cougars and a garden

Shocking news to most of you: Trustin is crazy about BYU basketball. His downtime in the evening always seems to consist of reading articles about BYU and other college sports. (How much can they have to say about one team, I say...but apparently a lot). And luckily I'm a fan too, if not so crazily. A while back we got to see BYU play in the Mountain West Tournament here in Vegas. Unfortunately we didn't see the 52 point scoring Jimmer Fredette but the exhausted team the day after that game. So the cougars lost...but luckily we took along our own cougar/lion who always makes things fun.

Trustin said, "We should put Zeke in his lion costume." I said "Oh, no, he'll die of heat!" But Zeke heard and he definately wanted to wear the costume.

We had the best seats in the house: the very back row. This meant I could throw Zeke way up high in the air to cheer, he could sit on Daddy's shoulders for the fight song or I could hang him upside down and tickle him. Zeke's favorite thing was singing the Cougar fight song. He would clap and laugh and he even started doing the rolling his hands and punching the air at the end (for those of you familiar with the fight song). He's a natural cougar.

We didn't take many pictures though. But here he is happy. He was kind of a zombie the first half of the game (combo of just waking up and his people watching tendency) but he was really into the game during the second half. And for the week afterwards he kept wanting to sing the fight song.

And this is our garden! Wahoo! In two weeks when the sun really shows up around here it may be gone, so we've got to admire our green thumb while it lasts.

And hey, that dead tree I bought Trustin for Christmas really is a living tree! It has two buds started so we're hoping for some pomegranates in a while.

And just because he's cute.

We also had a family date to the park last week but all the pictures are on Trustin's phone. It was crazy though. We made the mistake of letting Zeke throw a cracker before we'd finished eating and suddenly we had ducks and geese and pidgeons swarming us from all sides. Zeke was rather worried for his life, and I was too. If Trustin hadn't come to our rescue Zeke and I would have been Goose food for a minute there.

Zeke is as usual being a cutie these days. His current favorite things to do include raiding the kitchen drawers for wooden spoons and then hitting little plastic golf balls around the house. Trustin's our ward Ragball coach and Zeke has become a baseball fan too. He will swing his arm in a throwing motion say "catch" and usually point to his head because he realized he isn't wearing a baseball cap. And he will randomly grab twigs and and sticks and try to bat with them (or more frequently, make us bat). It is fun to try to pitch to him because he stands with absolutely perfect form, perfect (at least to Mom's untrained eyes) but by the time we throw the ball he is completely distracted and looking or walking somewhere else entirely.

Unfortunately, we've hit a phase, a hitting phase. When Zeke doesn't get what he wants he is quite liable to smack me in the face, stomach, leg, etc. I am truly at a loss of how to help him. I was hoping it was one of those phases that comes with the age, but from a recent case study (asking only one friend with a daughter two months older) this is just a Zeke phase. Uhgg. We were watching Toy Story the other day and there is a scene in the first one where Woody is just pummeling Buzz. Suddenly I realized why parents get so paranoid about what their kids watch. We will be skipping that part of the movie now, just in case. goodness he's gotten simultatneous cuter as he's gotten a bit cantankerous (this is the word Trustin uses to describe it).

For example: Trustin typically whistles as me as he walks out the door (aw, precious). Lately Zeke has taken to returning the favor. Cracks me up. Even last week when he got ridiculously sick he was still my whistling buddy. He had a fever of over 104 and was laying on my chest completely weak and sad and Trustin walked out the door and whistled and Zeke in his sick weak voice says woo-woo. He's a keeper.

Patting ourselves on the back

We moved in five months ago now (wow, that went by fast) and I bought fabric to make curtains for our giant sun-attracting windows pretty quick after that. That step was easy: a couple awesome coupons, a minor self-control battle to resist the fabric that was still $30/yd after the 50% off coupon, making myself fall in love with something off the discount rack and then bringing it home with a lot of enthusiasm and optimism for the easy task ahead of me. Afterall, curtains are pretty much just big rectangles, I don't even have to any piecing. One day project. One deluded mama.

Why didn't someone tell me giant curtains are so darn hard? All the blogs and how-to's I read made it sound so easy, so maybe I'm just not a natural curtain maker. Making these puppies took me ages to make and included a lot of unpicking and replanning.

Luckily I did have my one special helper. I've always hated the pinning step of any sewing project, so I turned that step over to Zeke:
Whereas I'm tempted to scrimp, Zeke knows you need a lot of pins...per square inch.

He was pretty pleased with himself.

So wa-la, curtains. They are done, that is the end of the pain right? Oh how we wish. Last night we installed the curtain rods and lets just sum that whole story up by saying it included a lot of brokenness: broken dry wall screws, broken drill bits, broken windows and broken egos. I may have even cried a bit, but hey I'm pregnant. The culprit in our troubles? The ridiculous man who decided to put windows in the corner with only two inches of wall. Just try making two curtain rods meet up there, look nice, and still keep your curtains on. On second thought, don't try, it's no fun at all. Luckily, what stinks at 11:00 at night is pretty entertaining at 3 in the afternoon. Plus, we have curtains to show for it! (nevermind that I haven't yet hemmed or ironed them, this counts as complete to me)

Now as long as Zeke doesn't go Tarzan on us, we're set!

Which brings me to our couches and further evidence that our family is not normal. We have two mismatched couches, and one of them, big and yellow, probably doesn't fit the typical description of beauty. But I decided this week that I am in love with our couches. I've heard several lessons on respect in primary lately, and the example that has been brought up repeatedly is "You don't jump around on your mom's couches do you?" My answer, "Well of course not, never...who would do such a thing?..." In reality, that is precisely the beauty of our big yellow couch. It was made for "To infinity and beyond!" and the accompanying jumps and dives and rolls. A minimum of 20 minutes a day is devoted to flying, crashing, jumping, touch-downing, rolling and climbing around the couch and the love sac. It kind of clashes with our new curtains but I realized that even if somebody offered us a brand new beautiful set of couches I think I'd have to turn them down. I don't want a couch Zeke can only sit on. That sounds awfully beautiful and dull. (see, we're abnormal). What I really want is beautiful couches and then a basement for our fun couch to live on forever. I don't think I can part with it, and Zeke can't either.

This is just a cute picture of Zeke and his friends that we got to babysit for two days. Zeke was in heaven. He loves playing with friends.

This was too cute. Zeke is going to be the best brother.

And somebody has got to teach little sister how to put on make-up, so Zeke practiced this week. He was quite proud of himself when I found him putting blush on his cheeks. He did a scarily good job. Oh heavens, this kid knows how to make me laugh.