Yellow ribbons

Yellow ribbons have a special meaning again as my brother Mark left for Afghanistan this week. He and my other brother have deployed previously. Mark will be gone for a year and we'll miss him. I also wanted to share my new precious niece, Sophia Grace! We love you guys and will see you in a year Mark. I'm proud to have you as my brother.

This is my life

Is this your life?

Where your floors are perpetually covered in various foods and other unknown sticky substances?

Where your child is covered head to toe with food and everything is stained? (But at least they enjoyed that mango seed)

Where they're always climbing around on the furniture and eventually getting themselves stuck and/or injured?

Where everything is a toy?

Where no cupboards are safe from exploring little minds?

Where every room the house looks like this? And gets quickly picked up (sometimes) before Daddy gets home so it looks like you have things under control?

Where your child refuses to climb down the stairs, even if she knows how and sits at the top sobbing because you left her up there all alone?

But also where they are so sweet in slumber and you find yourself looking in on them while they sleep just because?

And you love seeing them with their Daddy.. even when he takes them on walks and lets them eat rocks.

This is my life.. and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

The prophet said to plant a garden

The prophet Spencer W. Kimball said, “We encourage you to grow all the food that you feasibly can on your own property. Berry bushes, grapevines, fruit trees-plant them if your climate is right for their growth. Grow vegetables and eat them from your own yard...Make your garden … neat and attractive as well as productive. If there are children in your home, involve them in the process with assigned responsibilities” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1976)

Check. Didn't happen last year because..we had Sarah..but I got it going this year. Complete with roma and cherry tomatoes, yellow squash, zuccinni, pumpkin, watermelon, cucumber, lettuce, green beans, some herbs and green peppers. The tomatoes are finally coming around and I'm so excited to make spaghetti sauce! My basil is going nuts and the squash, zuccinni, pumpkin and my 1 cucumber plant are taking over. I'm already planning on next year. I didn't like the lettuce variety.. maybe because I let it grow too much. We also have an abundance of earwigs this year and it's gross to pick up a lettuce and have 15 earwigs crawling around in it.

 

Sarah is not the best helper.. and gets very upset when I'm inside the garden behind the chicken wire.. she also doesn't like grass so much and will walk on anything else before she goes on the grass.

Our first green bean crop! So delicious. We've gotten lots of squash, zuccinni, some tomatoes so far, cucumbers, I gave lettuce away.. and green peppers so far. I'm not thinking the watermelon is going to produce and the pumpkins are starting to grow.

I'd love to have fruit trees.. but we did get some rasberry plants from a friend that will hopefully produce next year. My garden is definately not neat and attractive.. as my plants are sprawling all over the place but at least I did it. There's nothing better than eating something that you grew and tastes so fresh!

Utah adventures

FAMILY: If you have pictures from the reunion you'd like to share.. let me know and we can upload them to my Picassa album so everyone can share them!

At the end of July we all ventured to Utah for Kurtis' family reunion on his mother's side, the Hansens. All her siblings were there..with many, many cousins. We had a wonderful time with everyone and lots of laughs. Let me recap some of the highlights of our trip..

-On the way there.. long story short.. we missed our connection in Denver and spent 4 glorious hours corrolling Sarah around the airport until the next flight. We were just glad to finally arrive. The best part about being there, however, was playing on the walking escalators. Sarah loved to walk the wrong way, like a tredmill. Luckily it wasn't busy and people thought it was so cute and hiliarous. I was too afraid she'd get stuck that I never got a picture.
-We spent the first 2 nights at Julie's grandparent's. They were pretty relaxing days and it was wonderful to get to see them and have Sarah see them again. I got to get some sewing projects done because my grandmother has all the right gadgets to make things 'sew' pretty! Haha
-On Saturday, July 24th, we had the brilliant idea to go to the Pioneer Day Parade in downtown Salt Lake. We met Kurtis' family there. I'll be honest and say that I wasn't impressed..thinking it would be this huge ordeal.. and it was just a normal parade. No candy or anything! And it was HOT. It was fun to get into the Pioneer spirit and see the Elders walking at the end holding up their little cameras.. so silly. But we had fun and then headed back to Logan. Lucia (our niece), became Sarah's new best friend and copied everything Sarah did. So here she is, on Kurtis' lap because Sarah is. She liked to hold her hand too!

-We don't have a lot of pictures from the reunion itself.. others have them.. but it was a crazy bunch of days! There was an adventure scavenger hunt where the older kids went on go-carts, paddle-boats, rock-climbing and other fun things while the moms stayed behind with the little ones and played games. We went to Bear Lake another day and had a BLAST water-skiing and jet-skiing. Yes, I did both at 20 weeks pregnant. I was under the supervision of Kurtis' uncle who is a doctor and said it was perfectly fine for me to do so. Oh it was so much fun! Sarah ate sand most of the time.. but eventually learned that it's not too tasty.

-There were various sessions and things to do at the temple the final day. We also got a chance to go back later in the week. It was wonderful to get to go and spend time in such a peaceful place, and be there with family.

With most of the siblings

Grandpa Tucker made a GREAT horse!

Kurtis took Sarah on the boat like this and she totally fell asleep all cozy in her life jacket

-We played lots of ping-pong, Wii, all got colds, went crazy in a house full of people.. :) had a wonderful family council meeting, and most of all just hung out and laughed. Sarah did really well with all the new people and would go to others after a few days, much to her Grandma Tucker's joy!

-Sarah and Lucia followed each other around and copied each other like crazy. I can't wait for them to get older and have their little brothers be friends too. That will be so much fun!

Thanks to Chauncey and Paola for letting us invade their home (at the time) and putting up with our messes.

June..and July some

It's sad that I'm posting monthly updates but at least I'm doing that much! We haven't really taken a lot of pictures either so I don't feel that bad. Kurtis and I both went on trips in June.. he went up the Boundary Waters with the boy scouts for their high adventure. They spent 6 days canoeing, fishing, camping, cliff jumping and other 'manly' scounting things. He enjoyed it but was glad to have it over. It was a lot of planning and babysitting hard work to take 5 teenage boys through the wilderness. He'll post his stories and more pictures soon. Here's what it looks like from the air.. just a glimpse mind you. This is thousands of acres of land, rivers and lakes.

And what they saw at sunset..

He's mentioned that he'd love for us to go up together and I think it would be really fun.. but when to do it is another question!

As he's been planning this for months.. I told him I wasn't about to hang out alone for a week so Sarah and I hopped a plane to Boston to spend the week with my sister! Sarah had a great time being carried, tickled, pushed around and played with by her 5 girl cousins. Unfortunatley, since Kurtis had our camera, my sister has all the pictures.. to be posted soon. But we had fun hanging out together, going to the Boston Children's Museum, pool parties, late night movies, Davis Farmland (kid theme park) and attempting to get used to swimming. Sarah did overcome her fear of Dottie (their dachchsund) and thought she was a great toy. And although she towered over her same-aged cousin Janelle.. she took a few beatings as Janelle has to defend herself from her sisters. Ha! We loved being out there. Thanks sis!

Our latest adventure was going to the MN Zoo with another little family. It ended up raining (curses to weather.com) but we still had a great time. Here's our little hatchling..

By the dolphins..Petting the sharks..With the turtles..

Grooming the monkey, Daddy

Looking at the sea dragons, which are so neat!

Our 4th of July was a bit quiet since it was Sunday and it rained the whole day. We bbq'ed with another couple and attempted to see fireworks from our deck.. which ended up being cancelled. But we did make ice cream in a bag, which is pretty good on a hot night!

We're gearing up for our Utah trip next week and can't wait to see Kurtis' family. We also hope to find out the sex of our baby this Friday! yay!