Whistle while you work...

This is a mantra I am trying to teach my children. It is a slow and very painful process of course. 


Yesterday morning, for example, I asked the kids to come help me plant the last remaining garden plants that have been waiting patiently for the past month to be placed lovingly in a garden box. I figured that I have done everything else up 'til this point, the least they could do was help me plant 7 measly plant-lings. Berlin couldn't wait to help, but Finley was a different story. Oh, the tears, the yelling, the screaming. Finley angrily kicking the floor shouting that it was my job to do all the work, not theirs. Sigh. 


I held my ground and calmly listened to it all as I shoved their little hands into gloves and forced them outside. Ryan built these planter beds for mother's day. I painted them a few weeks ago and lined them with outdoor weed cloth to help keep the soil from seeping through the board cracks. Filled them with way more dirt than I thought it would take and we are good to go! 

The kids planted zucchini, squash, pumpkins, cantaloupe, and watermelon plants. I figure these are fairly hardy so hopefully they will thrive under the kids watchful eye. Once the cantaloupe and watermelon start growing I have a trellis system I will set up to keep them off the ground. 

My reward for such patience came in the form of 6 little words spoken from Finley's mouth: "I was wrong. This IS fun!" Yep, thank-you, thank-you very much. It was a small victory for me, though I am sure we will go through the exact same process the next few weeks when I ask them to come help water these plants by hand every morning and evening. These two garden beds will be their responsibility and it has already gone on their daily chore chart.


In response to Finley, I have my garden jobs too, one of which is the container garden which already producing lots of fruit and veggies.

 

Container plants: 
2 yellow tomatoes, 1 yellow pear tomato, 1 red juliet tomato, jalepenos, sweet peppers, string beans, bell peppers, butternut squash, yellow squash, strawberries, cucumbers, and red onions.

Herbs: 
Mint, Apple-mint, Citrus mint, basil, thai basil, cilantro, dill (we already lost the dill to aphids. Oh well).

In-ground:
Yellow raspberry bushes by the barn


With all the time I've been spending out in the yard, I have to say that most days I love our yard, especially the new stuff we've been planting - red bud trees, zelchova trees, peonies, lilac bushes, hydrangeas, japanese maples, etc. 

But I have to admit that on hot Summer days, when I look out the window and see this, I think BLEH! I hate it! Just looking at all the dryness makes me hot. The field sprinkler just isn't cutting it. Correcting this might have moved up a couple notches on the "to-do" list. Even the chickens hate chillin' out in the field. 

They prefer the kids play-set, which isn't working for me. So #1 on the to-do is putting a fence up in the middle of the field. Always something to do :)

Raccoons, Caterpillars, Butterflies & the Beach

The title pretty sums up the last two trips to Bear Lake this Summer. Two weekends ago Ryan took the kids up to the cabin and met up with his sisters to do the big opening (cleaning etc). While they were up there they discovered an unnerving scraping sound coming from under the bathroom tub. Apparently is sounded like something was trying to claw it's way through the bathtub walls. So, Ryan's sister called an exterminator and after removing the panel, they found a family of 4 raccoon's living under the tub, along with lots of other rodents and pests. And it seems they had been there for quite a while. Lovely. It's made for some fun and exaggerated story-telling on my children's part. Finley swears he saw a raccoon stick his claw up the bathtub drain while he was taking a bath (after throwing up in bed). And it gets larger, bigger, pointier and scarier with each telling of his story :)


The annoying pests even chewed through four main cabin electrical wires, so we had to have that fixed. $2000+ later it's all fixed and though the thought of all that money being spent on raccoon removal & damage control, it's much better than having them still there. We are very grateful they didn't chew through the cabin walls and really wreak havoc inside like they did to two of our neighbor's cabins a few years ago. 


We went back up this past weekend for Father's Day. On our way up we stopped in Perry for some Maddox chicken (a must) and some fresh fruit from the roadside stands. 5 lbs of fuji apples for $1? Seriously folks - so cheap. The Rainier cherries not so cheap, but so delicious. Well worth the money! 

Tired, hungry, and a bit impatient ....

Satisfied.

At the cabin thankfully the raccoon's were gone, the area thoroughly cleaned, bleached and re-sealed by the exterminator, but there is apparently one more raccoon (the mother) that is trying to get back into the space. So there were traps set up to catch her (and any others). It didn't stop us from enjoying the lovely weather.


The water level is high again so there is no chance of there being any beach by our cabin this year. So we drove up to North Beach on Saturday and played in the sand and clear, cool water. It was lovely. 

After too much sun we headed back for dinner and a camp-fire in the yard. Ryan is quite the campfire builder and in no time we were roasting yummy marshmallows and making smore's with his second cousin's from next door. It's fun having a cabin surrounded by Ryan's aunts & uncles and cousins as it usually means there are other kids up there for our kids to pal around with. There was lots of trampoline jumping going on :)

Berlin showed off her hula-hooping skills all weekend long - she has become quite the super-duper Hula-Hooper and loves to show off anytime she can. She would try new tricks, like arms inside, around the neck, head covered in a blanket, holding a pretend microphone and singing while twirling, and of course hoopin' in the water. She even added levels, one being slow, four being super fast.

Above is a video of her twirling away on the beach.

Berlin will fiercely defend her reign as supreme hula-hooper in our family. We each took turns and I am not so bad myself, but when she saw me do it she immediately pipes up that she was still the best and I was only second best. Yes dear, we know :)

Sunday we got up and went on a morning hike. There were tons of butterflies everywhere. 

 

Afterwards we came home, relaxed, did rocket balloon races, had lunch, cleaned, then came home. It was a short, but fun weekend. So glad we have Bear Lake to go to in the Summer.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Nine years today.

I love this guy!

Track & Field

I like running. I would like my children to like running too. So I signed Finley up for the Track and Field program through the Millcreek Rec Center. Finley wasn't too optimistic about it, but his friend signed up as well, so he was hoping for the best. He was up bright and early and in a good mood, until he got there and realized he had to run the whole time. Then he got grumpy. I will blame it on the heat, because even at 8:30 in the morning, it was freakin' hot.

His group did long distances today. On Wed he gets to do the short distances/sprints. Here is his finishing his last run of the morning. I wanted to cheer him on, but none of the other moms were doing it, and since I didn't want to embarrass him I just kept my mouth shut. He's a cutie. 

Finley is the 2nd runner.

Needless to say he hated it. All of it. And he made it very clear to me. Oh well. He has 6 more weeks ( it's three times a week, plus 4 meets) that he will have to endure. 

Here's Berlin enduring the heat of the morning from the sideline. She was a trooper too.

Music to my ears

Finley starts piano lessons this next week and we are SUPER excited. I took lessons for a couple years when I was younger, but quit. Looking back I wish I had continued - oh the fickleness of youth. And since Ryan never played we obviously didn't have a piano of our own. So the past couple months I have been scouring KSL classifieds for a beginner piano that would fit our needs and budget. Stressful and intimidating is how I would describe the process. I like the older Spinets/consoles like this ...

while Ryan prefers the upright grands. Guess who won out? 

Here's our new piano all polished up and ready to go. It's hard to show it in the pictures cause the lighting is so bad in our living room, but it has this pretty reddish glow to it. Eventually we are going to paint it a fun color but for now, it suits us just fine.

Oh, and the sound is really good too - which I guess is just kinda important :)

The price was great and it looks lovely in our home. And the kids love it. They were fighting over who gets to play it ... and that's fighting I can handle.