How does your garden grow?

Growing up we had a garden. We lived on a small lot, but my dad dedicated half of our backyard to a garden. Here you can see the different boxes where we planted vegetables. Against the garage we had strawberries (usually).

I remember Saturday mornings spent weeding. Late summer mornings spent picking, and afternoons spent canning and freezing. I love that we always had a freezer full of vegetables and cans of fruits. Not all did we get from our garden. My mom's brother-in-law owns a farm and we got corn, peas, peaches, melons etc. from them. But we had so many that came from our own labors. I know that my parents were so pleased with that.

I just know I hated weeding. I don't like the figuring out where everything goes, making sure it has enough water, and keeping it alive until harvest time. I do love knowing that I am growing my own food. So I planted a garden again this year. Last year I didn't get anything. I had some beets, but they froze before they got big enough. My peas died while I was at girl's camp. And my tomatoes never got bigger than a grape (no, they were not grape tomatoes).

So this year I talked to a few people in my ward. One of the blessings of living out in the boonies, everyone plants a garden. And we have quite a few gardening geniuses in our ward. (Thank you so much). I went pretty small. Right now I only have five things planted. I learned that some things do better if they are planted when it is colder out. So I have peas, beets, carrots, lettuce, and spinach.
The racks are for my peas. In the box you see in the background I want to plant tomatoes (when it gets warmer) and melons. Hopefully I can get a harvest this year. I don't like pulling weeds any more than I did when I was a child. But I do like taking a bag of peas out of my freezer and knowing that I planted and weeded and harvested it.

Now, if only I could have a desire to do the same thing with flowers.

Joseph's birthday

So for Joseph's birthday (back in February) we went ice skating. We went over the summer and he had a really fun time. During the month of December, almost every show on PBS kept showing people (or animals) ice skating in an episode. Joseph kept asking to go ice skating, so I told him we could go for his birthday.

He had a blast. He fell down a bazillion times, but mostly he just laughed and tried to get up again. We did get him to skate by himself a few times, but he was very insecure about that. We invited all his aunts and uncles and cousins, but the only person who showed up at the rink was Josh's sister Melanee. Joseph didn't care, he was having fun.

Here he is trying to stay upright.

Here we are (me, Joseph, and Melanee)

Believe it or not, he's laughing so hard he can't get up.

Trying to teach him he needs to put his weight on his feet, not on Daddy.

After skating, we went back to our church to have cake and ice cream. We would have done it at our house, but we don't have enough room for more than 6 people. My sister Kirsten, my brother Jeff, his wife and their girls came up for this part. Also, Josh's parents and his sister April made it too.

Sadly, this is about the best picture of the cake. I wanted a good pic of it, but left that up to Josh, He was photographing Joseph. Joseph is making a funny face at Grandpa. Luckily he had fallen asleep in the car on the way back from the ice rink. He was ready to have fun again. If you could really see the cake you could tell it's lopsided. I saw this online and I fell in love with it. It didn't lean the way I wanted it to, but it still turned out really well.


Jeff, Michelle and their girls enjoying cake and ice cream.

Michelle and my beautiful sister Kirsten. (all my sisters are beautiful. I sure lucked out)

This is his sneaky smile so you know he's up to something. My little boy is 3. I'm glad he had a happy day. He still talks about it. We'll see what happens next year.