Corban Turns 3

Things have been pretty crazy for the last week and so I am just getting around to posting Corban's birthday. I will talk about how we celebrated in another post. This post is dedicated to my little 3 year old boy.It is so fun to look back on these old pictures and see what a cute boy he has always been. Corban Ronald was named after Bump's dad, Ron, but he is most definitely more Wright looking than Williams. He was delivered c-section in Rexburg, Idaho by our very good friend (practically family as far as I am concerned), Dr. John Allred. He started having some problems on the day that I delivered and ended up having the cord wrapped around his neck twice. But he was an absolutely beautiful baby and such an angel.
Bump absolutely loves Gabby, but he couldn't hide his excitement that he got his little boy. He and Corb have always been buddies.
Corban was a pretty mellow boy and always really happy and easy until right about the age of 2. He slept well, he liked to cuddle and played so cute with anything that Gabby had, or anything he could turn into a car and push around the room. He loves cars and trucks and that started very young.

To say that Corban has had the "terrible two's" would be an understatement. Anyone that knows him would agree that I am not just saying that. Gone were the days of cuddling and being sweet and mellow. He is a very determined and stubborn kid. Hopefully those are traits that will help him later in his life. I have wondered several times who took my sweet little boy and traded him in for the monster that has been living with me for the last year.

2nd birthday

Thankfully, in the past month I have seen more and more glimpses of my sweet boy returning. He is starting to mellow out every day. He still likes to drive Gabby nuts and pushes all the right buttons to make her angry, but overall he is calming down and seems to be more in control of his emotions.I do absolutely love my little boy and I love seeing his excitement over the little things that I never think about. I can't wait to see what life has in store for this little guy.

House Pictures for Mom

My mom has been asking me for pictures of the house with the roof now finished and the fence up. I hadn't realized that I was being lazy and only taking pictures of the fence from the house and not going out into the road and taking pictures of the fence with the house. Sorry Mom! So, here are some pictures of my house from the street (how most people see our house now).

This is a before picture taken on the 4th of July - Don't be distracted with how cute the flags make the house look! Tera told me to put the flags back up for the new pictures, but I decided not to.

This is the same shot as above taken with the new roof and fence.

Here is another before shot taken from the corner. Notice the juniper bush on the left?

And an after shot taken at the corner also. Notice the absence of the juniper bush on the left. Hooray! That will be replaced with flowers as soon as I can afford them.

These last two are just pictures taken from the street showing the house and fence.

We need to still do some major flower planting in the yard and some touch up painting on the house, but we love it and the kids love it. I can relax a bit more knowing that the kids are contained! Don't the pictures make you just want to come and visit?? Come on out!!

Did I mention that I hate wasps??

If you haven't read my previous post called "I hate wasps!" please discontinue reading this post and read the next one first. Then come back and read this post.

As you can recall from my previous post I declared war on the wasps in my yard. I read all different web sites that said to wait until dusk to mount your attack. So, I patiently waited until the sun started to set before I pulled out my RAID Hornet and Wasp killer. There they were all coming back to their nests to bed down for the night, when suddenly from about 10 feet away poison shot at them covering every inch of their nests and killing them before they had time to realize what was happening.

I sprayed the nest still left in the bush, I sprayed the nest on the ground by the bush (that I had previously knocked down), I even sprayed around the opening in my eaves and on some nests just starting in the dormer peak on the front of my house. The spray knocked them immediately out and things were good.

Once there were no more wasps around the nest in the bush, I knocked it down and was surprised at how big it was (it was deceiving from where I was looking at it from the outside). I gave it some time and then decided to start (or finish depending on how you look at it) pruning my bushes again. I really wanted to get them done while I had Bump around to do the tops of them. Things were going well and Bump took over and finished the first bush and started on the second. I offered to take over doing around the bottom of the second bush since I knew he would have to do the top and I didn't want him to have to do the entire thing. He went into the house to check on the "sleeping" kids.

While he was in the house I continued hacking my way around the bush making it look so good, when suddenly out of nowhere I got stung in the arm again!! Seriously! It must have been a straggler wondering where his nest went. Oh, I was so mad! It is the same arm as the first sting too, but this time it was high up on the inside of my arm right below my sleeve. I ran into the house and told Bump that I was finished and it was up to him to get those bushes looking good. I had done my part and paid the price!So, even though it was hot outside, he got on his jacket and gloves and went out and finished trimming my bushes for me. He never got stung, but imagined them flying all around him and was very careful and light on his feet to get away if he needed to. I am still on destroy mode and will be out spraying again as soon as I find nests that survived! Stupid wasps!

I hate wasps!

We have had a problem with wasps in our yard this summer. When the roofers came and replaced our roof they were stung several times in the process. One of the roofers said that they took down at least 5 wasp nests up inside the front eaves of our roof. Since the roof has been finished I still see the wasps flying around that particular area and so I am sure that they are back and building more and more nests. I have really come to hate wasps and their dang nests!

Yesterday I was out trimming our overgrown bushes out in the front yard. I finished most of one bush and started on the second one. After I took a few cuts I noticed some wasps flying around me. I stopped cutting and looked around to see if there was a nest in my bush. Sure enough there was quite a large nest with several wasps flying around it. I took my clippers and knocked down the nest and ran and got the kids into the house while the wasps were mad. I went ahead and put Quincy down for a nap and got the other two kids playing upstairs and decided to see if the wasps had calmed down yet.

I walked up to the bush and could only see a couple of wasps, so I thought I was pretty safe to start trimming again (it drives me nuts not to complete a project that I have already started). I went to the other side of the bush, just in case, and started clipping away. After only 2 or 3 clips I was swarmed by the angry wasps and they were mad! I was swishing them away from my hair and around me while I danced toward the house and one of them stung me right on the wrist. Stupid wasps! I must have looked so funny to anyone driving by at the time.

Getting stung by a wasp hurts! I ran the sting under water and washed it with soap, but I could feel the venom just burning around my wrist. After awhile it let up and I put some benedryl gel on it and the pain pretty much went away. Then last night it felt like I pulled a muscle in my wrist and it took me awhile to figure out what I had done to hurt my wrist. The only thing I had happen to my wrist was getting stung by that dump wasp! It is still sore this morning.

I feel like such a baby writing this - I am fine and it's not a big deal, but I have declared all out war on the wasps in our yard! Bring on the poison! I now hate wasps!

The week without Bump

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. It seems that many of us have had the summer-slacker-syndrome when it comes to blogging. This week Bump got to go with his dad and brothers on their annual Father-Son fishing trip. Tyler was able to fly out from Ohio with his son Wes and they all went in on a cabin rental just outside of Bozeman, Montana. The cabin was right on a beautiful river with several other rivers within a short driving distance. Bump said that it was nice and cool and absolutely beautiful! He is moving Bozeman up on his list of places where he would like to live.He hasn't given me a lot of details on the trip, but it was really relaxing for him and it was very much needed. They were able to watch a lot of the Olympics and cheer on Michael Phelps and the other swimmers, as well as the "Redeem Team," as the press is calling the US Mens Basketball team.
He got back last night just as the kids were going to bed and you should have seen the looks on the kids faces when their dad came walking into their room! You would have thought he has been gone for months rather than almost a week. They screamed and giggled, almost to hysterics, and jumped all around the room. Then he got to spend lots of time in their room trying to calm them back down to go to sleep again!
While he was gone my sister, Tera, and her 3 kids came out and spent that time with us. We had fun working on the computer, watching the Olympics and doing some other busy work around the house. It was nice to have the company before she starts school again next week.
Anyway, the week went by really fast and there isn't much else to tell. We are glad that Dad is back home and that he had a really fun trip to Montana!

Finally the gates are here

Now the fence is really complete! The caps are on all the posts and the gates are installed! Now the kids are completely contained and we can lock the gates if we need to. Hooray for the fence! I can't believe what a difference just finishing it with the caps makes, I absolutely love it and we have had such a great response from people around town and in the ward. It makes you feel good to know that you are making an old home look even better. Now onto the flowers. . .

The front gate

The front gate again

The side fence by the driveway - notice my newly planted iris plants by the fence?

The back gate

Doing My Girl's Hair

Any of you that have seen pictures of my girls, or know me at all, know that I am not very creative or ambitious when it comes to doing my girl's hair. Gabby didn't have hair until she was almost 2, then when she actually had some hair she cut it off, and even still it grows incredibly slow. So, she hasn't given me too many opportunities to need to figure out ways to do her hair.

I have an amazing sister-in-law who was lucky enough to have a daughter that has always had a ton of hair to play with. She is great about taking the time to have her daughters hair look so cute and fun. Gabby always looks like a bit of an orphan in comparison - I have no one to blame but myself. Anyway, now that I have 2 girls I have really decided to try and do something with the hair that I have been given to play with, but what do I even try?? My sister-in-law told me about a blog that she discovered called shedoeshair.blogspot.com. I finally went in and checked it out and got some really fun ideas for both of the girl's hair. There are also some links to even more cool hair blogs for girls. I am glad someone out there has this kind of creativity so that people like me can just copy them!

So, since today is Sunday I decided to go in and find one to try. I gave Gabby some choices and she chose one that looks like a crown, of course. It was fun trying to make her sit still enough to finish, her braids were a bit short to fit into the pony tail, but little clips did the trick, and it actually turned out pretty cute! I also did Quincy's hair, but she is asleep so I can't take a picture, it's just 2 puffy braids on top of her head - she doesn't have enough hair to do much. Anyway, I put a few of my favorite links at the bottom of this post, happy styling! Thanks for the inspiration, Casi!




www.pipershairdos.blogspot.com
www.babesinhairland.blogspot.com
www.curlsandcowlicks.blogspot.com

The Mostly Finished Fence

I say the mostly finished fence because they ran out of the little picket caps and didn't have the post caps or the 2 gates to actually finish everything. . . other than that it is finished!! It is amazing how quick they did our entire fence! I can't even think about how long it would have taken us to do all this work. They were finished today before 12:30!! Crazy huh? Once the gates are in the kids will be totally contained and can play outside to their hearts content!! Yeah!! Now we just need to get the gardening in line and we are in business - anyway, the pictures speak for themselves so here you go: