The aftermath

Well, Hyrum was successful in shooting the skunk in the head, but it still managed to let out it's stink when it died. We had to evacuate the house and toss the cage over the railing to the alley. Hyrum finally dumped the skunk out into the trailer of dirt and buried it under more dirt (we're taking our dirt piles over to an empty lot the city wants filled), and now the city will have a fun surprise when they level the dirt. Sorry!

Now the problems is, we have all the windows and fans on in the apartment, but even 3 1/2 hours later, it's still pretty stinky. We only had the door open for about 5 seconds after shooting it, but that was enough to fumigate the house. People walking by on the sidewalk could smell it and they'd comment about it, and even in the big house it stinks. Weston's work shoes were outside when Hy shot the skunk, so they stink and he's had to work under the house barefoot all day, not that that's so unusual for the twins.

My brother-in-law, Edward, has never smelled a skunk in his life because they don't have skunks in England, so I've been trying to figure out a way to capture some of the vile stink so he can smell it when he comes out here in August. Fresh skunk stink smells like the stuff you pass by on the road, but only 100 times more powerful, and with a nasty cut onions smell mixed in. Good thing no one has plans to visit us any time soon! We're pretty raunchy right now. Hyrum went to a job site to check on his installers, but he was kicked out because he stunk so bad. He then went to his office, but he was kicked out of there too because his funk was unbearable. So now he's back at home where the rest of us don't notice it because we stink as bad as him.

This experience has meant the death of the cage entertainment. It's always been fun to wake up and see what new thing is in the cage, but no more. We don't want to risk catching another skunk, and since this area of town was once dubbed "skunk hollow" because of all the skunks, our odds of another encounter are high. We'll just let whatever wants to get into our cat food have at it.

A hostage situation

We're being held hostage by a skunk!! We're prisoners in our own house, or apartment I guess. We haven't caught any more raccons since Vicious, but we did catch a skunk last night, and unfortunately, the cage is right outside our front door. I opened the door to go on a jog this morning, and I saw a skunk in the cage in a very aggitated state because my cat was out there waiting to be fed. I coaxed the cat inside, then shut the door, and for the last hour we've been stuck in here waiting for Kyle, Hyrum's employee, to bring us some bullets. We have our gun upstairs, but the shells are downstairs, so Kyle can get them when he gets here and toss them up to us through a window. The tricky thing is, you have to shoot it in the head or else it will spray. This one is really small, and the holes in the cage are small, so we'll see how good of a shot Hyrum is. I told him that if he gets sprayed, he has to go downstairs and hose off instead of seeking shelter in the house. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Mommy's big butt

I found this draft from May 20th that I'd forgotten to post. This was Talea's reaction when she saw this photo:


Tilly: Mommy, why are you covering your butt?

Me: So Daddy couldn't take a picture of my bum bum.

Talea: Well, you have a big bum, so Daddy's taking a picture of it.

Lovely, isn't she? I'm gonna have lots of blackmail for her when she's a teen!

And so it begins...

Saturday (the 14th) was THE day. We rented a hoe (by hoe, I mean the large tractor variety) and started work on lowering the lawns so the rain water would run away from the house and so we could continue work on digging out the crawlspace.

Hyrum checked to see how many inches he needed to lower the yard...

...and the digging commenced.

First in the front yard.

Then in the back. They say it looks worse before it begins to look better.

I'd say it's looks tragic.

Down came the nasty old swingset...

...and up came a water line. Oops! Weston got to fix this one.

Tilly tried her hand at photography. Hyatt stuffed his mouth with cookies.

The kids took turns riding with Daddy on the tractor, but the hum and the bumping around just put Hyatt to sleep. You should have seen his head bobbing around!


I laid him down to nap next to Kiersa...

...and when he woke up, the first thing he did was give her a big kiss. What a sweet big brother!

Are you curious as to how my poor yard looks now? I'll keep you in suspense no longer! Check out the next post, "Dirt nightmare". I wrote this post before the dirt nightmare, but when I went back to my posts, I noticed I'd never published this one. Oops! Better late than never.

Dirt nightmare

To give you perspective on the nightmare my yard has become, I've taken pictures of all sides. My floor is constantly covered with dirt from the working boys and my kids. I can't keep up with it! I might as well have real dirt floors, because even though I mop it, it's dirty a couple seconds later. I give up on mopping!
Here's my front yard.

The chimney side.

The back yard. The house is on the left, the apartment we live in is on the right, up the stairs.

Here's the view of the back yard from my apartment windows.



The driveway, minus the bamboo we pulled up.

Tilly thinks the mountains of dirt are great to climb on. Imagine the laundry piles I have now.

I'm queen of the mountain!

Not be outdone, Hyatt makes his way up the pile.

"Oh yeah? I'm KING of the mountain!" Notice how his waistband is rolled down? He has such a skinny waist and bottom that his pants fall off if I don't roll them down.

Peter Parker the second

Hyatt's really into taking pictures with a camera since he sees me doing it so much. He says, "Smile, Mommy! (pause...wait...) SMILE!!!" I have to look at him and give him a cheesy grin. He also says "Look at me!!!" You can tell what I always say to him, I guess.
The other day he came in to the apartment from playing in the playroom in the big house (yes, during demo), and this is what I saw. Spiderman requesting my picture! I thought it was appropriate since Spiderman's alter ego, Peter Parker, was a photographer.

Ride 'em Cowgirl!

Look at my little future bronc rider! In order to grab the blue toy, she'd lean back, kick out her legs, and raise one arm. You can tell from her expression she was concentrating really hard on trying to get her extremities to obey her brain. She would take a break, then try again, and each time her arm would shoot straight up.

Smarter than the average blood test

This is what I think of blood tests.

Many of you have been on pins and needles to find out the results of my second blood test. Am I pregnant or not? Am I crazy? Am I imagining the symptoms and my pee tests were just 2 freaky erroneous ones stuck in the same box at the manufacturing plant? If you think you've been dying of curiosity, imagine how I've been feeling! What is going on!? I know I'm pregnant!! I don't get these symptoms otherwise! I have crazy bad carpal tunnel pain all the time, I'm gaining weight while exercising and eating healthier, my fat pants are about to burst and are giving me some seriously embarrassing muffin top, my stomach "feels" different when I knead my mushy flab, my abdominal region is seriously pooching straight out (I resent all you girls who can hide it until you're halfway done...Kylene!), I'm getting headaches, I've started to be bothered with insomnia, people are asking me if I'm prego, the list goes on... I don't care what the test said, I KNOW I'm pregnant. There's no imagining this! Why would I want to imagine a pregnancy so soon after giving birth anyway?

Well, I've called the lab close to 50 times it seems since 4:45pm yesterday to try to find out my results, only to not have anyone answer or to be told the machine had to be calibrated before they knew. Now remember, your hCG levels should double every 48-72 hours if you're pregnant, hence the second blood test. I looked online, and it said anything over 25 would consider you pregnant. Under 5 is not pregnant. Now, my first test was 79, which would make you think I was pregnant, just not very far along yet. But it was waaaaay too low when you match it up with the first day of my last period. I told the doctor I am NEVER regular with my cycles, so that's why he had me take another test and see if the number doubled. I finally got a hold of my doctor's nurse at about 11:30 this morning, and she checked my numbers. Now it's 177! Ha! I told them so! I am definitely pregnant!! I have to say, I'm very proud of myself. I don't know too many people who can tell they're pregnant as early as I can. Aside from my pregnancy with Talea, since it was my first, I've known I was pregnant BEFORE I took a test, and I can't tell from a missed period since I only cycle about twice a year. Way to go, T!

Okay, now I just have to wait until July 3 to find out my due date! I hate waiting! This is what I think of waiting.

If you know me, you know I'm not a patient person. Hyrum and I have a guess for our due date though. We bet it's right around Kiersa's birthday, within days. I pay attention to my body I guess. Watch me have two Valentine's babies! I'll let you know once I find out. The funny thing is, I was supposed to go in to the doctor for a pap smear in July anyway, so might as well kill two birds with one stone, right? Why would I got in to my OB if I wasn't pregnant! Psh! What a waste that would be!

If I get another pyogenic granuloma with this pregnancy, I'm going to scream! If you saw the nasty alien growth on my nose during Kiersa's pregnancy, you know how lame it was. Only less than 5% of pregnant women get them, but usually it's children who get them. It looks like a bright red dangly mole that bleeds profusely and constantly, sometimes without any reason. It's a result of an injury usually. I had a strawberry on the side of my nose that looked a little like a spider vein, so I poked it hoping it would bleed, empty, and go away. That was the worst thing I could have done. While pregnant, your body produces a ton of extra blood vessels (so I'm told) that go crazy producing more blood for the pregnancy. When you get an injury, like the small pin poke I gave myself, your body goes crazy into hyper-overdrive trying to repair it, and instead of getting it back to normal, it produces a growth that bleeds like nothing you've ever seen before. I would rub my eye and accidentally slightly graze the PG and in an instant, blood would be pouring down my face. If you're pregnant, DO NOT injure you're face or gums. Those are common places to get them. Let me give you a visual of what a PG looks like, in case you were fortunate enough to miss out on looking at it the first time. Wouldn't want you to feel left out!
Here's my nose before. Just turn your head to the side to see it since for some funky reason downloading it rotates it, and I can't force it to not rotate this picture! (That's my baby sister, Shira, with me.)


And here is the growth when it was only about half it's normal size because I'd already choked it off twice with thread. It grows rapidly, so when it was sticking about 1/4" off my nose and I couldn't hide it under a band-aid anymore, I'd strangle it with thread. It would grow back within a week. Do you know how long it takes to get into a dermatologist? Months!!!!


Here I'm trying to cover it under a band-aid.

And here is my permanent scar after the dermatologist removed it. It's definitely not perfect, but after living with a bleeding freak thing for over 2 months, I didn't care. Taking it off was enough for me! When my face gets tanner in the summer, the scar doesn't tan so it's more noticeable. I'll always remember Kiersa's pregnancy when I look in the mirror. She gave me my first couple of stretchmarks too! Naughty girl! She scarred me for life in 2 ways! She was a cinch to push out though, so I've forgiven her.

Thrills and chills

On Tuesday afternoon, we had a last minute urgent need to run up to Albany. We finally found a conveyor belt to rent, so we threw everyone in the car and made the 3 hour trip up there. On our way back, as the sun was setting...

...strange things began to happen. An eerie mist began to creep over the hills...

...water bottles began to stick to fingers...

...cute kids were transformed into nerds...

...babies fell asleep instead of screaming...

...searching for the sharp tooth snail became irresistable...

...eyes were poked voluntarily...

...and hair stood on end.

Watch out for those haunted coast drives!!

Target practice

For some strange reason (it couldn't have been the fact that we lost a lot of money due to a certain vicious critter), we felt the urgent need to buy a 22 on Monday. We checked a pawn shop, a gun shop, BiMart and WalMart and found a sweet semi-automatic stainless steel 22 on sale at BiMart, so we got it and decided that for Family Home Evening, we'd take the kids target shooting for their first time. We went far into the hills, with Weston and his friend Daniel in tow, and played around with the gun. It was getting chilly and the mosquitoes were hovering overhead, so after letting off a few rounds, I went in the truck with Kiersa and fed her while the others had fun with shooting the target. We'd gone to the doctor earlier that day and Kiersa got some shots, so she wasn't the happiest of campers.