Garden Pics

We had another successful garden this year. We planted peas, lettuce, carrots, radishes, tomatoes, beans, corn, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, and watermelon.  

One fun thing we planted was this yellow watermelon.  Last year I tried a yellow watermelon at a dinner I went to and loved it.  I saved some of the seeds from that watermelon and planted them this year.  I didn't really know if it would grow or produce anything so when it did, we were really excited.

How did it taste you ask? Delicious!!

Our corn and potatoes were really good too:

Not to mention the carrots and peas and everything else.  We also got a ton of tomatoes.  I was canning tomatoes all the time this year.  I made salsa, pasta sauce, tomato juice, and just tomatoes.  

Our watermelons did really well.  We also planted normal red watermelons along with the yellow ones.  We ended up getting about ten watermelons.  They were all so good!  

We didn't plant any squash plants, like zucchini, spaghetti squash, or pumpkins this year because I didn't want to deal with squash bugs.  We also read that if you do a crop rotation with squash plants, the bug will not be so bad.  We decided to try this out and planted multiple melons instead.  We planted the two different watermelons and a cantaloupe. Everything was fine until we went outside one day to check on the garden.  We notice something was wrong with the cantaloupe, it looked really dry.  We added some more water to it but nothing helped.  It just kept going down hill.  Then I found them: the evil squash bugs.  They had attacked the cantaloupe and were slowly killing it.  I killed as many as I could but it was too late, the cantaloupe was a goner.  Apparently a cantaloupe is part of the squash family.  I had no idea.  We were so mad!  After the cantaloupe died though, the squash bugs moved on to somewhere else.  The weird thing is that cantaloupe, watermelon, and cucumbers are all related to the squash family but the bugs only infested the cantaloupe.  I learned something new and I am glad the nasty bugs only got the one plant not our whole garden.  

Our lettuce crop was really small this year.  We never really got any lettuce.  The strange thing was that it never grew right and then all of a sudden it went to seed.  When we pulled it up, we noticed the roots were very small. We think the ants ate all of the roots which is why it didn't grow well.  

I don't know, it seems like every year we learn something new about the garden and are always thinking of ways to improve for next year.  We might try squash again next year but stay on top of the bugs with pesticides.  I guess we will see.  I'm pretty sure we will plant another yellow watermelon though!

First Day of School 2021-22

It is already the first day of school for the new school year 2021-2022.  The summer went by so fast.  This year we have a 7th, 5th, and 3rd grader as well as a preschooler!  Thankfully the Covid restrictions from last year have been lifted so the kids do not have to wear masks to school anymore and they can have parent helpers in the classroom again.  I am glad we are hopefully getting away from this pandemic.

Emily's first day of Middle School started early.  Her bus comes at 7:25 am so she has to get up at around 6:30.  Thankfully she is old enough now to get up and ready on her own.  

She is getting so grown up!  Emily has been looking forward to middle school for a while now.  Her main motivation for going to middle school is her locker!

She was so excited to get a locker and decorate it before school started.  A week or so before school started, we toured South Cache Middle School and found all of her classes.  She switches classes every hour so she wanted to be sure and find out where all of her classes were before the first day.  We also got her locker number and combination and Emily when to town decorating it.  She taped up photos and uplifting quotes as well as a mirror, just in case.  Emily could not wait for the first day of school.  To tell you the truth, I was a little nervous for her to start middle school.  I remember going to middle school and not liking it that much.  I had a hard time making friends the first year and was worried Emily would be the same.  Thankfully though she came home from the first day happy and said it was a good day.  So far she has made a few new friends as well as gotten better acquainted with old ones.  I am glad she is doing well.  Emily is taking band for the first time this year.  She has decided to play Percussion.  I hope she loves band as much as I did.

The boys are the only ones left in the Elementary School this year.  An hour after Emily left for school the boys got ready to head out. 

Colby is in 5th grade this year and has Mrs. Potter for his teacher.

Colby was also excited to start school because that meant he could have recess and see all of his friends again. 

I hope Colby has a great year and learns so much.  Fifth grade is a big learning year because he can start working on the Great American Award, and much more exciting big projects. 

Logan is in 3rd Grade this year.

I don't know why but with his hair cut and fat, bandaged lip, he looks like a thug.  Great first impression right.  

Logan's teacher is Mrs. Scott.  She is a newer teacher and seems really nice.  For the first day of school, Logan was supposed to bring three things that described him to show the class.  Well Logan brought his three things but the only thing his class wanted to know about him was how he got his stitches.  They wanted to know what happened, if it hurt, how many, and how long it would take to get better.  Logan said he was getting tired of answering everyone's questions. 

All the big kids had great first days.

The next Monday Charlotte started preschool.

As you can tell, she was so excited to go to school like the big kids.  Charlotte is in the preschool at Mountain Crest High School.  This is the same preschool Logan went to a few years ago.  Charlotte's teacher is Ms. Mindy.

Charlotte loves Ms. Mindy and loves going to school.  She asks me everyday if it is a school day.  She has met a lot of new friends and even a boyfriend!  His name is Jaxton!  She is so funny.  Her friend, Everett is in her class too so it is nice to car pool with his mom on Wednesdays.

Of course she needed a new backpack to start school so I made her one.

Charlotte picked the material out of my stash of scraps and we put it together.  She loves her new backpack!

Charlotte also started her first year of Let's Play Music.

This is the music class the other kids did and we put Charlotte in Logan's old teacher's class, Ms.  Ashley.  So far Charlotte has loved going to music class.  She like singing the songs, dancing, and playing the bells.  I think this will be really good for her.

There you go, we made it through the first days of school!

More Summer Fun

This summer has been filled with fun adventures.  It all started with an exciting trip to Texas, then finding new camping areas in Idaho.  Through the rest of the summer, we did some other exciting things too.  

First, the kids participated in the neighborhood KidFest.  This is a fun little thing the neighborhood has been doing for quite a few years.  It is kind of like a craft fair for kids.  The kids make things and try to sell them at the KidFest.  Last year when we went, the kids said they wanted to be a part of it the next year.  When the lady putting it together called to see if the kids were still interested, they said yes.  Then we had to come up with something to sell.  While we were camping in Idaho, we spent a lot of time making crafts and then made even more when we got home.

The kids made hot-pads, key-chains, friendship bracelets, yarn bookmarks, hair bows, painted rocks, and little pom pom people.  They had a great time selling their wares.  Our biggest seller was our little pom pom people.  All of the little kids wanted one of those to take home and play with.  It also helped that they were only 25 cents.  We did sell a few of the other things but that was what we sold out of.  If we do it again, we will make more pom pom people and maybe add some cookies or treats.  The other kids that made treats sold all of them. In the end though, the kids made about $30 which is pretty good.

We liked selling things so much, we tried our hand at a yard sale.  

We have been gathering things we don't need anymore for a while now because the DI has been closed because of Covid.  We had a lot of kids clothing, maternity clothing, baby things, books, kitchen appliances, toys, and just a bunch of random things.  Emily even set up a table to try and sell some more of their KidFest things.  She also made chocolate chip cookies to sell at the yard sale too.  Well Emily sold the most with her cookies.  We sat outside all day and only sold a few things and made about $75.  We still had a ton of things to haul off.  We sorted through most of the things and were able to take most of it to the DI.  All of the boy clothes I gave to our neighbors' three little boys.  I also made a pile to try and sell at a kids consignment sale in September.  We are slowly decluttering our house...

One day we took our bikes to the BMX bike park in Logan.

The kids had a blast riding their bikes on the dirt tracks and jumps.  Even Charlotte tried her little bike on the kids track.  Well we did come home with a few bumps, bruises, and scraps.  Riding on a dirt track with jumps is much different than riding on the road.  They would get going a little too fast and then skid around a turn crashing in the process.  Another time they would try out a jump just to land funny and biff.  Logan had no fear so he tried everything.  Colby was brave until he crashed a couple times and then he was more cautious.  Emily went slow on everything.  She did not want to wreck.  Her bike is also not the greatest for dirk tracks so it was hard for her to really get going fast.  All in all though they had a good time and, despite the wrecks, they asked to come back again another time. We definitely will.

This summer the Logan Fire Department got a new fire engine:

As part of a long running tradition, the fire fighters pushed the new engine into the station bay.  I don't know what the tradition signifies but Russell said it was pretty cool to work together with the other guys to push the engine in.  Emily, Colby, and Logan went along for this ceremony and had a great time. They loved the new engine especially the American flag insignia on the grill.  

Russell has also been working on a few projects around the house.  This summer he built this cool nightstand.  The top is burnt like the American Flag and it also lifts up to reveal a hidden compartment.  I think it turned out awesome.

I have also been working on canning and preserving projects.  We got a bunch of free fruit like apricots, bananas, pineapple, strawberries, and kiwis this summer.  Since this was more than we could eat before it went bad, I decided to dehydrate all of it.  We now have lots of dried fruit to snack on throughout the year. I probably won't do apricots this way again because they turned out weird.  Everything else, though, was delicious.

This summer has also been one of medical bills.  It all started with the dog:

After falling out of the truck, Truly's legs and paws were pretty banged up.  We had to buy a ton of co-ban and gauze because we had to change her dressings everyday.  We also had to try and get her to not rip the dressings off her feet and eat them.  I don't know how many dressing she ate but it was so frustrating.  To top it off, we had to follow her around and examine her poop to make sure she pooped all of the gauze out so it didn't cause a bowel obstruction.  Finally we had to get her a cone of shame.  She hated it and hated us for putting it on her.  She wouldn't even look at us for a long time.  Unfortunately, the cone didn't work either and somehow she was getting around the cone to get the dressings off. And then eating them!  She puked and pooped gauze and co-ban some more.  We even got a bigger cone so she could barely get to her food when it was on.  This worked for a while but then she figured out a way to get to the dressings again.  This dog was going to be the death of us.  By this time though, it wounds were pretty much healed so we decided to let them heal the rest of the way without dressings.  Truly was much happier about this.  Thankfully there were no bowel obstructions or any bad side effects from eating co-ban and gauze but it was very annoying.

Next it was stitches for Logan and me:

My stitches were on my knee.  Our piano bench hinge broke and was sticking out because we never fix anything.  Well one night I was walking passed the bench in the dark to take something downstairs and I ran right into the sharp broken hinge.  It sliced my leg pretty deep and was enough to require 11 stitches. The doctor was worried that it was deep enough to hit the tendon and in that case I would have needed surgery.  Luckily though it was not that deep and healed up fine after about two weeks.  It was really annoying though because I could not bend my knee for a week.  Because the stitches were right on a bend, I had to keep my leg straight while it mended so that it wouldn't keep splitting.  The doctor really recommended not walking at all for a week but that was not going to happen so he wrapped it tight enough that I couldn't bend it.  It was a fun week of limping.

Then Logan split his lip clear through the day before school started.  He was jumping on the trampoline doing flips when he flipped to far and hit the bar with his mouth.  He split his lip and chipped his front tooth.  Luckily, the chip in his tooth was very minor and did not hit a nerve or anything.  Unfortunately, he bit through his lip.  After another trip to the ER, Logan came home with 3-4 stitches including an internal stitch.  Now he will have a lovely scar on his lip.  The next day was the first day of school so he got to start school with a fat lip and stitches.  Parents of the Year right here...

We have had a fun and eventful summer but now it is time for school to start again!

4 Months Old

Brooklyn is seriously the happiest baby.  She is always smiling. She is now four months old and is growing all the time.  

At her most recent well check, she weighed 13 lb 13 oz (41 percentile) and is now 23.75 inches long (20 percentile) and her head is 16.5 inches (84 percentile).  She is not the biggest baby but I'm pretty sure she is the cutest!  

This is the face I wake up to every morning. She is definitely a morning person. Brooklyn is pretty good about sleeping through the night or only waking up once.  She has also grown so much that it looks like it is time to move her into the big crib because she is getting too big for the bassinet.

Brooklyn loves talking to her brothers and sisters and loves being entertained by them.

Emily was the first one to get Brooklyn to laugh.  We were camping in Idaho and Emily was talking to her in the trailer when all of the sudden Brooklyn started giggling at Emily.  This was the first time she laughed.  Emily felt pretty special for getting the first laugh out of her.

Brooklyn also went to the swimming pool for the first time this month.

As you can see, she loved putting her feet in the cool water.  She was not even scared.  We didn't put her whole body in the pool, we just got her feet splashed.

Here is a cool girl picture:

Brooklyn likes holding her own bottle now.  She gets really impatient when we try to hold it for her because I guess she thinks we either don't hold it right or she is afraid we will take the bottle out of her mouth.  She is a funny girl.

Happy 4 months old Chunky Monkey!