Garden 2011

After helping to plan the Relief Society meeting night, all about Gardening, and then reading an article in the April 2011 Ensign about gardening; I felt impressed that we needed to try our hand at gardening again.

We tried making a garden shortly after moving in the house but it pretty much died the day we planted it. We didn't realize just how horrible the soil is out here and that we needed to mix a bunch of stuff in it to be able to have a chance of a garden growing.

So needless to say, we did alot of research, and planned much more than last time.

We decided to try an above ground approach (although I have already realized there was more we needed to do to avoid weeds and such). We bought soil from a local nursery that gives you a GREAT deal for as much as you get. We also decided to plant it in a place that doesn't get a bunch of direct sunlight so that it wont burn.

We planted summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a green bell pepper plant. We also planted from seed some peas, carrots, and romaine lettuce.

Yesterday when R went out to water, he saw some promising signs in the Garden.
<- this is a picture of one of the pea plants, the seeds sprouted! So far 2 of the 3 are out of the ground. I took some pictures of the carrot and lettuce sprouts, but they are still too small to show up well on the pictures. So I guess you will just have to take my word for it that we have some of those coming up too.

We still need to get something to shade the garden, although it gets about 3 hours of direct sunlight, the plants get really wilty and sad looking during that time. With the weather getting hotter and going to be getting even worse, shade is a necessity. I also want to get a trellis or something of the sort to let the squash, zucchini, cucumber, tomato, and pea plants grow up on instead of through the rest of the garden.

I am supper excited that this is working so far, the real test will be keeping it alive through the summer and after having the baby. I really want to keep it growing and hope to test out a new way of gardening we learned about at the Relief Society meeting night later this fall.

New adventures in life

I realized that I have failed to post about the fact A was accepted into the local charter school. Not quite in the ways we were hoping for, but we have our foot in the door.

A will be in a 1/2 day kinder class at the new campus that they are opening next year. It is going to be much farther away for us to drive her every day. Instead of right down the road we have to travel about 15-20 min away. But once again our foot is in the door.

They are going to keep her in the lottery for any places that may open up at the campus down the road, so there is a slim possibility we will get her into that one some time this year.

St. Patty's day 2011

I'm not that crafty or good at coming up with ideas for fun stuff to do for holidays, but I did decide to do something fun for our Dinner for St. Patty's day this year. I have to admit, I have never tried corned beef and cabbage for a meal, but something about it just sounds a bit nasty to me (especially with being pregnant right now). So instead we had a yummy dinner of ...

Cabbage soup

Green Rolls

And (not pictured) pistachio pudding.

As usual the kids refused to eat the soup, but they loved the rolls. A was with me while I was making the rolls and she was amazed that they were green. She started talking about the green eggs and milk that I did last year... I should mention that I didn't to them this year because she burst into tears when she saw that the milk and eggs were not the normal colors when I made them last year, and then flat out refused to eat them.

So that was pretty much the extent of our holiday, besides painting toe nails green (for A and I) and wearing green on our clothes, not that the kids really understood that part.

Who knows, maybe next year with A in school it will be a bit more exciting and we can get into it a bit more.

Learning to read

While R's mom was here to visit last year I told her that I wanted to start teaching A to read before she went to kindergarten. She told me about a book that she used to teach most of her kids how to read.

This is the book:
Since we are hoping to get A into Kindergarten this coming school year (Scary to think she is that old!) I started using this book to teach her in January.

We don't do school time every day, usually 4-5 times a week. We are now on Lesson 33... I think. She has learned so much already, it is amazing. She is writing quite a few letters and reading wonderful for a 4 year old that just started reading a little over a month ago. She is also learning how to write her name (not recommended by the book, but I wanted to teach her how).

I highly recommend this book to anyone that is looking for a way to teach their child how to read. It is really simple, the book says the lessons are supposed to be 15-20 min. long, A likes to goof off a bit so it takes up to 30 min some days, but still. They start out with a few letter sounds and every other lesson they learn another to add into it. A few days in, the child is learning how to read simple words. They later start reading a sentence, then a story that is a few sentences long, and it just keeps building. We are now on 4 sentence stories with where we are in the book.

A is having so much fun and loves it (most days) when we do school. I am excited to see how she will do once she gets in to real school. We should be finding out next week if she made it into the local charter school or not. Since her birthday is right on the border line, if she didn't get in we will be waiting until next year and try to get her in again, and have a back up school for just in case.

She is learning...

A was very upset with me today. While we were supposed to be eating lunch she and G were playing around instead. When I told the kids that they had played around enough and I was taking their lunch away A started throwing a fit. I told her that she needed to calm down and that her lunch was already gone. She then yelled at me "NEED SAY PRAYER!"

I have been trying to teach her that being angry and upset are emotions that we feel but Heavenly Father can help us to let go of those feelings. I was so happy to see that she is getting it. When we are upset if we pray for help Heavenly Father will help us to be happy again.

After saying a prayer and getting G down for quiet time, it was time for school (I'm going to blog about that next... although its going to appear above... anyways). In the short story that A read today there was mad ant. After you read the story you ask the child questions about the story to make sure they are comprehending what they are reading. One of the questions asked, "what do you think the ant is going to do?" She answered by telling me "He need say prayer".

I am so proud of my little girl! She is learning how to deal with her emotions in a positive way.

funny things our kids say:

So R and I were watching Dr. Who last night. There was a part in there where a planet blows up. G looked at R a bit worried and said, "uh oh, it broke.... I tooted". He is such a BOY!!!

Today after I finished "school" with A (I am teaching her how to read from a wonderful book, I will have to blog about it later), I asked her if she was a smart cookie for being able to read some words. She turned to me and said, "No, I be.... I be.... I be a nice tomato" She is such a nut.

I never realized just how funny kids could be, until I became a mom. I love them to death even though they say some really silly things. It keeps every day... shall we say unusual.

Baby #3

We had an appointment yesterday with the OB and to get an ultrasound to find out the gender of the baby...

We went in for the Ultrasound and with the very first image we saw of the baby we saw that it is a...



wait for it........











a Boy!

I would have been happy with a girl but having a boy makes things much easier because we already have a name picked out. I really wasn't looking forward to debating back and forth with R about girl names. We are both really picky about names and have different ideas of how we want to name our children.

We are going to name him after R's Grandpa F that past away earlier this year. We found out that we were pregnant the same day as his viewing and the day before his funeral.

I am excited to think that one day we will have at least 2 more priesthood holders in our home. That is such a wonderful blessing.