Spring Planting

Or at least we're getting ready for it. Yesterday after work, Eric rented a tiller and tilled our big garden. At the moment, he's off tilling three other ward members' gardens.

Xela and I moved the concrete border (concrete in chunks) around the garden so that Eric would have the full area to till through. Some of those are quite heavy. The kids all thought it was cool to see the ant trails, they "rescued" the worms, and scurried away from the centipedes. We fed the local birds as they came down to the feast on the bugs exposed by overturned rocks. Then Graigry went and scared them all off; poor birds, grateful bugs.





The kids all liked watching Eric take the tiller out of our friend's truck. The boys had fun playing in the truck bed, pretending they were fishing and other stuff. I told them to be careful or they'd end up with a scarred forehead like their mother.

I was in the garden while Eric was tilling and Neta must have thought I was going to be chopped up because she just cried until I came out. Her little dirty face was stained with tear trails. It was cute. This picture was taken at the beginning of her meltdown, so her face isn't as dirty.

Remember the time...

...when we were in DC.

I'm enjoying having a blog and thought I'd share a few pictures of one of our three ten year anniversary trips last year. We went to Florida in June, St Louis in October (for our actual anniversary) and DC in November. It's great to have friends that will volunteer to take your five monkeys so you can escape. I've been very blessed that way.


Anyway, Eric had a work conference in DC and I went for the weekend. I remember when Mom and Dad went to DC and Mom came back with a shirt that said: "I walked my feet off in DC." I know what that feels like. We walked all around the National Mall on Saturday and by four o'clock we had shin splints. Here are some of the sites we visited:

Eric's dream home! We did a walk by of the White House - the line was too long to actually go in.

Abraham Lincoln is one of Eric's heroes, so of course we went there. I've always wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial (Eric's been there on another business trip) so we walked down the reflecting pool and read some of his addresses.

We also stood in the spot where Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. We had to wait a bit for people to move so we could actually stand on the square and think about what it would have been like. Eric thought it would have been very symbolic if Obama had had his inaguration there at the Lincoln Memorial, but of course he didn't.

We saw the Jefferson Memorial, Korean and Vietnam Memorials, FDR Memorial and then walked back to the Washington Monument and sat for lunch. Eric wanted to see the Supreme Court, but it wasn't within view and our legs were very upset.


Our last stop was the Capital building, (it was in view of our lunch bench. We briefly met a couple from Utah who was willing to take our picture. As you can see they were getting ready for the inauguration. We tried to go inside but you need tickets and it was already raining and we didn't want to run around the building, again, and get more wet. When the rain let up, we headed the three or so blocks to the Metro and the hotel.

After an hour nap we got ready to go to the temple. It was the first time we'd been to the temple together in a while, so that was obviously wonderful. The DC Temple is beautiful inside and out. We were back at the hotel around ten and then spent a quiet Sunday before I had to catch a plane home, where, apon arrival and gathering of children from various houses, two threw up all over. I called Eric and cried that I wanted to go back. Gotta hate it when reality slaps you in the face like that.

My baby is NINE and other notes

Xela turned nine on March 16th. We had a cookout and presents on March 14th which I think kind of threw her. I invited some family friends for food and we made cake and called it a birthday party. It was a little colder than I remember the weather predicting, but the kids didn't seem to care. They ran around more than us old fowgies did. They asked for ice cream, but I said we weren't going to do that as they'd freeze themselves from the inside out and they didn't complain too much.

Xela has expressed an interest in playing soccer (must take after the old lady) for over a year, so after Mom's "what does she want" phone call and a little inspiration, she's all decked out ready to go, see the photo. She wore the outfit everyday after school for almost a week. Any excuse to go outside and play. I signed her up on the 16th to be on a team at the YMCA starting in April and she's totally excited. We played soccer for family home evening that evening and Xela's a pretty good player, not afraid to take out an adult (thanks to protective shinguards) for the ball. It's going to be fun to watch and live vicariously.

In other news, the three youngest have good times playing together, for the most part. They take the letter pads (for lack of a better word) and make "train tracks" as Nate calls them and then, well you can see the picture. It's fun to watch them as they create new games and Neta is pretty good to just go with the plan of her elders. She didn't even mind when they made her princess of the laundry basket. They are quite the little treo. They are currently entertaining themselves by taking turns spinning on one of our office chairs. They moved it to the kitchen where there is more running room.

I finally did it

I'm the last one in the Hibbert family to start a blog. With any luck, this will assist in my desire to keep up on journaling my life and the adventures we have as a family. There is the hope anyway.

Neta is finally feeling better, after four days of revisiting her meals and wanting to be held most of the day. She woke up and has been her usual happy self this morning. Hallelujah for simple answers to prayer.

We're very excited for Spring! Eric started to get our pool ready last Saturday. I got our garden starters planted last Tuesday and we plan to till this Saturday. We've already had two cookouts and are looking forward to MANY more.

Well, Graigry and Nate want me to read them some dinosaur books, so I will have to get back to this a little later and post some more recent pictures of our zoo crew; I have to get them off my camera.