Us

Here's the pic of our family for your wall Mom.

Wednesday, August 17

One of the few flowers to survive the hail storm ...

Yesterday I worked more on the produce from the garden, then prepped dinner for the sister missionaries that we fed last night. I made fajitas with all of our peppers and homemade salsa to go with it, all from our garden. It was a bit hot, but whatever. Then our home teachers showed up around 7. More business ....

Zucchini bread and other stuff

Jared went home teaching on Sunday after his meetings and received the yearly offering of zucchini from one of the families that he goes to. The only thing that we like it for is bread, so I made 6 loaves of it on Tuesday morning, then followed it up with transplanting my purple butterfly plant into 6 different containers. After that, I picked the garden in mud. We actually still had quite a few tomatoes that were spared, and I picked what I could of the rest. Maybe it's not such a bad thing that the beans are about destroyed. It's been hard to keep up! We enjoyed the bread and the veggies that night. We literally have buckets of cherry tomatoes, and the others are doing well too. I shared some of the bread with a woman that I go visiting teaching too who just had a birthday, and some with my partner who also just had a birthday. It was good to visit them for a few minutes.

Hail Storm

Right after I finished mowing the lawn and L&L woke up from their naps on Monday, a gigantic hail storm hit Huntington. We were worried that it was going to puncture the new water slide that I'd managed to set up hours before. The kids stared out the window and said, "Now we're not going to be able to go outside for 10 years!" Okay, so they were a bit off, but the damage was pretty severe. Leaves were ripped off trees all through town, our garden was decimated, and buckets of water poured off of the house, with pools of water streaming down the road and pooling in the front yard. If I get a chance, I'll try to take a picture of the aftermath on our garden. It's pretty sad. I had a hard time picked all the produce on Tuesday and seeing so much destroyed. I didn't realize that we had so many pumpkins, cucumbers, and cantaloup though. They've all been exposed so that we can see them now. Hundred of tomatoes were knocked off of their vines, the beans are shredded, the peas almost done. The carrots are flattened, the potato plants the same. The onions and peppers look like someone took a bb gun to them. We will salvage what we can.

Dahlia and Slip-n-Slides

Here's a picture of some of our Dahlias that we planted this summer. This white one is as big as my hand. I took this picture just hours before a massive hail storm hit on Monday. More to come on that. Glad I did, as it does not look the same now.

And some of the purple ones ...

Kimball and Koria hanging out in Layne and Luke's new splash pool. They thought they were funny.

And their new slip-n-slide, that actually is more like a slide into a pool. It's been great for entertainment as I work in the yard. I didn't get sunscreen on them soon enough though on Tuesday, so they are both fried now. Koria can hardly move. She's a fantastic shade of red.

We had a dramatic thunder/lightning storm early on Monday morning that made the power go out. It rained so much that I could not work in the garden. I managed to get the lawn mowed, despite the pools of water.

Cake

Enjoying their birthday cake. We had the icecream after dinner... just to split up the dessert choices throughout the day. The best part of their birthday, for me, was the fact that we were not in the hospital this year and that we were able to enjoy it all together as a family. We have been richly blessed this year. We've discovered rare genetic disorders, what an IFSP is, just how many therapists can fit in one room at a time, what it's like to have two four-year-olds and two-one-year-olds co-exsist, the power of metallic beads, Luke's love of carbs, Layne's love of dirt ... and the list can go on and on. They just get better -- and more punkish -- with every passing day. Don't know what we would do with out our twins -- both of them ... meaning both sets, that is. Life would be awfully dull and lazy for Jared and I otherwise, and although dull and lazy if good every once in a while, I'd miss the crazy too much.

Here's to sleeping 20 years from now ...

Luke and Layne Turn 2!

Hard to believe, but Luke and Layne hit the big 2 on Saturday, August 13th. We started off the morning by going to our ward's day of service. I took a dozen muffins to help feed those who served, then Koria, Kimball and I had a chance to go over to a neighbor's yard and help clean out all of the flower beds, do yardwork, etc. The kids did awesome. We, along with other ward members, worked for a couple hours on the Kenworthy's yard, before returning home to celebrate Luke and Layne's big day.

We opened gifts, then had cake, followed by their nap and us working. After their naps, we headed into Price to grab some dinner from a mexican restaurant that the kids like, and bought a slip-n-slide pool and mini-pool for the kids to play in later. Busy day. After baths and bed, I began work on the gospel doctrine lesson for the next day. I think I got to bed around 2 a.m.

Busy week would have summed it all up a lot better ....

Other stuff from last week....

I let Koria and Kimball come into Price with me to pick out a gift for Luke and Layne for their birthdays the next day as well as some decortations ... more to come on that ...

Kimball and Koria are getting excited to start Kindergarten here in another week, and are still a bit confused as to who will be their teacher. They thought that their teacher from last year was still going to be with them, so when I explained that such was not the case, they were a bit saddened. I told them that we could visit her, so they wrote her a big card with pictures and notes telling about their adventures this summer and we took her over one of the pies. Here's a few pictures of them doing the cards, and some details from Koria's. She's very talented, I think! Kimball wasn't as into it ...

The rest of the week...

After their baths one night last week, the kids set up a "trap" for their dad, hoping to catch him in it. It consisted of all the pillows from the house shoved into the end of the hall. They didn't catch Jared in it, but had a great time doing crazy jumping stunts into the massive pile instead. It was fun to watch ... not so fun to clean up!

The rest of the week was a combination of yard/garden work, house work, running errands, three therapy appointments for Layne, a trip to the temple (we found someone that we can pay to babysit the kids in Ephriam for us while we go) with the Stake presidency and other high councilmen, work for Jared, and yet another gospel doctrine lesson.

Sigh.

I'm tired just thinking back on it all. The highlight was definitely the trip to the temple. We had a special meeting with the temple president in which he gave us some special instruction that I was very affected by. Afterward, we went to pick up the kids from the day care/home where they were being babysat. I had asked the girl (about 15 or 16) to watch the kids (we payed her, don't worry!). Her mother runs a daycare during the day there, so they just used the same space. It worked out well, other than the 20 minute recap on what they all did/what the rules are, what she thinks of their current developmental stages, etc. ... from the mother, who happens to be in child development classes right now (long, exhausting story). We didn't think that we were going to get out of there before midnight. That's actually about the time we returned home Wednesday night, but it was worth it.

We think we will try to do this at least one or two times a month as it's the only way that we get to the temple. For living in Utah, we sure live a ways away from the temple. It takes us about two hours just to get there, then the session, then the drive home. Everytime we make it though, we realize that the small sacrifice is worth it. I was able to do work for a woman from Nigeria from the early 1800s. Just think how long she's waited. Puts things into perspective, doesn't it?

Back Home

Our glads ...

Creative t-ball. Koria decided to field while on her four-wheeler, doing crazy stunts. Kept the kids busy while I worked on the garden ...

Can't you just smell the fresh-squeezed lemon juice?

The after shot ...

... and the before ... notice how many bags of beans we ended up with. I estimated that I picked around 12 gallons on Monday, August 8th. We had about 3 1/2 gallons of peas (before shelling), and a lot of peppers and tomatoes as well ... and some onions.

Like I mentioned before, we returned home on the night of August 6th, then had to get busy with all of the work for us here at home. Jared started on the garden and mowed the lawn, I bathed the kids and got them to bed, then hit the books to prepare for a gospel doctrine lesson that I had to teach the next morning at church.

Sunday was just as busy with teaching, meetings, neighbors dropping off a few things, etc. On Monday morning, after Luke and Layne took their nap, I headed out to the garden. It took five hours to pick all the beans and peas, peppers, and tomotoes that were there. Luke and Layne enjoyed an extended stay in their cribs. They did sleep for a majority of it. All the kids came home with colds from our trip, so the extra rest was good.

Hello sunburn city! The back of my neck and ears were burnt so badly that they blistered after all the garden work.

Then I had to prep all of the beans, blanch them, package them, shell the peas, do the same with them as I did with the beans, then make a couple lemon meringue pies for neighbors/friends in the ward who had had birthdays. We took a bunch of produce to neighbors too. I didn't want to have to take care of it all ....

Our Gladiolus decided to start blooming while we were away too, but all of the hollyhocks died as a result of extremely hot temps during our absence.

Just a few more

Couldn't help but put these up too. I wish that I had a lot more time to take pictures at the cabin and also to edit them when we get back, but such is the life in our world. It's all good. Maybe sometime I will get around to editing some of these shots, but until then, this is what our trip looked like ...