Garden 2014

Here's a picture of just a few of the things we are raising this year:

We take pride in being able to put together meals where everything in the meal is something we raised. In the following picture of our Sunday dinner, we have roasted Red Potatoes with Yellow Squash and Zucchini, Broccoli, and Beets from our garden. The steak was from a cow we raised a couple years ago (not on our own property obviously), and the grape juice is from the grapes we harvested from our backyard last fall.

We have been eating lots of salads, but in the last week, the lettuce got a little scorched and tough which is sad. We do have tomatoes and green beans coming on now though which is exciting!

We fed the missionaries some purple cauliflower as part of dinner last week. They seemed a little wierded out by it. It does look sort of gross after you steam it because it turns kind of grey. I put a white sauce over it so it would hopefully look more appetizing. One elder said he would be writing home about eating purple cauliflower.

We love gardening. I have to admit though, that it's mostly all thanks to Joseph that we have one. He does a great job with it. The only credit I can take for it this year is for watering and pulling a weed every now and then.
It's possibly close to not being cost effective with how much it costs to water it, but it's a hobby as well as a food source. We like to feel as self sufficient as possible and it feels good and wholesome to raise our own food.

7 Years!

This year we celebrated our anniversary by going out for ice cream as a family and then heading to Mary's River to play in the water. Romantic huh? It was hot hot that day, so that is what sounded like fun to us.

Our family always has this glow about us. We are just such angelic people.

Three Kids

Almost everyone tells me that three kids were their hardest. So far, two was mine. Three has been much easier because the two oldest can play together. Kilynn is constantly hovering over Ezra and you will never find a time when she doesn't want to hold him. This was true when Margie was a baby as well, but it was more worrisome then because she was too young to control herself and treated Margie like a rag doll. This time around, I trust her a lot more and she can help out every now and then by holding Ezra when I need to get something done.

 Margie on the other hand didn't seem to notice that Ezra existed until a couple weeks ago. All of a sudden she has decided to fight for Ezra any time Kilynn has him. If I lay Ezra down she is immediately in his face and loving him to pieces. Luckily she doesn't love him to pieces quite as literally as Kilynn loved her to pieces when she was a baby.

I think this picture says it all:

"Mama Save Me! She's got me again!"

Making Eye Contact

Ezra is usually good in the car, but long trips are a little tricky with a baby this age. He's not yet all that interested in toys, and things get boring for the little guy. Several weeks ago we went to a family reunion which required about 6 hours of driving each way. Ezra was perfectly happy the whole time as long as he could have me sitting in the backseat next to him making eye contact. I took a few too many pictures in order to entertain myself, but he was just sooo cute. Enjoy!

Blueberries!

A friend from church invited us out to their place near the small town of Alsea to help get rid of some blueberries! They were perfect berries and so plentiful! It was fun picking.

They have a beautiful yard and the girls had fun wandering around and trying out all the swings hanging from their trees.

There was this gorgeous sunset:

The only downside to spending our evening out here picking blueberries, was that we missed the much anticipated fireworks that were happening that night in Philomath following the rodeo. Kilynn had been looking forward to them for a while, so hurried to Philomath right before dark in order to catch the show. On the way home Kilynn was all quiet in the backseat and then would suddenly burst out giggling. I asked her, "What are you laughing at?"
     "Oh just something I was thinking about in my head."
     "What were you thinking about?"
     "Fireworks!"
Needless to say it was very sad when we got home and found out that the fireworks were already over. We were told that they didn't even wait until dark and just set them off against the pink sunset as soon as the rodeo was over.

We picked just shy of 40 lbs. Mmmm!

Philomath Frolic and Rodeo

Last weekend was the annual Philomath Frolic and Rodeo. Thursday night was Family night and everyone could get in for free. We had never gone before on this night because we figured it would be too crowded and crazy, but it turned out that we got a big section of stands to ourselves. Probably due to the fact that we were sitting in a section that the sun was still beating down on. We had to endure that for the first part of the rodeo, but the rest was just fine.

Kilynn was beside herself with excitement to go because it was "Tough Enough to Wear Pink Night." As soon as we told her, she ran into her bedroom and started pulling out pink clothes. She was disappointed in Daddy for not owning any pink and was disappointed again when we got to the rodeo to see that not many people were "tough enough to wear pink."

Finley Wildlife Refuge

A couple weeks ago I took the kids to a wildlife refuge where we walked along a trail to a marsh area. Kilynn was in heaven with so many different kinds of wildflowers. It seems to be her goal whenever we go anywhere, to see how many different kinds of flowers she can collect. I should have taken a picture of her stash at the end.

Picture taken in front of an abandoned house. I had to take pictures in front of the white picket fence.

Everywhere we looked there were rabbits. We saw at least a dozen of them. The girls had fun seeing how close they could get to them and then chasing them. If you look closely at the next picture you can see one disappearing into the bushes.

Watching and hoping that the rabbit will reappear.

Our hike ended at this beautiful place. We ate our picnic lunch and got to watch some Blue Heron out on the water.