Two Weeks outside and several trips to D&B

These last two weeks have been so great. I really do come more alive again in the spring. I've spent so much time outside and it has been wonderful.  There was gardening, there was a camping trip, there was crazy yard landscaping projects, and there were several trips to D&B Supply. 

 Let's recap. 

First up here is my peach tree because I love it so dang much. 

Two weeks ago was Monday, March 15th. I was still riding the high of the best day ever on Saturday. When we were done with work and school on Monday I went to D&B to buy some soil amendments like manure and peat moss. Then I came home and went back to work on the backyard. 

I basically left the kids alone in the house with Youtube as a parent. I think we were all happy to have a break from each other after a whole winter of being inside together. I was surprised when Veronica came out to show me this lego creation. I'd assumed she'd been on Youtube the whole time, but she'd been playing quietly with legos. She'd built a jail. 

Lydia had gone inside D&B with me and she'd bought a little plastic baby deer figure. When we got home Charlotte wanted one too. I didn't want to drive back over there just for a figurine so I said she and Lydia could walk to D&B and get one. Both girls were a little scared by that at first. They said, "It's so far."  I told them, "It's basically as close as Smiths and you've walked to Smith's by yourselves."  Then they were worried about crossing the busy street. But I told them to use the light at the intersection.  One of them was still a little worried about how to get there so I drew a map.  

Then they headed out on a walk to the store. They came back about 30 minutes later as proud as they could be. Charlotte had bought a figurine of a Doe. The girls played with their deer for a long time.  Later in the week Veronica bought a Buck so they could all play together. (I drove Veronica for that.)

We hadn't just gone to D&B after school. Lydia had talked me into taking her to Joanns for some craft supplies. She wanted to make herself a magic staff for a game she'd been playing with Charlotte. She worked on decorating her staff while I worked in the backyard. 

Okay I bet you want to see what I worked on don't you.  Well I'll show you, but first here is a picture of one of the peach blossoms. 

Okay, here's what I did.  Impressive, right? 

 I know it doesn't look like much, but let me tell you what to look for. See those logs laying down by the white fence. Those logs were part of the walls of the shed we pulled down.  I laid the logs down to form a garden bed. I took soil from the small hill behind the shed and moved it over to the new garden bed. I added peat moss and composted manure to make the soil better. Then I transplanted blackberry plants into garden bed.

The berries used to be in two rows. Now they are in more of a large L shape. Here are the transplanted berries in the new garden bed. This used to be just a blank space between the shed and the fence.  Now its a garden bed. 

  

When Brandon came home from work we had dinner and then we went right outside to keep working. He built me another garden box in the old garden so I could get peas planted. He used wood from the shed to make the box. We finished right as the sun went down so I didn't get a picture.  

While he was working on the box I was digging out more soil from that low hill. There was a trench of sorts where the wall of the shed had met the grassy area of the yard. It wasn't deep, but it was prominent enough that Veronica had tripped over it about a million times. Since the fire pit was by the trench I didn't want Veronica falling into the fire pit.  So I filled in the trench. It's one of those things that you don't even notice, but it's made a huge difference.  

Here's let's do some before and after pictures for comparison.  Here's what the area looked like when we were still taking down the shed.  You can see the trench in the foreground of the picture. And you can see the white fence behind the shed wall.

Here's what the area looked like on Saturday when we did the fire. You can see the low hill still intact, the trench and the hard ground by the fence. 

And here's what it looked like when I was done with moving the plants on Monday. I don't think I'd filled in the trench yet, but you can see the garden bed that I created. 

I wasn't the only one being creative. Charlotte had been hard at work on a Leprechaun Trap. She created the outer shell that would drop down and trap the leprechaun. 

She astounded me by using little cardboard straps and staples to hold the sides and the top of the card board together. 

She created and inside portion of the trap that was a leprechaun hotel.

It was shaped like a clover and had a little bed, a chair and a table inside. 

Her plan was to rig it so the top part would close over the whole hotel and trap the leprechaun when he triggered a trap. 

On Tuesday night I had Staff Meeting at work so I wasn't able to help set the leprechaun traps. (Something I was not sorry about in the least.) Brandon helped the kids set everything up. 

Here's a picture of the police station Veronica made out of legos. She had an office area, a jail area, and a police van. 

I really don't care about St Patrick's day any more, but the kids still do. Here's a picture of a leprechaun that Lydia drew. 

The leprechaun did visit us. he was tricky and put all the chairs on top of the table. 

He sprung all the traps. 

Even Charlotte's.

But he left cute hats and gold coins for everyone. 

We didn't do much else for St Patrick's Day. That evening I had the Autism Support Group. We doubled our numbers. There were 2 people at the last meeting. This time we had 4. 

Here's a picture of Lydia's Barbie Camper in action. The barbie family went to the beach. 

Here's the full view of the beach. 

On Thursday at work I was between projects. The receptionist didn't have much going on, and one of the therapists clients had cancelled. There weren't any other clients in the office and we realized it was the perfect time to rearrange our front area. We've had the idea to move the front desk for a few weeks,  and so we went ahead and did that. It was really fun to rearrange. I think the room flows a lot better now. I'll have to remember to take pictures later. 

Thursday afternoon we had horseback riding lessons again. It was Lydia and Charlotte's turn. 

The weather was beautiful!

Derrick and Veronica played in the car most of the time. They like to pretend they are in a rocket. They pretend to turn off the gravity and float. 

On Thursday night I didn't have to go anywhere.  Yay!

Instead it was Brandon's turn.  He was thinking about buying a rifle. Our bishop is really into weapons and so I'd told Brandon to ask him for advise. (We joked that he should say, "Bishop, I have a question about ordinance.")  The bishop was thrilled about Brandon wanting a rifle so he offered to go with him to look at some. So on Thursday night they went to D&B and looked at the different rifles there. Everything is super back ordered right now so Brandon wasn't able to buy anything, but it was a good night for him. 

On Friday I had to work for a little bit to cover for the morning receptionist while she did some stuff to register for college this fall. I'm glad I went in because I ended up being super busy the whole time I was there.  

Then I went home and finished up school with the kids. Here's proof we did school.

Saturday was much more laid back that the last week had been. The weather was cold and wet so we didn't feel like doing much outside.  Instead we worked on inside things.  

We've had these super ugly lights in our living room. I've known I've wanted to replace them ever since we moved in, but I haven't known what I wanted to replace them with.  My sister Hillary put in some LED lights in her house and showed them on Marco Polo. I realized that's what I wanted in the my living room.  Here's the old light. 

Here's a very dim picture of Brandon replacing the light. 

And here's an oddly reflective picture of the new light. We have two of them up in the living room. They are perfect because they go up against the ceiling. We didn't have to worry about anchoring them or carving out any drywall.  And they are so BRIGHT.  The living room has always been a little gloomy at night.  But now it's very well lit. 

Charlotte and Lydia were cleaning their room and came to show me the funny thing that Cubby and Antler had done. 

Brandon and I went on a date to buy new sheets at Bed Bath and Beyond. We ended up buying a whole new comforter and sheet set. We've had this king size bed for 5 years, and this is the first king size comforter we've bought. (And if you are wondering where the headboard is, well it's in the garage waiting to be stained. 

Brandon also replaced the faucet in the kids bathroom. It had been clogged or something so there was hardly any water coming out of the faucet. 

At some point during the week I'd gone to DI to find new Sunday shoes for Derrick. He'd completely outgrown his other pair. Lydia came into the store with me and we ended up buying some new dresses for her and Charlotte. Then Veronica got jealous and wanted new dresses too.  She HATES dresses so it was a big deal that she was asking for more. So I took her to Goodwill on Saturday and she found three dresses that she was willing to wear.  (Really they were more like shirts with skirts on them, but this was progress) 

Since Easter is conference weekend I let the girls wear their new dresses to church on Sunday. They all looked so grown up.

I wasn't feeling well most of Sunday. I'll just say girl problems and leave it at that.  But I did go outside and see that my daffodils in the backyard and blooming. I need to remember to plant more of these in the fall.

And here is the pretty peach tree. It's blooming earlier than all the other trees because it came from out of state. It's done well through the cold nights so I kind of hope it blooms this early every year. 

Here's a view of the garden. The bed in the back corner is where I'd planted peas.

Here are the tulips poking up in the front. 

Monday was another day where I had to cover for the receptionist. I had to go in at 8:00. I can't believe I used to have the kids to school every day by that time. Next year is going to be rough when we have to get back to an early morning routine. 

Technically this week was Spring Break for the school district. But I decided we'd keep doing school this work. We did take school off on Friday, but other than that we kept basically our same schedule. 

During homeschool on Monday we did writing time. Here's Antler at her little desk getting ready to write. 

The prompt was "Where would your dream vacation be and why." Antler wrote, "The North Pole."

Here are all the kids writing together. This lasted less than 2 minutes. But hey, at least it happened. 

Derrick has been OBSESSED with the Deep Space Rocket Launch Control Lego set. He goes to visit the set at Target nearly every day during therapy. Weeks ago I told him he could get it for his birthday. We even marked on the calendar the day that we would buy it in order to have it for his birthday.  Derrick has been patently waiting for that date.  It finally happened on Monday.  

I asked Derrick if he wanted to pick it up at the store or have it delivered.  He told me he wanted it delivered.  So we got onto Targets website and ordered the set.  Then Derrick asked, "When will the package come?" He was very disappointed when I told him it would be here on Wednesday.  He thought the truck would drive right up.  

So we got back on the website and cancelled the delivery order. Then we ordered it again for in store pickup.  Derrick was so thrilled when we were able to pick it up a few hours later. He spent a long time staring at the box. I hid it the next day.

Tuesday was a snowy morning. 

But the peach tree didn't mind. 

I had to get up early again on Tuesday and have a tire fixed at Les Shwab. I'd noticed it was loosing air and they got it all fixed up again.  

Then I went home so Brandon could run an errand at 9:00.  While I was home the kids created a school for their stuffed animals. 

It was so cute. 

Brandon came back from his errand.  He'd been able to get a COVID Vaccine.  I'm still not entirely sure how this happened.  I'd added his name to a list managed by the state of Idaho. He was supposed to get notified when it was his turn to get a vaccine. That way we wouldn't have to keep paying attention to all the different notices of who was eligible.  I assumed he would be notified sometime in May or June. Well on Monday a doctors office called Brandon and said that they could schedule him for a vaccine on Tuesday morning. Idaho doesn't open up to all adults until April 1st so I don't know how Brandon was eligible before that. The only thing I can think of is that I said he was an essential worker (transportation counts and essential) when I signed him up for that notification list. But we weren't going to question it too much.  He got his first dose of the Moderna Vaccine and he'll get the second dose in three weeks. 

Brandon usually doesn't react well to Vaccines so we were expecting some bad side effects. But overall things were okay. He came home a little early from work that day, and had a headache the next day, but other than that and a sore arm he was fine. We'll see what the second dose does in a few weeks. 

Tuesday after dinner I told all the kids, "It's warm outside. Forget dishes and let's go outside.  The snow from the morning was long gone. We all needed jackets, but really it was a nice evening. Brandon brought a big tube out of the garage. He'd brought it home from work during the winter and the kids have been itching to play with it. 

The kids had a lot of fun with the tube. 

They would climb in it and see how far they could go.  And look, that's me in the back ground.  I was working on digging out more of the hill. I wanted to put in a post as a retaining wall to keep the soil intact around the raspberries that were still planted on the top of the hill. 

Here are the kids playing more. 

Seriously this tube was so fun.

Here's my work for the evening.  You can kind of see the log buried in the dirt. I also dug two deep holes and pounded in some T-stakes to hold the log in.  It all worked really well, but by the time I was done with the project I realized I was going to need to change it. I decided to take out the log, dig deeper, and then stack two logs in that spot, but that would have to wait until another day.

Brandon had spent the evening cutting boards for garden boxes. We ran out of daylight before he could screw them together. But at least they were ready.

And here is the peach tree. Best purchase ever. 

On Wednesday after school I took the kids to Jiffy Lube so we could get and oil change for the car. Marcia came with us and kept trying to lick the guy who cleaned our windows. 

On Wednesday night I needed to go grocery shopping to buy some food for the mini vacation we were going on the next day.  I asked if Derrick wanted to go with me. He did so we went got in the car. But we didn't go to the grocery store. Instead we went to  D&B. Funny how that happens. 

We were there so I could pick up more wood chips. I'd ordered a tree online and it was supposed to show up on Thursday. If there was time on Thursday I was hoping to get it planted and I wanted to make sure I had wood chips for it. 

Derrick helped me load the bag of wood chips onto the cart. Then he pushed the cart for me. He wanted to see if the were any chicks so we went over there to look. There were a bunch.  Derrick had fun looking at them. 

Then we bought the wood chips and went to the grocery store. 

Thursday was a busy day. I had work, but I only hung around long enough to take care of the mail. Then I was out of there because I had so much to do. 

We had homeschool, reporting homeschool work, a trip to the library, and packing packing and more packing. 

Also here is the Easter Grass. It started sprouting.  

It was a lot of work to get ready to go on our little vacation. Brandon came home at 6:30 and I was working almost right up until the time he showed up. I felt like I was handling it well, but I was pretty testy by the time we left. Things were a little tense during the hour drive west to Three Island Crossing State Park.  

But by the time we arrive I was feeling a lot more relaxed.  We arrived at 8:00 and so the park staff was long gone. They'd left the cabin open for us though.  I'd reserved this cabin back in January and it was so nice to have it waiting for us. This is a picture I took the next morning. But I want you to have a visual idea of what the cabin looked like.  It was nearly identical to the cabin we stayed in last month at Lake Walcott. 

We unloaded the car and settled down for a late dinner. I'd made tinfoil dinners back at the house and cooked them in the oven. I'd put them into a pot and wrapped it in a towel. Everything was still hot when we sat down to eat. 

I'm so glad this worked out.  No one was in a mood to wait for dinner.

I'd picked up the book The Goose Girl from the library that day. I'd ordered it several weeks ago and I was kind of mad that it hadn't shown up yet. But this turned out to be perfect timing.  I was able to read the first 2 or 3 chapters to the kids while they fell asleep. 

This cabin was nearly identical to the other one except in one very important way. The other one had a very thick futon mattress on the futon. This one did NOT. It had a very thin mattress. And the mattress was on top of slats. I could feel each and every slat pushing into my body all night.  Brandon and I were miserable that night. 

In the morning, I got up to use the bathroom and then came back and laid down on the kids' bed. That was much more comfortable because it didn't have the slats pressing into my back.  I fell asleep while Brandon fed the kids breakfast. Then he took the kids on a walk.  This is one of the pictures from their walk. 

Those cliffs were so pretty. I had only looked at the area from google maps so I didn't know what the topography of the area looked like. I'd expected it to be flat on both sides of the river. 

The kids and Brandon came back and I woke up for real. Then I went exploring with the kids. Here are Derrick and Lydia on the porch. 

Our cabin was very close to the Snake River. We had such a beautiful view. 

Here's the river. I loved the color. 

The kids took me on a trail along the river. 

We saw a muskrat.  Derrick said it was a beaver. 

The kids were so excited to show me everything. 

More river. 

They liked this little crossing. 

And here are the cliffs again.

The cliffs reminded me of the yellow stone cliffs in Yellowstone.

Brandon and me doing a selfie.

More hiking kids.

Brandon took the kids fishing while I worked on something that the kids had been looking forward to for weeks.  Around Valentines Day Derrick got very interested in Treasure Hunts.  I told him I'd do a big treasure hunt when we went camping at Three Island Crossing State Park. We wrote it on the calendar and he has been counting down to it every since.  

I'd bought some fun "treasures" at a party supply store and brought them on the trip. So while Brandon took the kids fishing I took the treasures and set up some clues. 

While I was doing that I took this picture of the museum that is at this state park. 

Here's a close up.

This park is at a location of a river crossing for the Oregon Trail. There was a replica of a ferry. I decided that would be the perfect place to have the treasure hunt end. 

You can kind of see a corner of the ferry in this picture. I had the treasures in a brown paper grocery bag. I wrote on it, "Illguth Family Treasure" in case anyone happened to find it before we got back to it.  Then I shoved it under the ferry. 

Then I wrote about 4 clues leading back to our cabin.  I met up with Brandon and the kids and told them the hunt was ready. They were so excited.  Here they are reading the first clue. 

The first clue took them to the fire pit near our cabin. The second clue directed them to the showers at the bathroom. Here they are running up to the bathroom.

The third clue directed them to a group fire pit.

And the fourth clue told them to check the abandoned ferry - only it wasn't abandoned any more. 

It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but a group of about 10 kids had biked down from the RV campground. They were riding and running all over the ferry.  I was glad I'd thought to push the bag with the treasure far under the ferry. But I was trying to figure out how have my kids discover it without making the other kids jealous. 

Charlotte ended up finding it.  And she listened to me when I told her we should find somewhere else to open the bag. So we walked back to our area by the river and found a picnic table. 

The kids were so excited about their treasure. There were pirate swords and eye patches for everyone, slinkies, candy, plastic rings, and bubble necklaces.

Charlotte was so good at divvying it out.  

After the treasure was divided we went back to our cabin for some lunch. We had sandwiches on rolls. Derrick was so excited to finally get the Sprite he'd picked out at the store with me.  He'd been asking to drink it with every meal on this trip.

Here's Lydia eating pudding on the porch. 

Charlotte and Derrick. 

The kids ran around for a while, but eventually we all ended up in the cabin again. It was Brandon's turn to take a nap on the other bed.  While he zonked out I read to the kids. 

The kids ended up on the top bunk blowing bubbles. 

All the bubbles were pretty cool looking. 

We read for a long time. Then Brandon woke up and we decided to go visit the Oregon Trail Museum. 

We liked looking at the big wagon outside the museum. The kids tried to imagine living out of that for months.  

I said, "And we thought an RV was crazy."

We showed up at 3:48 and discovered the museum closed at 4:00. The museum worker let us in and told us, "We close in 12 minutes." I said, "That's about all we need."   We zipped through that museum in 10 minutes.  It had some cool displays, but nothing to get really excited about. 

Then we walked up to another area where there were some other wagon replicas on display.

It was really, really windy and the kids were pretending to blow away. 

We blew back down to camp. Brandon and I swung on the porch together for a while. The kids ran around and played pirates.  It was windy, but warm enough that the kids didn't need shoes most of the time. 

Here's a pretty tree that was near out cabin.

It had lots of flowers. 

Here's the view of our cabin from the back. 

After a while we decided it was time to light the fire and cook hot dogs. 

We didn't have room to pack camp chairs and so we just sat on the grass.  We probably looked like inept campers, but really we were just traveling light. 

The hot dogs cooked fast and were really yummy. The wind didn't quit at all during dinner and finally I'd just had enough. You can only handle so many hours of incessant wind.  I headed into the cabin to join Derrick and Veronica who had already given up.

The kids did tricks with the bunk bed. (Until it got a little too unsafe and I called an end to that.)

They also blew more bubbles and Lydia tried to eat them. 

I read for a little bit, but the kids were a little too wound up.  So we decided to go on one last walk at Sunset. 

I love these windmills off in the distance. 

Here's the river. 

And the kids and the river. 

It was a  really pretty walk. 

We could see the almost full moon as we walked back to camp.

The kids got ready for bed and I read to them. They fell asleep very fast.  

Then Brandon and I went back outside and built up the fire again. The wind had finally died down and everything was still.  We had a fun time talking together as we huddled close to keep warm.  We finally went to bed around midnight.  

Brandon had the idea to try sleeping perpendicular to the slats in the bed. That was slightly more comfortable, but the night was still rough. 

In the morning we all had to go to the bathroom at the same time. The walk back was really pretty.

The river was very calm and had mist coming off of it. 

I loved how pretty the reflection was. 

We went back in the cabin and had yogurt for breakfast.  

Then we packed everything up and were soon in the car heading home. We'd had a great visit and I'm glad we stayed two nights, but we were ready to go back home.  This was Saturday and we still had a lot to do. 

The drive back home was about an hour. When we got home we unpacked the car and everyone took showers.  

My bareroot tree had been delivered on Thursday, but I'd only had time to unpack it and then put it in the basement.  So when I got done with my shower I went to work on planting the tree. It looks a little small here, but it will grow up into a pretty Weeping Birch.  We have plans to turn the area around the tree into a flower bed, but that will happen later.  For now it feels good to have a tree in the ground.  

After the tree was planted we went to McDonalds for our traditional mini-vacation lunch.  We took the food to a park and ate there.  But the wind found us again so we didn't stay long. 

Back at home Brandon build the remaining 3 boxes for the existing garden space.  I was able to plant onions 200 onions in 2 of the boxes.  Onions worked really well last year so I wanted to double how many we planted this year. 

I went to work moving the log that I'd previously put in as a retaining wall. I dug out the area and then put two logs in to be a stronger retaining wall. 

But all that got eclipsed by the next project we decided to tackle. 

We've had this wishing well thing on the side of our patio ever since we moved in.  We haven't really liked it, but it's huge and appeared to be cemented in so it stayed.  Well a few weeks ago the kids tied a hammock to it. While they were rocking in the hammock I noticed the well rocking back and forth.  I quickly had them move the hammock, but I realized that the well isn't quite as permanent as we thought. 

As the back fire pit area started to take shape in my mind, Brandon and I started talking about moving the well to that area.  It could be a good little table for hot dogs and smore supplies. 

So after Brandon finished building the boxes he started to try to figure out how to move the well.  He was able to easily pull it off the cement block that it was built on. He and I worked out a way we could move the well by working together. I'd hold the cement table and he'd hold the roof. We'd work together to scoot the well inch by inch.  

Here's a video Lydia took of that process. My pants aren't very flattering, but let's just agree to focus on how strong my body is and not on how my belly looks, okay.

We actually made pretty good progress with this method, but as we tried to pass between the tree house and the garden shed we realized we had a problem. We had no way to move sideways. We could only move forward. It was going to be very tough to move the well between the tree house and the shed, and then navigate the rest of the yard back to the firepit area. Plus it was harder to move on the grass. 

We needed a new plan.  

Brandon went to Lowes and bought one of those wheelie boards used for moving pianos.  He came back and I helped him lower the well down so it was on it's side. Brandon strapped the wheelie board to the well with tie downs.  Then we raised the well back up.  But immediately the wheels started sinking into the grass. 

We lowered it down again and Brandon had the brilliant idea to grab wood and lay it down in front of the well like a boardwalk.  We made a boardwalk and then stood the well up again. It worked!  We were able to slowly push the well along the boardwalk without any of it sinking into the grass.

When we moved the well to the end of the boardwalk we'd pick up the boards from the back and move them to the front. 

Here is a video of that process. This was done on Marco Polo so the quality is a little grainy, but you can totally see our plan working. 

We were able to move the well all the way around the yard with this process. The kids were all great helps.  At one point Veronica disappeared into the house.  A little bit later she came out with punch and 6 cups.  She had realized on her own that we would all be thirsty and could use a drink.  I love when my kids take initiative like that.  

We ran into a bit of a problem when we had to go down the slope toward the fire pit, but we made it.  Then we found it was easier to go back to the wiggle method for putting the well in place. 

We were completely beat by the time it was in place. Each one of us had bonked our head on the roof at least once, and we'd all been hit by a stray board once too. My feet were killing me and my back hurt. But it was totally worth it.  

I'd run in and started freezer pizza cooking in the oven while Brandon leveled out the site for the well.  Derrick was in charge of listening for the timer.  As soon as the well was in place we ate pizza outside.  There was still a lot of daylight left, but we were done.  We went inside and watched Ferris Bueller's day off.  I slept through most of it. (I have never understood that movie.)

This morning I woke up at what I thought was 8:45. I thought, oh that's a long time to sleep in, I must have been tired.  Then I looked at the clock again. It was 9:45.  Brandon didn't wake up until almost 11:00. We could hear the kids playing "Sodor" with Derrick's trains in the living room.  They had been playing together for hours and didn't bother us at all.  

I'm so glad we have 1:00 church.  Brandon and I could sleep in and it didn't throw off the rest of the day. We made it to church early and had a good time. The kids had primary today. Derrick was really interested in the choristers pictures so he and I sat on the front row so he could see them. The other three girls stayed in the back. But at least they stayed. 

We spent the rest of the day enjoying the outside.  Here are the kids using the wall as a drink stand. It feels like it's been there all along. And I'm glad because we are NEVER moving it again. 

And that gets us caught up again.  

And I'm just going to warn you now.  I have a super busy month coming up in April. I'm going to try to keep up on this blog, but there's a lot going on including a few writing projects.  I'll need to work on those projects so this blog might get a little neglected. But I'll be sure to update when I have time, it just might be more than 2 weeks.  

Thanks for reading.