The Salad Days

Raising Arizona. One of my all time favorite movies. I guess I do have to confess that I lean towards thinking about it and quoting it more than actually watching it because some of the stuff in there is just too yucky for me to enjoy watching over and over - mostly those two guys who break out of jail.  Wait, they didn't break out - they released themselves upon their own recognisance, of course.  Anyway, it's a great movie and I truly do love it.  I think it has one of the best opening sequences of all time - partly because it lasts 15 minutes or so before they even show the title of the movie and partly because there's that guy yodeling Beethoven's 9th the whole time.  It is during that wonderful sequence when H.I. McDunnough is happily married to his sweetheart Edwina and they're sitting there enjoying the sunset as they sit in their crappy lawn chairs outside of their crappy trailer, H.I. makes the comment, "Those were the salad days."

The Salad Days. Is that a common phrase?  I think so, but I am not entirely certain.  We sure use it a lot around here -  Troy uses it especially to describe the wonderful college years after his mission when he was spending time with this awesome group of friends including people we know and love to this day, like Rex.  I get a little jealous hearing him talk about those salad days. I wish I had been there.  Of course, I was way too mental in the year 1992 to have been cool enough to hang out with the likes of Troy and his gang.  So I just reap the benefits of being married to a guy who had salad days like those.

I bring this up because I think we might be in the middle of a salad-days time of our lives at this very moment.  Our youngest child is very nearly potty trained and very nearly sleeps through the night very nearly every night.  She has friends and play dates and is definitely no longer a baby.  Don't get me wrong - babies are great and many are the days that I wish I could have just one more day with each of my babies.  But let's not kid ourselves that the baby years are some very physically demanding and completely exhausting years!  And I've made it!  At the same time, our oldest child is no where near his teens yet.  He's still young enough to be a little kid - he still plays pretend and builds forts and needs hugs and a few weeks ago even asked me to sing him to sleep.  These are just some very good years. Here are a couple of things I've enjoyed since my last post:

We bought some dry ice. (Troy did his own wart removal; it was fascinating and alarmingly effective).  We had quite a lot of left over ice and had a few fun ingredients in the fridge so we whipped up some dry ice-ice cream.  The kids had fun stirring the smoking pot of cream and sugar and the result was so yummy.  I mean, it's hard to go wrong with that stuff anyway, but the dry ice made it sort of carbonated as well. You had to eat it up quickly before it melted, but that's never been a big problem around here.  Troy and I topped ours with berries and almonds, but the kids went heavy on the sprinkles and light on the fruit instead.  It was a great spur-of-the-moment family treat.

The other thing we seem to not get enough of is riding our bikes at the park.  Bundle has recently learned how to pedal around on our tiny little bike with training wheels.  We head up the street and around the corner at least once or twice a week let the kids zoom around (or wobble around as the case may be.)  Bitty especially loves her bike time and gets a look of absolute glee whenever she rides, as noted by her photos.

I'm hoping the summer ahead will be one full of many salad days.