The ABC's of Ruth and Joe

tagged by Amy and Missy -

I'm making Joe do it with me, and he's not happy about it.

A- Attached or Single: We're both married (to each other)

B- Best Friend: we're each other's best friends. Ruth has a lot of other close friends too, but Joe would be lost without Ruth

C- Cake or Pie: Ruth loves the double chocolate chip cake from KFC,

but Joe loves a good cherry pie

D- Day of Choice: Friday, becuase it's usually our Date night,

and it's the last day of work and school

E- Essential Item:for Joe it's a computer (or two or three).

Surprisingly, Ruth says a computer too, because it's how she keeps in touch with her friends who are spread all over the world

F- Favorite Color: Ruth-blue, Joe-"I don't know"

G- Greatest accomplishment: Having 4 amazing children

H- Hometown: Ruth is from American Fork, UT, and Joe is from Manti

I- Indulgence: Ruth likes to go to the movie theatre, just with Joe (no kids), and get some really bad theatre food (i.e. hot dog or nachos, popcorn and soda), and get there early to see the previews and get a good seat (Can't wait for Indiana Jones, X-files, and The Chronicals of Narnia this summer)

Joe likes to eat out.

J- January or July: January is when we got married

K- Kids: Cora, JT, Madelyn, and Alex (we have the same ones)

L- Life is incomplete without: Family

M- Marraige Date: January 8, 2000

N-Number of Siblings: Ruth has 4 younger sisters.

Joe is in the middle with 1 sister and 4 brothers.

O- Oranges or Apples: Ruth-Oranges, Joe-Apples

P- Phobias or Fears: Joe says the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Ruth is scared of anything bad happening to the kids.

Q- Quote: Joe - "It takes a really good meeting to replace no meeting at all" (Our Stake President). Ruth - "If I told you that I loved you, would you have me do so stintingly; or as I feel it, with all my heart?" (the Scarlett Pimpernell - because Joe always says it to her)

R- Reason to smile: our cute kids

S- Season: Fall

T- Tag 3 friends: I'm really sorry to do this, but how about Adreann, Aleath, and Tara (I'll understand if you don't do it)

U- Unknown fact about me: Ruth is obsessed with golf, Joe says he's very mysterious, but he's an open-book to Ruth.

V- Very favorite store: Joe-Best Buy,

Ruth-Walmart (it's convenient and cheap)

W- Worst Habit: drinking diet coke

X- X-ray or Ultra sound: what does this even mean?

Y- Your Favorite Food: Joe-Pizza, Ruth just loves food!

Z- Zodiac: Ruth-Sagitarius, Joe doesn't know about such things.

Me Vs. Mother Nature

Remember my garden flower pots? What's it called if you have the opposite of a green thumb? After two and a half weeks I had given up completely, and stopped watering them. Then one day, about a week later, I go outside and see this cute little zucchini plant sprout. I couldn't believe it. All my love and nurturing did nothing, but a week of neglect was like magic. Well, the others didn't make it, but the zucchini sprout motivated me to try again, so I replanted seeds and hoped for the best. A few days later....

I don't have much hope for the seeds. Another casualty of my love and nurturing is this dead fish. Yep, dead.

We didn't even have it long enough to name the poor thing. My friend gave me this little one gallon fish tank with a filter and light, so we went to the pet store and Cora and JT helped me pick out two little fish. I should have taken it as an omen when Cora said, "Why are we getting fish? They always die. Can't we get a dog?" The other fish died about a week later. Why do I even try? JT found the silver lining and reminded me that there's lots of water in fish heaven, so I guess all is well.

I've decided that when it comes to growing and nurturing things, I should just stick to kids - I'm good at growing cute ones. See for yourself.

Alex is big enough to climb this step ladder and try to help us paint the dining room, which we've been doing this week (he has a brush in his hand). And here's Madelyn showing off her big muscles. She says, "I'm strong". It's cute every time she does it.

First Birthday

On Sunday our baby turned one. He had his first taste of cake, which he thoroughly enjoyed. The big kids went around the house and found old toys, wrapped them up, and gave them to Alex for his presents. They were a lot more excited about the presents then he was, but he enjoyed the attention. I can't believe it's been a whole year! What did we ever do without him?

A Week Late

Well, you'll never guess what happened. We were having a little dinner party at our house for some friends who are moving. One of the guys had been out in our front yard talking on his cell phone. He came in and said, "I was talking on the phone, and I heard this loud noise. I turned around and looked up, and this huge branch just fell off your tree." I was thinking branch - as in the small branch that came down when we had the tornado a week ago. So we all got up and went outside to see. It was no branch. It was a huge limb....well, you can see for yourself in the first picture, it's almost as big as our neighbors little tree.

It fell into our neighbors yard, and we're just lucky it didn't do any damage. I'm guessing that it was weakened during the storm, and today it finally gave up the ghost. All the kids thought it was the greatest thing ever, and played on it for the next 20 minutes (nobody poked their eye out), while all the adults stood around and talked about it. Hey, we get our excitement where we can folks.

And Joe, being the wonderfully obsessive compulsive person that he is, is outside right now sawing it into peices, even though it is 10:30 p.m. and it is too dark to see what he is doing. That is why I'm blogging about it this late. But I'd better go check to see if he's poked his eye out.

Children's Festival

Every year our base has a Children's Festival in April, and everything is Free (one of my favorite words)! They have face painting, arts and crafts,

games, food, plus children's ID finger printing, booths on nutrition and safety, and a whole lot of other stuff. The kids always love going to this,

and they come away with a lot of loot. It's nice to be able to live vicariously through your kids - if they're having a good time, then so are we.

Our city actually puts on a Free Children's Festival every year in April too (are they competing with the base - I don't know), but they always have

theirs on a Sunday, so we never go to that one. I think that Joe thinks that one festival a year is enough though. He can only handle so much fun.

Tornado

Having grown up in a state where you don't normally have to worry about tornadoes, it's weird to have to worry about them now. Every spring here we know to expect these huge storms with lightening, flash flooding, strong winds, hail, and yes, tornadoes. Our kids do tornado drills in school, as opposed to the earthquake drills I did as a kid. So, at midnight last night the tornado sirens went off. We woke up all our kids, brought them into our bedroom, and sat in the closet for 20-30 minutes while we watched the news on the TV through the door. We got about 70 mph winds, hail, and they said that a funnel cloud was spotted over the college that is about 3 blocks away from us. I haven't heard anything about where the tornado actually touched down, or if it was even within our city limits. Last time we had a tornado it touched down just south of the base, and Joe was at work at the time, so it kind of scared me. There was some damage, including downed power lines, broken signs, shingles blown off roofs, some windows shattered, broken branches everywhere, one uprooted tree, and some cars and a tractor trailer that were flipped over. We just had one medium sized branch broken off in our front yard, and a lot of debris on our street, but that was it. I know that as the storm has moved North East over night and through this morning it has increased in intensity, so we were really lucky.

What a mess!

Workers out early, cleaning up the mess

Our neighbors across the street

Our other neighbors across the street

I don't envy these people - see their van?

A Garden?

We've been in our house for just under 4 years now, and every year I swear up and down that we are going to have a garden. Of course, it never happens. I just never have enough motivation (or money) to commit to the whole process of clearing out an area of our yard, tilling, killing off the grass roots, worrying about digging around the sprinkler system, etc. I think I would have had more motivation if I knew that we were going to stay in this house forever, but we're moving in two years, and not everyone wants a garden. Anyway, this year I'm going half-way, and I've done "container gardening". That's just a fancy way of saying I planted some seeds in a bunch of cheap flowerpots. My kids are excited about this, and want to help me water them every day. I'm just afraid that nothing will grow, or if it does I'm going to kill everything and waste the $10 I spent. But time will tell, and hey, at least I did it Now I can't get that song out of my head, "the prophet said to plant a garden, so that's what I'll do. . ."