How to plant potatoes, Lyman style...

One of the things I love about being married is experience a different style of living.  I relate to my mother-in-law a lot because she understands how it feels to be brought into the "Torgerson" way of doing things.  This weekend I learned for the first time how to plant potatoes.

First, you need some good help.

And you need some "seedling" potatoes from last years crop.

Then you cut the potatoes into chunks.  How?  With a knife between your legs. 

That's right!  A knife, stabbed into a board, right between your legs.

Then you load them into this piece of machinery from 50-60 years ago.  What's cool about this, is Daniel's grandpa bought one, and another guy bought one.  They sped things up by attaching their two pieces of machinery into one.

Then you sit on the back of it and watch the tractor do all the work.  It's quite a ride up there on that seat.  You might not think so, but that tractor flips you around pretty good. 

After taking all the pictures to document my new adventure, I couldn't resist but jumping into that other seat and going for a little ride myself.



And this is how you know if you've worked hard enough.

Your not done until your face is plastered with snot and dirt!

How could I resist when Chase asked me to take a "smile" with him by Brody?







Check out this kids hair.  I love it.  I can't get it to lay down for the life of me.  (Course I havn't tried TOO hard, cuz I kinda love it stickin' straight up.)

 And check out those cheeks!  Mmmmmm....  just right for kisses.

Train tracks

See these little yellow bumpy things?  Betcha didn't know that those were "train tracks".  Well they are and that's the favorite thing to do around here.  We get on the "cycle" and go for hours, until it's time to go inside, and ride back and forth across the streets so that we can "drive on the train tracks."

It's very entertaining!  You should try it sometime.


I just wonder what people think when we are walking around and Chase asks to go "walk on the train tracks."

Lovin' Brody

I was worried about how Chase would react to having a baby brother, but he is slowly gaining interest in Brody.  He loves to hold him, help feed him, and putting his binkie in his mouth.  He's a great big brother!

Sleeping all day makes for such a hard life.....  Makes a little guy tired.

Welcome home Drew!

I don't know why this post never showed up back when I wrote it, but here it is a little late...

My little brother made it home from Puerto Rico and we were so excited to see him.  Chase couldn't stop talking about him the whole day before/ morning of/ and day after, but was too ornery to be excited when he had the chance to see his uncle Drew.

Newborns pics

This little guy has brought so much joy into our home.  We are so happy to have him here and healthy.

Once again, I don't claim to be a professional, but I figure I can take pictures as good as anything I could afford to pay someone else to do, and I'm very happy with how they turned out.  Although, I didn't do them by myself, I had help from my mom and Jill.

This kid is just so photogenic! 

I owe a HUGE thank you to my mom.  I will never be able to pay her back for all the help she has given us, especially this past week and a half.  She spent countless hours taking care and playing with Chase while we were in the hospital, getting some sleep, and getting used to taking care of a newborn, cooked all our meals, washed dishes and laundry, cleaned our house, shampooed some of our carpets, and countless other things.

I still don't know what I am going to do without her, especially when Daniel goes to work on Monday.

AND, Happy Mothers Day Mom!

The birth story...

Mostly for myself, but in case anyone else is interested....


    Despite having extremely healthy pregnancies (so far), I suffer from the "symptoms" pretty bad.  This pregnancy I struggled with morning sickness pretty much through the whole pregnancy right up until the day he came.  I took my last zofran pill the morning of the day that he was born.  That, plus the back aches, body aches, extreme exhaustion, heartburn, not being able to sleep AT ALL, etc, made this pregnancy hard to handle at the end, and I jumped at the chance when my doctor offered to induce me on my due date.  We scheduled the induction at my Wednesday appointment for the very next day.  I made arrangements with my mom to have her come stay with Chase and we started frantically getting last minute details ready.

My mom showed up at about 10:00, and we all headed for bed.  At about 1:00 I woke up with those unmistakable contractions.  My body had finally given in and I was in labor.  At about 2:00 we got up and got ready to go to the hospital with contractions about 10 minutes apart because I didn't know how fast labor would go this round and the hospital was 45 minutes away.  When we got everything ready and I wasn't progressing that fast we went back to bed and slept between the contractions that were still about 10 minutes apart. 

We decided to keep the appointment to get induced and headed in at 8:00 with contraction about the same.  They hooked me up started antibiotics and pitocin.  The same as when I had Chase, the monitors wouldn't pick up any of the very painful and strong contractions that the pitocin had strengthened.  I got my blessed epidural at 11:30 and at noon the doctor broke my water, promising the baby would be here by 3:00.  At 1:00 I was "complete" and told that they were going to have me "rest and descend" because they were low on nurses and there were 3 other deliveries happening at the same time.  At 1:30 a nurse came in the help my nurse and had me start pushing.  After half a push she told me to stop and wait for the doctor.

When the doctor showed up it only took 15 minutes of pushing before this little guy entered the world at 2:06.  I can't believe how smoothly everything went.  We've been enjoying every little moment with our little Brody.

Introducing:

Brody Hyrum Torgerson

He is a big healthy boy at 8lb 12 oz

19.5" long

A head full of beautiful (almost) black hair

and a face that makes my heart skip a couple beats.