Italian graffiti doesn't last forever.

This post is no longer accurate. The buildings along Via Magenta have been painted, and there is almost no graffiti there any more. It only took ten years.

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This is a picture post. I finally organized and backed up recent photos, which I hadn't done since Eli was born. So here's what I would call too many pictures.

This first one is Jay, during our father and son outing. He had a great time. He wasn't much of a hiker, and I carried him up most of the hill we explored. He loved his "light-saber" glow-stick flashlight. 

This was our family picture from Mother's Day. It's very professional: five out of six of us are looking at the camera, with no crazy facial expressions. 

On the Saturday before Memorial Day, we went to the Springs Preserve. Jay needs a haircut. 

I'm not sure this is a good picture at all, but it illustrates how family outings go. Holly is very attentive, Mia stays close, and Jay gets distracted easily. Eli won't carry his own weight. 

Also at the Springs Preserve. The curbing in the parking lot is one of their better attractions. (Not really; they have great exhibits and trails.)

On Memorial Day, we went Sunset Park, and noticed a few native birds and plants. This quail was just outside the park boundaries, on undeveloped land that was pretty similar to the desert-landscaped park. 

The new part of Sunset Park has some unique playground equipment, including this lopsided spinning seat. With Jay in my lap, I could control how fast we were spinning, and I was able to stop. When I sat in it by myself, I was spinning literally out of control until I reached my foot to just barely touch the ground to slow me gradually and keep me from getting ill. It was pretty fun, though. 

In organizing our pictures, we saw Jay's first Halloween, where he was a skunk. Eli will be too big by Halloween to wear that costume, so we tried it on him now. It was a perfect fit. 

Not that paranoid.

After my last blog, Kelsea asked me if I really thought someone was poisoning our tree(s). I don't. But the thought did cross my mind. There are two reasons it crossed my mind. First: Another of our trees died because it didn't get enough water, but it didn't get enough water because someone closed the sprinkler. Repeatedly. After I replaced the tree, I replaced the sprinkler with one that was slightly broken, so that it couldn't be turned off completely. The new tree has done very well. The second reason I thought of poisoning was because of a couple of news stories of poisoning of trees. Someone poisoned a very old tree on the University of Alabama campus. I think they found out it was a rival school supporter. Also, I read about billboard companies poisoning trees to improve sightlines to their billboards. Neither of those situations remotely applies, which is why I didn't believe the trees had been poisoned. I was more suspicious of the first tree's death, because a big healthy tree there would have shaded my neighbor's pool for part of the day, and possibly dropped leaves in his yard. I don't think he's that petty or bitter, but it was a reason I found plausible, and that tree actually died.

The other tree isn't completely dead. I saw yesterday that there is some new growth coming up from the base of the trunk. Which means it wasn't being poisoned. Just drastically underwatered. But if the roots are healthy, the tree should grow up quickly again, and be a strong tree for me. Here's hoping.

Trees and other random thoughts.

I'm not a paranoid person, but I think someone is poisoning my trees in my front yard, one at a time, for no apparent reason. First it was a eucalyptus tree, then a chitalpa. I think the sprinkler to the eucalyptus was closed, so it dried out. Now I'm watering the chitalpa like crazy, but it's still quite wilted. This is the primary reason I want to get a home surveillance system.

Eli can roll over from his back to his front. He has rolled over from his front to his back, but he doesn't do it often enough that I think he's doing it on purpose or can actually do it if he wants to. Perhaps the motivation is different, and he just doesn't want to.

Jay likes legos. He doesn't like to build or play with legos, but he likes to have them. He does like to play Lego Star Wars, but he is terrible at it. It's tolerable if the map is flat, with no obstacles, because then he doesn't have to make his character jump, or walk around things, both of which he has trouble with.

Mia is an awesome reader. She is probably reading at a second grade level, though I don't know who decides those things. She is the best reader in her class by far. She is almost too smart for her own good, and has decided that she is smarter than her older sister. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to bother Holly, who (allegedly) agrees with her. Of all the things they fight over, I don't think that is one.

Holly is really good at playing the piano. Not prodigy good or anything, she's just doing well. But she prefers to practice early in the day. If it's 45 minutes to bedtime, and I tell her to practice for 15 minutes, she throws a fit. Not a real fit, just a stubborn obstinate fit where she pouts and tries to outlast my attention. But lately I only tell her to practice the piano in those situations if I have no reason to leave the room for 20 minutes. Then I ignore her pouting and wait her out. In the morning, even before school, she's really excited to play, and does a good job.

Kelsea and I have finally painted our bedroom, which involved moving out of it for a while. Now we have moved back in, but our closet is empty, because we haven't painted the inside of that yet.


Interestingly, I am always sucked in by sentences that begin with the word "interestingly."

This post is in no way a delay tactic.

I'm not really sure why I blog. It's not to share anything deep or amazing with the world. I'm not sure I have anything like that to share, and even if I did, almost no one reads this blog, except for my closest and dearest friends.

I think the major reason I started doing this was as a substitute for a handwritten journal for my family. I can add pictures, announcements, amusing anecdotes, and they would mostly be for me to look back on sometime in the future. However, I have not kept up. Most of my posts are catch-up posts. This one is too. 

We had a baby in November, and had an unusual Thanksgiving because of it. We had a very nice Christmas, and we sometimes get enough sleep. My two youngest siblings got mission calls, and will be leaving in the next two months. Mia and Holly are doing well in school, and are both amazing readers. When we read scriptures together, I am literally amazed at some of the words they don't need help with. How many kindergartners know the word "Israel?" Holly told me she reads at a fourth grade level, which she knew because her classmate told her. Kelsea and I think it was because of the listed grade level on a book she read. The friend said she was reading at a sixth-grade level. They are both in second grade. 

Now you're caught up. Maybe you'll stay that way. More likely you won't.