Recapping July

So July has been busy!
We shingled the playhouse roof and have spent a lot of time working in our yard and Grandma Earl's. For all you non-relatives that read this, Grandma Earl turned 90 this year and she's still going. She lives in her house with her widowed brother Uncle Karl. They have some one who comes in and helps around the house and a little in the yard. Some one mowes the lawn, but most of the garden has been left to go totally wild for the last 5 years but it was starting to go wild from the far corners in about 5 years before that, and since she has about a 1/2 acre lot thats a lot of yard!
Well we've started to reclaim the yard from nature. It's totally like The Secret Garden there's still a lot of good stuff growing under the weeds and creeper vine, we just need to give it some TLC. And maybe you've heard those jokes about "Nature's a mother!" well some days thats how it feels working out there, and then John whips out the weed eater and 30 minutes later we go oh well maybe that's doable. I'll have to do another Grandma's yard post after I get the pictures off the camera.
Little John and I started a once a week mommy & me tumbling class, he loves it. And we're in the last week of our mommy & me swim class, which it sooooo much fun!
We keep canning: cherry pie filling, blueberry pie filling, raspberry jam, tomato juice, maraschino cherries (non-alcoholic), danish cherry sauce, and just canned raspberries. And we froze the ecsess purple carrots from the garden, because we don't have a pressure canner.
My mending and alterations bussiness is picking up a little, I just altered a wedding dress for a girl.

Recapping May and June

So May was a good month because school got out.

Ben went to his first ever fancy dance on a date. He took Amanda Wendel from down the street, they look so good!

My grandma Earl (she is actually my Great-Grandma) had her ninetieth birthday so we celebrated with a great huge part with all the reletives from out of state that we don't get to see very often. Someone found out that you can get amazingly good deals on huge orders from Maddox so we got the food from there. YUM!!! Two different flavors of cake. After the lunch we had an open house so that all of her friends and neighbors could come and see her.

We made and frosted donuts, chocolate and vanilla frosting!

Little John decided the sand box is more fun with water.

We started buildingLittle John a playhouse in the backyard, we modified some plans off the internet. John's parents came over and helped a lot. The weather was hot not foggy, the fog in the pictures is Little John's fingerprints on the camera lens but no one noticed until too late.

We enjoyed a nice picnic up the canyon.

We made jam and our sticky helper is so cute!

We went to the zoo and Little John was mezmerized by the elephants, they are deffinately his favorite animal.

We ran the Race For the Cure 5k with my Aunt Juli and her daughter Kate. It was awesome! I hope to do it again next year. Maybe next year I'll jog part of it with the stroller instaed of just power walking with the stroller.

My brother Ben graduated from Box Elder High School and Seminary. At the high school graduation things were getting boring since the speakers just go on and on and on. Then all of a sudden, at the back of the students there was a great commotion with everyone looking all over and looking under their chairs. It turns out that someone had let loose a mouse. Ben appreciated the break from the monotony. After a while they caught it. Then there was some more commotion because they had let loose more than one mouse. It kept the audience very well entertained. It also kept the sutdents awake. Oh, and some guy wore a kilt, it was cool.

We spent a lot of time working on the playhouse.

We took Ben for a ritual "last meal" before shipping him out to boot camp.

We spent a weekend with my sister Heather in Loa, UT (near Capitol Reef Ntl Park), for her baby shower.

We made arricot, pinapple apricot, and apricot plum jam

Little John ride his trike a lot.

For Father's day I helped Little John collect stuff and we put it in plaster to make Daddy a paper weight (I gave it a few coats of sealer to protect it).

We are loving your year pass to the Jensen Historical Farm (where we went to Baby animal days) We saw lots of chickens and washed clothes.

Little John loves bubbles!

My Mom entered an online contest and won a Pizza Party! So we had a bunch of friends and family over. The kids loved the backyard.

We took Little John to the pool.He lasted about 10 minutes because once the wind picked up it got cold.

Nana (my mom) lets Little John get away with things sometimes. Like making the backyard a nudist camp. He decided sitting naked was a mistake, but had fun doing everything else.

Typed by Sarah Snow the cooliest ever!!!! ('Cuz I don't type, I chicken peck:D)

So I'm still here...

Wow I knew it had been a while since I blogged but I didn't realize it had been almost a month. So I've been busy, here's the basic rundown and then I'll do some more blogs on the more interesting stuff afterwards.

Spring has arrived, complete with it's fickle whims of crazy weather. It beautiful, it rains, I wonder where my shorts are, it snows, its beautiful again. Over all this is great for the yard, but I lost a blueberry bush :(. The most obnoxious part of that is for best fruit you plant 2 different varieties and I'm not sure which one died so I'm not sure what to replace it with. This weather is not so great for Little John, he just doesn't understand why he can spend 3 days living in the backyard and then has to be cooped up for another 3.

Spring break came and went for Mom and Ben and it was nice to have them around for a few extra days. We went to baby animal days, drove to Idaho to see cousins, and just hung out. (Blog with pics soon to follow)

General Conference weekend was great! We loved the speakers. We DVRed it and I put it on DVD and mailed it to my friend Clerie in Iraq (the internet there is too slow to stream the feed). We also (mostly John) got the railing on the deck out back, between sessions. I worry a lot less about the little guy playing out there now.

We finished the Man Cave, it's all decked out and John enjoys using it. (Blog w/ pics to follow)

Easter Sunday we got together with some cousins and did dinner and an egg hunt. Little John loves to find the eggs and for quite a while didn't care that there was stuff inside them. He got upset at the city hunt when we made him wait till they said "go" to start finding them. (pics blog soon)

We joined this fruit and veggie co-op thing (it actually started in AZ) and the produce is great. We got the italian pack and I made 6 cool whip containers of sauce and froze it (I added the tomato paste/sauce and some spices but most everything else came in the pack). We also got 40 lbs of pink lady apples that I'm in the process of turning into apple pie filling and canning it. I will be doing this for a while because 27 apples gave me 7 qt jars of filling and there's 115 apples in a 40 lb box plus the 13 I also used 'cuz they'd been in the fridge for a while. So I figure I'll end up with between 30 an 35 jars of filling. And I made a pie from the jar that didn't seal- delicous! Here is the link to the co-op if anyone is interested. (The only UT places right now are Brigham and Clearfield)

I have been stage managing a show at the local community theater. It's a straight play (as in not a musical) called The Women. It's basically Desperate Housewives, set in the 1940's. The author got all her material sitting around in hair salons and pwder rooms and women's shop just listening to ladies gossip. The play is fantastic a lot of drama but still funny. Opening night is tonight. (More stuff in following blog)

My mom went to the doctor for a rash on her face that started to swell and was told it was shingles. First of all she isn't old enough to be having shingles! Second, because its by her eye she has to keep a close watch 'cuz if it gets in her eye she could go blind, I'm not sure how likely that is to happen, but just thinking about it freaks me out! So I'm praying for her alot, feel free to join me :)

So see I'm so busy doing things worth blogging that I have no time to blog :D

The silver lining

So now that I've depressed everyone with our sickness (and possibly shared the germs), here's the silver lining. While being cooped up, those who were feeling up to it have done a lot of good work.
We put together, anchored to the wall, sanded, painted, and painted again the shelves for John's man cave. I made and hung a curtain to hide stuff stored at the back in the space to small to use as part of the man cave.
We dug, moved, and fertilized the garden boxes (the dirt here is such junk we use the square foot gardening method (mostly)). We planted peas, lettuce, and blueberries (although the weather may have killed one of the blueberries). We transplanted the raspberries. We seeded the bare spots in the lawn and spread peat moss to keep it moist. And even though the one blueberry may be toast all the wet/snowy weather means I haven't had to water the grass seed.
After being cooped up the old furniture arrangement was definitely old so we changed it up and it's much more cozy and conducive to conversation (but everyone can still see the TV, so we're all happy).
And John's had the chance to give lots of blessings. I love that we have such convenient access to the priesthood. And I always feel so comforted, even just listening to someone else's blessing. John says he makes better decisions than he might otherwise, because he knows I'll ask for a blessing and he wants to be worthy to give them. I think that is so awesome.