Loser Day

I'm having a hard time adjusting to my summer off from teaching. I've learned something new about myself. Productivity makes me happy and feel useful and being unproductive makes me feel... the opposite. Believe me, I was happy to have the first couple days off, but after that it got a little boring. I really have to say that I admire those people who can stay home and do useful things with their time. I have discovered that I am not one of those people.

Today was the least productive day I feel like I've ever had. EVER. Last night I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning watching the 2nd season of Gilmore Girls. I woke up around noon... I think and then checked Facebook. Facebook can only keep a person occupied for so long. Anyways, I watched like 5 more episodes of Gilmore Girls, took another long nap, and woke up around 7pm. At this point, I decided to create a to do list of things that I could/should be doing. I accomplished like 3 things (out of like 30) on my to do list and baked a bonus pan of brownies for my dinner. I then finished up the rest of he 2nd season of Gilmore Girls. I had my daily call with Doug around 9:00 which was the only real human contact I had for the day. He mentioned something about possibly wanting cookies, but told me it was too late anyways. At around 3am I decided to make cookies. I made a lot.


Wow, what a loser day. Good thing I get to go see Doug tomorrow..uh I mean today. I have the capstone (final) project presentation for my summer class I've been taking today as well. I actually worked on it quite a bit on Wednesday and it's basically flawless and goes way beyond the requirements already so I couldn't really spend more time on it. Believe me, I tried.

The second week in August I get to start teaching Early Back, a 2 week summer program to get a small class of kids jump started for the school year. It should start keeping me busy again, thank goodness!

Catnip Mess

I don't have kids, so I take pictures of messes that my cats make. Last night I came down to this mess in the kitchen... unlike children who usually hide, cats have no guilt. He continued to lie on the floor even as I was sweeping and vacuuming it up!



We bought some kind of cat thing online and they gave us a bunch of catnip to go along with it. Darwin and Lucky didn't really show too much interest in it so I put it in our junk drawer. (in case we needed it?) Anyways, the bag of catnip was accidentally left on the counter. They had a bit of fun with it. Now it's where it should have been in the first place... the TRASH.

Harvest Time!

The garden is turning out pretty good this year. I had a piece of corn a few weeks ago and it was delish, but I wanted to wait till Doug was able to be there to pick it so we waited and now the corn kind of tastes waxy... sad. Well it grew well, we just need to pick it earlier next year. We have tomatoes growing EVERYWHERE, so its a little crazy trying to pick them because they weren't caged. The cherry tomatoes are excellent and I love just snacking on them.



We also had some sweet peas pop up this last week. I've decided that after eating these, I haven't really had peas. My mom always got the frozen stuff and I got the even cheaper canned stuff. These are SOOO good, they don't even compare. This garden is turning out quite healthy for me because I'm finding vegetables that I like. I'm not sure if its that they taste better fresh or I'm just so excited that I actually grew something.

The garden is terribly overgrown with weeds, but I'll show you a picture of it anyways. The veggies out of it are quite yummy!

Shelly's B-Day + Crappy Neighbors = Police

My little sister Shelly turned 15 this last Saturday! We had quite the eventful weekend that ended with the cops being called on us...

Thursday night, Shelly and Johnny came over to my house for a sleepover. I usually get pretty lonely having the whole place to myself, so it was nice to have some extra bodies in the house. On Friday, Doug was able to come home, so we drove back to my parents' house to drop off the kids. It was late and we didn't want to drive all the way home just to turn around and come back the next day for Shelly's party, so we decided to camp in the backyard.

Camping is never complete without a big bonfire to roast marshmallows and hot dogs. My dad just tore down the old front deck on the house, so we had plenty of wood to feed our fire. We got out all the camping chairs and sat around the fire and had hot dogs and s'mores. It was a lot of fun!

Chris starting the fire.

Both Doug and Chris (hopefully soon) are Eagle Scouts, so they are plenty experienced with tending to fires and we were very safe. The next evening we grilled and started up the fire again to roast some more marshmallows and finish off some of the wood.

*NOTE: I just got a Tiffen UV Protector for my camera and read in the reviews about a weird green glow. I thought, "I never take pictures in the dark..." so I just ignored it and bought it anyways. Not to self: Take off UV filter when taking pictures at birthday parties.

Shelly, before blowing out the candles.

We had just finished dinner and were singing "Happy Birthday" to Shelly when we got a knock on the front door from a police officer. He explained to us that he had gotten a complaint from a neighbor about the fire in the backyard and explained to us that it is against the law in WV to burn "construction debris" and that we could/should be written a citation. We did not know this so we were more than willing to put out the fire. Another police officer in the backyard supervised Doug as he put out the fire. The police officer in the back was very kind and understanding and basically told Doug that he didn't think we were hurting anyone but that they needed to respond to the complaint.

Doug putting out the fire.

I am now going to rant about my parents' neighbor... My family has now lived in the same house for 30 years. We NEVER had the cops called on us, but since these neighbors have moved in we have had the cops called on us 3 TIMES and have had numerous disputes.

(Not so) Little History:
When they first moved in about 8 years ago, my mom brought them homemade bread and cookies to welcome them into the neighborhood. Shortly thereafter, they started putting up a fence in the backyard... the only problem was that they were putting it on my parents' property. My mom went over to their house (she didn't call the police...) and explained to him that he had measured the property lines incorrectly and that they were putting up the fence in our yard. He completely dismissed her and continued putting in the fence until my dad wrote a letter telling him that they would take him to court if he did not put the fence on his own property.

The first time this neighbor called the cops on us was during a party we had for Cassie and Candice (I believe) while they were visiting in WV in like 2001. Jed and Justin decided to race (motorcycle VS car) down our street at midnight. Admittedly, it was pretty stupid for them to do it and I told them that they shouldn't have... Anyways, it was loud for about 20 seconds as they raced down the street. When they drove back up the street he came out of his house cursing and threatening us with his gun. He came over to my yard, got in Justin and Jed's faces, and forced them to leave. They drove off, parked somewhere in the neighborhood, and walked back to my house. We were outside talking when a police car drove down the street and shined a spotlight on everyone at the party as we were talking in the front yard. My neighbor returned when the cop came up and started yelling again. As the only person who lived there, I was summoned to go to talk to the police officer. It was pretty terrifying for me as a 17 year old that had NEVER gotten in trouble for anything. Jed and Justin both came up and talked to the police officer just as it looked like I was about ready to pee my pants. We didn't really get in trouble, but had nice little "chat."

The second time was when Chris, my little brother, and a friend of his were shooting his BB gun in the backyard. His friend accidentally shot the neighbors' above ground pool and put a small dent in it. I haven't seen the dent, but the kids tell me that you can see it when you get within 2 inches of it. He came out cursing at the boys and yanked the gun out of their hands and called the police. Once again stupid, but did it need to involve the police?

The third time was Saturday night for the bonfire in the backyard.

It is COMMON courtesy that if you have a problem with a person, that you go to them FIRST. If our neighbor would have walked the 30 feet over to our door and asked us to put out the fire, we would have been more than happy to comply. As a fourth grade teacher, I deal with tattling quite often. I teach my students to first try to handle the problem themselves and if they were unsuccessful to come to me about it. I feel like my fourth graders are more capable of solving their own problems.

My parents plan to retire in the house that they raised their children in and this worries me that they have such crappy people as neighbors. I hope the neighbors move... and soon.

Russell Family Reunion

Fri, July 3: Fly into SLC, go to Grandma and Grandpa's house in Provo
Sat, July 4: Watch BYU Stadium fireworks from back porch
Sun, July 5: Attend Grandma and Grandpa's Ward
Mon, July 6: All Day at the amusement park, Lagoon
Tues, July 7: All Day boating, jet skiing at Deer Creek Reservoir
Wed, July 8: Provo River Rafting Trip
Thurs, July 9: All Day at 7 Peaks Waterpark
Fri, July 10: Go up to in-laws, swim, watch girls' horse show
Sat, July 11: Celebrate Doug's B-Day by eating at the Mandarin.
Sun, July 12: Fly Home

As you can see, I had a busy week during the family reunion. I had a BLAST! I'm now back home doing absolutely nothing and I've seriously never been so bored in my life. People say that one of the perks of teaching is the summer, but I'm bored out of my mind. I wish I could've gotten a job this summer! The highlight of my day has been, well posting this blog...

Doug hasn't had the time to install Photoshop on my computer, so I've been playing with Picasa, Google's free photo editing software. I took like a thousand pictures over the reunion, so it's hard to pick just a few...

Sammy, Bekah's son, riding on Uncle Rick's Boat.

Nicholas, Bekah's son, under the umbrella at Seven Peaks.

A crazy picture of dad after a day of chlorine filled fun at the waterpark.

Jon, Bekah's husband, towing Chris behind him on the wave runner.

Doug and I riding one of the wave runners at Deer Creek.

Chris getting into the boat.

Jon wiping out while wakeboarding.

My feet in grandpa's golf course lawn.

Shelly and Angel swinging below the back porch.

Grace, Becca and James', little girl playing in the backyard.

Medieval Times

Doug and I went to Medieval Times in the Arundel Mills Mall this last weekend. If you haven't heard of it, basically it is a dinner plus a show with horses and sword fighting and all of that stuff. We're not really into all of the sword fighting stuff, but I had heard good things about it. We had some discount coupons that made it $30 a person rather than $60 a person, which was nice. We had a blast!

They started out by having us raise our right hand and left hand in the air and explaining to us that these were our utensils. Doug doesn't touch his food so this made things interesting. We were in the section that cheered for the blue knight and Doug and I were pretty loud. The knight even threw a flower to me!

I definitely recommend this if you have a good coupon like we did!

Here are some pictures:

The arena

The rose that the blue knight threw to me.

Doug at the entrance.

This is what the outside of the mall looks like.

A quick snapshot of Doug and I before the show.

I'm off to Utah for the next week starting Friday, so I probably won't be blogging much. I hope you all have an excellent Fourth of July!