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6.27.2013

Girls camping trip!

Clara and I bravely headed to the mountains by ourselves to camp out for a night.  I guess we may need to call it "camping".  My friend Jessica has a family lot up in Donnelly, ID, and she brought her tent trailer up to stay the week.  Clara and I just headed up for a night, and crashed with her and two of her three kids in the trailer.  At their lot, there's a fully functional kitchen and bathroom.  So it wasn't really camping, but we like to sound tough and say we camped alone, just us girls!

This was such a treat to head up during mid week!  The McCall area gets so crowded on weekends, so to drive up on Wednesday was so peaceful.  I especially loved jetting out of town because for the last three weeks I've been taking classes.  So this was officially my first, real week of summer vacation!

Clara had so much fun!  Knox is her age, and they have a ball together!  The night before we headed for the hills, we got her bathed after dinner, and she helped me pack our bags.  As soon as there was a quiet moment, she said to me, "Mommy, I'm ready!"  I asked her what she was ready for, and she told me she was ready to go camping!  It was hard to wait all night to leave, but she managed.

Here she is during the evening after she changed into her jammies.



 Here are Jess and her three babes, and Clara in the background.

 Baby Elliotte.
 I told you Clara and Knox were thick as thieves!  They can't get enough of each other!


And just for fun, I'll show you what these two birds looked like a while ago!

Both of them had awesome hair!







Back to the camping post!  We spent a good chunk of today at Cascade Lake.  There must have been a MOPS group or something at the lake with us, because there were a million toddlers... scary!  But we found our own little corner of the beach and set up camp.

Clara loved the lake!  It was pretty shallow, so I let her play around without her life jacket.  She was thrilled!

 Knox having fun and dunking his head!



 There's Ezra!
 Sandy bum...couldn't resist!

 She looks like such a kid here!  Scary how big she is this summer!
 Ellie having fun!





 I know there are tons of pics of Clara, but I just kept snapping.  And she actually agreed to let me snap, for once!

Here are all four kids in the car this morning...loving them some Veggie Tales!


Thanks Jessica and family for having us up!  It was delightful!  I still can't believe all the children slept all night!  Count on us paying another weekday visit soon!!!

6.18.2013

garden tour - spring 2013.

So last year Kurtis put in the 4th garden box for me.  It has been so wonderful to have a little extra space!  I tried to rotate crops a little this year.  My tomatoes and peppers get a little more shade than they have in the past couple years because of the rotation, which may come back to bite me.  But we're giving it a go!

Here's the first box with watermelon, baking and carving pumpkins, zucchini, crookneck squash, cucumbers, and eggplant.  It is a lot to pile in one garden box, but the vines drape over the edge and onto our rocks.  So it will work out.  This was the first year I saved pumpkin seeds from some pumpkins that we bought last year.  We'll see how they grow!

I also put three tomatoes down the middle of this box.  It is pretty crowded, but they didn't have a home, and I started them from seed, and I can't just let something die.  So there they are!

 This box has our snap peas (which Clara is loving right now!), onions - walla walla, red, and green, and then carrots and parsnips!  It will also house our green beans (I need to get those seeds in the ground!).
 Here are out minuscule tomatoes in the background and peppers up front.  I started them from seed again this year, and they always look embarrassingly small to start the season.  But they always seem to  come around!  We planted roma, early girl, and grape tomatoes.  And California wonder, green, red, and Anaheim peppers!
Here's our strawberry patch. Holy cow!  It's going crazy!  We have been eating strawberries for about two weeks now, and loving it!  We also have asparagus growing directly behind the strawberries, and two rhubarb plants that are trying to get established at the back of this box.
 In this tub, I threw a tomato and a bunch of basil starts I had.  I saved basil seeds from a plant I bought two years ago, and those seeds grew me plenty of basil last year, and enough for this year too!  Love when seed saving works!
 Here we have lemon thyme, rosemary, and purple basil.
 Another tomato.
 I've been propagating geraniums again.  Magic!
 Here's what's left of my seed starts this year.  I need to find a spot for some green envy zinnias, hollyhocks, and red hot pokers!
 Here are two pots of tomatoes (probably 4-5 plants) that haven't found homes yet!  I thought they were dead because I didn't get them water for a few days, but they're coming right back!  I can't throw them away!  Anybody want tomatoes?
 Here's a glimpse at what's underneath all that greenery in the strawberry patch.  Yum!
 Clara picking peas for breakfast this morning!

 A little bed head never hurt anyone!  We're keeping her humble people!

 And we picked these this morning!  I may need to squeeze in some time this weekend to make some jam with our strawberries and my Mom's rhubarb!

What's not pictured here is our raspberries which are getting blossoms, our two blueberry plants (we've got some bluets that are almost ready to be eaten!), and our three blackberry bushes.  Those are growing like crazy too!  2/3 of our blackberries are thornless, and we may need to take out the thorned blackberries in the future!  My salad greens just didn't do so well this year.  They were a little more neglected than usual.  I'm pretty sad about that!

I'll have to snap some pictures of our flowers soon to post.  They're all growing like crazy!

I'm so glad to have our garden space!  Clara is learning so much from gardening, and nothing tastes better than something you grew with your own two hands!!!

6.17.2013

garage and driveway party.

Our neighborhood has an annual garage sale, and we try to sell stuff every couple of years.  We were getting things ready on Friday, and my Mom and Em showed up.  So we had a garage party and sat in chairs and chatted!  Saturday, after the garage sale was over, Clara painted while the rest of us...

 sat and had a drink in the driveway...because we're classy like that!