Teeny Tiny Turtle

We lost our teeny tiny turtle as in.. he has passed away.. gone to heaven type of lost. And, I am REALLY sad about it! I get choked up even just thinking about it. I know he is just a turtle, but as of late I may have been a little neglectful towards him. With my busy work schedule (that is STRESSING me out by the way!) to just keeping up with Whitney, I let some things slide and the teeny tiny turtle was one of them… and the guilt is making me so sad! I would walk by him every day and not even realize that he was slowly dieing (hopefully not in too much pain) and I didn’t help him like I should have. L To our credit, we weren’t HORRIBLY neglectful.. we did feed him, soak him, and try to let him spend time outside every couple of days but it wasn’t enough. Yesterday, Danny was taking the turtle to our friend’s house to see if she could help him, but he died on the way in the car. So RIP little turtle, I’m so so sorry we didn’t realize you were sick until it was too late. We love you and will see you in heaven!

Another sad thing : we were fostering/ trying to find a home for Danny’s sister’s dog. (It’s a long story) so we had this dog for over a month. A cute little miniature pinture named Finn and we kept putting off trying to find him a home and kept going back and forth on whether or not to keep him. He is a great dog, good with Whitney, but we already have 2 dogs and he wasn’t totally trained and had occasional accidents in the house. (Which if I had taken the time to train him, he would have been fine.. another thing I feel guilty about) but finally we just decided to post him on KSL for free and someone called. Danny was at work so I had to be the one to give him away… and the caliber of the person that came to get him was a little bit sketchy.. I clung to him, completely lost it, and almost wouldn’t give him to the lady. I was being such a baby. So, I feel guilty about that too. I hope that he went to a decent home and is being loved and cared for.

I have become a crazy pregnant person that cries over everything and feels guilty over the smallest things. Poor Danny, he has to put up with all my weepiness! Hopefully we can all survive these last couple of months until little Hank arrives. AND HOPEFULLY by then, I will be a little less weepy, but I’m sure a whole lot more crazy!

"I cannot believe this, the sky is making noises"

Growing up my favorite thing was summer rainstorms. I love warm rain and watching the thunder and lightning. Today we experienced our first summer storm of the season and it was awesome. We laid a blanket down outside and watched the clouds roll in. We had some pretty good thunder and lightning! Whitney loved watching it all. She kept saying the most random comments.. which is nothing out of the ordinary. She sang “Rain is falling on the ground” (a song Megan taught her in nursery) and kept reciting the following parts of the cute book, Mr. Brown can Moo! Can You? By Dr. Seuss:

“Boom, boom, boom Mr. Brown is a wonder. Boom boom boom Mr. Brown makes thunder!

He makes lightning Splatt Splatt Splatt and its very, very hard to make a noise like that!”

But the most random, funny thing she said was: “I cannot believe this, the sky is making noises!” My cute little Whit.

The best thing about a summer rainstorm is, for sure, walking in the gutters! When we were little we would LOVE to do that. When it started raining really hard we came inside, turned off all of the lights and watched the lightning outside. When it died down a bit, we took a little walk. (Didn't go past 150 yards though... that would be breaking Danny's parole!)

So Pretty.

My 2 lovers, just a cuddlin', watching the clouds.

Danny and his "New Friend"

This all started 2 years ago, night before our anniversary, we were driving to the airport and got pulled over. Danny had a warrant out for his arrest (probably a couple at this point) for many unpaid tickets so the cop took him to jail. JAIL. I was pretty upset.. I had to pick him up at 3 am on our anniversary. To make matters worse, he made friends with one of the inmates who had to be well over 400 pounds and offered him a ride home. It didn’t help any that our whole car was dragging and the guy lived way out west somewhere. Danny, Danny.

Since then, I was under the impression that he had paid all of his tickets and fines… and to be quite honest, I’m pretty sure Danny thought that he had paid them too. A couple of months ago, he didn’t do a complete stop at a stop sign turning right.. got pulled over.. and apparently his license was suspended. Bummer. So he got a ticket. A week after that, he was going 45 in a 35 zone by Draper temple and got pulled over AGAIN with his license still being suspended. Bigger bummer. Turns out, Danny got a ticket in Iron County in 2005 that just posted onto his driving record this last year at which time they suspended his license. We never received notification of this nor did we know that it was suspended. We thought that all of the tickets had been paid.

Anyways to make a long story short, he had to go to court and the very nice {heavy sarcasm} judge put Danny on house arrest and he gets to wear a lovely ankle bracelet for 20 days. Lucky us, we get to pay $15 per day that the da*# bracelet is on… on top of the erroneous amount of fines that we have to pay. I’m talking HUGE amount of fines. You’re all jealous right? So Danny’s stipulations are this: he can go to work and home. That is pretty much it. He can only go to 1 hour of church too. Lucky for Danny, he gets to get out of a lot of “Mindi errands” for the next month.

So it’s just kinda funny, what else can it be? Danny isn’t a drunk driver.. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t do drugs, never has. He isn’t a reckless driver and he doesn’t even poop out of car windows anymore.. (another long story.) I think it is ridiculous that this happened but a good lesson for us to learn, I guess. Danny’s mentality for years was that he was above the law..well that’s clearly not the case and eventually it will come back and bite ya real hard in the behind. If anything, learn from our mistakes. Pay your tickets so you don’t have to adorn yourself with a heavy black permanent jewelry piece that we like to call Danny’s “new friend.”

Danny has to charge his bracelet every night for a couple of hours. The first full day that he had it on was last Sunday and we both had to talk in church. Sometimes his "new friend" will talk to him or beep saying "low battery" or "battery full"... I was so nervous the whole time he gave his talk that it would start beeping.

Naptime

Ever since the 2 year old turned 2 naps are a thing of the past. I was in denial for a long time and tried everything that I could possibly think of to get my little one to sleep:

I tried to let her cry it out (I’m not good at the tough love thing, anything over ½ hour is too long for me.)

I tried getting her to cuddle and nap on the couch.. nope. I even let her try to take a nap in my bed, but that didn’t work either.

I tried singing songs to her in her crib. She did fall asleep (after an hour of singing) but as soon as I tried to sneak out she instantly woke up. Plus that is too much work to do every day.

Whitney loves to bounce.. on the couch, in her car seat, but her best place is in the high chair. As my last resort, I thought that I would try that out. I turned on some quiet classical music and let her bounce herself to sleep in her high chair.. and it actually worked! (Well it worked once.) She finally let her guard down and fell asleep. Not the most ideal nor comfortable place to sleep, but she was ASLEEP and mom was happy to have a little break.

It took me awhile (I cried for a couple of days) but when I finally came to terms with the fact that naps were no longer a part of our routine, we had to come up with a different one. So we have “quiet time” now where we read books and then she watches a couple of shows. We have been doing this for over a month and it has been going pretty good and yet again she throws me for another loop. These past 2 days, she has wanted naps and has actually napped without throwing a fit. Who knows.. I guess naps are cool again?? I’m not complaining though, I’d gladly have her take a nap over no nap. It has been a blissful 2 days for mom, but I don’t want to get my hopes up too high. My fickle toddler could change her mind at a moment’s notice!

Whitney's Blog

I started a blog for Whitney at the end of April. The link is on the side bar of my blog labeled as "Whitney's day to day blog" with her picture. I'm not going private. I am or may not in the future, but for now it is public for my family members and friends who don't have blogs and want to read about the silly, funny things that Whitney does with out having to log into anything. The blog link is whitneymaewestenskow.blogspot.com. She is quite the silly girl and I mainly just want to use this as a journal for her. Something for her to have and read about when she is older. Feel free to check it out. She does and says some of the most random things.. it's hilarious.

Cookie Monsters

Here’s the deal.. I’m pretty sure I live with 2 cookie monsters that go by their alias names.. Danny and Whitney. I may have created these 2 monsters but what’s a girl to do when she has the BEST chocolate chip cookie recipe in the world? (No joke.) These chocolate chip cookies are a staple in our household, we make them weekly, and my family is hooked.

History of the recipe: I’m not sure where this recipe came from but it is for certain a family favorite passed down by my aunt Isabel. My cousins and I have been making these cookies since we could talk and always competed with each other to see who could make the best batch. My cousin Scooter was so cocky at one point that he didn’t even use measuring cups and just eye balled the recipe. I was in awe and thought that was SO cool. J His older sister Jenny put a stop to his cockiness and banned him from making the cookies all together. Fun memories. That was my life back then.. hanging out with my cousins.. making cookies, it was so simple and I loved it.

The tradition has continued and our little family makes these yummy treats all of the time. I have trained my monsters well too. Whitney pulls out all the ingredients (and she actually knows what to pull out) and Danny does the mixing and measuring. I sit and really do nothing but tell them what is next on the recipe. It’s a good system I’ve got going.. too bad it only works with cookies! The dough is by far the best part and we eat WAY more than our fair share.. so yummy. Danny is getting so good at it too that HE is now giving ME tips on how to make them better. So here you have it,

The Hart Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe:

¾ C Crisco

½ C Sugar

1 C Brown Sugar

--mix—

2 Eggs

--mix—

2 ¼ C Flour

1 tsp Vanilla

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Salt

--mix—

Add ½ bag of semi sweet chocolate chips

Bake at 375 for 10 minutes (sometimes I bake them at 350 for a little bit longer)

Makes about 24ish cookies (depends on how much dough you eat!)

** Danny’s special tip: Add a little bit more flour to make a more fluffy cookie**

Enjoy! We will probably make and eat the dough for dinner tonight.. and the cookies for breakfast. It's an essential part of my monsters diet, they can't live without them.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

My backyard is definitely NOT beautiful. There is no pretty landscaping or flowers. We have dead grass from the dogs doing their business and random holes from digging. There is so much work to be done.. VERY overwhelming to even THINK about. However, after “de- winterizing” it .. picking up dog poop.. for well over 3 hours with in the last couple of months… to my eyes, it is the most beautiful thing that I have and my greatest ally! I am GRATEFUL to have a fenced in backyard to let my little ball energy wear herself out in! I can hardly get her fed and dressed in the morning before she has gone through the doggie door and out for the day with the dogs and chickens. Last Monday was so nice, we were outside all day. Whitney came in at 8:30ish with Mo and Muffins.. dirty and worn out.. all in all she had spent about 7 hours playing outside and was exhausted! I have to work on Monday nights, super bummer.. but at least I work from home so it’s ok. This last Monday, I went outside to peek on the crew and this is what I found: Danny talking on his phone, Muffins was chasing Whitney (they love to chase each other), and Whitney- no pants, no diaper, and was running around naked… Not sure how long they were playing that game but I quickly fixed that problem. Our poor neighbors. A new fence is definitely on the “backyard renovation list.”

I can’t wait for more summer days to come.. wish they would come sooner.. and someday ours will be beautifully landscaped, but for now as long as the dog poop is picked up, it is the BEST and most BEAUTIFUL thing I have!

This is where Whitney and Mo hang out. They like to watch the neighbor kids. Everyday Whitney says "I want my cute friends to come over and play." She loves the cute girls.