Dad's Garden

Since Brendan has been gone, I've been in charge of watering our little garden and our lawn and it has been hard work.  Our fresh herbs, zucchini, and yellow squash have been doing very well, but our tomatoes aren't in abundance as I would like.  As I was watering, I was thinking about my dad's wonderful garden back at home that he maintains year round.  A month ago when I went home to visit, I took some pictures of my dad's garden and forgot to post them.

My dad has been growing a garden since all eleven of us kids can remember.  Our grandpa also grows a garden and we always thought that was why our dad started, but we all just found out last month that my dad helped my grandpa get into gardening.  When my dad was eighteen, a coworker introduced him to gardening and he has been doing it ever since.  I'm not sure how it started, but my dad has been collecting little garden "knick knacks" I guess you would call them.  He has been getting them as gifts for Father's Day, his birthday, and Christmas for a long time now.  In fact, the black bird below was given to him by Brendan and I a few years ago.  Going back to the tomatoes, I think this is the most I have ever seen growing in his garden.  His tomato plants were nine feet high when I was home, but I've heard they've grown to eleven feet!  He has rows of lots of different varieties.  I'm not sure of everything he has growing now, but growing up he would grow potatoes, strawberries, carrots, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash,  tomatoes, cucumbers, string beans, pumpkins, ochre, spinach, lettuce, sunflowers, broccoli, and cauliflower.  I hope I can have a garden like that someday.  

Sandpoint Fun

Brendan is still away on his three week trip to Europe, but he will return on Monday.  I decided to break up the three weeks by planning a week long trip in the middle up to my sister Dawn's house.  She lives in Northern Idaho near Washington.  Sandpoint, Idaho is a beautiful resort town with cool weather in the summer, so it was a refresher from the heat in Utah.  Whitney came too.

My sister has four kids with a big playroom, so Hazel loved it!  With all of the toys you would think Hazel and John (my two year old nephew) wouldn't have a problem finding their own toy to play with.  Whatever toy Hazel had John had to have it too.  A toy Hazel really liked was a cute little grocery cart.  One day John not only took it from her, but he ran her over with it too.  I wasn't there to witness it because I fell ill one day, but I was informed Whitney had never laughed so hard at the sight of it.  One toy I might have to purchase for Hazel is the Little Tikes Coupe.  She couldn't get enough of it, even though she can only walk backwards in it to get it to move.

Some activities we enjoyed during the week were: swimming and playing in the sand at the neighborhood beach, wakeboarding and wake surfing, a stop downtown to the Hey Cupcake shop to get huckleberry ice cream, blueberry picking, canning and jam making, and a bow holder project (pics coming soon.)  Thanks Dawn!  We had a great week!  

Heartshop

Back in June, friends of ours from yanphoto.com invited us to be models for their photography workshop called heartshop.  There were about 20 photographers from all over the country who attended the workshop.  We were photographed in a really cool natural light studio which was in downtown Provo.  Here are just a few pictures from the shoot,  and these pictures were done by Melissa Fullmer from Dallas, Texas.  I actually broke the bed while jumping in the second shot, but I was told to jump.  I kind of felt bad.  It was fun to do, and I was able to pick up on a lot of photography tips while I was there.

Farewell

My brother Blake entered the MTC today.  These days you just drop the missionary off at the curb and drive away.  It's pretty fast and painless.  I'm sure I would have cried if we would have gone in and watched the regular movie.  Everyone knows at the end they have the missionaries leave through the other door as you part your ways.  Missions are great, but they can also be rough.  I guess I better send him some same day mail tomorrow.  I remember mail was always the best part of the day!

Family Reunion

We went to Island Park, Idaho for Brendan's family reunion and just returned on Monday.  Island Park is only 30 minutes from West Yellowstone Park.  The cabins we stayed in were really nice, and the weather was perfect.  It was a great place for a reunion.

Breakfast

We had oatmeal for breakfast this morning.  I usually feed Hazel myself if it requires a spoon, because I don't like messes, but Hazel kept trying to take the spoon from me.   I finally gave in and let her go at it.  Of course there was oatmeal everywhere, but she had a good time.

Sisters

After spending a few days in California with my family, my sisters Breeze and Holly 

drove back with us to Utah.  We had a fun filled week.  Our fun included:

mini golf

indie cars

xd theater

picnic up the canyon

alpine slide rides

shopping in park city

bowling

gelato

temple square

homemade lasagna noodles

swimming in the pool

sailing at the lake

movies

spoon it up frozen yogurt 

magleby's at travani

homemade apricot jam

Humboldt, Nevada

We drove to California a few weeks ago for my brother Blake's missionary farewell.  On our drive out there, I just had to stop at this "special" spot and take a few pictures.  When Brendan and I were dating, we drove out to San Francisco to meet up with a friend of Brendan's who was in town from Russia.  We were also going to stop and visit my family in Sacramento on our way out there.  This was Brendan's first time driving to Northern California from Utah.  Brendan pretended to have some car trouble in the middle of nowhere and pulled off at this Humboldt exit on the side of the road.  To make a long story short, he had me get out of the car to check some things out and proposed to me.  I did say yes, but was a little shocked at his location for such a proposal.  Anyone who knows Brendan knows he's pretty creative and romantic, so it wasn't exactly what I had expected.  Especially since it was the day after Valentine's day and we were headed to a pretty romantic city the next day.  Later, when I asked why he chose such a spot he told me that in the future whenever we would drive out to visit my family we could tell the kids that's where Dad and Mom got engaged.

So on our drive out to visit my family I just had to stop and show Hazel where Mom and Dad got engaged.