playful little buds and the big ruffly blooms that droop all over the place. The way their scent fills my whole kitchen sends me into giggle fits. And I adore the crazy looks strangers give me when I knock on their doors to ask if I can please pick one. I don't love when I bend down to inhale their glory and in so doing inhale an ant that gets stuck in my sinus cavity for two days. Gross.

I wait all year for these flowers to bloom. Apparently I am not the only one...

Peonies by Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are
getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open ---pools of lace, white and pink ---

And all day under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise,
their red stems holding all that dampness and recklessness gladly and lightly,

And there it is again --- beauty
the brave, the exemplary, blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment,
before they are nothing, forever?


You can definitely expect another ridiculous post about these beauties from me next May because I get this excited about them every year.

Take me out to the ballgame!

Bryce has a dream of visiting every major league baseball park over the course of his life. So far we have been to three...yeah, we have a lot of baseball in our future. That's fine with me as long as I get hotdogs and cotton candy (I'm not really a peanuts and crackerjacks kind of girl.)

This weekend we made the short trip to Cincinnati to go to a Reds game. It was our first time in Ohio. It was really beautiful, and it kind of looks the same as western Washington so we felt right at home.



Lucky for us it was free baseball hat day at the ballpark. Yippee~! Now we have matching reds hats.



It was a gorgeous, not too hot day. The home team didn't win, but we had a ball of a time!

Happy Anniversary...

BUSTER!

You joined our family one year ago. It took awhile for us to find the perfect name for you, and you really needed a bath. But you have been a perfect fit for us and we love you.

You are a good dog because:

1~ you keep hazel company

2~you don't shed

3~you like to snuggle

4~you don't eat very much

5~your bark isn't too yippy or annoying

6~you are our fierce protector

7~you are learning to be nice to children

8~even though you are ugly, have an under bite to boot, and smell super bad two days after I bathe you, you never let your self-esteem suffer.

9~when you have just been shaved you share a striking resemblance to FALCOR, the dog/dragon from the Never Ending Story.

He Knew!

Bryce has been holding out on me in a BIG way!

Since moving to Indiana we have only gotten one channel on our old, trashy TV. This is not a bad thing because (A) the channel we got was NBC; The Office, Biggest Loser, basically everything I need. And (B) when you only get one channel you don't watch that much TV. And I really didn't mind.HOWEVER, I have a few guilty pleasure TV shows and they are all found on one channel.

Dare I admit that I love, love, LOVE Gossip Girl, 90210, Privileged, and don't ever forget ANTM. I know every single one of these shows is trashy, trivial and an enormous waste of time. But, we all have our weaknesses. I watch these shows online, which is fine, but it's more fun to watch it on TV and you can only see that Go Fresh! Dove body wash commercial so many times before you decide that even the drama of Blair and Serena is not worth the agony of the same jingles every commercial break.

We got our digital converter box in April and I knew we got some new channels, but I didn't bother to check because I didn't want to open that Pandora's box and start watching more TV, and I figured we didn't get the CW anyway. Monday night I was a huge bundle of nerves, agitation, and all the stress that comes with making a big life-changing decision I just NEEDED to watch me some Gossip Girl. I needed to lose myself in the inane/wonderful senselessness of it all. I fired up my laptop, got cozy on the couch and told Bryce I would be there for awhile because I had several episodes to catch up on. He laughed because he knew how serious I was and then commented. "I'm surprised you haven't been watching them on TV, you know we get that channel now, right?" Oh, he knew I didn't not know!

Seriously, this is almost a deal breaker. We do not not tell our spouses such vital information. I'm Serious.

The car didn't end up in the lake

We defied the weather reports and went camping this last weekend. We drove down to Starve Hollow state park in Brown County and tried not to look at those dark ominous clouds all the way.

It was a beautiful place to camp, write on the edge of an almost flooded lake. I didn't get any pictures because the camera was out of batteries. It didn't rain at all in the evening and the dogs had so much fun swimming and chasing geese. The best part of the trip was when Hazel tried to eat a giant frog on our night hike. One of a frog's defence mechanisms is to secrete a nasty chemical through its skin. It was hilarious to watch her foam and spit for the whole rest of the hike.

After the frog incident Bryce asked what are the differences between frogs and toads. As-a-matter-of-fact, I can tell you the exact differences between those two animals. Apparently it is crucial for 2nd graders in Indiana to learn them. Ask me sometime so I can impress you with my wisdom.

The rain did come sometime in the middle of the night. Not just a little trickle either. It was the simultaneous lightning and thunder that woke me up. I was able to go back to sleep, but I kept dreaming that our car was sliding into the lake and I wouldn't be able to catch it in time. So I kept waking up every few minutes to see if it was safe and still. It pored and pored all night, but we didn't get wet and fared better than our neighbors. In the morning all the surrounding campsites had sleeping bags and blankets hung out to dry.

We had smores for breakfast...obviously it was a perfect camping trip. We plan on doing lots of camping this summer. Anyone want to come?

We are homeowners.

We closed on our cute little house last Thursday and we're pretty much all moved in. It definitely needs some beautification;some paint and a few updates. But it's ours! No more landlords or leases, and the mortgage is way less than we paid in rent!

I once read a quote that went something like this:

"Home is the place where it feels right to walk around without shoes”

It couldn't be more true. The last two places Bryce and I lived I never ever let my bare feet touch the floors if I could at all help it. They were dirty and gross no matter what I did. But this week, I have been letting my little toes touch the carpet every chance I get.

I am so excited to make this house our home. We will be living in it for at least the next three years...maybe longer. It feels great to have taken this next step in our life together. It wil be so fun to decorate to eventually bring children into it and to make it the kind of home we are urged by the scriptures to build for ourselves.

“Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God” (D&C 88:119).

There's really no place like home!


(pictures coming soon)