Weekend Update

Summer is officially over, and, unfortunately, I'm pretty sure fall is too. It snowed on Monday and it stuck. I have lots of updates to make. I have been pretty much MIA because we only have internet on our phones now. The "free" program that was connecting out computers to the internet through our phones stopped working on my computer because my trial was over. So Chad finally got me a new program which I am using now.

As you may or may not know, we planted a garden this summer. We dug up the ground, made little rows, and planted seeds. (Mollie - ECS chorus song coming to mind... "step by step, row by row... gonna make my garden grow. All I need is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground.") We planted 3 rows of corn, 1 row of pumpkins, 1 row of cucumbers, 1 row of zucchinis and 1 row of carrots. As you may recall, we were soon overwhelmed by zucchinis. We kept a tally on the white board in our kitchen and counted (give or take a few) 119 zucchinis for the season. That's from 5 plants. With some strategic anonymous drop-offs, we were able to get rid of pretty much all of them. I brought a box to Relief Society several times, Chad took some to work, I gave some to the teachers at school, we brought a box to a ward activity, we made bread out of some and gave it away, we left some in somebody's car because their door was open in the church parking lot, and with that, we used up our 119 zucchinis. Here is a particularly large zucchini that I found several days after I thought an early frost had killed all of our zucchini plants.



We got some carrots too. Luckily Lady likes carrots, and she ate several right out of the ground. We picked the last of our carrots for the season and made glazed carrots when Chad's mom and brothers came over for dinner a couple of weeks ago. They were good! Look at these carrots!



We got some yummy cherry tomatoes from the plants the Holmans gave us. Our pumpkin plants died (frost) before the pumpkins could turn orange, so we got a whole bunch of green pumpkins. Our corn came in really late, and consequently didn't get eaten. It also seemed to have a fair amount of bugs in the husks, which was not particularly appetizing.

We finished painting the house in late October when we had unseasonably warm temperatures (70s) for about a week. We gave back the ladder we borrowed, and then found a small triangle on the house that was missed. Guess it'll have to wait until next summer. Hopefully, since we didn't notice it for about a month, nobody else will either.



How is the dog, you ask? Well we enrolled her in a puppy training class. It is 8 weeks long and is guaranteed for life. So if your dog ever doesn't do the things they were supposed to have learned in the class, you can take them back to any PetSmart in the country for more "free" training.

Here is her first day of school picture on the front step. We only wish we had a little tiny backpack to put on her.


She has learned sit, lay down, high five, roll over, take it (when you are offering a treat she has to be calm and given permission to eat it), leave it (when you drop something on the floor, or don't want her to eat something off of the ground), come when called (works about 80% of the time unless what she's smelling or has in her mouth is more exciting than you are), drop it, stay, sit for a greeting (sitting down and being calm before anyone new wants to pet her) and she's supposed to learn how to walk on a loose leash. We have the most trouble with this one because I am not patient enough to stop and wait for her to calm down every time she walks in front of me when we are out for a walk. One day it literally took me an hour to walk the length of our yard. On the retractable leash she gets in front of me but rarely pulls at the end of the leash. However, for the class, she's supposed to walk beside you (never in front of you) without ever pulling on her leash. This is pretty much impossible to me with an energetic puppy that wants to smell everyone and everything she sees on a walk. So... graduation is in three weeks (it's supposed to be this week but the trainer is out of town) and we'll see if she does it by then. The problem is that when she doesn't do it, I get in trouble. Chad and I don't really know if we care that she walks in front of us, but in dog training, it's a thing. In our spare time at home, I have also taught her to come close the drawers and cabinet doors in the kitchen when they're open. That's one of my favorite tricks. She is also house broken and rings a bell we have hanging on the door if she needs to go out. However, she has learned that ringing the bell also gets her outside (in a cage, but still) so sometimes she doesn't go and we bring her back in. She sleeps in our bed (I know, I know - you don't have to tell me how spoiled she is, etc. etc.) and if she has to go out at night, she walks to the corner of the bed and scratches her collar so the tags jingle. (Which usually wakes us up.) If that doesn't wake us up, she walks all over our bodies and comes and licks our faces. She's a pretty good dog, and we like her.


A lot of times she sleeps all the way under the covers (we assume she must get cold) and we can slide out of the bed in the morning without her noticing.

Can you spy the puppy? I believe she is under the white circle with blue polka dots that's directly to the right of the corner of the pillow.

And sometimes she sleeps longways between us, with her head on my pillow.


And she keeps us entertained too. She likes to play with (chew up) cardboard boxes, so I gave her an old tissue box and went to use the bathroom. When I came out, this is what I found.


Hahahahaha....
She had been running into the cabinets because she couldn't see, but when she heard my voice, she froze and waited for me to rescue her.

She also "helps" clean the dishes, though I make Chad hold her now whenever I'm emptying or loading the dishwasher.


And she loves to snuggle.


In other news - the driver's side door on the van quit working on Monday night, of course in the middle of the snow storm. It was dark and we couldn't see anything wrong with it, so Chad just kept trying to slam it shut, which, surprisingly, did not work. So we covered it up with a tarp for the night and took it to a mechanic the next day. They said it wasn't a mechanical problem and it would have to go to a body shop. We took it to a body shop here in town (with a big fancy office and lot) that said it would need new hinges on the door, and probably a new latch, which would cost us about $300. Not too bad. He said he would call around to see if they could find the hinges on a junked van, and he'd call us back. By Thursday he hadn't called, so we took it to a different place. The guy there (more of a hole-in-the-wall type of place) told us it didn't need new hinges, he could weld it back together and have it back to us the next day. DING DING DING, WE HAVE A WINNER! And he did! He welded the hinge back to the pillar (I think is what they call it), put on a new latch, and evened out the metal that got mangled when Chad tried to slam it shut so many times. It looks great. And it works better than it ever has since we've had it. And! It only cost us $125! The guy that fixed it said that bigger places like the first place we took it sometimes say they're going to call you back and then they never do because they don't want to bother with such a little job. And they try to upsell you on something you don't need but you don't know that you don't need. (new hinges) So - Classic Auto in Idaho Falls, Idaho - thanks for fixing our car and being honest about it! They also said that if the door starts to sag again, just bring it in and they'll adjust it for free.

(If you've found this by googling "Classic Auto in Idaho Falls, Idaho", I hope you take your car to them - they seem pretty good. Our guy's name was Brewster.)

So, with a new hip, Jermaine is mobile again.

A while ago, our ward had a "Harvest Hoedown" for adults 18 and older. This included dinner, relay races, line dancing, and pictures. We were supposed to dress up in the "Western" theme - here are our pictures.






Also - with the aforementioned snow, we built a snowman. Chad has never built a real snowman because the snow in Idaho is usually too dry. But it was perfect on Monday, so we built a lovely snowman - that morphed into a snowbear when we couldn't get his nose (a pinecone) to stick without a giant glob of snow behind it.

I told Chad we would take some pictures in the morning, but to take one with his phone right when we finished it, "just in case". It's a good thing too. We built this great big snowbear and when we got home a couple of hours later, someone had knocked it down. Hence the previous post. We went to a friend's birthday party on Tuesday night and were telling our sob story when one of the husbands of one of the girl's friends said "Hahaha - that's funny!". And I had to restrain myself from punching him in the face. I'm not joking, one of these days we will build a big snowman around a steel pole. Then when someone tries to kick it over, they'll break their foot. And I will have no sympathy.

And I guess that's about it from here. Hopefully I will have a few videos to post soon - Chad has been extra busy at work, and with his film "business", so he hasn't been able to do things as quickly as he would like.