Silly Faces - August

I know you don't see enough of these faces so here they are close up!

Her 'cheese' face has come a long way

 Curly wings :)

 The kids wanted to take pictures of silly faces....

Life would be so boring without them. 

In the Garden

Our garden had been an adventure and a half. No one told me your first year is hard. But as I am lovingly reminded by the hubs, "[I] need to ask before I start things." Someday I will learn that lesson. Our garden seems to flourish in the beginning. It was literally a jungle. But our very green and luscious jungle was not producing fruit due to the very rainy and rather cool summer. Thankfully stuff decided to bare fruit, eventually. 

Our yellow crookneck squash was booming for a while. We had so much we were eating daily and giving it away! That was fun. 

We got a pretty good amount of green beans too! The kids ate our garden fresh beans SO much better than they ever have the store bought ones.

Our peppers have done wonderfully. Because this was our first garden, I don't plan well, and we weren't completely sure what we were getting into we have had peppers for months without the necessary tomatoes to make salsa....So we tried drying the peppers...we gave some away. I even got to pickle jalapeños while the Gee's were here!! That was a new and fun experience. Devin and Ryan approved and I am glad because we will need to do it again here in a couple of weeks.  

Around the beginning of August our garden decided to die. We discovered it had been infested by squash bugs...the kind you don't discover until your plant is dead and they have already infested every other plant around them -- type of bug.

 

I know this picture doesn't make much sense but the middle where it is black...that is where the plant goes into the ground...that black spread across all the vines. 

Yeah, that was a very sad day. So we lost our crazy fast producing crookneck; our butternut squash; and sadly our watermelon and cantaloupe. We were so excited for those melons!! We let them stay on the vine as long as possible but the watermelons weren't quite there. They have a great texture, just not a whole lot of flavor. The cantaloupe didn't make it at all. They were still too small and started rotting on the vine....like I said, "sad, sad day."

When we were planting the garden Lucy spilled some carrot seeds at the top of the green bean row. We tried to pick most of them up and plant them in the right row, then kind of forgot about them. A few weeks later we had this lovely patch of green coming up out of the ground! I'm glad we didn't mistake them for weeds because we have had some really good carrots come from her little mishap!

This is where she spilled...

See them popping out of the ground?

They were on the small side, but we needed to check to see if they were big enough to harvest...like I said we are a little clueless!

She was beyond ecstatic! And still is every time we go get some more of her carrots :) Can you spy Devin's handful of green beans in the background?! 

Even through the unfortunate turn of events for our garden we have had many good things come of it and we have learned SO SO SO much! 
~I learned that lettuce grows into trees!! Who knew?? We weren't pulling the whole head out, just the leaves off and it kept growing..I think right now our lettuce is almost 4 ft tall. 
~Tomato plants get way too big to keep upright. Ours are enormous and seem to do better now that they have all fallen over.
~Bunnies will eat all your lovely little peas leaving you absolutely nothing....I'm only a little mad about that one!
~And you need to treat for squash bugs and know what to look for and when to prevent infestation...
~Among many other things :) 

Random August

Here are pictures that didn't quite fit into the other posts...

Lucy was writing on the dry erase calendar one day. She called me over to see her name. No your eyes are not deceiving you and I did not flip the picture. She wrote her name backwards! It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen. I wish I had been watching so I could see how she did it.

Cole almost never makes it home from church awake. This day he was really tired :) 

Before we cut his hair he had a lot of fun making crazy hair. 

All my kids love to read. Sadie is in the read all day stage. We can read the same books so many times throughout the week that the day before we take them back to the library I have it memorized and Lucy is pretty close to being able to recite them.

Like father, like son. We bought this Encyclopedia of Mammals last year from the library. Best $2 I ever spent. Cole reads it and knows SO many animals. It helps that Devin will sit and read with him too.

We were gifted a wooden gun (thankfully it is broken so whatever it originally shot could never work again). Cole enjoys shooting everything and having a toy gun in the house has given his imagination another route to go on.

Glimpse into Sadie's future....pretty dresses and talking on the phone. I can see it now.

Visit to the Pellegrino's 8.1.14

JUST A QUICK FYI: WE UPDATED OUR IPHOTO AND SOME OF THE PICTURES ARE ALL GRAINY AND FOGGY :( 

We headed down to Indiana for Indee's birthday. It was a fun packed weekend and we enjoyed it so much! 

Our kids LOVED their little hamster! It made them miss our Snowball :)

The boys playing with toys together. They did really well this time! Not that they don't usually but there was more interaction between these two which was fun to see :)

The Daddy's went golfing so we all went to a farm! They had a brand new baby horse and I thought the kids would love it so much. They did but because the mom was kind of moody they couldn't really pet it.

 So they played with the little kittens pretty much the whole time.

They got to ride one of the horses!!! Cole loved it. And didn't seem nervous one little bit! I was impressed.

And of course Lucy was in Heaven!!! She kept telling me she wasn't nervous or scared at all and that she knew all about horses because some day she was going to have one. Keep dreaming little one, hopefully someday it will come true!

They had a couple of baby cows as well. Sadie liked this one the best.

That night we went to the local state park and had tin foil dinners and went on a hike. It was so beautiful!

I wasn't sure about all the stairs at the beginning so I stayed behind while they went on the hike around the lake. I told the kids to take pictures for me :) This is what I got!

I did end up going up another path to get up there when I could hear them coming back around :) It was gorgeous up there and the view driving around was really fun too.

Saturday (I don't have any pictures :() We did some thrifty shopping and then headed to a birthday party. That afternoon we went to Indianapolis for the state fair! We stopped at On the Border on the way up. It was our first time at that restaurant and it was really good!
We got to see a BMX performance at the fair. It was really exciting and the kids were amazed at some of the stunts those boys did!!
We got to see all the 4-H animals. And do some fun things there! We sure do love living so close to the Pellegrino's! Thanks again for the great weekend!!!

Indiana Sand Dunes 7.24.14

It feels like we went here forever ago, but it has only been a couple of weeks! 

My friend Ilana had been telling me about a beach only a couple of hours away from us along Lake Michigan. Where the sand was supposed to be beautiful and a great place to play. We finally decided to set a date and make it happen. We invited a couple of the young women from our ward to go along with us, and I am SO grateful they came!!

It was only about an hour and forty five minutes from our house. There was a bit of a hike from the parking lot to the actual beach so having some extra hands to help made a HUGE difference. It still amazes me how much stuff you have to have when you go places with little kids!

We got there early and stayed until the afternoon. Here are the pictures, since that is the funnest part of blogging :)

Sadie and Cole in the sand. Sadie is not a fan of waves, so she stayed as far away as possible the whole time. 

Cole attacking the waves. He ran on all fours for most of the day. 

Cole and Lucy and Elijah LOVED the waves. They would stand on the edge and let the waves just beat and beat on them. They were not soft waves either!! 

Burying themselves in the sand..

Elijah wanted in on the action but didn't really want to get buried himself.

Cole resting for a bit around our normal lunch and nap time. After a few minutes he was up and ready to play. I love that about my kids! They are very aware of when they are tired and USUALLY have no problem taking the time to rest. 

Warming up on the sand. The water was freezing and there was a chilly breeze so being on the sand was really nice.

Sadie was off doing her own thing a majority of the time

Getting every kid to look is futile. 

No matter the angle.

Lucy had SO much fun!

"Big" Lucy and Elsa. Cole LOVES "big" Lucy. We share a pew at church with their family and Cole ALWAYS sits by her, and asks where she is if we happen to be earlier than them. So happy they came and played with us!

Ilana and Elijah! 

My attempt at getting us all in a picture! Lol, it was not easy, thankfully Ilana helped us out!

I love these kids! They make my life so fun and so full! 

                    

While we were packing up, these two were just singing and playing quietly on the sand.

Driving home I was looking at the sky and realizing how blessed we are to have such a beautiful world! One of the many gifts Heavenly Father gave us. I'm grateful for the opportunity to experience the beauties of this earth. I love how there is nothing out here to stop your view of the sky. The clouds spread out forever. It really is one of the many beauties of the earth.