Weekend Recap...I Know it's Tuesday

Of course I meant to write this post yesterday, but I had priorities.  I had to sew up these little cuties, so no blogging for me.



I think they turned out pretty well.  I would have made more, but I ran out of stuffing.

On to the weekend.  I didn't get to put up fall decorations earlier in the week like I originally wanted to.  Why?  Because the tote that had all the stuff I needed was way in the back of our small, dark storage closet, buried under all the Christmas totes, (never fails) so I had to wait for Jason to help me get to it.  So that didn't happen until Saturday morning.  When we did get it all moved out, you would have thought it was Christmas.  Brennan had the greatest time pulling everything out of the box.  Following the unpacking, the house looked like it exploded, but that's ok.  It was worth it to see Brennan so excited.  (For some reason he absolutely loves pumpkins!)  I haven't taken pictures of everything yet, but when I do I'll post them.

Saturday night we went to the Olive Garden to eat, and the walked around Target for a couple hours.  That's the usual routine; go out to eat, eat too much, and then walk around Target to get some exercise until you feel normal again.  Hey, works for us. : )  We did find some good deals on stuff we normally wouldn't have even looked at.  Jason found a new leather cell phone holder on clearance for $4.98 and I found two good-smelling candles on sale for $0.75.  Score!

Sunday was the usual, we did the yard work, ran to Walmart (I can't remember why, now), and watched football.  Some of us (Jason) got more napping time in than football watching time, but it was all good.  I did make my pot of chili.  It was really good, and I made it in the crockpot so I didn't make too much.  (Usually, I make so much we are eating the leftovers all week.)  Sunday evening, Jason had to go to the airport to pick up a friend, and Brennan and I skyped with Nana and Papaw (oh, and "puppy," we can't forget her.)

 Other tidbits:

We watched Sherlock Holmes.  Rating: Eh.  Definitely not a movie I will ever want to watch again.

Brennan has discovered he can put on his own shoes.  He proceeds to put them on and take them off several times a day.

He also has figured out how to "play" his harmonica.  We get to hear his "music" all day.

I started ready the Harry Potter series.  I know, how many years behind am I.  My 100 Books post from the other day got me looking through the bookcase and I found one of the Harry Potter books Shanny or Andrew must have left behind one summer.  I figured what the heck, so I read that one, and then ordered the others off of eBay.  So that's what's on my reading list right now, which of course will require me to then watch the movies.

Well, I think that's about it.  Let's see what we can get into this week.  : )


Hugs,

Welcome Fall!

Happy Fall, Everyone!  Or should I say as they do in the South, Happy Fall, Y'all!



Did anyone see the Harvest Moon last night?  It was pretty cool.  We only got a glimpse because of all the haze and the clouds.



Fall is my favorite time of the year!  I love everything about it; the colors, the smells, the crispness, the food.  And it doesn't hurt that my birthday is in October, either. :)

Fall Food...yummmm!!  Because of my tooth, the dentist grounded me from all things chewy, so no candy apples or candy corn for me.  (I should have got an apple at the State Fair the other week, darn it!  Instead we had funnel cake.) On Sunday, with the season in mind, I made a batch of fried chicken.  Definitely not something I do regularly.  In fact, it's only the third time I've fried chicken - ever.  It was not nearly as good as my mom's, but seeing that after the first time I made it (like 8 years ago) I said I'd never make it again, I'd say it was a success. (The second time was after a moment of weakness, and Jason talked me into making some after watching Driving Miss Daisy.  Yeah, my chicken did not look at all like hers.)  This weekend, on the other had, I am making something I make very well.  Homemade chili.  Can't wait!


Don't judge me by my chicken.

Today, Brennan and I are going to dig out the fall decorations and start putting them up.  I have been ready for weeks, but Jason said I had to actually wait until fall gets here.  Bummer.  In the meantime, I have been making some new Halloween decorations since I haven't updated my stash in years.  I don't know if I'm going to put them up today or wait a couple of weeks.  We'll see, but I will definitely post pictures when it happens.  Pumpkins and fall leaves, though, the house will be covered in the by this evening!

Flowers for Mommy

The weather has been so nice here lately, we try to take a walk around the neighborhood every morning.  Along the way Brennan likes to pick all the dandelions and fuzzy grasses he can find.

And then when we get home (or if he hands get too full on the way) he gives them to me.

Isn't he the sweetest boy?

100 Books

OK, I've seen this list posted on two blogs I read regularly, so I thought I would give it a go too.

The BBC apparently believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. 

Some of the books are children's books and some of them were required school reading, so I thought 6 was a pretty low number.  I marked mine as bold for "have read," and italic for "partially read," since some of the selections were whole series.  Of course if I haven't read it at all (or if I've just seen the movie, haha) I just left it alone.  I would love to see what everyone else says about it.




1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


Not too bad, I'd say.  I might put a few of the non-read ones on my B&N wishlist.  I did wonder how they came up with these particular titles. 

And where's The Best Mouse Cookie?   

I get to read that one every day.

Just Ask Mouse.

Give "Peaces" a Chance

On Sesame Street last week Brennan learned to say "Peace" and to give the sign of peace with his fingers.

(Yeah, we're still working on the fingers.)  It's been his newest fascination, and he does it all the time.  I even hear him in his room after we've put him to bed saying "Peaccccccccce."  How cute is that? : )

He can also do the sign with both hands.

And what do you think you get then?


"Two Peaces." 

Of course. 

Why didn't the rest of the world think of that.

I've Been Crowned

You missed me yesterday didn't you?  That was because I spent most of my afternoon in the dentist's chair.  I didn't think it was a good idea to be blogging while there were several sharp instruments in my mouth.  Why was I at the dentist you ask?  It wasn't by choice, though I am due for a cleaning.  It was because of this very dangerous jar of olives.



On Sunday morning we went to the commissary to pick up a few things, one of them being the evil, dangerous jar of olives.  Later in the day we were getting ready to watch football, which of course requires snacks.  I was the one who opened the jar of olives so it was a requirement that I ate the first one.  You know, because they're packed all the way up to the top, and if you don't eat one some with your fingers how can you possibly get a spoon in there to scoop out the rest?  Well, that was my mistake, unbeknownst to me the first one I pulled out had a pit still in it, and when I tried to chew it, it broke my tooth.  Thankfully, I wasn't in excruciating pain.  The broken piece didn't actually come out, which is what I think saved me.  It did make it interesting trying to eat supper, (steak, no less) but I cut it up super small and made sure I only chewed on the good side.

The kicker to all this is Shanny called Sunday night to get her insurance information because she had chipped one of her teeth!  What's the likelihood of both of us breaking teeth in the same day?  We haven't heard an update from her yet, but hopefully hers isn't as bad as mine.  The only option for my battered tooth was getting a crown.  So several hours, and several hundred dollars later, I've been crowned. (Well temporarily, it will take a couple weeks for the permanent one to come in.)

From now on just call me Queen Heather.  I won't mind a bit. : )

p.s.  Happy Late Birthday, Mom!!  We love you!

Laugh at Yourself and the World Laughs with You

The other day I was trying to make a video of Brennan's version of  "You Can't Touch This."  It came on the radio the other day and Jason was trying to teach him the words.  Well, that video was a fail, but when I was playing it back on the computer I recorded Brennan watching himself.  Comedians only wish they could make people laugh this much.



It may just be because I'm the Mommy, but it cracks me up every time, too. : )

Rambling Wednesday...Give Me Some Coffee

I don't have a "What I'm Reading" post for today, since I'm not reading anything of note this week.  No "Wordless" or "One Word Wedneday" either.  Maybe because technically it should be Tuesday?  I'll just ramble for a bit and see what happens.

I'm not really "with it" yet this morning.  Brennan is being a major chatter box (he definitely doesn't take that after me!).  That, plus listening to the Cat in the Hat in the background is making it hard for me to think.  Martin Short is the voice (the most obnoxious voice) of the Cat.  Brennan loves that show, but it annoys me to no end.  And it's on for a whole hour.  Joy.  I think it will be radio time after it's over.

Jason got called in to work this morning at 4:00.  Poor guy.  That was after having to stay late last night.  So much for getting rested up over the weekend.  Hopefully he won't have to stay late tonight too.  All that is most of the reason why I feel so out of it this morning.  Since Jason got home so late, we let Brennan stay up late to be with him.  That cut into my evening mommy downtime, which snowballed into me not sleeping well last night, and then after Jason's wake up call this morning, I couldn't get back to sleep.  Brennan must not have slept well either.  When Jason came to kiss me goodbye this morning, he said when he checked on Brennan, he was sleeping on the floor in front of the door.  Funny kid, he must have fallen out of bed and rolled over there.  Good thing we put him to bed in warm jammies.  He must have been tired, Jason put him back in bed and he didn't stir a bit.

So enough about that.  Brennan and I did make some "art" yesterday.  I pulled out some of that stuff I got at the Dollar Tree over the weekend and we had some fun.


First we made some of these little pom-pom critters.  Why yes, those are twist-tie antennae.  I don't have any pipe cleaners at the moment.  They worked in a jiffy, don't you think?


Next we worked on making a paper plate smiley face.


Oh my, it looks like Mr. Smiley has some kind of crazy clown acne!


A House, A Tree, and the Sun.  Can you tell  Brennan was born in hurricane country?


Next we worked on some abstract mixed media.  It took extreme concentration.


"Better to See You With" Mixed Media By Brennan Bal

After all the artsy stuff, we also made some sugar cookies.  There are no pictures of those though.  They were tasty cookies, but not very pretty.  Let's just say when the recipe says refrigerate overnight, it really means it.


I also started working on my quilt again.  One of these days I will have enough diamonds to start piecing it together.

Well, I think that's about all for yesterday.  As for today, I think I need to go find some coffee.  Brennan is also telling me it's time for a "cheesy hand-wich" and a "pea-butter apple," so I better get on that.  I hope everyone has a Wonderful Wednesday!

Lone Buffalo

Buffalo. Balloons. Some Big Poop. and a Brisket

I can't believe it's already Tuesday!  We had a great weekend, though of course, it went by way too fast.  We started out bright and early Saturday morning by going to the Balloon Stampede on Antelope Island.  We had fun, but "stampede" was a little bit of an overstatement.  There were only four balloons there; one of them was tethered to give people rides, and another on never made it past half inflated.  I guess if you've never been to one of these things before, it was pretty impressive, but Jason and I have, so we were like "OK, where's the rest of them?"  This is the second time that we've had those kind of thoughts about stuff we've done here, so we've just come to the conclusion that Utah just does stuff, well...smaller.


Early in the morning.  See the sun rising behind us?


The buffalo greeted us shortly after we made it on the island.


The sun made it over the mountains.


A snake skin, just in case you forgot who was boss out here.


Here they go!  You like how they had the crowd on the side of the balloons that required everyone be looking into the face of the sun.  Nice.


Almost ready.


Up, up, and away!


Whew, that was a lot of work!  Time for a sandwich.


Second balloon inflating.


People watching.


Thankfully, the balloon went inland.  They were afraid the wind could possibly carry them out over the lake.


The third balloon.  This was about as big as this one ever got.  I think some of their crew failed to show up, so they were having some problems.


Obviously, Brennan is not used to getting up so early.


Making himself comfy.


Flying away.


Baffalo Poop.  Hey, I'm just reporting all the facts. : )


ReMax balloon.  This one was the tethered one giving people rides.  The line was SO LONG, there was no way we were even going to attempt it.


Brennan's had about enough of the balloons.


Jason


In case it wasn't obvious before that he was bored.

So with that sentiment in mind, we decided to pack up and head over the the other side of the island to the Fielding Garr Ranch.  We've been there a few times before (it was also one of those places we went with Nana and Papaw while they were here this summer, but I neglected to blog about it) but we always enjoy going. 


One last look at a balloon.


We picked a great time to drive over.  The buffalo were on the move.


More buffalo.


This one ran right past the truck!


We brake for buffalo!  Good thing we weren't in a hurry.


The straglers.


We also brake for running pronghorns.  They don't seem to be the brightest things.  One of them ran into the side of the U-Haul when we were moving out to Utah.


King of the mountain (of buffalo poop!)


We made it through the gauntlet of wild animals, and went to check out the horses.  The trail rides hadn't started yet, so they were all still at the barn.


Ready to ride.


I think they could have stayed here all day.


Petting the horses.


Chickens.


At the ranch house.


A big rock.  I think I'll have a seat.


Jason and Brennan


Peek-a-boo!


On the way out, more buffalo.


And more pronghorn antelope.

And that concludes our Antelope Island tour.  I didn't take many pictures of the lake because the water was way down.  I wish I could transmit the smell over the computer though, it was the worst!  And I want you to share all of our experiences, of course.

Sunday, we went to the commissary to buy groceries, did some yard work, and then I went to the Dollar Tree (by myself!!!) to stock up on craft supplies.  I love our Dollar Tree here, besides fabric and spray paint, they really have everything I need to be crafty.  Really, it's that huge.  I'll be posting about some of my finds there soon.  The rest of the day, we just hung out and did some grilling.  It was a nice relaxing day.

On Monday, we drove down the road to a little town called Hooper.  They were having their Hooper Tomato Days festival.  We were pleasantly surprised.  It was a really nice gathering.  We actually would have like to stayed longer, but we had a brisket marinating back at the house, so we had to leave so Jason could get it on the grill.  We know for next time.


Tomato Days sign.  Though, it should have been "Tomato Day," since the festivities were only on Labor Day.


First place sunflower.


Gigantic Pumpkin.


Brennan's favorite: the watermelons.


We had to leave before the Rodeo started, but we did get to see some of the Junior Barrel Racing.  So cute!


Brennan intently watching the "horseys."


We moved to the other side.  It was cold in the shade!


The older girls give it a go.


We had to take a break to do some swinging.


Another of Brennan' favorites.


Happy to be free of the stroller.


Walking the bleachers.


Mad because he got too far away and Daddy had to go retrieve him.


Unfortunately, time to go home.


We did stop at the Farmer's Market on the way out.  I sauted the squash and zucchini to go with the brisket, and sliced one of the tomatoes.  Yum, yum!

I hope everyone else had as great a weekend as we did.  It was definitely a great closing weekend to summer.