Mother of 5

Today Ben and I watched my Brother and Sister in Law's three boys while they are in Australia getting the VIP treatment, because they deserve it.  We watched them for just one day and it was the least I could do, considering all the times she has watched Ruby for me including when I went to Germany and when I first had Lulu.  They have been gone a week and will be coming home tomorrow.  These pictures are courtesy of Ruth's Blog.

I have really enjoyed getting to know their personalities better and getting some bonding time.

Here is Max.  He is 8 years old, he is really good at video games (which is a talent because not all people can play video games, I suck at it), chess, having a good time, being nice to his brothers, getting dressed fast. He has a love for life!

Then there is Ollie.  He is 5 years old.  He really looks up to Max.  He has a really high voice.  He probably misses his mom the most.  Whenever we went into his room he would pull out the Atlas book and open up to the Australia page and say, "that's where my mom and dad are."  Then point to a picture  of people on horses on the beach and say, "and this is what they can see right now,"  in a high voice.  

 And Harper, who is 1 1/2 years old.  He has such a cute personality and smile, when he is not crying.  He is a super tough kid, I saw him fall so many times and would not even be phased.  He loves the bath, and man can this kid eat.  Max even said, "he can out eat all of us" and I believe it.  

I picked them up and got them dressed around 8 am and took them over to my house for breakfast.  Ben had made waffles and eggs.  We then headed down to Mission Viejo to my parent's house to swim and play.  It was so much fun.  I hadn't had that much fun in the pool in a long time.  Then we had lunch and played some board games while Harper and Ruby took naps.  Then we headed back to their house and ordered Pizza.  I bathed Harper and put him to bed and then me and the girls left Ben, Max and Ollie playing Wii.  Ben was pretty into it.  So he is sleeping over there and I am sleeping at my house.  I hope he survives.  

Tomorrow we are taking Max and Ollie to church with us and Ruth's Niece is watching Harper.  I am not going to lie, I feel so drained emotionally and physically. I just want to crash in bed- but I would not trade that time with Max and Ollie for anything.  They were so much fun to play with.  I feel like my girls are so mellow and life is so calm compared to how Ruth's life is, but the trade off is that she has a lot of really fun memories.  I really hope that I will eventually get a boy of my own to play war with in the pool, and instead of rock, paper, scissors it will be sword, shield, spike ball, and light saber fight to the tune of star wars, (all things we did).

Blue Jay/Garden Week 4 Update

Blue Jay Nest

It was a rare couple minutes that the Blue Jay mom was not in her nest.  I crept up under neath it and the mom swooped in to feed her babies .  She did not see me so she again flew off to get more food.  As I was snapping these pictures I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure the protective mother did not try to dive bomb me and try to peck out my eyes like in the Hitchcock movie - The Birds.  That movie really had/has an effect on me.  I think I was 11 or 12 years old when I saw it and it scared me then and I am still scarred by it.

Here they are in all their ugly glory

There were 5 eggs, and I only count 4 beaks, so one didn't hatch or is under those other guys.

Not a good shot

Wow they are gross.

Garden Season 2 Week 4

Zucchini Looking good.  Can't wait for this tasty treat in Zucchini bread

5 Cucumbers, starting to grab onto the trellis

Bell Peppers haven't grown much, hoping they will, Tomatoes are going crazy

The Mystery Patch.  I think I counted 13 pumpkins and 23 melons plants (either cantaloupe or watermelon)

Ruby and Gus, both not allowed within the fence,near the garden.  They both do not  get the idea of not stepping on the green stuff.  She does enough damage throwing her shoes, balls and whatever she can into the garden.

Gus Discovery

I had to take Gus to get his Rabies vaccine, before I could register him with the county.  For those of you not in the Dog loop.  You have to renew their registration every year which is $24 if the dog is spayed or neutered, and a lot more if they are not.  Every other year the Dog needs a rabies shot, which also happens to be $24.  Just like a smog check when you want to register your car, you have to show proof of the vaccine.  Here is the ridiculous part.  The late fee for the registration is $48,  double the registration fee.  

Gus did great with the shot, he didn't even realize it happened.  The Dr. Just gathered up some skin and was done with it.  He said Blood Hounds have a very high pain tolerance.  I could have told him that with all the abuse he takes from Ruby.  

I now know he is 4 years 4 months old, birthday is December 26.  We might have a double Birthday party for him and Ruby in December.  It is only May and Ruby is already planning her Birthday, We will go to Disneyland, and she will get a bike.  We will see if this is how it goes down.

Love and Logic-easy enough, right?

Love and Logic is a book that teaches you how to parent without using force, Yes it is possible.  You offer choices mostly and you let your kids figure some stuff out by themselves.  When I feel like I am a 2.0 GPA or below in parenting I study up with this book.  The trick with offering choices is they are both things you want your child to do, so either way you win.  

Failure #1 Today Ruby was not being social at the park (surprise, surprise) but usually I don't care because the people are strangers.  Today our friends were there and I kept trying to get Ruby to say Hi to the little girl and she kept telling me NO!  and ignoring the girl.  I was getting embarrassed and so thought to offer her a choice, "You can either play catch with Maylea or play race with Maylea, which one do you want to do?"  I thought this could not fail, but it did.  Ruby didn't answer... silence.  

Failure #2   I was cooking dinner and Ruby pulled out all the cubboards, to build a castle.  I was fine with her playing right under me, I just wanted to make sure she cleaned it all up afterwards, so I offered her a choice: "You can either stop playing, or clean up when you are all done."  She said stop playing, then as she was getting up to do something else she told me not to touch it (it being her castle).  After she left I thought about what just happened.  Well those were stupid options.  

The only down side about the book is there is not a script for every scenario in life, so in turn you need to be quick on your toes and be able to come up with creative options and ones that do not backfire.

Blue Jay Nest Update:  Have tried to take an updated picture everyday, but the mom is always in her nest.  I will try early tomorrow morning.

Garden Update: I am scared our pumpkin patch will actually be a cantaloupe patch.  We planted cantaloupe in there last year and never harvested them, so they all just rotted away and I believe reseeded this way.  So we might have 25 cantaloupe plants this year- too bad Ben and I are not cantaloupe eaters!

Garden Season 2 Week 3

Our pumpkin/ Watermelon Patch took the initiative to reseed itself.  I came out to weed and do some more prep, and saw all these little plants popping up and recognized that they are pumpkins and I think watermelon.  It will be a little bit of a surprise what ends up growing, so far there are 18 plants growing.

Ruby giving Gus some loves, rare, usually she is sitting on him, pulling his ears, pouring water on him, chasing after him with a stick.
Garden is thriving and unfortunately so are the weeds.  I spent a good hour weeding the two planters

San Francisco State University is doing a bee study to see if Sun Flowers will increase the Bee population, so they are sending out free sunflower seeds at their site, www.greatsunflower.org.  You just plant them then let them know your bee related observations.  Pretty cool.  I signed up on their site to receive the free seeds, you can too!

But it's Mother's Day...

Happy Mother's Day to me.  A nice tradition that the Schultz family does on Mother's day is the boys make and clean up after Dinner.  Here Matt is making Brownies, Scott is thinking about grilling up some steaks.Matt putting Brownies in the oven, Ben examining the Orange Juice, Harry overseeing the baked beans, and Harrison's Arm- making mashed Potatoes.

Battle of the Bulge: Lulu vs. Henry. (Lulu 3 1/2 months, Henry 5 1/2 months)

Biscuit saw what was going on and thought, "That's easy you just need to lay there and act fat and helpless, and then i'll get attention, no problem". 

After the Schultz House we cruised over to the Hills for a good time.  Yummy Tea, My Fair Lady, five Crowns, and a new Game that was nerdy like Settlers of Cattan.  My parents have this cool tent/tunnel activity set.  Ruby loves it and for some reason my dad felt enticed by the little tunnel.  Gail had to help him out.

two tunnels and two tents- Ruby has fun with this thing
Panic starts to set in.
Here Jimbo is successfully extracted from the tunnel
The best part about mother's Day is reminding your husband about it all day long, especially while playing card games.

A Blue Jay Nest

Right outside Ruby's window there is a little tree that is a home to lots of pretty pink flowers and a blue jay nest. Today I finally had to guts to get close to the nest. Usually the Momma Blue Jay is stalking the nest and I am scared she will peck out my eyes if I get close to her babies. But she was not around at the moment so I climbed onto the ball bin and I still could not see into the nest, so I held snapped some picks with my broken camera (can not see the screen, I have to upload them to my computer to see the pictures) The mom kind of looks like this.  I went online to find a picture of the mom bird, and found out it looks like a Female Common Grackle.  

The tree 
Three eggs

Total of five eggs

PS anyone that lives near Craig park should go see the baby ducks.  They are so cute.  Every time I go running through there my heart melts.  I am such a sucker for baby animals.  I went and saw Earth (do not recommend seeing it at night- it is a little to relaxing)  I loved to see the baby elephants the most.

Pet Worm Video

Ruby is really happy with her worm and really comfortable with it in a cage.  This is when we first found her pet worm

Brown Reunion 2009

This weekend I went to a family reunion.  Ben's mom's mom's offspring.  It was one of the 5 reunions from Ben's side of the family.  I usually look forward to them, and have fun at them, and am usually really ready to go by the last day.  This one was so much fun, I didn't want to leave.  The pictures are out of order but it takes to much effort to organize them on here.

We stayed at the LDS owned Warm Springs Ranch in Moapa, Nevada.  Just as the name says it is owned by the LDS church and is only $2 per night per person, and is run by a missionary couple, and there are two warm springs running through the camp.  It is like a desert oasis.  So fun! 

The last day here, there was a father and sons service project right next to our tent.  fortunately for me I slept in Harry and Nancy's toy hauler trailer, and had a great night's sleep.  Unfortunately for me, Ben and Ruby did not, so they came to let us know about it really early in the morning.  The red tent is ours and all the people behind it are the service project- clearing the palm tree trimmings.

Nan and Myles had a pop up tent trailer and sound wise it is the same as being in a tent, so she too was woken up early by the service project and other noisy neighbors.
This picture says it all

We played one game of Volleyball on Friday and the last day- Saturday, the boys played lots of games, they were really into it.  These pictures are pretty cool, but even more cool because Ruby took them all, I didn't help her at all.  I was nursing and wanted to keep her entertained and not running into their game so I gave her my camera and asked her to take some pictures of the game.

At last Ruby and Piper played together.  Nan and I really want them to be best friend cousins, but they are still pretty young, and Ruby is not super social, she loves to play and have fun, but doesn't like crowds or sharing.
Here they are playing stop and Go (red light, green light).

Another Ruby pic
June and Steve (Ben's Cousin)  I thought this was an amazing picture and even commented to Ben how they might want to hang it on their wall at home- but Ben let me know they would probably not want to hang it on their wall at home.  When I asked him why, he said because the lighting is not that good.  Ha Ha
Where we spent most of our time- in the hot springs- temp was 85 degrees year around.
Ben and Ruby
Cute Steimle Family
We had a couple bon fires that Ben built.  The first night was really pleasant, the next night was rough because the wind picked up and we all sat about 10 feet away from the flame because of the sparks that kept being thrown from the fire.  That was the best night though because we had so many people there hanging out.  And all the kids were asleep-- well at least mine were I know it was a rough night for others.  
Yah for the best baby ever.  I love that she is on a schedule.  We were both so happy because of it.  She feeds every three hours and sleeps an hour and a half after she eats until her next feeding, and normally sleeps through the night.  So i was able to go swimming with Ruby, play some Volleyball, eat meal, and read Jane Austin.  And Lulu had the best sleeping arrangements, in the toy hauler's shower, We made a little bed for her and there was a fan and it was quiet and dark, wonderful.

Harry, Ben and Scott sitting around the camp fire.
The warm spring right by our camp site, was a little faster than the other one and so we would put the kids in the one tube Ruth brought and drift them down to the last wall of defense - BEN.

Here Sam is starting Ainsley upstream a little bit
Here come Ainsley
Stopped by the Wall
And the celebratory Dance

Ka Chow

We seriously spent half of our time in the water- there was also a huge swimming pool that we played in too, and the boys played water basketball and I played with these two girls along with Piper and Eliza.

Had to include a Ruthy pic.
More from the Stream- Actually this was the first day there when we discovered the Stream and how amazing it is.

We were the last to leave the reunion, And even as everyone else was packing up and heading out, we were still swimming and playing volleyball.  Favorite memories from this reunion:

1.  Myles' micro-phoned favorite memory of past reunions when he and scott and STEVE BERRETT were hiking and he fell down and STEVE BERRETT helped him up (nanette dared him to share a memory, so he made this one up, just copying the cousin's story who went first)

2.  Harry feeding the masses the last day.  He literally brought enough food to feed every person, every meal, and the last day he went around picking people up with his golf cart and dropping them off at our camp site to eat.  Love this about him!

3. Fun Volleyball game

4. Bon Fire Conversation-  If you could wipe an influential Band from existence, Who would it be?  My unshared answer that I will now share is... The Beach Boys.  Feel free to post your own influential band that you could wipe from existence.