Baking, Service and Bunnies

Friday morning I went to the Rec Center and was able to walk the track with Dad, Laverne, and Melissa. It was good to be able to talk to my sister again since that doesn't happen much anymore with our busy lives....and of course Covid! I didn't really have a plan on how much I was going to walk but it ended up being about 4.5 miles by the time we were done. 

I had mentioned to Garrett the day before that if he felt like baking anything that I found 2 cans of pumpkin that could be baked into something. He decided on Friday that he was going to bake some mini pumpkin pies. He started off working on his own but I had to step in and help, especially with the pie crust. They didn't take long to bake but we had to wait a long time for them to cool. It wasn't until after dinner that they were finally ready for eating. They turned out to be a yummy little treat. We only used half a can of pumpkin and half a can of evaporated milk, so we may have to make more soon to use them up. I love that Garrett likes to bake now.

He prefers his without the whipped topping so I had him hold mine for the picture.

I finally got a trio picture of my oldest kids and their braces. They are purposefully standing under that picture on the wall because I thought it would be fun and they are standing in the same order as they were in the picture. The braces buddies!

Unfortunately I ended up being too tired to go play tennis with Jack on Friday like I had planned but I don't think he really cared. I kept saying that we were going to play tennis during spring break and alas it didn't happen....not even on Saturday. However, we were blessed to be able to participate in a ward service day. I wasn't sure if I should bring the little girls but I decided to go ahead and try and figured I could take them home early if necessary. I'm so glad I did! All of my kids helped do service and it was great! Some people started by cleaning the church building. It went quickly with so many people there to help. Charlotte, Alice, and I helped clean windows. I know Nikki did some vacuuming but not sure what the boys did. When we finished we headed over to a Angela Haldeman's house to help remove some gravel, weeds and the weed barrier to get ready for new rocks. She is a single mom in our ward. Curtis used to work with her brother years ago at Lee's Plumbing. Technically he's in our ward also but he's not an active member. Anyway, it was great to see all of my kids working hard. The girls worked well for awhile and then they went inside to play with Angela's little girl, Sydney, who is 8 years old. It really helped that we brought our radio. Nikki enjoyed having everyone listen to her Spotify playlists, the first list being the Beach Boys. Then later it was other oldies from the 70's and 80's. It's nice that she likes music that we like also.

The project turned out being a bigger job than we thought. The funny thing was that this was probably the most difficult job assigned and there weren't any men when we started. It was 3 women and their kids, mostly teenagers. Fortunately when others finished at their first projects they came to our rescue and helped us, including a couple of missionaries. After we finished piling up the gravel into a pile we were told to go to the church for ice cream and that later others would come load up the pile into a trailer and take it to the dump.

This was the backyard portion. Thankfully Garrett had his best friend Austin in our group.

Jack enjoyed having Austin's younger brother Luke there also. Luke is a year older than Jack.

Here's the side of the house. It was a lot of work!

The girls had their little shovels and helped move the gravel to the pile.

I was working on digging out weeds that were close to the bricks.

Our pile of gravel and weeds. Later we added some bush trimmings that Angela trimmed. So she was out there working also.

The side all cleared out.

Kids enjoying popsicles and ice cream at the church afterwards.

That same afternoon after we got back home I saw that something was happening at our neighbor's house. Our friends the Wallace family were busy scraping out their whole back yard and I had to go see for myself. Their back yard was full of goat heads and their little girl stepped on them several times with her bare feet. They finally were able to afford to pay off their irrigation tax of 10 years and are redoing their whole back yard and will be laying some sod. I can't wait to see what else they do with it.  Their son Tyler, who is friends with Jack, brought over one of their baby bunnies for us to see. I guess they recently bought 3 rabbits thinking they were all the same sex. Well, they were surprised and soon found out that one must be ready to have babies because she started pulling out her own hair to build a nest. They have 5 baby bunnies now. So cute!

Of course now Charlotte is begging to have a bunny and I have to admit it was a little harder to say no now that I had seen the bunny in person. I told her I would think about it and talk to dad. Of course she brought it up on the phone when Curtis called to say he was coming home. At first he was quick to say no but then thought about it and told her that mom and dad will talk about it on their date tonight. Well, we went to Applebee's for dinner and talked about it and thought it would be fun for the little girls to learn responsibility taking care of a pet. And at least it's easier than a puppy or a horse! The bunny is not quite ready to leave it's mom yet so that will give us time to get a cage and everything ready before it's time. It will be our literal Easter bunny this year. Today is Ashlie's birthday and when I took over a little gift to her after church she said we could bring the bunny to our house for a little while. Curtis told the kids that this would be Charlotte's and Alice's bunny and to let Charlotte pick the name. As of right now, she has picked Marshmallow, to keep the tradition of having a food name for our pets (except the birds, which were space names). We'll see if she changes her mind later though.

After we took the bunny back yesterday the girls got to play and eat popsicles with the Wallace's little girl Sidney.

Waiting to go in to eat at Applebee's. We haven't been here in years. It was weird though that when Curtis asked for a 2nd menu after they only gave us one, the waitress said she wasn't supposed to but that she would give him one. Why is it so hard to give everyone a menu? I don't get it. Do they expect people to look at the menu upside down while the other person looks?