Gopher/Mole/Vole?

Let me begin with a story. My tale begins about 6 years ago in West Jordan Utah when we lived in our first home. When the snow finally started melting off our back lawn during our second spring in our home, we noticed odd tracks in the grass. After tons of research we found out that we had voles. Now, if you are unfamiliar with voles, I'll try to sum them up for you. They are basically mice who eat their way through your yard. Not even snow stops them. They eat your grass UNDER the snow. This concept horrified me. Mice. Eating my yard. All winter long. Mean little cooperative mice eating together. In my yard. Very creepy. Then it happened. I got a phone call from a man explaining to me he was one of my neighbors.

He was blaming me for the mice that were suddenly in his yard. Not just normal mice, but mice that were eating his plants.

Now, I was horrified to begin with, but then the phone call and my knees went to jelly. I was mumbling and stammering on the phone trying to play dumb and apologize at the same time (doesn't work very well).

I called my sister Jen after I hung up to explain to her what happened.

Turns out she already knew about it.

My neighbor turned out to be my brother in law Ron, her husband. He was prank calling me because he knew how upset I was about the mice being in my yard. Ron is basically a good human being but, and most would agree with me, he also has a pure evil side. He has favorite victims to show this evil side to. Since I was 13, I happen to be one of his favorite victims.

He never did apologize for scaring the tar out of me, but that's not his style. I'm sure one day I'll see the fake call incident from his side and it will be funny, but not this spring, oh no.

In the yard of our home now we have a gopher or mole (please not vole) problem. We have a pest control company who gets rid of all our rodent/spider/bug problems. When we noticed the gopher/mole type damage in our yard, we called them and they took care of it, telling us to call them if 'we noticed more activity'.

Now Brandon has been working very hard the past few weeks getting part of our yard ready for a vegetable garden. We know we have issues with pests, so we built raised beds with chicken wire underneath to deter any rodents from burrowing up into our veggies. We took all kinds of preventive steps and worked very hard yesterday to finish it up. We took pictures of all our handiwork.

Here is a shot of the completed beds

Here is the first bed with our tomatoes, peppers, peas, cucumbers and various seeds.

This is the taller bed where Jake helped plant corn and carrot seeds

Much later last night, I asked Brandon to quickly go water the gardens. It was dark. Brandon came back in, and said a phrase that terrified me, "There is something not right with the planting beds. There are bumps."

Arrrrggghhhhh! What?!! Noooooo! We had tried so hard. We tiptoed back out and turned on the lights to see all our hard work destroyed. Plants uprooted, dirt everywhere. Giant holes in the corn/carrot bed. I was so upset. Then I thought, "I'm standing with flip flops in the dark next to the world's most evil gopher/mole." It took all my strength to walk with dignity back into the house. When Brandon followed me in, he found me almost hyperventilating mumbling about mole/vole/gophers. I was in full panic mode. Brandon tried to reassure me but I wasn't having it. I wanted to see what was going on. We let our Bandit out in the back, turned on our exterior lights and ran to our bedroom to watch. No activity. We kept watching. Then we noticed Bandit sniffing around the veggie beds- he was looking for the mole/gopher. I was so happy that Bandit would protect the beds!

Wait, was Bandit eating the basil? Yeah.....um....our dog who we owned now for 5 years, has kept a secret from us this entire time. He's a digger dog! He destroyed our beds! We saw it with our own eyes! I was so relieved that it wasn't a blind, giant, evil creature like the worms from the movie 'Tremors'. It was the small, apparently evil creature I let sleep in my room.

So we decided we needed a fence to keep out the dog. We decided to do it first thing in the morning.

Here are some shots of the sad veggie beds in the light of day

Oh no, poor carrot/corn bed. There are tiny carrot seeds everywhere now. Heaven only knows where they'll show up.

Here is the garden with it's new 3 foot push in fence from Home Depot. We hope it keeps him out..............

The culprit!!!

One happy note, if we put Jake in it, he can't get out.

Fingers crossed that the garden is much lower drama for the rest of the year. I don't think I could handle waking up to see more destruction out there. Wish us luck.

A Nice Spring Day

After the weather here in Utah decided it was okay to act like spring, we celebrated at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens. The flowers were pretty cute, but my boys were cuter.

Things That Are Making Me Happy Lately

1. Hearing Jake sing Kelly Clarkson songs when he's playing with Hayden's toys.
2. The return of seemingly nice weather
3. The recipe for Bacon Pecan Waffles in my new magazine
4. Being able to call a professional to get rid of the gopher/mole/vole situation
5. Tide with Febreze
6. Enjoying Brandon's new obsession with weeding (woo hoo!)
7. The way Hayden jumps around while he's playing video games
8. All of my Old Navy t-shirts
9. My funny co-workers who like to eat treats at 9:30 p.m. too
10. Finding out my cell phone plays and records video (duh)
11. Groupon
12. My new found ability to quickly fall asleep when taking a nap, which makes up for my inability to fall asleep quickly at night
13. Children's Zyrtec
14. Realizing that because of Brandon's new found love of weeding, we may actually plant a garden this year (if the professionals can get rid of the gopher/mole/voles)
15. Free exercise equipment (thanks M & D!)
16. Free time to exercise
17. My ability to come up with valid excuses for not exercising (I think they're valid)
18. The fact that some things don't embarrass Hayden like they would me if I were his age (example:When he says something we don't understand he says, "Uh yeah, I'm still in Speech Class, remember? Listen better next time.")
19. Our poor, poor patient dog Bandit, who endures daily toddler abuse without biting the aforementioned toddler
20. My 14 year old car that still behaves like a 5 year old car (knock on wood)

Jake is 2!

It was Jake's birthday yesterday!

It is definitely weird to think that my baby is two years old, but he is. There is nothing I can do about it except to embrace it. He has acted like he was two for months now, so maybe that's why I can't believe it. Grandma, Grandpa and Becky came and brought him lunch yesterday for his birthday and gave him his gifts. He loves Grandma attention in all forms. He loved to show her how he already knew how to play with the cookie counting game she bought him. When she kissed Hayden, and told him how handsome he was, he replied, "Grandma, did you know you've told me that a thousand and one times. I know I'm handsome." After Daddy got off work, we went to Classic Fun Center with Auntie Shilo, Grandaddy and our little friend Anthony. I had never been there before. Oh my goodness, I've been missing out. That place is awesome.

Here are Jake and Daddy celebrating and waiting for cake.
This is Hayden with a mouthful of cotton candy

Sorry, I know it's dark, but this is a shot of Auntie Shilo and Jake on one of the slides.

(She was so nice to play with Jake and I just lounged around. I owe her.)

And here, my friends, is a shot of the most amazing kid treat I've ever seen. It's a huge flashing sword wrapped in cotton candy. It's a treat, flashlight and weapon in one! You go ahead and try of thinking of something more spectacular for a child, I dare you.

Thumbs up to Classic Fun Center and auntie slaves!

Check out Classic's website. Be sure to watch the video of The Blast Zone. The intense action movie music makes it so very dramatic.

School Play

Hayden was in a school play last month called "Stone Soup". He played Soldier #2, and he played it well. He had seven lines to memorize and he didn't mess up a single one. I was very impressed.

Look! Grandaddy caught the toddler! It was the only way to get him in a picture with his brother.

Proud Auntie Shilo and Soldier #2

Jake wanting the camera. I eventually gave it to him to keep him quiet and he took a lot of pictures of my lap and his arms. Good times.

We are very proud of how hard he worked and how seriously he took being in the play.

Happy Easter

One of the perils of working in retail is missing out on holidays. Our celebrations were short. The boys had already colored eggs once so Hayden wasn't interested in coloring more, but he was kind enough to stop in for a picture.

Jake enjoyed candy for breakfast. It's fun watching him now on holiday mornings. He almost understands what's going on.

That Lego set completes Hayden's Space Police collection. He also enjoyed candy for breakfast.

I tried to get Jake to stop dipping his entire hand into the egg dye by putting his egg in the whisk.

Even with the 'throw the egg as hard as you can into the cup' technique, Jake's eggs turned out pretty darn cute.

Happy Easter everyone!

Interpretation Gone Awry

Have you ever ordered flowers for someone, had them delivered, and then wondered how they looked? Well, this weekend, I was lucky enough to get a new nephew. My sister Jen decided to order some flowers for the happy new parents at the hospital. She thought she'd be safe choosing a Martha Stewart design, but she was wrong. The first picture is of the lovely flowers from the website, the second shot is what they received. Now I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that the card holder and vase make the arrangement look more like a Village Inn milkshake. I understand the need to replace out of season flowers, but seriously? When are carnations out of season? And who thought replacing them with green spider mums was a good plan? And it seems to be half the size of the desired arrangement.

And if you think that's bad, wait until you see what happened when my mother used the Internet to order flowers............

Now, I will give the florist credit for using the exact same type of flowers (see that, other florist? there seem to be carnations in this arrangement), but those little round mums are black. Maybe in bright sunlight you could pass them off as purple, but in a hospital room they look like creepy, fake, Halloween type black mums. What says 'Congrats on the new baby!' like creepy black flowers? Any other flowers, that's what.

So the lesson today kids is this:

Walk your buns into a Flower Patch, find an arrangement yourself, and take it in with you when you go to see that super freakin' cute new nephew.