I love flower gardening

I have worked for three years on these two beds and I finally have them how I want them - well, now  I am just waiting for some of the ground cover to grow.  Thanks to my mother-in-law I have found a new hobby of flower gardening.  Maybe one day I will segway that into vegetable gardening - but for now I really enjoy flower gardening.

I took these pictures in the morning when nothing was in boom yet - I should try and get a pictures with all of the little flowers have opened up.  I love the ground cover coming up around and in between rocks with patches of rich black dirt in between them.  I thought I planted yellow and purple ice-plant - but once they bloomed i put too many purples close together - next year I might rip some out and move things around - but next year I am supposed to focus on my upper beds.

I also built a sand box in my front yard. It is on one of the "levels" of my rock hill.  I love it.  It fits in perfectly with my personality - a space for my children among my pretty things.  Plus I was really proud of myself for doing it all by myself in one afternoon.  I dug out all the "real dirt", then I dug up the sprinkler pipes and clamped it (I had no idea how to do it - but I talked to the guy at Home Depot and figured it out).  Then I hauled all the sand to fill it from our (overly full) sandbox in the back yard.  THEN I channeled all the energy of my mother-in-law (she is a strong, do-it-yourself woman) and carried that huge red flat rock all the way from the corner of my back yard up to that spot - it was HEAVY and hard - but I did it.  The girls love playing in it while I weed and mess with my beds.

 Next year I am  tackling this bare bed right up against my railing.  I have a vision - but it comes from temple square - which seems like an unrealistic vision.  I want to pull out all that ivy in the corner and put in cascading sweet potato vine with hydrangeas along my porch railing with smaller flowers in front.

Like this-ish

Women's Conference Dinner

My friend just emailed me this picture - it should have gone with my Women's Conference post.

I went to dinner with my childhood friends, Megan (Wray) Mcgary and Niki (Engh) Harris.  There were supposed to be a lot more than 3 of us - but a lot of things came up and people couldn't come.  These two still had little babies at home - so I was so glad they still came.  We had so much fun talking and catching up  - we stayed until the bitter end.

Fourth of July

This was our first fourth of July not in Utah.  Our kids were very concerned we wouldn't be able to really celebrate it properly.  So, despite mine and Jason's hatred for parades (living on University Ave in Provo for 6 years will do that to you) we took our kids to our local parade.

They thought it was great - except they only threw candy to one side (NOT our side) - but we told them next year we will sit on that side.  Again - they thought it was great - but it really wasn't.  I learned that Utahan's love parades and we have exceptional parades.  There were no real floats (just people pulling trailers with crate paper and balloons), no cheer leaders doing cheers, no marching bands, no beauty queens.  Mostly just advertisers carrying banners.  LAME.

The best part was our shirts.  The kids all got up and did their high-5's by themselves.  They all knew it was the fourth of July so they picked out proper Fourth of July attire.  When Jason saw the kids he assumed I had told them all to wear and made a comment about how ridiculous it is that I make them dress for the holiday.  I told him I didn't and that they had all picked out their own outfits.  He did not believe me - he couldn't thin that they would choose to "dress for the holiday".  So I said, "kids did pick pick out any of your clothes today?" and all yelled, "no, I picked it out" (or some muffled variance of that statement).  Jason said, "that is the biggest parenting failure of my life".  ha ha.  Form that story you can tell he is against anything "theme-y"  He protested our matchiness by wearing a gray shirt - but jokes on him becasue Noah's shirt was gray too - so he fits right in!

That night we went to a neighborhood BBQ - it was delicious - but left once the Jell-o shots came out.  Then we went to another neighbors house and did fire works in front of their house.  In the end I think we did pretty well - and the kids went to bed satisfied.

On a patriotic note - I felt more grateful for our country and the men and women who died for it, and still do, this year than in most past years.  As we have introduced our children to the musical Les Mes and I hear daily the anthem of the rebels my thoughts turn to people who are willing to stand up for something greater than themselves.

"Will you give all you can give so that our banner may advance?  
Some will fall and some will live, will you stand up and take your chance?  
The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France.  

Do you hear the people sing?  
Singing the songs of angry men.  
It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again.  
When the beating of your hearts echos the beating of the drums; 
it is a life about to start when tomorrow comes"

Could I have sent my son out there?  My husband? The revolution?  The Civil?  D-day?  If things keep going the way their going - 10 years from now right as my boys are entering college will there be a call?  Boys of all generations have been called to die so that freedom can continue.  I am at awe at those boys, men, mothers, and wives who have heeded that call.  I hope one day I can prove worthy of their sacrifice - and be willing to make my own.

Our summer plan

I like to put up schedules, charts, rules, etc up for summer.  It really helps us do all the things we wanted to do.  This summer's theme is "work hard and play hard".  I really want to start teaching my kids how to actually clean really well, cook, and just generally work hard and complete a task.  I also wanted to have a lot of fun.  With out a child napper the world is our oyster and we can pretty much do what ever we want when ever we want.  We have 2 more weeks of summer and we have stuck with it almost perfectly.  We have had a good summer.  A perfect balance of school work, chores, and fun.

I go running in the morning - any kid can come with me if they are awake and ready when I leave.  The girls come almost every morning with me - the boys hare awake maybe 10% of the time.

Our reading hour is wonderful.  I have a couple of stations around the house - they can pick a station and every 15 minutes we rotate.  You have to at least be with me reading for one of your stations.  We did this last year and it was exhausting for me to read with them for an hour straight - but this year they are all such great readers I am just listening rather than teaching - so its not so draining.

We officially started our Monday cleaning days (a tradition carried over from my mother).  The kids were better at this than I was.  Some Mondays I did not want to clean.  But before I even came down stairs the kids had already started their jobs.  I think becasue on Monday they get their weeks worth of screen tokens - but they can't use them until they are done with their jobs - so they are extra eager to clean.

We didn't hike or bike ride as much as I had hoped.  It turns out we have a pretty wide gap in abilities and makes things like  that hard still.  Madison is still in training wheels - but the other three are on two wheels so it is really hard for her to keep up.  I have a seat on my bike she can sit in - but I feel like I don't want her just sitting for several hours during our "activity" - also I got a hole in my tire mid June and have yet to find time or extra mula to get it fixed.  And we haven't hiked as much due to mostly laziness on my part.  Shame on me!

Friday fun is something we don't normally do like bowling, go to a movie, chuck e cheese, etc.  This one obviously cost more money - so we don't do it every Friday - I think we have done like 3 or 4 things this summer.  But it is nice to get out and do things we don't normally do.

The newest member of our family

I know that is a little dramatic (the title of the post) - but that is kind of how I felt after we got this piano in our home.  Like our home was now complete.  I played the piano for...oh, I don't know, 5 or so years.  I am by no means a piano player - but I can read music and can play very simple songs after a lot of practice.

Noah tried soccer for 2 seasons and decided it wasn't for him.  We asked him what he wanted to do, and gave him a very exhaustive list of options.  He chose piano.  This piano taught us a lot of life lessons in buying pianos and basically how NOT to buy a piano.  What happened was a family in our ward was getting rid of it and she offered it to us for free.  She said that it was OLD and hadn't been tuned in years - but we could have it if we could move it.  I LOVED the look of it and wanted it.  But she wasn't kidding - it was old and HEAVY - Jason determined it was too heavy for him to move (even with a bunch of men) - so since it was free we thought we could foot the bill and have a moving company move it.  So we paid $125.00 dollars to move this piano into our home.  A piano apparently needs to sit in its new home for 2 weeks before it can be tuned.  So after 2 weeks the tuning company came out - after about 45 minutes (and $75.00 dollars) we were told the piano is untunable!!! And they left.  Now we have spent $200.00 dollars to have.... basically nothing, and now we need to spend another $125.00 to get the piano moved out of our house and taken to the dump.  Its crazy - by the end of it we will have spent over 300 dollars to have no piano and start back at square one.

Well, by the time all of this was over we were tired, exhausted, a little embarrassed, and out of money.  We have a pretty low bar on most things and Noah really wanted to start his lessons...so we decided to just let him start on a HORRIBLY tuned piano.  I have NO ear for music and I can tell its bad.  Even Noah after his first lesson said, "why does this song sound weird?"  But when all is said and done it is our piano and we love it.  One day we will chuck it and find a new one I am sure.

And he is absolutely loving piano.  His teacher is a man in his 20's named Derek.  He is so cool and that makes Noah think the piano is so cool.  He loves to go to his lessons and practices every morning - the first thing he does when he gets up.  I love waking up to the sounds of him practicing.  I also love sitting down and playing a hymn or two while I am waiting for water to boil or something.  I was hoping the other kids would want to take lessons - but so far the others just have other instruments they want to play (mostly the flute) - I don't think we will be doing that anytime soon.

Family vacation/camping to Colorado Springs

Best family vacation ever!  We went camping for 3 days and 2 nights all-the-while spending time at some of Colorado Springs attractions.  This was our first "real" family camping trip.  We have gone a few times with my family - using my dads stuff - we went for one night last summer - borrowing stuff from friends, but this year we bought all of our own camping stuff with our tax return and this was our official inauguration.  

We camped at Thunder Ridge campground overlooking the Rampart reservoir.  It was absolutely beautiful.  My camera is completely broken and incapable of taking good pictures - so these pictures are a very very sad attempt at the beauty of our camping spot.  We were right up against a hill over looking the lake and the whole valley.  We had a wonderful ravine and a burnt mountain (wildfire in 2014) right next to us - this allowed the children to wander, explore, and hike for miles and we could see them the whole time.  When we went originally we thought this was our last time camping in Colorado Springs, but now we want to return to this campsite every year.

When we got there it was cold, rainy, and WINDY!!  The wind blew so hard that our tent would bend almost all the way to the ground.  Jason is a great stake setter because our stakes never gave way!!  The kids are great little troopers though, they helped us unpack and set up tent with very little complaining and slothfulness - even in the cold and wind.

The camp ranger came through camp telling us a major thunderstorm was coming through in an hour - so we better get everything put away and get in our tent for the rest of the night.  Of course we had to hurry and roast some smores - priorities people!!

Camping in bear country is a lot harder than camping in Utah.  Everything has to get put away every night and every time you leave - not as much fun.  But it does provide us with more opportunities to teach the kids to work. :)  We all made it into the test just in the nick of time - except for Jason.  He was putting our last cooler in the car when there was a crack of thunder and then.... down pour.  He ran into the tent, pretty wet.  It was only 7:00 - so we huddled in our sleeping bags and Jason read us our current chapter book "Henry Huggins".  This always ends up being the kids' favorite part of camping, reading in the tent.

Jason and I camp very differently - so we are trying to find our own way as a family.  One point of diversion is food.  He wants to only eat basic non-prep, no-mess food.  I like having really yummy dutch oven campfire food.  As of now we have compromised on really yummy tin-foil dinners.  I spent several hours online finding great tin-foil dinner recipes.  This one was amazing.  Like the best dinner I have ever made, period.  It was a lemon garlic shrimp with asparagus and red potatoes - I threw some summer sausage in there becasue we can only afford 3 shrimp per person and I knew everyone would still be hungry.  I made these all ahead of time and froze them - then just stuck them on the fire.  They were fantastic!

Funny family story:  I forgot to tell Jason what was in them, so when he ate his he thought the lemon wedge (which was in there for flavoring) was a pepper -so he stuck the whole thing in his mouth and ate it - the whole thing.  The kids thought it was so funny!

After our first night of camping we went to Cave of the Winds in Colorado Springs.  It was pretty expensive - but our kids are really into caves right now.  We spent a couple of weeks a few months ago watching "Planet Earth" documentires from BBC and they loved the ones on caves.  So we thought this would be a great educational extension.  The tour was quick paced and I had to be VERY attentive to the children - if they TOUCH the cave walls at all we get fined, Jason and I had 8 hands to keep track of for an hour - SO... I didn't take really any picutres.  I thought it was great and a very uniqu expierence and the kids loved it.  Our dear sweet little Noah, however, was struggling.  The best thing about Noah is how inquisative he is, and there were SO MANY things he needed to discover and figure out.  Noah, who is SO SLOW and ALWAYS 20 feet behind us anywere we go, could not for the life of him stay BEHIND the tour guide - he kept going in front of him from room to room and touching everything.  About 10 minutes into the tour and after his 20th warning - he had to hole my hand for the next 30 minutes.  It was as if I was torchering him.

Our kids are great though, they asked question after question after question.  There were lots of other kids on the tour and not one other kids had a question.  My kids love knowledge and are always trying to figure things out - they get all of that from their dad - I find it mostly annoying and are happy to just find things mysterious. ha

The next day we went and explored Garden of the Gods.  It is a beautiful *free* park that has red rock all over that you can climb and explore.

It was hot, and Madison did not bring her hiking legs.  We only got away with doing about a mile and a half - but we saw a lot of awesome birds and the scenery was beautiful.

On our last morning we took a hike down to the lake.  The hike was beautiful - we were hiking on this small trail literally "into the woods" - we may of may  not have sung the whole song to the musical as we were walking (one of my kids' favorite musicals).  It was actually kind of scary since bears and rattle snakes are pretty common - but hey - hiking has risks right?

The lake was amazing - one of the prettiest lakes I have ever been too.  I could have stayed on that beach all day.

On our way back home we took our last stop to the Chyenne Mountain Zoo.  It is supposed to be one of the prettiest zoos in the whole country becasue it is IN the mountains.

The featured event - the giraffes.  They have the largest girrafe herd in the US and they get up close and personal.  You can buy some lettuc and feed them - but we quickly found that you can pick lettuce up off the ground that people have dropped and feed them with that.  Thrifty or cheap?  I will let you be the judge.

It was SO cool, they wrap their long black tongue all around your hand - I tried to get  a picture but couldn't.  We also love feeding birds with peanut butter on the end of Popsicle sticks and watching a rhino eating a whole head of lettuce.

On the drive home we introduced our kids to a new musical: Le Mes.  They loved it (we did not play them a couple songs or explain some aspects of the story).  It has become a new family favorite and my kids love singing "Do you hear the people sing".

Colorado weather

The weather here in Colorado is practically perfect.  Except for the hail storms.  

Eliches

Right after we got home from Utah our friends invited us to Eliches.  It is an old Six Flags.  We went to Lagoon back in Utah a few years ago and it was arguably one of the best days of my mothering life.  I was so excited to go to another amusement park with my kids.  Hearing them laugh, squeel, and scream as they ride a roller coaster could just about make my heart burst with joy.  It just does something to my DNA - I love it.

It was a lot of fun.  It was busy and hot.  But the kids don't really notice stuff like that.

The kids: Madison, Noah, Megan, Zoe, David, Brock and Finn

The "moms": Krsita, Me, and Jen - these are two of my best friends here in Denver.  The value of an "everyday friend" is immeasurable to me - I am grateful I have them.

Jen took these pictures of the girls and me on a roller coaster - love it.

I love, love, love summer and handing out with my kids.  Most of the time they are my best friends (and then other times my worst enemies) ha.  I am so glad we got to go - mostly becasue I learned that Lagoon is way better and I will willingly pay the extra $100.00 for Lagoon next year.