The Fruits of Our Labors/A little of Last Year too!

So for some reason I have the gardening bug. I caught it last year. I guess this is something powerful and god-like about growing a garden. You take something you can barely see in the palm of your hand and your grow it into something like out here! I love my garden. I don't even eat everything in it, but I wanted to grow it. I started gardening last year and we had a lot of fun. You forget how much work it is and then you try it again. This year, for some reason and doing something I have no idea what, I hurt my back and haven't been able to do all I wanted to do in the garden. If you look close, you will see more weeds than I would like, but we did a garden, nonetheless. It is growing and it is producing. This is one of my favorite parts of the year...harvest and seeing what you have done pay off. For the most part, besides meat, I could eat every night something from my garden and I'm putting away stuff so that I can continue to do so. This is the whole thing in four sections. Everyone tells me it is huge, but I don't think it is that bad. Over in the corner is where our pumpkins and peppers are growing. I have some pumpkins on, but I don't think I'm going to get peppers...we'll see. I started this section for little seeds inside of my house. Some grew some didn't, I don't know which ones will take and what kind of pumpkins I have growing. I was a little sad because I did a bunch of melons this way too but none of them lived and I didn't plant more...so we didn't try melons this year! :-( Then I have three rows of beans. This year we decided to plant yellow and purple beans along with the normal green beans. I love color and really got into trying different colors of things this year. As you can see the purple and yellow ones are so pretty. I haven't cooked any of the colored ones up yet. They are new. So we will be trying them soon. Beans are kind of a funny thing because they are so plentiful. For six bucks, we grow enough green beans to feed us all year. I think I would become a bean farmer if I had to choose. This little suckers just keep coming. We have given away, frozen, and snapped so many beans and the funny thing is, we are just starting with them! I would hire pickers if I did own a bean farm...miserable!I'm not a few of canned beans, so most of mine I freeze. We love them that way and they taste like they are right out of the garden (for the most part!)After our beans we have peas...our peas took a hit this year maybe from all of the rain, but they have been producing fairly well in the last little while. I'm not a fan of peas except for fresh from the garden...and since I know grow my own, I can eat as many as I would like! I do freeze a few and use them a little throughout the year...but don't really care for them except for from the pod! We have have two rows of lettuce. I loved growing lettuce last year, so this year I tried a wide variety of kinds...I got kind of funky and had 21 different kinds to try. They didn't all grow, but I still went back to three favorites. The others taste bitter. I guess I haven't acquired a taste for arugala and other funky greens...yet! But they were fun and pretty to grow. I don't like the red lettuce, but it sure is pretty and gives some color so I planted a little bit this year! The green leaf is my favorite and I haven't done a very great job of harvesting it this year. I have given a bunch away, but we have only enjoyed it a few times. I need to do better before it goes bad...however, I'm thinking about growing some inside during the fall and winter! I still have a bunch of seeds...just need to find the right planter!

After our lettuce we have two and a half rows of carrots with about five different colors...We have the normal orange carrots which are very good this year, red carrots (not good), yellow carrots (not too good either, but I was told by someone who ate them, they are good cooked!), and purple carrots which are my favorite! I grew these last year and loved them. I grew white carrots last year and didn't care for them....so I didn't grow them this year.

This year I also tried four different kinds of beets. I don't even really like them, but they looked pretty. There were some yellow beats, the normal kind, a bulls-eye kind of white and red, and an elongated one that looked like a carrot! They were fun to grow and I need to figure out what to do with them! Then I have my onions and potatoes. We planted yellow and red onions (my favorite) and red potatoes and a few fingerling potatoes that I am looking forward to trying! We try to harvest these and save them into the fall and winter! It is nice to not have to buy them for a while! I'm hoping to keep them longer this year! Then we have our corn. We have 6 1/2 rows of corn. One whole row, though is decorating and popcorn corn..I hope they turn out. I have four different kinds of this growing. Then we have 5 1/2 rows of eating corn...if it turns out, we could be in for tons of corn! argh...I planted a variety of kinds this year. Last year my corn turned out, but it wasn't that great of a yield. Hopefully we can figure it out this year!

My next section is our rhubarb, strawberries, tomatoes, and ZUCCHINI! We got a whole bowl full of these! We also have some apple trees growing in this section, but I don't know if they are going to do much? We will see. I didn't pick our rhubarb soon enough, so I didn't get as much as I normally like, but I'm hoping to get a bit more from some of the younger ones. Our strawberries at first were a little rough. We did some transplanting and made some new rows and now have a whole bunch of strawberries. We have quite a few rows producing big nice berries. I've made strawberry jam, strawberry leather and will be freezing strawberries. These are not my favorite, but Andy loves them..and I'm slowly getting converted. My tomatoes look a little rough, but I have some coming on...hopefully we will be able to enjoy them...My mom though will be in tomota heaven..her plants are huge and beautiful! My favorite this year has been my ZUCCHINNI. My husband laughs because I always plant too much, but this year I did about seven different kinds of ZUCCHINNI. We laughed because at a fruit market we stopped at, you could buy 10 ZUCCHINI for 1 dollar! It is the fruitcake of the garden..you can't give it away! But I like it. I find a variety of ways to use it and I freeze it to make zucchini bread in the winter...we love that!
These are some of my different kinds of Zucchini...they are wonderful battered and fried! YUM!

Finally the last thing in my garden, but the one I love the most is my raspberry patch. They still haven't produced yet this year because they are late bloomers...They like to bloom in the fall. Last year they were so yummy! I'm holding out hope they produce like they did last year. We'll see! I haven't been able to weed and transplant as well I would have liked in my patch this year, but I see lots of buds...cross your fingers!

Finally this year I wanted to do an herb garden. It needs to be weeded which I'm going to try and do this afternoon! I grew dill for my mom..but because I wanted to also! I grew mint, peppermint, and chocolate mint which you can see below. I also grew spearamint. I just now have to figure out how to use it all! I will be drying some!

I have rosemary, thyme, pineapple sage, and lavendar! They smell so good and like above I need to learn how to use them.

Finally if you look in between the weeds you will see some fresh parsley! This was a fun new experiment! And they are perennials, so they are supposed to come back!

These are our little melons we grew last year. I was sad we didn't get any in the ground this year! These other pictures are of some of the fruits of our labors last year...I was going to post them last year and have had it saved since then, so I'm posting them now! I'm looking forward to doing all of the canning and peach season coming up.

We didn't grow cabbage last year because of worms and the smell! argh! We did grow sunflowers and I look forward to them coming out soon! They are bout 12-13 ft. tall right now, but we don't have flowers on them yet!

I Vow a Post a Day...Summer is OVER!

As my summer is winding down, I've felt really bad to "let" my blog go. We have done so many fun things that I want to capture and remember. I think I will work my way backwards and my goal is to do a post a day. So today I start with school shopping in Utah...The pictures are mostly of the fun stuff we did, but this year we went to the Park City Outlets and let's just say that they are so cool. They have tons of places for kids clothes and I loved them!

Andy jokes about going to outlets to save money, but you end up spending just as much because you think you are getting such a good deal, so you buy a lot. Let's just say we had some major arranging to do when we got home. Sonnet is not going to school, but Andy also joked that her fall wardrobe is complete! I told him a girl has to have clothes...and yes girls are so much more complicated but more fun to shop for! I mean how many sports, cars, guitars, and camo shirts can you buy!

My other favorite part of our trip was going to Cheesecake Factory and PF Changs. These are our favorite restaurants. Andy and I joked after receiving the bill for both places that we are glad we only visit these when we travel, but they are so good! Our kids even like both places. We bought some cheesecake and took it back to the hotel after the dinner because we were stuffed. We ate it later that night after swimming....however, one unlucky piece got left in the little fridge in the hotel. Let's just say both Peyton and I begged Andy to go back to Sandy, Utah and get it, but he wouldn't because we were in Brigham City! ha! Some lucky cleaner hopefully ate it. That was a topic of conversation for us on the way...would you eat it if you were the cleaning person? You should be able to tell that it hadn't even been touched! I don't know if I could even though it was Cheesecake Factory. I hope they enjoyed it though if they did eat it!

One of our favorite things to do in Utah is go to the Sandy Aquarium. It is pretty cool and the kids really liked it. Sonnet was so interested in everything you showed her. Peyton kind of buzzed through the place and kept asking when we could go back to the hotel and swim! That is all he wanted to do!

I have cute little frog wranglers! You get to pretend you are driving a boat. Peyton loves this! And of course, Sonnet had to do it too...since brother did it! You also get to pet sting rays...with the stingers taken out of course...but it always makes me laugh to see how bad Peyton wants to do it until he gets up there. You can see above that he is attempting to touch it with one finger, but it flapped at him and my camera was in the right place at the right time...as you can see below...they are kind of creepy! Sonnet didn't care much for them either! She did however want to pet the octopus through the glass! She thought he was cool! These are my favorite. I love watching them and could watch them for hours! They are so cool!

My cute little indians posing in the canoe...But now it is time to go back and swim...

Don't Look Under There....You Dirty Rat!!!!

So the other day my husband and I were trying to hurry and get all of our flowers planted because we were leaving for four days and they also really needed to be planted...anyway, we were doing some stuff on our deck and he had this bench that I built a couple of years ago at a super Saturday that totally fell apart. It had been bugging me and I wanted to throw it away, but we had been doing some planting on it and keeping some of our plants there...well Andy walked over to it and saw a bunch of animal poop....and he just kind of passed it off as a ground squirrel or something. I was very disturbed that something was pooping there and so I determined I was going to get rid of the darn bench and clean it up. So I go over and pick up the bench and low and behold something comes running at me. Now I'm not the type to be a hysterical female and I've always tried to be tough with mice, small rodents, etc...because I always thought girls who were afraid of them were stupid, but this just plumb creeped me out. I dropped that bench like it was on fire, I ran off our porch and screamed like a little girl. Well I told me husband after I calmed down a bit to go and get the darn thing. He got a shovel and even though he seemed a little scared of it himself, went up and proceeded to smash it on the head with a shovel. He definitely squished/smashed/killed the thing. It still gives the creeps when I think about that little thing charging me...My dad informed us that is was a pack rat. We think it was stirred up because they are knocking down and cleaning up some junk across the way from us. They think that stirred them up. They are also out in my dad's barn. It really creeped me out to know that thing was there while we were outside. I don't know how long it was there, but it just gave me the willies. Be careful the next time you decide to look under something for it just might be a dirty rat!

(Scroll down a nice surprise!)

Red Jello Happens..

So have you ever just had one of those days? One where you were extremely busy...extremely stressed, don't have enough time, have places to go and people to see and projects to finish and food to cook and a lesson to plan and a parade to watch and a picnic to go to, and family to hang out with, and fireworks to watch, and on and on...well that was my day. I was making the famous knox blox jello flags. I usually make blue and red, but only had red and orange jello. So I go to put the flimsy jello molds in my fridge which is already really full. I set the orange one in the fridge and then try to attempt to put the red criss cross on top of the orange one. Well it didn't want to sit there and it was rocking and rolling because the molds are very flimsy and it just wouldn't stay. I didn't know where else to put it, so I finally got it balanced on top of the orange one and began to shut the door. When I heard a terrible sound... Yes, you guessed it, it sounded like something spilling. I opened the fridge and felt like something had been murdered in my fridge. There was runny red jello all over my fridge! I was too tired, busy, and horrified to do much but go out and yell at my husband to come and look. By then I was able to kind of smile and joke about it. He offered to clean it up, but I knew he was busy and I was busy...so we left the murder scene in our fridge for I hate to say two more days...I didn't feel like doing it on Sunday but I did it on Monday. I wasn't too worried because my fridge needed a good cleaning anyway, but every time we opened the fridge door, it looked like someone had been murdered.

Let's just say that in life sh$%$#$ happens....but from now on I will say, "RED JELLO" happens! And if you can laugh about it, it will help. I won't tell you it took about three hours to clean my fridge and that red jello was in every crack and crevice, drawer and shelf...but my fridge now looks like new!

Fireworks, Parade, and Family...Fourth of July Fun

We had a lot of fun over the fourth of July. Peyton has really enjoyed everything he has done this year with all of the holidays. This is such a fun age. He wanted to stop at the fireworks stand and we bought those silly little fireworks that cost an arm and a leg and don't really do much...but he loved them. I must admit that this big sparkler is pretty cool.

We then broke out the small sparklers and luckily made it through no little boy burning another one.
Peyts decided he needed to be tricky and did two at a time.

My family always does a family show on the third of July with Jake and my dad displaying their stash of not quite legal fireworks that they have acquired either on the Indian reservation or in another state. I believe this year it was another state. I don't know why Idaho is so stiff about it, they are actually pretty fun. So these next pictures are out on my uncle's lawn because of the location where we shoot them off. I don't know if I can mention, where but it is quite a show. I told everyone we needed to charge to come to the pre-show of what will happen the next day.

Andy is fooling around with some fireworks and he shot some photos of me too, but they are all blurry. That is why I never have any pictures of me on here!

This is the whole crew playing around with fireworks. We have quite a crowd!


This is the master pyrotechnician himself. What would we do without Jake's love of blowing things up and fire. This career of fireworks started very young and very illegally...when Jake stole an M-80 from Bruv and attempted to blow not only himself up, but my grandpa's field! Then his life of crime continued when he attempted to throw a salute on his teacher's lawn...it is a good thing it died, for it could have really done some damage. He was shot at on this attempt...Luckily the teacher missed! Now he his registered to do this kind of stuff and the only real illegal thing he does is buy fireworks that he shouldn't shoot off in Idaho! Thanks for the nice pre-show!

Pam has always been Jake's sidekick at this family fireworks shows. She is helping Peyts get his sparkler going.

Peyts loved the sparklers this year. He did have a hard time not putting them in people's faces and around their hair. He also liked dropping them on the ground and stomping on them!

This is a photo that Peyts took of Andy and I. How nice that he can actually take pictures of us! He did a pretty good job especially when you see some of the othes he took. We had a lot of leg pictures!

Andy is quite a creative dude and I had the bright idea for Peyts to drive a tank this year and wear his army clothes that he just purchashed (yes against my better judgement!) I usually just have to dream up some idea and Andy can make it happen. This year he just happened to create a tank out of Peyton's little gator that my dad bought him three years ago. This little thing has been turned into a fire engine, too! We don't know what we are going to do next year, but it turned out awesome. Andy gets all of the credit for this one!

Let's just say that some little boy thought he was a real soldier. I wrote this little poem on the back of it that he is standing by, but he drove it too fast through the parade for anyone to read.

I’m a tough COWBOY,
a brave FIREMAN,
a courageous COP.
I’m SUPERMAN,

BATMAN,
and ROBIN.
I’m a smart DOCTOR,
a clever SCIENTIST,
a wise TEACHER
I’m a valiant SOLDIER,
an obedient SERVICEMAN,
a decorated GENERAL
I am a little BOY,
the bright FUTURE,

the SPIRIT OF AMERICA!

Looking at this picture you can see that the above poem rings true. He really feels that he is all of these things. He thought he was so cool in his tank. It was rather funny watching him in the parade scoot around in that little box. He thought he was pretty big!
The only way into this thing was through the hole in the top. I guess that makes it more realistic.

This is the crew at the parade. We have a specific spot that we park at all of the time. This year it was a little invaded by people. I wasn't that happy, but it worked out all the same. The parade seemed to zoom by really fast this year. I got Peyton on video driving around and it was rather quick so I don't have photos of him. Holly also made a float with the kids on it. It was historical figures from the past and some modern day soldiers. It actually won the grand prize. Peyton won most creative and got 20 dollars for his prize. That was pretty fun!

Every year after the parade we go back to Mom's house and eat. We always have a bunch of great food, but the highlight is surely the scones and dutch oven chicken. I believe my parents are getting sick of it, but we sure enjoy it. After we gab and eat, we go over and watch the fireworks at the school.

I attempted to film the show but only got a little bit. I also had my camera turned the way that I thought would capture it best and forgot that if I turn my camera this way and film, that everything is sideways. I figured you can still enjoy the fireworks this way and Jake wanted to see them, so just remember it is sideways. It was quite a show this year and I know that everyone enjoyed it. It lasted over 20 minutes and only had a few short ones that made us all a little nervous! Good job pyrotechnics crew! I tried to upload the long one, but it won't let me...so I guess you get the really, really short one! :-) (Okay so I've tried three times to upload the footage and it won't let me...so I guess no footage! sorry!)

Airshow Extraordinaire

So we decided that Peyton would love to go to the airshow in Rexburg, and he did. However he loved the army stuff they had there more than he loved the airplanes. I think if he had been able to actually go in the airplanes like he was able to go into the army stuff he might have liked the planes. There were some really cool stunt planes and some fun old planes. He really had a great time.

Rexburg Air museum has a bunch of cool planes. Andy told me that they even used some on the movie Armegeddon. Peyts had a hard time just looking at the planes...A lot of people had their hangars open to go in and look, but he wanted to get in.

As you can see he is just thrilled with the Army stuff because he could get in and go crazy. He would not leave this section and we were there getting into and out of Army stuff for a long time!

Some guy had his helicopter there and he was letting kids get into it, but he also get a little touchy if they touched too many things. You can see Peyts just sitting there, wanting to press everything! So then he would run back to the Army stuff!

These are some of the weapons they had on display there. I hope that they aren't real, but I think they are!

This is a cool old Navy plane. Again, you can't really see it because they are covered, but they had some really neat planes there!

This is one of the stunt planes. There were two planes there that were a little nuts....a red one and a yellow one. The yellow one acted like it was a drunk plane...it would fall, lose stuff off of it...nosedive etc...The red plane was pretty cool...it was nuts and you will see from the clips!

These two old planes were flying in formation with each other. They were cool too!

As we were leaving we found this silly car in one of the parking lots. I thought it was too funny not to show you! Some people are funny! I wish I had an old shaggin' wagon like that to paint all of the time!