Treadfully Painful

It's been another eventful few weeks. There was a suicide in our little community, which was a terribly sad and troubling situation and I can't seem to shake it from my mind. I have found myself reflecting on the value of life, my blessings, friendships, the gospel, etc.

Thursday morning I finished running on the treadmill and Maggie was begging for a "turn" on it.  I've let her walk on it a few times are the lowest speed (supervised, of course). I told her she could walk on it while I stretched and cooled down.  Enter Lane.  I've told him to stay away from the treadmill, and he's done a pretty decent job obeying until now.  Honestly, I won't be surprised if he ends up being an engineer.  He's very fascinated about the way things work.  Sometimes I watch him with his toys and he seems more fascinated with figuring out how a toy does what it does than with actually playing with it.  Anyway, He had one of these inquisitive moments and fed his hand to the treadmill where the belt turns under.  It sucked his hand in and I had to pull pretty hard to get it back out.  This all happened in a matter of a few seconds, but it burned the skin off of his ring finger badly.  I wasn't sure what could even be done for it besides neosporin and a bandage, so I bandaged him up and decided to check on it later.  He was in a lot of pain and I felt really terrible. My sister called and I told her what happened.  She said the same thing happened to her friend's little boy and he ended up needing skin grafts on his hand.  Now I was all paranoid! I met Jonathan for lunch up the canyon where he was working and I showed him.  It looked a lot worse now and we decided I better take him to the doctor.  It turned out to be a pretty bad second degree burn so he prescribed us some Silvadine burn cream (which I've heard wonderful things about) and some special gauze to dress it with.  He said in a few weeks it should be looking a lot better. All in all, it could have been a lot worse and I should probably stop beating myself up about it. Lane is now very sensitive about using his left hand for anything and it's a battle each day to change the dressing :(              

Maybe I should stick with my walks in the country and avoid the dreadmill all together.  We made a 4 mile loop a few weeks ago.  I'm not sure what was more tired; my arms from pushing two kids up hill or my legs from walking/jogging that far. It was nice to have scenery and an occasional stray animal to keep us entertained on the walk; you don't get that on a treadmill.

I've been enjoying all the blooms in my yard :) I wish tulips stayed in bloom for longer than a week before they start to wilt! The really dark burgundy ones are my favorite. From a distance they almost look black.

 Maggie got hung up by her belt loop trying to climb up on the counter to get a cup. "Help me Mom!" "After I take a picture, Maggie."

Sometimes flood irrigating can go terribly wrong.  This time, too much water unexpectedly got turned down the ditch, which ended up flooding our yard while we were gone for awhile.  Luckily it never made it to the basement, and it didn't wash out my garden (which happened last year). On the bright side, my lawn got watered :)

I found a few items that I've wanted for a long time at a garage sale for $1 each.  I don't know why I've always wanted manual hand beaters.  I guess I find solace in knowing that I can whip egg whites even if the power goes out :)  My mom had a Danish ebelskiver pan, which my sister stole, umm, I mean inherited. I've been looking for one for a long time and was really excited when I finally found it.  Then a lady at the garage sale tried to talk me out of it so she could have it and I had to nicely tell her "no way!" So here's the real kicker, I made ebelskivers (spherical pancakes that can be stuffed with jam) the next morning and NO ONE LIKED THEM!  They were a total flop!  Jonathan's exact words were, "I hope that's not the only thing you can use that pan for."  I found a few recipes online that look more promising, but my pride needs to recover some before I dare attempt them again.  I think there are few things worse for a mother's ego than putting a meal together with love and having it rejected by the whole family.  I bet I could find a way to use it with brownie batter...I doubt that would be rejected.      

We invited my cousin and her husband up for a barbecue.  We went up one of the canyons on the ranch. It was fun to socialize and enjoy some yummy steak (which, thankfully, was not rejected by anyone.) Typically we see a variety of wildlife when we go up there and we only saw one deer from quite a distance.  I felt a little bad the wildlife viewing wasn't better, but at least the company was good :)  The next night we drove back up to pick up the grill and change water and we saw a bunch of deer, some turkeys, and a moose! This was the first time I've seen a moose on the ranch, but it was right where I've always thought to myself, "that looks like perfect moose habitat." I'm pretty sure the reason we saw the moose is because I didn't bring my nice camera along.  We always see the best wildlife when I leave the camera home.  This was the best picture I could get with my phone.  

 Watching Daddy change water,

I found some cute little ceramic birds at Michael's that I instantly fell in love with, but I talked myself out of buying them.  I had nothing to decorate my mantle with though between Easter and 4th of July and I kept thinking that a little bird theme would be fun for the beginning of summer. I ended up going back to Michael's a few weeks later and found them for 50% off and I had a coupon for 25% off my entire purchase, including sale items. There was no talking myself out of them this time. You've heard of killing two birds with one stone...  

Well, I killed two birds with the accidental drop of a bag when I got home.  I was very mad at myself :-/ Thankfully super glue saved the day (and glued my fingers together.  I am incapable of using that stuff without gluing my fingers together.) You can still tell the one was broken if you look at it closely, but it's a lot better than how it was!

My sisters and I have an odd obsession with all things tiny.  So you can imagine my joy when I found these tiny whisks at another garage sale. Now I can also beat tiny egg whites.

Have you tried S'mores in an ice cream cone?  If you haven't, you should.  We tried them last year over a campfire (wrapped in foil) and they didn't cook consistently.  One side always burned while the other side wasn't all the way melted.  When my cousin came up we tried them in the grill on the indirect-heat rack. They were perfection! They are very versatile too.  You can add M&Ms, shredded coconut, mini reese's peanut butter cups, nuts, fruit, etc.  This time we just stuck with mini marshmallows and chocolate chips :)  

I thought this was a cool picture; there's something about taking pictures of water.  One of the few things I despise about this time of year is watering the lawn.  I think it's because I grew up with automatic sprinklers. The funny thing is, I always thought it was so cool that our neighbors watered their lawn with a hose and sprinkler.  It's not so cool when you're the one doing it :-/ It doesn't help that our spigot has zilcho water pressure, making it impossible to water more than six square feet at a time.  You probably think that's an exaggeration, but it's not. It might get up to ten square feet, but no more than that.

My friend Laura invited me up to their range ground for a picnic.  Originally we were going to go up the back side of the range, but when we got up there she found out that the lock to the gate broke and she didn't have a key to the new lock. So we drove around to the front side and ended up having our picnic at their cabin.  This hide art was hanging in the cabin and I thought it was pretty neat.  I guess the guy that made it used a Bic razor for everything!

Young Women's is going well.  We had a foreign exchange student from China and she has been very active and interested in the church the whole time she has been here.  I taught her last year in Sunday school. Remember when I downloaded the scriptures in Chinese on my phone?  That was for Yumi (which is not her real name; Americans cannot pronounce her real name, so she was told to come up with a two-syllable name to be known by while she was here.) Anyway, our whole ward has fallen in love with her. She really wanted to try on an American wedding dress before she went home, so for our last activity with her we went to D.I. and the girls tried on wedding dresses. I was absolutely shocked how many pretty wedding dresses they had at D.I.  I figured they'd all be 80's style with poofy sleeves, because I think that's all I've ever seen there. She was happy she found one that fit and insisted we take lots of pictures for her.  I will miss her, and I think we're all really interested to know what happens after she gets home.  She bore her testimony before she left, which was really touching to hear her talk about what she feels at church.  Her parents have been inquiring about the church as well, so I won't be surprised if they end up getting baptized eventually.    

It was my turn to teach today.  The lesson was on how to honor and uphold the priesthood.  I thought it would be nice if we wrote thank you notes to priesthood leaders in the ward and to their dads, so I made these little goodie bags to include with their notes and I thought they turned out really cute.  The lesson went well and so far I'm really loving being in Young Women's.  I think it will be a sad day when I get released.

Julieanne and my parents came up yesterday and we made some crafts for the fourth of July.  I disassembled a pallet for the first time using a reciprocating saw.  I'm terribly afraid that now that I know how easy and fast it is to disassemble a pallet, I might be doing a lot more pallet projects. You can't beat free wood :)  

 I spy our little valley :)

 Future farmer (end engineer).  This boy LOVES tractors!

 I took some pictures for Laura for their little girl's baby blessing a while ago, but I never included any pictures on the blog.  This was my favorite :)

 Maggie and her friend Kenna picking wild flowers after our picnic.

Jonathan came home with another tick on him :-/ Yuck!  I've added ticks to my list of despicable creatures (rattlesnakes, mosquitoes, spiders, and house mice are on it as well).  I don't know how Jonathan made it this many years without ever finding a tick attached and we've found two in the last few weeks! I think I'm going to begin mandatory DEET spraying before he heads to work.

It's officially past my bed time and I'm already running on less sleep than usual, so I'm off to (hopefully) catch some z's.