Movie in the Park

One of K's friends from preschool called to see if she wanted to go to a movie with her at a local school. K was thrilled to go. We went around 6:30 and the girls played on the playground for a couple of hours. Before the movie we bought a hot dog meal for each of us that was being sold by the same people putting on the movie. Then we watched the movie with some real movie theater popcorn. The girls were only interested in the movie for a little bit, then they wanted to play on the playground some more. We ended up staying until 10:30. K had a wonderful time with her school buddy and L really enjoyed the playground too.

Walking to the playground hand in hand.

Hotdog dinner before the movie.

Watching a movie in the park.

Portraits

We took the girls to get their annual pictures done. K did a fantastic job and her pictures are so adorable. L, on the other hand, was a nightmare! She wouldn't sit still, she kept lunging for the camera and other equipment, and she screamed pretty much the entire time. Luckily we were able to get a couple decent shots of her. I was actually surprise there were any at all. She seriously would NOT sit or stand for more than a second. Every time the photographer was able to focus on her, L would run.

Here is a closeup of L, she was headed for the camera.

We tried to distract her with the toys that were there because ours were not
working. She seemed to like the train for a brief moment.

In this one, M had a hold of her. It actually turned out pretty cute.

We brought K in to try and help keep L calm, but it didn't work either.

However, this picture turned out pretty cute too, even though L is yelling.

Here is K for her 4th Birthday shot.

I thought this was a very cute little pose.

This is my absolute FAVORITE of the shoot!

K looks so beautiful here. It is just so perfect.

Let's Go Fly a Kite

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny, and slightly windy day. We decided to take the girls to the park to try flying K's butterfly kite. We were all very successful and everyone had a wonderful time!

Here is K with her kite. She is a great kite flier.

She was able to keep it in the air pretty well.

Here she is running around with the kite.

L wanted in on the action too so M held her while she held the kite string.

M decided that she was a natural and let her fly the kite solo.

She did an excellent job as well!

Here I am flying the kite. Can you believe I have never flown one before?

It was so much fun and really relaxing. Definitely a fun time at the park!

Strawberry Season

We loaded up the family and headed out to a local farm for U-Pick Strawberries for our Family Home Evening activity yesterday. I had heard from a friend that the season started last week so I was surprised that they still had some left when I called to check. However, we were disappointed when we arrived and saw how small the berries were. I don't know if it is because all the good big ones were picked last week or if the crop was just small this year. But they were easily half the size of the ones from the store. Most of them were about the diameter of a nickel. But, we weren't too picky. We planned on turning them into some yummy jam. It took us a while but we were able to get 2 buckets full of berries. The kids had their fill of them and were covered in berry juice when we left.
After we got home, M and I got the kids cleaned up and put L down for the night. Then we started making jam with K's help. We cleaned and stemmed the berries. Then K got to mash them up. We cooked them on the stove while we sterilized our jars and lids. Then when everything was ready, we made our first batch of jam. We got thirteen 8oz jars which we then gave a water bath to. When they were done we set them aside to cool and started our second batch of jam. When we were all done we ended up with twenty-two 8 oz jars, two 4 oz jars, and three 12 oz jars. We still had quite a few berries left too. The sight of so much yummy jam makes my mouth water. I am so glad we are set for another year of jam.

Father's Day

We had a peaceful and relaxing Father's Day with just our family. The girls got M a few small presents: a BBQ meat thermometer, popcorn flavoring, and a bookmark with K's little footprint on it. We enjoyed the nice weather in the backyard and even saw some cute creatures.

M opening his gifts.

K finds a little green frog.
She wanted him to get in her hand, but he wouldn't.

After K looked at him for a while, M put him on our zucchini plant.

We have white butterflies that come to our garden quite often.

K loves to see them but is disappointed that they won't land on her hand.

Sometimes she calls to them, it is really cute.

Seven Years

We celebrated our 7 year anniversary on Saturday. It is really on the 21st, but I wanted to devote that whole day to M for Father's Day, so we celebrated a day early. M took me out to eat a local restaurant called Bates Steakhouse and Saloon. The theme was kind of corny, they really went all out with the Cowboy ranch thing. But the food was amazing and there is no way you could walk away hungry! I definitely recommend it. After dinner we went home, snuggled on the couch, and watched a movie, He's Just Not That Into You. It probably wasn't the best movie to watch on our anniversary and it wasn't very good, but we enjoyed making fun of it.

It is hard to believe that seven years have already passed; it doesn't seem like it has been that long. But in other ways, I feel like we have been together forever. M is such a wonderful and loving husband. He is always so attentive and wants nothing more than to see me happy. I am so lucky to have found him. I am grateful for every day that we have had together and look forward to many more to come.

K's Garden

After helping us with our garden and seeing how big it has gotten, K decided she wanted a garden of her own. So we went to the store and she bought four kinds of flower seeds to plant in pots. When we got back home she wanted to start immediately.

M got her some pots and she started filling them with good soil.

She looks so cute here.

These are the seeds she bought at the store:

Shirley Posies, Marigolds, Daisey Fleabane, and Delphinia.

These are some of the seeds out of one of the packets, very tiny.

Carefully putting the seeds in the middle of the pot.

Pat down the soil, carefully.

M made her a watering can out of an old soda bottle. Works pretty good.

Congratulations Emily!

I am in the Young Women's Program at church. For those of you who don't know, it is a program for girls ages 12-18 where we help the girls become close to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. We strengthen and prepare our precious young women to be virtuous and pure, to live the standards that will help them be free and happy and allow them to reach their divine potential. It is a wonderful blessing to be in this calling right now. These girls are adorable; I enjoy spending time with them each week and getting to know them. They each are so special and unique. It is a pleasure to be with them.
One of our Laurels is graduating high school this week so on Saturday we had a little graduation lunch to celebrate her achievements. We invited all the girls to join us at a leaders home where we had pizza, salad, fruit, and cheese cake. We got to visit with her about going off to college and her aspirations for the future. We also gave her some gifts for her dorm room. We got her a laundry basket, laundry soap, fabric softener, stain remover and hangers. We also gave her a framed cross-stitch that I made for her. She loved her gifts and was so appreciative that we took the time to do this for her.

Here is Emily, the graduate. You can totally see her personality in this shot.

She is so fun and entertaining. Never a dull moment with her around.

She will truly be missed!

This is the cross-stitch I did for her. Thank you to Liz who gave me the idea and the pattern. It turned out great and was very easy to do.

Here is her basket of goodies for laundry chores.

Here are some of our wonderful Beehives with Emily.

Here are the Leaders and the girls who were able to come.

Chalk Art

It was a pretty mild day on Saturday and K wanted to draw with her sidewalk chalk. So daddy took her outside to draw while he relaxed on the front porch.

Here she is drawing a butterfly.

This is her drawing of her sister L.

K eating pizza next to her drawing of a snowman with a bird in the sky and a green spaceship. I am always amazed at the things that she comes up with to draw. She doesn't watch television and the only movies she watches are Clifford and Caillou. So I don't know where she comes up with the ideas she does. Just a very imaginative little girl, I guess:)

Chupaqueso

So my husband came home today talking about this thing called a Chupaqueso. I had never heard of this before, so I was intrigued once he told me it had to do with cheese. He heard about it from one of his co-workers. Apparently some space mercenaries were mighty upset when their chupaqueso vending machine broke down. I don't know if that is true or not, but that's the story I was told.

Now my family, especially my husband, LOVES cheese. So after telling me about it, he decided to make one to see just how good it is.

Here are are the ingredients he used.

He spread some cheese onto the griddle at about 350 degrees. I'm not sure how much cheese he used, but it was enough to be about the size of a small tortilla.

Then he just let it get nice and crispy on bottom.

After it was crispy, he flipped it over to brown up the other side. While it was browning he added more cheese and peperoni.

Then he rolled it up and it was ready to eat.

Here is the finished product. I was surprise he shared with the girls,

but he did and they LOVED it!

K with her piece.

L even liked it, which is saying something because she is VERY picky!

I even got to have a piece. It was pretty good, kind of reminded me of a really good Cheezit Cracker, only much better. The flavor of burnt cheese is an interesting one. Definitely a great snack for those die hard cheese lovers!

Our Growing Garden

So we have been working on our Garden since April. I have posted about it a couple of times but now I have made a mosaic of our progress. M made raised beds out of stainless steel. We planted strawberries we got off of craigslist and then a bunch of seeds. We planted corn, peppers, cucumber, zucchini, carrots, lettuce, and green beans. We transplanted our old strawberries and bought tomatoes and broccoli to plant. Recently we planted pumpkin seeds for the Bemy Pumpkin contest.

On the side of our yard we planted raspberry shoots we received from M's mom along with the blueberry bush Emy gave me for my birthday last year. Along the back of the fence I dug up two holes to plant the apple trees we got from Wal-Mart. We are hoping they get enough sun to grow, they are kind of over shadowed by the Poplar trees behind our fence.

Everything seems to be growing quite well, except for our carrots. They haven't come up yet. We have planted them a couple of times, but to no avail. Does anyone have any suggestions?

M put down some pavers in between the beds so we would have a nice place to kneel down to pick our veggies and weed the garden. I think it turned out very nice. I am so pleased with how our backyard is looking. It is so relaxing to be in, now if we could just find some nice furniture to put on the deck, we will be pretty close to done.