Quick Garden Note...

So I couldn't find any information on how to keep birds out of my garden so I sucked it up and put bird netting over top of it. Hopefully I can get my corn to grow this time around. The bird netting is not cheap so maybe I can recycle it and put it over my tomato plants to keep the birds out of them once they start getting fruit on them. But really... if anyone knows a more permanent solution to keeping the birds out of the garden, let me know.

HAPPY FALL!!!!

I can't even tell you how excited I am that Fall is finally here. It means yummy food, time spent with family, pumpkins, fall leaves, gardening, and best of all, cool weather. I know that it is not exactly cool right now with 100 degree temps still in the day but at night you can actually walk out the door and not sweat to death! It is the best time of year!
And speaking of gardening... Look at my garden! I am so excited. I have been gardening for a couple of years using these great garden boxes that I built using instructions from the Sunset Magazine website. I have 2 of these great raised bed gardens and I love them. This year I am planting a few things that I have never planted before. I planted broccoli, cantaloupe, cucumbers, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, eggplant, corn, radishes and carrots. I have never planted broccoli or leafy greens before so we will see how they do. So far so good with the exception of my corn. The birds ate the sprouts of my corn a day after they popped up through the ground. ARGH!!! If anyone has any tips for keeping the birds out of your garden without covering it up with bird netting, please let me know.

These are the sunflowers that my boys planted without my knowledge. Aren't they so sweet! Guess we will have to leave them so we have enough seeds for next year.

Camping...

Jared eating a giant Chocolate Chip Cookie (thanks Aunt Erin!) by the campfire with his head lamp on his head.

The boys drinking hot chocolate before breakfast
when they thought no one was watching them.

The boys with their Grandpa after the trash run!

J Bear fishing at the lake

Peanut playing in the dirt with his baseball

Do you ever remeber doing this with the
pop cans on your shoes to make it
noisy when you walked?

Peanut asleep after a long afternoon in the dirt!

So we had a great time up in the mountains. The only word I have to describe it is HEAVEN! Not to say that it was perfect because things seldom are, but I had a handful of moments when the breeze was blowing through the pine trees (which is probably one of my favorite sounds in the world by the way) and the boys were playing in the dirt, and the air was ALMOST COOL and I thought "I don't think I ever want to leave." My all time favorite thing about camping besides the sound of the breeze in the trees is at night time. When you have a fire going, the stars are brighter than you can ever believe is possible, all is quiet and you have a marshmallow attached to a stick getting ready to have, what is in my opinion. the greatest snack ever created- the S'more! Oh my gosh, it just can't get any better than that!



We tried to fish for 3 days and only managed to catch one small bass and a few very tiny non-keepers. But the memories will outlast all of the hours we spent by the lake. What a fun ADVENTURE!!!

My Miracle...

We were so lucky that we got to go camping this last weekend. But preceeding the camping experience was my miracle. So, the original plan was to pack the camping "stuff" and the kids an I into my parent's truck and head up the mountain last Thursday morning to camp. Well, when they arrived at my house to pick me up, the back of their truck was completely full and no room for any of the stuff I had packed. We had no plans to take my vehicle as it was in desperate need of new tires. MCP was going to get new ones before he headed up the mountain the next day, so my car was really in no condition to drive up. Well, with no other choice as we could not camp without a tent, or sleeping bags, or food for that matter, I loaded my stuff in my car with Peanut next to me and started up the mountain. My parents had said a prayer before they left their house that the vehicles would drive smoothly and nothing would go wrong so we could get there safe. Well, we hadn't made it 10 miles out of town and my car started making a huge thumping noise. I called my dad who was behind me and said we needed to pull over. We inspected the tires and found nothing wrong. So we continued up the mountain driving 5 miles under the speed limit just to be on the safe side. Well, I just didn't feel good about the situation so I called MCP at work and told him he needed to call a town on the way up and have them get tires ready for me when I got there because I didn't think I was going to make it. We made it to the town, pulled in and left the car to get the new tires and went to breakfast. When we returned, the man wheeled out my tire to me and said, "I know what that noise was you were talking about..." and turned my tire around to expose a huge hole in my tire with the steel belt hanging out of it. Then he said, " I don't know how you made it here!" I knew exactly how I had made it and I am so grateful to know that Heavenly Father hears and answers our prayers. And how blessed we are that we are safe and that nothing happened to us.

Lego Mania

I'm going to devulge a little known secret about our family... WE LOVE LEGO'S!!! Soon after we got married, MCP and I discovered that we both played with Lego's as kids and loved them. So we bought a set, if I recall, it was some under-the-sea scuba set or something. Anyway, he and I sat one night and built the whole set. It then snowballed into more and more sets, followed by shelving units in the boy's playroom to display them, which brings us to the present. The boys are finally old enough to play with all of the small pieces without putting them in their mouths and so we can finally share our love of the Lego building with them. However, they aren't as fun to play with if you don't have "MEN" to play with, so MCP went to the Lego store (bet you didn't know there was such a thing!) and bought a set of people to add to our collection. Included in the set was even 2 young men on bikes. We call them our Missionaries. So now you know... we are really just kids at heart!