2 months worth of pictures

It's been so long ago I don't even remember where this was. Some lake somewhere, apparently.

On the way back home we drove through the mountains and saw a ton of stuff! We saw this deer, which we nearly ran over since it was in no hurry to get out of the way. We also saw a fox run cross the road right in front of us, and also something else...i don't remember what it was though, but we were impressed by it! what was it?.... that's the problem with blogging about it 2 months after it happened, you forget!

This was right next to a waterfall, and we had to cross streams and such to get to it. Haha, i love this picture.

So I went to a garage sale a while ago and totally hit the shoe jackpot. i got Courtney 8 pairs of shoes for only $4. Seriously, the ones in the upper left hand corner have never even been worn. The bottom right ones are her "princess shoes" (The ones she cries out for in the middle of the night.) Anyway, I was pretty pleased with my find ; )

I decided one morning to make Courtney some playdough, since I couldn't stand another day of SpongeBob. This held her interest for almost 2 hours, it was great! I gave her a bunch of cookie cutters and a rolling pin, and away she went!

For any other mothers who would love a few moments of peace and quiet, here's the recipe:

2 1/2 cups flour 1/2 cup salt 1 Tbs alum

Sift above in a bowl and add 3 Tbs veg. oil. Stir in 2 cups boiling water.

Mix and knead until smooth. Add food coloring if you'd like. Store in airtight container in fridge.

Courtney and Mama just bein' silly.

Since the playdough went over so well, a few days later I thought I'd give finger paints a try. Courtney helped by stirring in the food coloring. What a helpful little girl ; )

This picture makes me laugh, it's like she's doing a "paint dance" ...you know, like a 'rain dance'

Clean up in the kitchen sink .

To make this all you do is boil 1/4 cup cornstarch and 2 cups water. Boil until thick, then pour into your jars and add food coloring. Simple ; )

A couple weeks ago, Jeremy, his brother Spenser, Courtney, and I drove to Gilmore, Id to check out the Ghost town. We've been there before, but wanted to go again. I have tons of cool pictures of all the houses, but it takes about 2 minutes per picture for my computer to upload and i'm not that patient. So here's a couple of the houses. It was fun to walk through them and get a sense of how they lived back in the 1800's. The time before when we went, we found tea cups and blue and purple glass and the top of a perfume bottle, some very cool stuff. This time around wasn't as exciting since so many people go there and trash it and take stuff.

This was down in the lower area of the ghost town where the miners and their families lived. I've always wanted to go to the upper area, where there's what jeremy calls "the whore house" and some other fancy buildings, but the road has always been closed and blocked everytime we've tried. Jeremy's been up there before though. On the way back home, we detoured to the Charcoal Kilns they used in the 1800's. It was raining and cold, so we stayed in the car while Spenser went and looked. Thats good enough for me.

Last year we planted 4 rose bushes in our front flower garden. I think each plant only bloomed 1 rose each, this year it's just overflowing with a ton of roses on each plant. They're so pretty! the two center plants are climbing rose bushes, so Jeremy is building a trelace to put in the flower garden for them both to climb up.

Courtney got her Red Balloon at Jakey's birthday party last week. She hasn't let go of it since. It has now become her "Squishy Chair" since it's so flat and rubbery and won't pop.