marsh lands and messy houses

 This is where we went today. It's called Farmington Bay. It's basically a big marsh land.  These marsh lands run into the Great Salt Lake. It's very close to my house. I wanted to go see if I could spot some pretty birds. Of course I had Gwenyth and Sarah and our little friend Sarah J. so I couldn't get too serious about spotting birds. If I would have had a pair of binoculars, bug repellent and a very nice camera I would have been set but instead I had 3 little girls, a dog and a so so camera. It was still beautiful. It was fun to have the windows down so we could hear all the pretty and interesting bird calls. We saw tons of fish teaming in the river that flowed into one of the big ponds. We even saw a very cute fluffy tailed skunk. Clearly I didn't take this skunk picture but this skunk is as cute as the one we saw but ours had a fluffier tail. 

 We even got to see this giant blue heron as we were leaving.

 He heard us and flew off. 

What a sight to see his big self fly off.

 We stopped at the pumpkin patch since it was close by. 

They have a hay maze that the 2 Sarah's loved.

 Gwenyth wanted to sit in the car and snuggle the dog.

Aren't the red mountains pretty.....

When my kids get home from school I am going to force them to get in the car so we can go on a hike before it gets cold tomorrow :(  

 I say force them because the 3 older kids must be forced into family outings these days.

 They walk in the door and start pelting me with requests. 

Mom, can I call so and so and can you drive me there and we need to go buy me stuff for my Halloween costume and can you take me to the store and my head hurts and my leg hurts and I'm hungry and we have no good food in this house and so on and so forth.

 It's 3:18 right now. Emmaline should walk in any moment, then the other 2 kids. Sometimes between the hours of 3:30 and 7pm I am barely hanging on to my sanity. Barely. 

If we take a hike maybe I can skip the insane part of my day....

Speaking of sanity.

 Nate asked me what I wanted to do over this past weekend. I said paint our bathroom. 

He said he wanted to go to Hyrum to our family home. He then suggested he'd take the kids and leave me here alone...........................alone you say?...........................oh my goodness gracious I'll take it!!! 

Friday they all left at noonish. I lovingly helped them pack and load the car. 

Kissed them goodbye. 

The kids were like, "mom, you should come" I assured them I'd be just fine, I must paint and clean the house. Off they went. YAHOO!

 I painted my bathroom, and listened to music and had a marvelous time. 

I tell you when I'm alone my body must start producing endorphins at an intoxicating rate. 

Wow It felt great.

 I finished the bathroom around 11pm and fell asleep after watching Oprah's Life Class. 

You can better believe I love watching that show!!! 

I slept in Saturday morning.  I thought I'd clean the house and do laundry then maybe I'd drive up to Hyrum......I started cleaning and got so frustrated with all the kids toys and junk and clothes and shoes!!!! The American curse of having too much stuff!!!!

 I then proceeded to bag up toys and clothes and garbage at an alarming rate.

 I think I must have walked 5 miles with all the running up and down my stairs and all around my house as I tore up closets and drawers, banishing bags of too much stuff up! 

I stuffed Nate's truck full and took it to the D.I. 

 Sometimes as a mom I start to wonder if I'm lazy or really unorganized or old and slow because my house is a mess most of the time.

 This weekend I discovered I am lighting fast, extremely efficient and young and strong. 

I ripped through this house like an organizing, cleaning machine. 

When I have 5 people undoing all my cleaning and dropping there stuff and needing my help when I'm in the middle of a chore, so I stop half way, it creates the illusion that I'm a terrible housekeeper. 

Not so.

 I'm just so out numbered. So that's nice to know. 

I told the kids I was going to crack down on their slovenly behavior. I warned Nate I was going to be obnoxious about the kids picking up there rooms and the house and it was going to be different around here. This isn't a house full of babies anymore so I'm going to start expecting more! Do I sound like a tyrant? Aren't you glad I'm not your mom? All right. The kids are home, time for a hike. I'll post hiking pictures tomorrow hopefully.

Hope you're having a great day and I wish I could read your blog and find out what you're up to...

P.S.

Demo's should be done this week. If you want one with my picture and the song titles printed on the CD let me know. I'll have 100 of them. Well, 99. I'll keep one for myself.