to Jo and Chad. (Somehow I ended up with Chad in the background of all the pics! Sorry Chad!)
We met them at the airport, when there flight arrived an hour early, we were all quite shocked, and I scrambled to get there!
It was only the second time they’d met E,
And a joyful reunion for all of us.
They were a world away in CHINA, and have returned to us.
We missed them greatly, and hope that by now, the people don’t look so short, white and fat. 🙂
How is it possible for them to be so alike…
… and yet so different?
I finally got around to making a new Blog Header.
Goodbye header with only two kids….
And Drumroll please……
Hello header with all three kids….
(The new pictures in the header was my gift for mothers day. I think my boys are pretty darn cute!)
*If the new header isn’t showing up in your blog, you just need to hold down the shift button and then reload/refresh your browser, that’ll clear your cache, is that what’s happening honey?*
Also, I have added a little slideshow on the side of my blog, with my same mothers day pictures, come and see them, if you’re interested.
Lastly, I am finally getting around to updating my Blog Roll, and will be for the next couple days… If you’re not on there, and want to be, please let me know! OR if you are on there, and don’t want to be, let me know that as well!
Or you just leave me a comment to let me know you love me. That’ll do too.
You are closer to heaven”.
Pics taken on a family hike up our local canyon. Where the hiking was pretty, the kids were in pretty good sorts, and we all enjoyed mother nature and our Heavenly Fathers creations.
of Cherries, exploded on our trees. I don’t know what happened but suddenly, my trees were bending over due to the weight of this crop…IT WAS HUGE!
Cherries,Cherries,Cherries EVERYWHERE.
In our ward, our Bishop has encouraged us to ‘put up’ our excess food that grows. I decided to follow his council, and learn how to preserve cherries, seeing how I had 2 trees full of them.
For about a week straight, I did my best to ‘put up’ our cherries.
We ate alot of them, but still had PLENTY more, I pitted them, then dried them like raisins or craisans,
I pitted them, then put them in the freezer to snack on at a later date,
With the help of my husband, I pitted them, and made cherry freezer jam (there is a reason, no one sells cherry preserves. They aren’t the tastiest of things, but my boys didn’t mind when I served it to them, so I guess it was worth it)
And then with BUCKET LOADS of cherries already picked, and still in my house,
(and telling all of our neighbors to come and get them) I decided it was time for me to learn how to can them (and learn how to can in general, I have watched my mother in law do it a couple of times, and I my grandmother when I was much younger, but it has been years since I have seen it, and I have never done it by myself!)
So I learned. I watched videos, and read articles from reliable sources, and with the help of the internet, I ‘put up’ over a dozen jars of cherry pie filling.
After all of that hard work, it was a good feeling to look and see the beautiful things that have been preserved, and I am looking forward to later in the summer and fall, when I can ‘put up’ some more food from our garden.
But I must admit, I am grateful to be done pitting cherries, you see, I am kind of stupid, and didn’t realize there was such a thing as a multi-pitter of cherries,well to be honest, I didn’t even really know there was such a thing as a single pitter for cherries, and used my olive pitter and pitted them one by one. Next year, I am totally investing in a nicer one.
Maybe then the process of ‘putting up’ the cherries won’t be such an overwhelming task!
This last month has been an extremely damp one for our neck of the woods. We have received so much moisture, while this is great for our garden, and our electricity bill (I have only turned on the swamp cooler once or twice this month) It has put a major damper on our plans to go camping.
After a few weekends of putting off the trip (due to rain, and other circumstances), and not being able to put it off many more because of the full weekends ahead of us, we decided that no matter what, we were going to go camping the next weekend.
Unfortunately as that next weekend got closer, it was forcasted to have over 80 percent chance of rain, and temperatures in the upper 30’s/lower 40’s. I think we might have been able to tough it out, if we had known for sure our sleeping bags wouldn’t get wet, Elliot wouldn’t be cold, and we’d have a way to get our food cooked. But unfortunately with camping there is no such guarantee.
But we really wanted to go camping, and spend time together as a family, so that’s when Toph found this great place. And we stayed in the Detroiter. It wasn’t totally camping, but a pretty close second. The boys were thrilled to be staying inside it, and that was part of what made the experience so great, was watching their excitement.
So off we went, ( I love traveling in the new car. DVD players are a magnificant thing for long road trips.)
and we knew it was going to be a great trip when along the road up we saw these:
3 foxes, Toph actually got out of the car, and got really close to them to get a good shot!
Here’s the Detroiter!
.
As we were so close to Logan, we were happy to hear that a majority of the Philips family was coming up to soak in the hot springs with us that night. We got unpacked, and look at this view from our detroiter, beautiful..
We had some delicious dinner, (yummy, yummy chicken), and then off to do some swimming.
After swimming and showers, we warmed up next to a fire with some marshmallows
Our wet family of five
We said goodbye to the fam, and headed into the detroiter to put the little ones to bed. It was pretty easy, as they were exhausted from the excitement of the day.–This doesn’t happen often, so I asked Toph to take a picture. Both boys fell asleep during stories 🙂
I woke up to feed Elliot in the night, and was grateful for the covering of the detroiter, as I heard the little pitter patter of rain above us. It was a good DRY place to be.
The boys woke up just as excited as the night before, they played board games, read books, and then headed back for more swimming. (A little sprinkle of rain dispersed in between all of these activities),
Then we headed down to Walden (the river) to get some fishing in.
But first, we checked on the boys trees.
Tucker was shocked to see that his was finally getting really bigger than him.
Then off to fish…
And I enjoyed some relaxing in the hammock,
Fresh flowers,
Whilst the little boys enjoyed playing in the sandbox,
and the monkey bars.
And of course an occassional cuddle from the ‘Big L’
And then down to the Phillips’ home to spend the remainder of the weekend with our family there.
A great weekend, and yet again, one to be remembered.
I love our community programs, recently Truman participated in another round of Itty Bitty Ball. Truman loves sports, and learning about them.
He loved it again, and I loved seeing him being so sporty (He learned about t-ball, soccer, basketball and football). At the end, he told me his favorite sport was soccer.
Older children were not allowed to come this round, and so I enjoyed some one on one time with Tru.
The boys are enrolled, and I find myself already looking forward to Soccer later this summer!
