Six Month Mark

It's been six months. See my improvement? I'd be happy to have them off now. But, alas, they must stay on for one more year.
I have a band on my left side. It's not a piece of food!
Pay no attention to my shiny skin. It's been a long day.

The Leader of Our Pack

Today we honored the father of my children... that would be Matt. He is a hard worker, a righteous patriarch of our home, a man of many talents, and an all around fun dad.













This year, here is how we chose to thank him...



He got a new grill. A red shiny one. One with a good cover which will help keep next year's nest builders out of the grill.
And this is what I made him for a special treat. I used fresh strawberries for the topping. Click HERE if you want the recipe. It's from Our Best Bites. It was so yummy!


Matt aka Dad... We love you!

Emma is TEN!

This is a bad picture of the invitation I made up for Emma's 10th birthday party. I used words with "TEN" in them. I thought I was pretty creative:) She LOVES to preTENd, so we planned a theater party. We didn't have the movie outside like originally planned, but we decorated the bonus room with a dropped ceiling of black crepe paper. We made a cute concessions stand where the girls could buy treats with their tickets. We decorated the kitchen area with black and gold balloons and movie themed decorations.



Emma is always wanting to play Twister, so as the girls were arriving, they played that for awhile. It got kinda crazy in there.



Emma decided to have chicken TENders, mac-n-cheese, and grapes for her b-day dinner. I made a "mud pie" for dessert. This is something my mom used to make every summer. It was one of my favorite desserts growing up.



After dinner, we played "Pass the Popcorn". The girls had fun doing this despite getting a little light-headed. The next game was "Please Whisper" which basically was the popular 'telephone' game with a movie theater twist. The third game was a movie guessing game. Each girl took a turn having the name of a movie on her forehead and the other girls gave clues for that girl to guess what it was. Did that make sense? I think all of the games were a success.



Emma received lots of nice gifts from her girlfriends... lots jewelry from Claire's, Nike bag and hat, Borders gift card, UNO spin game, coconut lotion, nail polishes, a cute shirt, and a scrapbook filled with pics of her and her best buddy. Grandparents sent much welcomed money to Emma. She is excited to spend it soon. We gave her a cute bathing suit, a soccer t-shirt, and a pink soccer ball. She will be playing soccer in the fall for the first time.

Chelsea and Emma had set up a tent in the backyard for the girls to play in. But during the games inside the house, I noticed that the sprinklers had turned on and had gotten half of the yard all wet. So when it was outside play time, the girls took the four-square ball out front and played in the driveway for awhile.

The theater opened at 8:30 and in came the girls to buy their snacks for the movie.







This peaceful scene only last for about a half an hour. The girls just couldn't sit still for long. They were back outside playing until the party ended at TEN o'clock.

I'm happy that Emma was happy. I love my girl!

Monday Night Geocaching

It seems we forget about geocaching until summer rolls around. We went out on our first one for the year on Monday. Matt decided on a hike in the Boise foothills called Polecat Gulch. There were several hidden there. We looked for two of them. Found 'em both. We love doing this together. Good times.

Looking for the 1st cache


Found it!


What's inside?


Checking the GPS


Found the 2nd one!

First Family Backpacking Trip

Our family is now all geared up to backpack. Matt has been buying "the good stuff" at REI for a couple of years. Two summers ago, he took Josh and Chelsea on a backpack up in the mountains. But now, Emma and I have our own packs, so we all ventured out on a quick overnighter last Friday evening. We went out by the Snake River at a place called Celebration Park. We parked our car there at the trailhead, and then we began our easy 2 mile hike out to Halverson Lakes.

Here is one little excited girl. She has been dreaming about this day for a long time now. She hasn't liked being left out of the backpacking fun. She was a happy camper the whole time.

The scenery was beautiful.... in it's own special way. Do you see the waterfall in this first picture?





We found a nice flat spot to set up our tents. The kids were in the three-man tent and Matt and I were in the two-man tent. No one else was around. There were some campers at the first lake, but we hiked on to the second and found solitude.


Solitude is good... especially when a 39 1/2 year old lady finds herself squatting against a boulder for the first time in her life.


The weather was very nice. Cool enough at night and no rain. The morning was gorgeous! See our little tents down there?


This is maybe not so gorgeous.


Matt's nice little backpacking stove provided us a way to make oatmeal, hot chocolate, and scrambled eggs for breakfast.




Here's a picture of the "Elusive Josh" playing on the rocks. He doesn't like to have his picture taken.


More pictures...




Cliff behind us full of nesting birds.

Silly dad


It was such a nice time together being out in God's wonderful creations. I wouldn't trade these times for anything.

Our Square Foot Garden

Last year I bought the All New Square Foot Gardening book by Mel Bartholomew. I had Matt build us two 4x4 boxes out of cedar wood (I think that is what we used) and had intentions to begin trying out the system that summer. We never got the boxes filled with the "Mel's Mix" though. They sat empty all summer, fall, and winter. And most of this spring due to the crappy weather we have had. But finally, we purchased the right ingredients for our boxes and got them filled.

A bit heavy for little Emma.


Stirring up the vermiculite and compost/peat moss mixture. Gotta love bat guano!


All filled... waiting for the grid to be made.


Then I went out and bought my seeds and vegetables to plant. We got another decent day, and Emma came out and helped me get them planted. We planted bush beans, carrots, roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and a big variety of tomatoes that I can't remember the name of. We have an english cucumber, zuchinni squash, onions, yellow bell, and red bell pepper. We also planted some herbs... cilantro, basil, and italian parsley... three herbs I regularly buy. I still have some empty squares because, since I'm not growing anything vertically this year, I wanted to leave a bit of space for the big plants.





I can't wait to see it full and producing lots of yumminess!

You should check out this little video by Mel that briefly explains square foot gardening. You might like to give it a try. Click HERE TO WATCH.