The other day, in a little mini-celebration (until we can do a bigger one) of his remission, we went over there and took a cake I’d made. I totally screwed up the outside and due to the icing trying to melt on me and then running out of time, I didn’t get to fix it, but the inside was what was important. I called it “After the Storm” – just like a rainbow comes out to remind you that everything’s a-ok, so comes his remission. He cut the cake and was VERY surprised to see the inside and called everyone over to see. Everyone had a piece and thankfully it tasted good, too. I have to admit I used box stuff, but I’m not ashamed. Like is said on this inspirational post, “Betty’s been doing it way longer than I have, and has pretty much perfected the art.” I am so not a baker. Maybe if I had a kitchen that was bigger than a closet, things would be different, but in the meantime, I don’t but I’m happy with how the cake came out. I did make some mistakes that if I do this another time, I won’t make them again. It also had E bouncing off the friggin walls… no left-overs for him!

And I wish my father-in-law many, many, many more years of good health and a cancer-free body!

Last year with everything happening and all the hospital stuff, the weeds in the boxes here got really out of hand. I ended up paying a friend’s son a little something to just rip everything out in the early fall, and I mean everything. But the morning glories, they have come out again. I started out in the spring with good intentions. I was pulling them out every time I’d find one but I missed one day and it was a big job then I was gone for a couple of days and there was no turning back.

Now the box in the back is just totally over-grown with these stupid things. We have a tall metal stick thing to hang a bird feeder on, I think it’s completely covered. I only had 2 gladiolas peek through and I wouldn’t be surprised if the one remaining rose bush is near death.

But I decided, as horrible as it looks right now, I don’t care!! There is no way I can manage this, it’s absolutely insane. So when fall hits, the idea is to just totally re-do everything. Totally dig it out, dirt and everything. I’m not sure how effective this will be but maybe if I can get rid of even the good stuff, when the bad stuff starts peeking out, I can get rid of it. If I can do that, maybe I can prevent it from getting out of control and seeding next year, even if it means a year of NO vegetation in the back box.

Plus, I have another motive. Out front we have a rather steep hillside that’s pretty much useless. For example, when it snows, you could sled it but you’d end up in the middle of the highway. Technically, we don’t own that land, it’s state land, the easement to the highway, but apparently we have to take care of it anyway. We did find when the lawn mower was broken for a couple of weeks that if it gets too bad, the highway department will weed hack it but they don’t do a very good job. Steve has been annoyed by the hillside of death ever since we moved in. He mows it but a few years ago he came up with a new idea and planted some ivy.

The idea is to get the ivy to grow on the hillside and no one has to mow it and risk their life in a battle of wits with a mower or weed hacker. So he spent a whole $50 gift card and a lot of time on ivy… that subsequently croaked. Dead as a doornail.

Then he tried some he found out at his mom’s, dug it up and replanted it. Most of it has died.

The little bit that survived? The guy who mows the neighbor’s lawn thought he would be “helpful” and mowed 3 feet into our side and cut it all down. Steve had to tell him, hey, dude, I’m trying to grow something here…

So I thought – and I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this before – why not let the already out-of-control wild morning glory seed out then plant or at least throw the seeds on the hillside? The way this thing grows, if no one messes with it, it could work. Of course, when fall comes it all dies off and turns brown, but who cares?! Everything is brown in the fall and winter. When spring comes, it’s so hardy that the green will soon overtake the brown again.

It would be so nice if this would work. And in my sleep deprived mind, I don’t see why it shouldn’t work. After all, so far my brown thumb grows morning glories so well that I can’t get rid of them. Would be easy to mow it at the top of the hill so it doesn’t extend too far, but the biggest pain with cutting the grass would be over. So we shall see what we shall see. Oh it would be really nice too, to fill the ditch alongside the highway so the trash people throw out of their vehicles doesn’t clock the pipe that goes under the road. Dirty litter bugs. :P

(Seriously, why should WE have to pick up YOUR trash because you are too LAZY to take it to a trash can? I don’t want to touch your spent beer cans, ew!)

kthxbai. :)

There were a few people missing but most were able to make it and we had a nice evening of pizza, presents, cake and ice cream. Elijah picked out his cake months in advance and was really excited about it. Blue and orange with a big Star Wars picture. Steve pointed out that it was “dark” – aka, the Dark Side – but I can’t help it if the kid loves Darth Vader! For his piece he just had to have Darth Vader’s face and for her piece, my niece just had to have “people,” so she got two storm troopers. The little things make them happy. :)

From us, he got all 5 of the Star Wars movies that he was lacking, on DVD. Sounds expensive but I made out like a bandit, as they say. I was able to get Episode I on amazon.com used for next to nothing and I had credits on swapadvd.com to get Episode III for nothing. Episodes IV, V, and VI are a box set but it was cheaper because it doesn’t have the added stuff that they put in later, and the cases are those thin small ones. Who cares as long as the DVDs play, right?

From me he also got a Spiderman blanket. He picked out the pattern several months ago, I guess he was a little left out that I was making blankets for K and for other babies. But then again, even though he’s never carried a “blankie” in the traditional sense, this kid loves his blankets. He has been known to pile them on at night. Often I pull some off when I check on him. He likes to bring them out to watch TV with, too, sometimes even in the summer. So I thought this would be a good one for that. I’m still not finished, though, I am going to go until I run out of yarn. I started with a pound of each in red and blue. I just ran out of time before his party.

Then from his aunts, uncles, grandparents, and a special set of family friends, he ended up with some birthday money, 3 of the “regular” Transformer toys*, two large Transformer toys that don’t transform but make a lot of noise, temporary tattoos, adorable set of PJs, a Nerf dart gun, another bubble gun (he keeps breaking them and my sister keeps buying them!), etc. It’s hard for me, at the moment, to even remember everything. It doesn’t help that he absolutely TEARS through his presents until they’re all open, and then shows just how excited he is about all of them. I’m going to have to stop taking video of him opening presents because he looks like he’s only mildly entertained by everything and just wants to move on to the next thing. But he is really excited about everything he got (except the PJs, of course), he just doesn’t show it until later when he can play with things. Even now, several days later, he’s still jabbering about everything.

* Regarding the Transformers, he actually ended up with two of the same one. Because of the way he tears through presents, I didn’t realize it at the time and by the time I did, they were all open and the packaging long gone in the trash. I made a comment to Steve that we should have paid attention so that we could have exchanged one for another one he doesn’t have and E said, “No! I like them both!” And it’s true, I’ve noticed that he is playing with them both, doesn’t seem to bother him that they’re the same bad guy!

It turned out to be a great evening and I’d like to do it more, but I don’t want people to have to feel like they have to buy him something every year. His grandparents always get him something, and so do we, my brother often does, but, really, I don’t want to spoil the kid! We will just have to find other excuses of having both families together in the future.

So, anyway, Steve spent a lot of time preparing for this thing. He cooked all of the meat on Friday and took baked beans and home-grown salad and a ton of other stuff including provisions for the guys to shoot clays. So we ate, they shot, my grandpa and two of his friends had a jam session and made my sister sing…

Then E and I went out with 4 of my cousins and my aunt and her boyfriend on the 4-wheelers. E rode with one of my cousins then moved over (though great complaints) to my 4-wheeler, switching with my youngest cousin. E was mad about it. Apparently he can have fun with the cousin who’d tripped him earlier that day, but not his own mother. Hurt my feelings a bit, but I know he’s just a kid and one that likes to do things differently, at that. He was also a little unnerved that we were now the FOURTH 4-wheeler (lykeohmygoshwebelastinline). Of course, once I told him that we were last in line so we didn’t get any spiderwebs in our faces, he shut up about everything and had some fun! I’ll have to tell him tomorrow, and prove myself right, that my aunt got a VERY large and thick web in her face at one point. EWWWWW.

We went across the road to the rest of Grandpa’s property, through fields and such, entering some wooded trails. It was all just SO completely gorgeous. Especially a field that was absolutely filled to the brim with tiny little wild daisies. They were everywhere. I’d have taken some pictures but I had to drive.

Coming down a large hill in the wooded trails (which need to be re-cleared again), my 4-wheeler decided it was going to die. I couldn’t switch gears and when we shut it off, it wouldn’t come back on. Turned out it was a dead battery. (Read: SO not my fault.) We had to eventually “abandon ship,” as my aunt said, and triple up on two of the 4-wheelers and head back as it was a few miles yet and we’d already stalled quite a while. When we got back, one of my cousins said to his sister, “what took you so long, you were gone 2 and a half hours!” Oops. I had no idea it had been so long, but, hey, I’m usually the one jipped of a good time, so I deserve it, so there! My brother and a cousin’s husband ended up taking a 4-wheeler back out to where we’d left the stupid thing and jumping it. They got it going and he had to drive back the whole way in first gear. THAT sucked. Maybe next time we’ll all pack jumper cables… and water… and food… E was totally freaking out. He thought were were going to be lost in the woods forever and starve to death.

Through it all, I am proud of myself to have returned UN-sunburned. Yay me! Incredibly dirty (not yay for fields of “wheat” that send seeds flying at your face at 30 mph), but not sunburned! So then there was some more sitting around and then some waiting (for me) to get some good shots of the hummingbirds before heading home. So now I sit, too tired to get out of this chair! I can’t wait to go through some more of my photos, though… tomorrow!