buffalo bayou walk

somehow, grant talked me into getting up early this morning and going for a long (5 or 6 mile) walk/run. before we left, lucy had to check her hair:

we walked from our apartment up to a trail that goes alongside buffalo bayou. despite being 8:30 am, it was unbelievably hot and humid. this was taken just after we turned onto the trail from the sidewalk. there were lots of trees, but they weren't shading the path. we came across some random 'art':i might have understood and liked it better if it had had a roof. here's another sculpture thing:it made me think of war of the worlds. this was about halfway. it's right by a brand new skate park:when grant found out about this skate park, he got really excited and started looking at bmx bikes on craigslist. then reality hit in the form of a 'no bikes allowed' rule. this has started a long and bitter process for him. maybe one day he'll share it all with you. this is the spot where grant usually stops so that hazel can play on the 'big circoo':then she runs up and down the hill a couple times:i let lucy stretch her legs too:here's a picture of the bayou taken from the bridge that we looped around on:that tall building in the background is where we're headed. we did, eventually, make it. but not before i told grant to just run home, get the car, and come pick me up.
this was probably about 1 mile away from home. we stopped at this pretty, but smelly fountain (it smells like a wet dog, probably because everyone lets their dogs cool off in it).see the little rainbow behind grant?

i wuv this chair!

since i had taken over the table with my sewing, for lunch hazel got to sit in lucy's chair: she was very excited and almost immediately after sitting down in it exclaimed, "i wuv this chair!" there's enthusiasm for you.

on a side note, i decided to start a cooking/crafting/sewing blog. i just posted my bread recipe, i know some of you wanted it because, let's be honest here, it's super tasty.

freedom!

at the park on monday, lucy was freed from her restraints and left to wander the park. and wander she did:she had so much fun.she even learned a new trick:she would climb up on the wall, reach down and pick up some bark chips. hazel has a few new tricks as well:

she likes to hang from this bar on the bridge and drop to the ground.

she tried to climb through this tree and got her foot stuck. it was kind of funny.

i took some pictures of lucy this morning. she has turned into a little, bald monkey:

monday night flashback #18

****DISCLAIMER**** children, do not attempt to do this at home without written consent from your parent or guardian!one day, not long after grant and i were married, we made pancakes. we both ate our fill but had a single, lonely flapjack left. grant didn't want to waste it, but it wasn't enough to save, so he came up with a third option: he chucked it at my head. and thus began a new tradition. . . pancake wars. in the early days, we would toss and flip and smack the last pancake around until it was obliterated. the most exciting part of the war would be when we had several pieces to gather and throw at each other. we'd hide around corners waiting for the other to let loose their ammo and then ka-pow! we'd attack. this isn't a weekly or even a monthly tradition (there have been maybe a half-dozen wars altogether). it's too messy to do really often. but every now and then the urge will hit us. . . saturday we decided to bring hazel in on the fun.at first, i think she was really shocked at *gasp* 'mommy and daddy thwowing food!' but she quickly got over that and chucked the pancake at grant. here's a clip:

the clip ends with grant asking hazel to throw the poor, beaten pancake in the garbage. we didn't want it to totally disintegrate. the following is one of the main reasons we don't do this every time we make pancakes:


the flapjack carnage gets everywhere.

sungwasses & swimsoups on a saturday

lucy loves to find (i try to hide them) and play with my sunglasses. i noticed today that she seems to have learned how not to poke her eyes when putting them on:she just hangs them around her neck. clever girl.during one of my attempts to capture this moment on film, she lost her balance:that was taken 2/10ths of a second before she hit her head and started crying. a little later this afternoon, we decided to beat the unbearable heat and go to herman park's water area:

lucy was the 'belle of the ball'. she is just such awe-inspiring sight when she's walking around. she's so little and bald, it's surprises people to see her walking.

this is the one picture of hazel i got:

she stopped and smiled at me but started moving before my camera took the picture. after we got home it was bath time. grant put lucy in hazel's old robe and it was too cute to not take a picture:

(sorry about the glowing eye. the red-eye fixer wouldn't fix it.) finally, it was time for 'nigh-night':

yes, they are in matching pajamas. precious, i know. i hope you enjoyed the recap of our day or at least most of it. . . . tune in on monday for the gory details of saturday morning. . .

my garden & hazel's sweater

it's the time of year when everyone is talking about their gardens: the size of the plot, type of dirt, varities of plants and hope of rain. i've wanted a garden for a couple years now, but never as badly as i do this year. well, my visiting teacher, last week, gave me a basil growing kit. here is my windowsill garden:on the left we have the basil and on the right is a flower that hazel planted in nursery. it hasn't bloomed yet so i'm not sure what kind of flower it is. i've taken a picture of the basil each day since monday because it is growing so fast (i planted it a week ago today). here's what it looked like on monday:tuesday:
wednesday:and today:i can't wait to use it, maybe on a tomato basil pizza...mmmmm...

so about hazel's sweater. it's not actually a sweater and it's not hazel's:

do you recognize it? here's a hint. she was carrying it around with her the other day and finally asked me to put it on her and 'zip it'. i can't believe it goes around her shoulders. it's a 12 month size. yesterday, when i put it on lucy, hazel got pretty upset and kept saying, 'that's mine sweater! i want it!' eventually she got over it.

one small step for baby....

the beginning of a new era:

there you have it. lucy, at 11 months old, walks [almost] more than she crawls. she does it so well too.

monday night flashback #17

when i was an adolescent, the most coveted summer job a kid could find in my neighborhood was working on a sod farm that was located across utah lake. none of us really knew what the job entailed, but it was clear enough that the privileged employees earned an almost unheard of wage and didn't have to go to work until well after lunch, leaving plenty of time to do other things.

soon after i started at the sod farm, i wanted to quit. the grass grew in circles around large pivot sprinklers. as i recall, each circle was divided into quadrants by narrow access roads of dirt. the tractor sized tires from each pivot sprinkler left deep ruts further dividing the circles concentrically. our daily objective was to cut the grass from the ground row by row, stack it onto pallets, and then place the pallets in loads for eighteen-wheelers to haul away.

it's difficult to describe what a sod cutter looks like. and nothing i can find on the interwebs compares to the one we used. it was roughly the size of the average truck, with a spot for the driver up front and platforms on the back where two of us would stand to stack the grass. with one or more mirrors, i think, the driver was responsible for raising and lowering the blade to and from the ground, and for keeping the cut straight. he couldn't leave any grass behind between passes.

the stackers had at least three tasks. one of us would communicate with the driver on such matters as cut depth. too much/not enough dirt and roots is a bad thing. also, as we finished stacking each pallet, this person would signal the driver to stop and then set the ready pallet on the ground by means of a set of forklift blades mounted on the back of the sod cutter. as he raised the blades, the other stacker would grab an empty pallet from an overhead rack, where there were as many as five, and place in on the blades at the bottom of the chute. Too soon, and the upcoming blades could crush a slightly misplaced pallet. Too late, and, well, as they say, time is money.

the business of stacking was an ordeal in and of itself. as you may know, having laid sod before, two pieces of grass fit side by side on a square pallet. to prevent the pallets from tipping over, in stacking them we would flip flop the direction of the two pieces according to some pattern that i've now forgotten (every fourth layer?). so doing, it was easy to send the grass pieces spinning too far, and to have the corner or edge of even a single piece of grass hanging out on the sides of a stacked pallet is highly frowned upon.

needless to say, the stackers had to be looking down at the pallet they were stacking, not at the pieces of cut grass coming down towards the chute. this meant that we had to reach, blindly, in the direct of the giant whirling blade at the top of the sod cutter. one of the guys i worked with had a scar running across the back of his hand from this very blade. luck for him, the sod cutter got clogged with grass and stopped before cutting through tendon and bone. (the owner of the company was not so luck and had lost parts of several fingers to the chains that drove the conveyor belt on which the pieces of grass ran before being cut by the blade.)

i should probably point out that the cut pieces of grass come down towards the chute very, very quickly, and can be quite heavy. even with leather gloves on, i had blisters on my finger tips and even under part way under my nails for several weeks.

as the finished pallets were set down, partially on uncut grass, it was the job of another of us, the forklift driver, to pick up them up, drive them across the sometimes bottomless ruts left by the wheels of the sprinkler, and place them into semi loads. everyday the number of pallets to be placed in each load was different, as was the number of loads themselves. so we had to keep that in mind. the forklift driver had the hardest job of all because it was easiest for him to mess up.

for one thing, when removing the finished pallets, the driver could easily gouge the uncut grass, either with the tires or blades of the forklift. so he couldn't go too fast. similarly, too much speed over the sprinkler wheel ruts, and the pallet would tip clean over. the absolute worst thing that could ever happen. but if he didn't go fast enough, there would still be pallets in the way of the sod cutter when it doubled back for a return pass.

all this was compounded by the forklift driver's most dreaded responsibility: keeping the stackers supplied with empty pallets. as i said, there were as many as five on the rack. in the midst of everything else, the forklift driver had to watch to see when there was only one left. he then had to get a stack of empty pallets and load them onto the back of the sod cutter, in motion, at the precise moment that the stackers ran out. The pallet rack consisted of two angle iron trays into which the driver would slide the pallets, trays that were no more than six inches wide. besides the risk of dropping the new pallets onto the pallet being stacked (if not onto the stackers themselves), the driver had to be careful not to run into said pallet, as it was sure to be finished and lowered to the ground the very second after he set the new pallets on the rack.

plus, they was always the distinct possibility that as the forklift driver approached with the new pallets, the sod cutter would get clogged up and come to an abrupt stop. the forklifts had bad brakes, whether by design or due to budgetary contraints i don't know, so in such a situation there was little that the driver could do to avoid slamming straight into the back of the sod cutter at full speed, sending the empty pallets flying and the stackers jumping for their lives.

as much as i loathed my existence as a sod farm worker, i couldn't bring myself to quit. it was nothing short of divine providence, then, that i was invited to accompany cousin ken on his quest to retrace the oregon trail. he had already gone most of the way. mike and i joined up with him for the last thousand miles or so, starting at lyman, wyoming.

***

there are lots of stories to relate about our trek, from the freezing rain storm that nearly killed us our first day out somewhere in the mountains above evanston, to the bona fide vagabond we encountered astride his k-mart special en route from central america. those are the stories that i intended to write about in this post. a few of them at least. but i got carried away with the lead-in. so i'm calling on ken (who probably has enough material for a series of posts) and mike (guest blogging at crazytrain?) and uncle eldon and whomever else with a tale to tell. and not just about this particularl bike trip either. let's hear about ken and neil on their ten speeds. etc. and what of the future?

create

last september, i remember hearing this talk at women's conference. i felt like it was just for me. a while ago, my friend, hilary, posted this video clip and i loved it. today in relief society our teacher showed it to us and i really loved it. so i thought i'd share it.

inspiring, isn't it.

cubby holes, high tops and shiny spots

lucy has found a new place to hide:

hazel is wearing new shoes:i had to show these babies off because they were the best deal ever: $2. that's right, two hundred pennies. (i got lucy a pair too, she just doesn't fit into them yet.) grant had hazel pose:
i kept waiting for him to tell her about 'jazz hands'. we went to the grocery store and when we came back grant found this on the ground:
not the best picture, but it was a very pretty butterfly. i don't know how it died so well preserved, especially on the asphalt. it's underside was gorgeous:those gray spots were shiny silver patches, i thought they would reflect more in the picture. hazel really liked looking at it and started talking to it: "hi, butterfwy. where my medicine, butterfwy?" (she has allergies and we got her some of the non-drowsy stuff. wasted opportunity, sigh.)

new tricks, mischief & lots of pictures

the most exciting new trick would be lucy's walking. i don't have any pictures or video of it yet, but she is getting really good. her record is 11 steps. she has also started standing up by herself and taking steps, rather than using us to stand her up or the furniture. pretty exciting. this morning she figured out how to climb up onto hazel's bed. grant and i worried for a little while, thinking she would take a nose-dive off, but first time she tried getting off herself, she did it perfectly. it's really quite surprising how fast she learns. *edit: or not. she fell off this morning [6.4.09] and has a nice little goose egg on her forehead. now to the pictures. one of lucy's favorite things to do is pull all of the toys she can reach out of the ottoman:she shoves the lid aside, grabs whatever's on top and tosses it behind her back. she does this with the clothes in the laundry basket in her room and with the plastic bags in the bottom drawer in the kitchen:i caught her before she was able to sit down and pull the bags out one by one. i like this picture a lot because it shows how tiny our kitchen is. notice that the dishwasher door has just enough room to open all the way. if the dishwasher is open, you can't open the oven. sad. i dream of having, not a large kitchen, but a normal sized one some day... here she is playing 'peek-a-boo' in the "woo-cy toenoo":

these next few pictures were taken at a playground in memorial park. grant and i (mostly me) have been trying to build up to a 3 mile run and memorial park has a 3 mile trail. after we finish jogging/wheezing/walking/limping, we take hazel and lucy to play here:

they both really like this see-saw (or is it a teeter-totter? what's the difference, if there is one?).

hazel is a climbing monkey.

and a swinging monkey, too:

next are some pictures from last night. i was lazy and when grant offered to pick up some panda express, i jumped at the opportunity to not make dinner. while we were eating, lucy crawled under the table and soon we heard some munching. she was eating everything that hazel dropped. so grant put lucy in her chair and gave her some chow mien:

she loved it and stuffed fistfuls into her mouth:

finally, the last picture. grant put hazel's old all star's on lucy:

needless to say, it wasn't long before we took them off. they are just a tad too small and take a lot of wrestling to get them on her. i'm glad we did it once and got a picture. i loved those shoes on hazel.