Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Italians and Camping madness


I know I've dropped off the face of the planet.  Three weeks ago an recently returned RM from Italy came to stay at my house for the summer until we go to Italy in August and every night all we do is talk in Italian so I never have a chance to blog anymore! Tonight she's out with some friends so I have some moments to catch up.  We're supposed to speak in English all day, which we're pretty good at doing, but by the evening she just can't handle thinking about English anymore so we end up speaking in Italian which is helping me brush up really well before we cross the pond.  Her name is Marianna, and if you speak Italian she's got the best and most hilarious personality and I just adore having her here.  She loves my kids and also loves to organize my house. She pretty much does all the dishes, folds all the laundry and tidies up the house before I even think about getting around to it.  It's so nice, but oddly enough, slightly stressful at the same time because she likes the house to be totally organized and it's almost impossible to get it all done, but I always just want to go have fun and she's stuck cleaning, which makes me feel uncomfortable.  I think after three weeks, though, she's realizing that it's futile to keep everything tidy so she's lowering her standards.

Here's the last few weeks in photos to keep your interest...

Made my favorite ice cream cake for the Birthday girls' party, Paige, Tracie and Clementine. Oh and in case you were wondering, I am wearing my hair wavy now.  I still struggle with it, but it's way faster than blow drying it and it's recovering from years of abuse. 

Added 17 new chicks to my flock totaling 30 chicks.  We can't wait for eggs!

The nest below Henry's window had 6 eggs in it.  They all hatched and then disappeared.  Any ideas what happened to the newly hatched babies? I don't think they liked being watched:(

Trip to Zions.  Totally fun, gorgeous views, found a farm we wanted to buy where we could keep our future water buffalo:)Some Japanese people took this photo.  Not the best shot. haha. 

Forgot a baby carrier so I had to improvise with a stretchy shade shirt.  My neck hurt after this hike. 

Check out this view! There's plenty of land for sale around here:)

And last but not least, we went to Moab camping in 35 mph winds and got sandblasted for 24 hours.  My tent let the most sand in of any of the tents and every time a gust would blow, it would rain down sand on top of me, Bea and Vivi.  Poor Violette had a half inch of sand on her body in the morning since she didn't move much during the night. I didn't sleep all night! And please don't ask me about Bea and Clementine's diarrhea and Violette's diaper rash to top it all off. We ate sand in our dinner and breakfast, but it finally settled down in the evening and the next day made up for the wind problems.  My dad pretended to be the Iron Chef and during our sandy breakfast preparations announced, "And the secret ingredient is....SAND!!!!" I was dieing laughing. lol! In our group we had my Dad, Teri, William, who came down for his Birthday, Auri(Teri's daughter and fam), Tracie and Justin and fam, Paige and Garrett and Fam, and Paige's sister in law.  All in all we had 11 children, mostly all 6 and under, and 11 adults.  We were a large group but I'm now convinced that I like camping with more people than less...if you like them, which I did:) Best story of the trip: Henry was climbing around on the rocks and got poked by a cactus, so in retaliation he decides to poop on the plant to show it who was boss.  Henry ends up pooping on his clothes as well and so Justin was summoned to climb all the way up to help him clean up his mess and clean off the cactus.  We found tons of Indian arrowheads and even found the rock they used to use to make them, lizards, fun canyons to hike in and endured lots of crying children.  Wind, sand, poop, screaming babies, what a trip:)