Park Time

Isaac trying to do a pull-up. Jacob and Isaac do pull-ups, sit-ups, and push-ups every other day for the personal fitness merit badge.

Allison doing a pull-up.

Isaac and Justin playing catch with a fun changing ball.

Ammon loved riding the wagon down the hill. He tried his little red bike once, but I think it was too fast for him. He wouldn't do it again.

Allison rode Ammon's little red bike down the hill several times. She LOVED it.

This picture is for my dad. This is my poor Linden tree. The deer love it. It if four years old, and hasn't stood a chance.

Playing around with my new 50 mm lens.

Don Johnson Clematis in my front yard. It's going to be spectacular! They're about 6" blooms.

We decided to fill our pool. This is less than half-way full, and the hose has been on for about 5 hours.




Maple tree

Sedum

The first pickings from our Tree Spinach from Canada.

Isaac grated the cheese for our chicken taco dinner. He made a hockey puck shaped piece of cheese, and thought it was pretty cool stuff.

Spring...Nature Center

Allison, Ammon, Joyanna, Joshua, and Jaeden

Not much exciting happened on our walk; just a nice day. Perfect weather. No bugs. Cute baby ducks. And great company.

Ammon said to me this morning, "Mom. There's an ant on my watermelon."

...and such is life, my little dude.

Last Halloween, I was walking the neigborhood with Justin, Allison, and Ammon. I'm hard pressed to even remember what their costumes were. It was an unusually warm October 31st; the kids didn't even have to wear a jacket! Allison started out in a Bat Woman costume, but changed.
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Okay, I just looked up pictures. It's all coming back to me.

t wasn't even Bat Woman. It was Wonder Woman!!! We put funky gold eyelashes on the rim of her glasses.

Then changed in to a skeleton. Here she is with her loot yet to be sorted.


A firefighter!


Jacob. Can you guess? A Pokemon Trainer.


Isaac went trick-or-treating with his friend, Cameron Nigard. He was a Knight.

As a kid, learned from my sibs how to sort the candy and get your "unfavorites" ready for trading. I've instilled this tradition in my kids. Sometimes, there are types of candy that no one likes, so Justin or I get a few goodies
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This wasn't even what I wanted to blog about.
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Anyway, we're out knocking on doors and one house has a dryer smell going and Ammon said, "it smells like my blankie." I thought that was so sweet!
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Today, I spent another 30 minutes mending his crocheted blanket. I've done many repair jobs and it's getting threadbare. Ammon likes to rub one particular corner on his nose. I had to chop it off once due to *ick* so he now has a "broken corner," which he's always snubbed. I washed his blankie today as well, and forgot to put it in the dryer. I easily convinced Ammon that he could try out the broken corner until his other one was dry. Amazing! He actually went to bed! He even remembered where the broken corner was. What a smart kid.

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I just took Ammon his newly mended and cleaned blankie. He had the broken corner tucked inside his jammie shirt. Close to his heart.

We were reading in Alma the other night and it was talking about lawyers. Jacob said, "they had lawyers back then? Now I've heard everything!"

Como Zoo

I decided to take Ammon to Como Zoo today, and we happened upon the free Monday for the carousel!
Ammon was not excited about riding the carousel. He's never really been on a "ride" before. He tried to sneak away from me, so I had to hold him.
We shared a horse, which I think calmed his fears some.
Once it got going, he was still somber, but liked it.

I guess I didn't take any pictures of the animals. Ammon loved the new rain forest room. He especially loved the turtles, snakes, and fish. He hated the fire ants. They "freaked his freak."

I love his reflection. It's fun to see tree ferns native to New Zealand in this room.

As soon as we walked in the sunken garden, my senses were going bee-zerk. Then I saw fresias. Mmmmm.

Oriental Garden

What is it? Fun colors!

Ammon begged to go on the carousel again on our way home, and loved it.

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I need to add that we went to Target before and after the zoo. I don't journal about my great coupon savings, but I think it'll be fun to remember some day. Spent $18.59; saved $70.94. And guess what? It's all stuff I would buy anyway. 15 lbs of chicken breasts for $14.

Whineys

Ammon woke up this morning acting like he hadn't slept all night long. He whined about anything AND everything. Doesn't make for a fantastic Mother's Day. He has learned how to fake whine and cry. Most of the time I can't tell when it's real or not. I think it blends on occasion.
At church today, he was acting okay, until I pulled out the stack of magnets. It was a tall stack. About 15 little 1/2 inch circular magnets, similar to the ones in the picture.
(Aunt Grandma taught the kids a trick several months ago with the magnets using the hymn book. Put one on the inside cover and one on the outside, and you can move the one on the outside using the one on the inside. Wow. That probably made no sense.)
Justin was going to help Ammon do the fun little magic trick and took five magnets from the stack. Ammon whined in a soft little voice, "don't break my Tower of Power."
(don bwake my towa of powa)
I don't know where this saying came from but it's a Dittmer household favorite.
I got the magnets back into one nice tower and he was fine again.

Eloise Butler Garden

3rd Annual walk through
Elloise Butler Garden in
Theodore Wirth Park, Minnapolis



Zoe Thomson, Isaac, Allison, Ammon, and Jacob

Isaac made a red cardinal

Jacob a blue bellied Dittmer

Wonder what I was thinking about...

I'm pretty sure I was thinking about naps in this one.

Isaac, Jacob, Barbara Thomson (Aunt Grandma), Ammon, Zoe Thomson, Allison, JoAnne
(back) Quinn Thomson, and LaMon Thomson (Uncle Grandpa)

Trillium

Isaac worked on identifying 10 types of plants for Scouts.
Not sure what the outcome was; I'll have to look into that.

Ammon loves to squish his Daddy.

Ammon wasn't quite tall enough to reach the drinking fountain. He figured out a way around it though.

I love to go to this garden. It is peaceful - with the exception of the Dittmer clan rampaging the area. I love to go here in the spring. I love the fiddle heads on the ferns and the translucent new leaves on the plants. I love the majestic trees and the birds chirping. I wish we would have had time to visit the quaking bog across the street.

This was the most intense vivid full double bow rainbow I've ever seen in my entire life. I wish I had my camera with me. This was taken with my cell phone. It was stunning.

Random Pictures

I love spring flowers.

I hope we get more than three strawberries this year. I've dedicated one whole box to them.

Troop 906 Court of Honor
This was Justin's last court of honor. He was released on Sunday and is now 1st Counselor in the Young Men's presidency, and assistant scout master. Jacob and Isaac both earned the Citizenship in the World merit badge that they earned from their Grandma Dittmer (pictured in an earlier post). Jacob also earned Emergency Preparedness and Isaac his Scout rank.Dusty Johnston, LaMon Thomson (my uncle), Ryan Koch, Jacob Dittmer, Isaac Dittmer. & ?

The boys are working hard on their personal fitness merit badge the past few weeks. Justin had them make up a fitness plan. They run one mile one day, the next do sit ups/push ups in certain amounts. Plus they're trying to get in ONE pull up.
It takes them 10 laps around the back yard to get one mile. Justin clocked it on his bike.

Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies.

I wanted another raised bed/grow box so Justin built me one a year ago, but it was outside the original fence. The bunny rabbits loved my garden last year; so much that I didn't get to enjoy it as much as them.
This year, Justin revamped our old garden and included the new grow box plus some in ground space. Yeah! And I think it turned out great!
It took him two days , but he did a super job.
It's hard to tell, but there are three grow boxes. Jacob and Ammon are digging a hole for the compost.

There is a spiritual side to this story.
We aren't rolling in the bucks this year, so we were going to utilize the wood we have in our garage. We have lots of pine shelving from a store closeout that Justin wanted to use and to seal. I wasn't excited about the idea of having to take care of it year after year, so was urging him to look at treated lumber at Menards when we went, just to price it out.
Before we left for the store, I checked a local freecycle type website and someone had posted ten minutes earlier exactly what we were looking for. Justin called, and no answer. He left a message. We've tried to get a few things from this website. It's nearly impossible to get things, because they're snatched up almost immediately.
While we were in Menards, they called us back and said it was available and that several people had called after us so they had to pull the listing. Crazy!
We bought our stuff and drove to their house, which incidentally is in Blaine as well. They had this huge stack of lumber already on a trailer and said we could take as much as we needed. They were happy to get it out of their garden.
One of the best parts was that they drove the wood to our house!

Here's the spiritual story:
The night before was my turn for family prayer. I asked Heavenly Father to guide us in building the fence for our garden.
Not only did he guide us in the design, he helped us build a much better fence and strengthened my testimony of prayer.