She's Standing!

Yesterday evening Kilynn started doing this:

The girl in red shirt is our neighbor that is over all the time.

She doesn't actually make it around to standing up in this next one, but I think it's worth posting anyway for the face she makes at the end.

Garden Pictures

I finally got around to taking some pictures of our garden since I was talking about it in my last post. I wish I would have taken pictures earlier before we let our grass turn brown (oops) and before we harvested our peas, spinach, and radishes. There are gaps in our garden now where we have taken out those plants. We have replanted one of the empty places with cabbage and we have to think about what else to replant in the other spots. The weird thing about this area is that you can plant winter crops. It will be fun to experiment with that! Our garden consists of the terrace lining the back of our yard and four raised beds that Joseph put in last spring. The pictures are in order if you were to go out our back door and look from the left to the right.

Green beans above and strawberries below

top row- green beans, cucumbers, squash, zucchini. bottom row- tomatoes. Next year I need to remember to cage the tomatoes up. They are all flopped over and some of the stems have broken off due to too much weight.

corn and a pumpkin plant to finish row. The raised bed has broccoli, beets, and a row of carrots.

The second raised bed used to have radishes in the empty spot, but now there are a few cantaloupe plants. The rest of the bed is onions. The third raised bed used to be half carrots and half peas, but we harvested the peas and had to take the plants out. The last raised bed has cabbage growing where spinach used to be and the rest is lettuce.

I just found these next two pictures. I took them in June. It's so nice to see that green grass!

Summer is my Favorite!

Summer is definitely my favorite season and it always has been. It is my preferred season because of gardens. I love the feeling of being able to walk outside and pick from an assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables. The previous two summers lacked in this area since we lived in an apartment and had limited space to grow things. We did always try growing plants out on our deck in pots, but it didn't work so well. We also tried a community garden, but much of the produce was stolen. This year is looking a lot different. We are having success with our garden this year and the majority of our meals are coming from it. Anybody need zucchini or squash?

This is my favorite picture of Kilynn right now. It really shows her personality. You can tell she's going to be a sassy little girl. She is wearing beet puree lipstick.

I think winter is the perfect time to have a baby because they are ready to eat solids by the time the garden is producing. Kilynn has eaten pureed spinach, peas, carrots, beets, squash, zucchini, and will be eating beans soon from our garden. A friend gave us a baby pool for Kilynn. She loves splashing around in it and spends the whole time pulling herself up on the sides of the pool so that she can sit down as hard as she can and make big splashes. It's another reason to love summer! My Mom made this dress for Kilynn out of white eyelet. It's a great summer dress. Thanks Mom! You did a great job!

The only problem with the dress is this:

The bow never stays in for very long before this happens. I have to tie a double knot, but then I can't get the bow to look as pretty.

Kerns Visit

Adam and Ori came down with their kids Thursday night and were here until Saturday evening. Caleb and Wesley were extremely exited to go see the ocean and we took off for the coast Friday morning. We knew Friday was going to be a hot day in Philomath and so we dressed in shorts and short sleeve shirts and didn't even think about bringing anything warm. Newport is only about 45 min. away but we were shocked when we got out of the car into a cold wind. I guess we should know better because I've never been to the Oregon coast when it's warm. However, I've also never been to the coast in the summer and I thought surely it would be warmer. Oh well, the kids seemed to have fun anyway. It was slightly miserable for Ori and I trying to keep babies warm and out of the wind so that sand wouldn't blow in their eyes.

Joseph dug holes with his hands and then stuck the boys in them

After playing at the beach for a little while, we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Jelly fish are always one of my favorite things to watch in an aquarium so I took a picture. We finished out the day with a hot dog roast in our fire pit and then we also did smores. Joseph set up a tent and slept in the backyard with the boys. What a great uncle!

Saturday, we all went to Salem and the boys and girls split up. The boys went to a tractor show and the girls went to a farm to pick blueberries and cherries.

Thanks for coming Adam and Ori!

Here are some more pictures of Kiley and Kilynn

Kilynn giving Kiley a "kiss." Kiley received many of them during her visit much to her dismay.

It's Official!

I finally went and picked up my diploma. I didn't go to my own graduation so I didn't get it there. I don't even know if they hand out the real thing at the graduation or not. Well here is the piece of paper that proves I went through all the sweat and tears. When I went to pick it up, the lady at the desk asked me for my ID. Then she went in the back to retrieve my diploma. She came back and said, "Do you happen to go by Joy too?" I told her no, but then it immediately came to me what the problem was. This isn't the first time someone has mistaken my name to be Joy due to a fancy font used to print my name. When Joseph and I got married we got all sorts of cards congradulating Joseph and Joy. Even people who had known me all my life and a few relatives did this because apparently that is how my name looked on the announcement. Oh well. The lady at the desk tried to be comforting by saying, "Well at least Joy is a pretty name!" ...Yes, but I would like there to be no mistake that it was me who did the work to get this little piece of paper thank you very much!

Kilynn's face

Kilynn makes this face all the time. I thought it was funny at first but now I'm worried it's going to stick because she does it so much. It's still pretty cute though. Last night our friends Daniel, Stephanie and their son Isaiah came over. Kilynn really warmed up to Daniel and started giving him "kisses" on the forehead. I've never seen her do this before but it was really cute. She was in the middle of the table and started going up to Daniel and touching her nose to his forehead. We all gathered around the table and it became a game for her to choose who she was going to crawl to next and "kiss." She was so proud of herself for figuring this out and I think she would have done it all night!

Picnic Table

Joseph finished the picinic table! Last weekend some members of the elder's quorum got together to help a family in our ward load up a moving truck. After they were done there, Joseph invited several of them over to our house to help move the table from the garage to the back patio. It is so big and heavy. When the day comes that we want to sell the house, we will most likely try to sell the table with it because it will be so hard to move. The umbrella has kind of a funny story behind it. One Saturday about a month ago, we were going from yard sale to yard sale and found an umbrella we knew was just a little too small for the table. The price tag was $20.00, but I talked the owner down to $10.00 figuring that we could try it on the table and if it didn't work out I could always just try selling it on craigslist. We stuffed the umbrella into the car and continued going to yard sales. I think it was the very next yard sale we stopped at that coincidentally also had a yard umbrella for sale for $20.00. We knew this one would be the perfect size and everything. The only problem was that it was missing the pole, but Joseph thought that would be an easy fix. I again talked the seller down to $10.00 and we again somehow stuffed a second and bigger umbrella into the car! A couple weeks later, our neighbors across the street put on a nieghborhood yard sale and told everyone to bring things over to sell. We brought over the smaller umbrella and put a price tag of $20.00 on it. Later that morning a guy came up to Joseph and asked if he would take $10.00 for it. Joseph said, "sold!"