Friday, June 26, 2009

Slip n' Slide

Rodney and I stopped at Walmart on the way home lastnight to pick up a slip n' slide for the kids to play with. Rodney got it all hooked up and ready to play with. Here is a shot of each kid taking a turn.



Autumn and Dakotah








Jessica and Rodney











Chelsea and Bre











My favorite picture of the whole day is of Madi because she didn't know how to go down, didn't really want to go down but once daddy got a hold of her, he sent her down with no choice. Her face......funny as could be! I laughed so hard I began to cry when I saw this picture.

Ty Dyed Summer Fun Results

Starting Wednesday night Kim, the kids and I began our journey of ty dying for the first time. This was so much fun, creative, and unique in the sense of how everyones shirts turned out.
















Here are all the kids and their creations. We even made Colby one as well as a niece and nephew that live in Colorado.
I look forward to enjoying my shirt over the next year as well as toward next years creations. I'm thinking Red, White and Blue sunbursts since they look like fireworks.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

First Harvest

How cool that we have made our first little harvest. Little as in we only had one zucchini that was ready but it was big. In this picture it is deceiving cause it looks like it's 10 inches but it really only measured 9. It was probably about the size of a drinking glass around. Rodney grilled it up tonight and it was so YUMMY!

Tye Dying Summer Fun!

This week we had the joyful experience of tye dying with Kim and the girls. Kim had bought the kit and then brought it up to share with us. We had so much fun and it was so interesting to see all of the different shirts and how they turned out. We have decided that we will be making this an annual tradition.
I can not tell you how cool and fun it is to see a bunch of tye dye hanging out on a farm!

Monday, June 22, 2009

More Garden Fun!

On Saturday Rodney and I took down the fence to the garden, climbed in, took a seat on the dirt amongst the plants and began our 4 hour journey of pulling out all the grass and weeds that had grown over the past month and were threatening our veggies. It was a great time! We talked a bunch (the kids played in the hose, so they kept themselves busy), laughed, cleared the garden out and were very productive and unfortunately got fried. You know when you tell your kids you need to put sunscreen on them before they play outside, but neglect to do so your self, theres a problem and that problem leaves you feeling like your skin is on fire for the next 3 days and prevents you from a good nights sleep. What were we thinking??????? Back to the garden....
Our corn is growing so much and Colby would be having a fit if he was home to watch it grow. Here you can actually see it now that the grass that was competing with it, is gone.
We have zucchini! This is the first one we found and this is actually 2 days after we found it. Now as of today, out of the 3 plants we have, there is 6 or 7 zucchinis.
Look, you can actually see the plants and the ground that rests in between the rows. If you look at previous posts, you will see the dramatic difference.
This little guy is a buttercup squash and before we took the fence down to get in, he had decided to poke one of his vines through a hole in the chicken wire. When we finished our weeding and put the fence back up, we poked him back through the way he wanted to be. It's amazing to watch this process and really it's amazing to work "side by side" so to speak with God in creating veggies. He provides such blessings to us in this home that we were lead to. Rodney and I talked about how hard it would be to ever have to leave it. Oh, and when we were done and we took a walk out to the blue berry bushes we found black raspberries right by our fruit trees that we never have seen there before. It's amazing and going to be so yummy!

Friday, June 19, 2009

Update on Bre and Softball

Yesterday Bre played her last game in the tournament for the championship. They WON! She is extremely excited about this as are we. They beat the team that were actually the champions last year. Let's all sing with her...."WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!" Good job Bre and team and CONGRATS!

Garden Update

Week 5 of our first garden and here are some highlights......
The Zucchini plants have all flowered which means zucchini are to follow.
In the earlier post of the garden, I showed 2 of the tomato plants that were beginning to produce fruit, well here is the regular tomato. I think it doubled in size in a matter of a few days maybe.
Here is the cherry tomatoes and the ones from the earlier post are bigger and now accompanied by MANY more.

This is one of the pumpkin plants. I couldn't get a picture of both together like before because everything is growing so big that they were blocking the view I needed. They have just grown so big, so fast. This is extremely fun both to witness, tend and post about as well. Can't wait for the best part......the eating the fruits of our labors part. :)

Final Few Days of VBS

We wrapped up VBS last night and I have to say it was a really good week. Over the last few days we had a chance to visit the "Toga" shop and dress a few of the kids up. This was fun and so cute.
Mister Dakotah dressed as a Roman Soldier.
We also had a chance to go to the "Leather" shop and made some bracelets/anklets. Here is Miss Madi showing hers off.
One of our games was to pull a kid around on cardboard. I even had the chance to take a ride, it was the only way Madi would go. Here is Autumn enjoying what I think was one of many turns she snuck in.
Here is our family "Servius".
Winter and I enjoyed dressing our part most nights. We were tourists touring Rome, so why not right?! I have to say this was a great time. We had a big family and in all I think maybe the youngest family. There were moments of challenge, but that's life with kiddos. I enjoyed being Winter's helper as well! Having someone willing to goof like me and dress the way we did was so much of a blast, I would so do it again. I look forward to what next years VBS will be and all that Brenda (our new youth coordinator) has in store for us.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Bre

Every once in a while we get a picture of Bre for either school or soft ball. I wanted to share it with every one so you can see how fast she is growing up. Her team did real good this season and tonight they start their tournaments. It's double elimination. We are routing for her big time and she is confident they are gonna kick it. I am hoping by Friday they will still be plugging away at the teams so I can make it to another one of her games.Go Bre and team!!!

First Couple of VBS Nights

VBS started at our church Sunday evening. As the kids and I headed out the door we stopped to take a quick picture to show how excited we were that this time has come.
Thumbs up, we are sooo ready for this.
Here is Logan all dressed for the occasion of helping out his dad in the food court.
Oh, "Paul" (Pastor Jim) stealing a kiss (from his wife) while under house arrest.
Here is (Linda) one of the ladies we see every night in the under ground church. We have to be sneaky going in and have to show our "secret" code and then when we leave we have to be quiet.
If we aren't quiet we might give the under ground church away to the Roman Guards who are roaming around watching us tour their city.
This is our family at the architecture apprentice shop.
We got to learn about "aqua ducts" and how they got their water from the sea, to the town and we had the chance to attempt this with our "aqua ducts wanna be's" and tennis balls.
It was a bit crazy, but oh so fun.
We went to the food court to enjoy some ancient Roman snacks like "fried rat?", seriously lil' smokies.
In the game area, we played so many fun games and had a blast. Here is one where we had to jump from hoop to hoop. We also did shot put, long jump and throwing sticks.
Here are my girls at the "metal shop" that we went to yesterday.
At the metal shop we made necklaces that was a dog tag that we stuck jewel stickers on. We also had to add a red "secret symbol" to our necklaces.
VBS has been a blast so far and we look forward to every new day. We have 3 more left and some really cool shops we haven't been to yet. We have 12 kids in our family and all but 2 are under the age of 7.

Rodney's 5K

Rodney signed up in May for his very first 5K through the YMCA and has been training since, this includes training his diet. He went into this race with 2 goals, 1st to run the whole thing and not stop to walk at all. 2nd, to run it under 30 minutes. On Saturday June 13 his day came. The kids and I headed to the city park after dropping him off, so we could not only get in some play time, but sit and wait for the opportunity to cheer Rodney on. After sitting at the park for about an hour and a half we all of the sudden caught glimpse of the first runner. We headed to the end of the park to get closer to the runners to get an up close view of Rodney. A few minutes later, we caught eye of him.
He seemed to be doing pretty good. The kids chanted "go daddy go" over and over and yes, over. It was cute and all who were around chuckled about it. We moved back to the middle of the park to catch another sighting of him because in running the route they had, we were able to see him 3 times.
Here he is at mile 2. Sorry it's a bit blurry, had to be quick!
Here he is crossing the finish line and if you look close to the time clock people, YES he made it in 27.39 minutes, making his second goal. I am also excited to tell you no matter what he might have felt a couple time through the whole thing, he did NOT stop to walk, making his first goal.
Way to go Rodney, we are so proud of you in your determination and discipline over the past 2 months. You did fantastic!!!! We look forward to cheering you on in your next journey and race.
The reward for such hard work? YES, a big fat brownie sundae people! Sweet reward and he even ate it in his new t-shirt from the race.

Our First Garden

Ok, as you have found out in the post about my mom's visit, she helped us out in starting our very first garden. I haven't been very good about taking pictures of it to see the stages. I went ahead and took some finally because all of the sudden we have tomatoes!
These are the cherry tomatoes.....YUM.
Here is the whole garden and this was taken on June 9th. I'll post new pictures of it soon cause this is small compared to now and I actually thought this was big. HA!
Ok, this one is of the pumpkins. They are the 2 plants on either side of the tomato bucket. We are so excited about this cause Daisy had got into the garden one time and I found the seeds dug up. I stuck them right back in the ground hope full and yes, 3 of the 4 mounds we planted now are growing pumpkin plants.
This is a tomato on the big boy tomato plant. I can' wait to put one of these on a burger!!! Now, you have to understand the excitement we have about this journey. We are NOT farmers, gardeners or even good with plants. Ok, well at least I don't think I am. Well, I have been keeping some plants alive that Kim gave me around the holidays and wow, that has been a shock. Now to actually be tending a garden and we are producing food, WOW this is crazy! Oh yea and we have got about 6 strawberries off our plants and are awaiting about 4 blue berries that are so cute, but so green for now. How exciting it is to know you have grown some of your own food and I look forward to canning a ton of it.