I have now merged my blogs into one...visit me at www.lettyslegs.blogspot.com/
Happy Trails!

-Letty

Happy Easter!!!

Redemtion...Holiday style

Happy New Year From the Edge's
Look...a Family photo!!! We are off to a good start!
(OK, so this was Christmas eve, but since we didn't send out Christmas cards, this will have to do.)

We were lucky enough to get a nice little blizzard this week that has helped to keep our kids occupied.
This girl loves the snow but refuses to wear gloves...burr.
The boy showing off his skills on his new pogo stick. He was pretty disappointed on Christmas morning when his mom could pogo better than him. He is now working on showing me up.
Also not pictured, the boy decided to try out his new super awesome sleeping bag by sleeping in our freezing cold sun-room on a night when the temps dipped into the single digits...thanks grandma. He said he stayed warm!
Poppy wearing her new Rapunzel hair and dress...oh, the indulgent grandma, what would she do without you??? You certainly have the knack for knowing exactly what she would love. I do however win points for getting her a bead/creative box that has been getting pretty good play time too. Pretty sure that Rapunzel didn't have that in her tower!
Hazel didn't even have to ask to know that the barn and animals were hers. From the minuet she walked int o the room she had them in her hands.
The girls were pretty content with their pre-opened gifts prior to breakfast. We generally don't let them open gifts until after breakfast. This way they get to play with whatever is out on the floor and the other gifts come after.
Poppy was happy being Mary for our Christmas Eve nativity.Our good friends Helen and Justin came over for Christmas eve. We made our annual gingerbread trains. I was delighted by the fact that Oscar and Poppy are now old enough to handle the frosting themselves. They are really getting independent!
Christmas Eve I told Rick that I wanted him to take the kids out while I cleaned up the house and got it ready for Christmas. He then told me they were going hiking and I decided to forgo my plan...no way are they going without me! The bonus was that I got a awesome Family photo out of it. BTW I consider any photo that has my entire family in it-with them all facing forward a success. This may just go on our mantle.

(Oscar wore his cycling hat as a winter hat. Funny thing is, it doesn't cover your ears. I lent him mine half way through.)

Oscar did the extra two mile section with me. I always love it when I can hang with the o-man. He always has such great ideas and thoughts that come about when we are one-on-one.

Well, there you go, my first post of 2011. I am hoping to redeem my blogging self with the new year. I would love to catch up on the ups and downs for 2010, but then I get overwhelmed and don't know where to begin. So, lets just say I'll re-commit to do better this year than last. It shouldn't be too hard to do. Happy New year Blog world!

Have I mentioned before that I hate shopping?

Oscar left me this note last week. Ricky bailed me out and went for me. You will proud to know that I went shopping today. He will be so excited.

Poppy's invite

Someone is turning five this week...I love her invite.

Missing the Mountains...and my boys

Back in the day...Oscar on daddy's back

Oscar's First Hike, a few weeks old

Another one of his first hike, see how protective I was...can certainly tell that he was my first baby. The others would have been placed in the bjorn, and we would be on our way.

This is a picture of Ricky backpacking when he was about Oscar's age(from the side profile it looks like it could just be Oscar), wearing the same pack that Oscar is wearing on this trip...thanks grandma and grandpa! (Bet you didn't know back then that your grand kid would wear it.)

This picture may be about what he looks like today...well at least earlier today when they were actually hiking, and not right now when they are probrably snuggled into their tent sleeping (which is most likely what they are doing, that is unless, they are telling silly jokes and making farting noises)...

Here's another "oldie but goody" of Ricky and Big Rick. What good look'in guys!

Yesterday my boys left on an expedition to the wild wilderness of the Willowas.
As I sit here at 9:30pm at night, with my two girls in bed asleep (one of which is sleeping in MY bed, as a special treat), I can't help but really miss the mountains. I want to smell the crisp fall air, feel some rocks beneath my feet, a pack on my back loaded with all sorts of trail friendly foods, sit on a summit and stare off into the world beyond...I want to be hanging with my boys doing one of the things I love most, spending time outside.
I'm not saying that I haven't had a fun weekend with just us girls, on the contrary, we have been having lots of fun. We went to the fair last night and I successfully wore them out and they both crashed in their beds by 7:45pm. We have played at the farmer's market, cleaned the church, went swimming, had ice cream (including a gummy worm topping), I even rented Poppy a "Barbie musketeers" movie, and even painfully watched 75% of it with her (now that is love). We really have had some great time just being together, sans the boys.
All that said...I still am missing those mountains.
I therefore have a job for all of you out in blog world who are near some of those pretty, monstrous piles of rock and rubble. Do me a favor and take a hike. Be in nature and let me glean a bit of that exposure off of you.
In a couple of moths I'll get my fix. In the meantime, I'll settle for some freshly harvested wheat fields and some pictures that Mark Feltis is going to have to take, becasue our "Olympus Tough" camera wasn't' as tough as it was supposed to be, and suddenly quit working without any real abuse...more on that topic later... but I'll hopefully get a re-cap and my boys back tomorrow.
Oh, and I'm missing my boys too. Things seem weird and not so balanced without them. Too much Estrogen in the house right now. But then again, Grandpa Edge is used to that.

I Remember...

I remember Meeting Lisa at the Salt lake Airport to "see her off" for her transition from the MTC (missionary training center) to her mission in California. They never made that transition that morning. In fact they wouldn't make that transition for a while. As we drove back into Salt lake city from the airport, I left Rick at a bus stop so that he could ride the bus up to school. I turned on the radio and the reports were coming in of an airplane that had struck one of the twin towers. The reports were benign and seemed like a fluke tragedy.
I arrived at my office phone job where I worked customer service for the "Marriott Rewards" program. The phones were silent. Not a single one would ring. We sat their gathered around wheeled in TV's, watching the news unfold as the second tower was hit, as the towers collapsed, as the pentagon was hit and as they had the crash landing in PA.
I felt sick. Everyone felt sick, and helpless. We were sent home from work that day mid-way through. It seemed that no one wanted to see how their rewards were doing, nor did they want to plan a trip. It was very strange.
This would continue for a very long time. Our office had to "let people go" because there just wasn't enough customers wanting to redeem their rewards.
I was in my first trimester of pregnancy with Oscar and I was physically sick anyway. I recall a few days after the tragedy of us being paid to stand in the back parking lot of the building tearing out a page from all of the brochures because it was a page on the twin-tower Marriott.
I wanted to puke...and not just because I was pregnant.
I remember watching with my "cup half full" outlook, praying that they would find more survivors a week+ as they began to try to pull NY back together. I was sadly disappointed. Although there were success stories, there just didn't seem to be enough.
Rick's interviews that he had had lined up for jobs post graduation went cold. He decided to take the LSAT and see about Law school. Never had we considered this option before. In fact because of 9/11 he is an attorney today.
During law school we spent many hours flying across this nation. New security measures, and an ever presence of insecurity in the general populace, I always thought about those flights and those people who never made it home that day. It was haunting.
I wanted to write this down because everyone who was old enough to remember, has a similar story. Just like when JFK died, or many other historically marked tragedies, I will always remember. If I'm not here to tell you...you can pull up the archives of this blog and know that I lived that day and that my life has drastically been altered by this experience. Not necessarily for the worse, but certainly was a path that changed following the aftermath of this national tragedy.
To those who lost the most, I hope you have chosen to live and to share with the world the resilience and strength of the American spirit. We can do hard things and can make this world a better place.

Canned Food Inventory

Picture from last year

Tomatoes: 58 quarts
Salsa: 73 pints & 4 qt
Peaches: 54 qt
Pears (we haven't canned any this year) : 12 qt
Apricot Halves: 24 qt
Grape juice(none this year, which may include several bottles of vintage 2005): 27 qt & 1/2 gal.
Honey 120 lbs
Apples(none this year): 5 qt
Apple Pie Filling (none this year): 5 qt
Apricot jam: 32 pt
Cherry jam(none this year): 3 1/2 pt
Plum syrup(none this year): 2 pt
Black berry jam(none this year): 3pt
Strawberry jam: 2pt
Peach jam: 5pt
(Not included is the beans and wheat.)
Just in case I loose my handy dandy notebook, I want to be able to compare next years inventory.
Nothing quite like some home canned foods.