Catch up

So I haven't been very good about posting anything at all for a long time. Let's make that about five months. Here is a quick summary and some photos.

Summer
This summer we took care of a nice garden, ate produce from the garden, worked on the yard, and took care of the garden.

Our great garden boxes.

Some of the produce.

 We got to see family.

Yes, those are tomatoes Lucy is holding.

We went to the Golden Spike National Monument and saw the trains.

Fall
In the fall the children went back to school and still managed to play for hours.

 The fun sandbox Kirk built for them.

 A hike to Cascade Springs.

The children love playing in our leaves.

 Halloween

Lucy was a Pioneer Girl. This was my favorite costume to make. It is very well made.

Edward was a knight.

 Andrew was a vampire bat. (We tried on the costume!) Henry refused to be anything.

November

 My birthday. Kirk made a nice chocolate tart.

Andrew got his Wolf in Cub Scouts.

 Henry turned 2.

Henry's cake (balloon theme).

Henry with his new cars.

Thanksgiving

 We made candy turkeys.

Edward dressed up as an Indian for the Wessman Thanksgiving dinner.

Comments from Lucy

 

The other day Lucy asked me, "Mommy are you pretty?"
What do you say to that? So I said, "Daddy says I'm pretty."
She replied, "Well, you're not."
...
A while later I asked, out of curiosity, "So who is pretty?"
"Me!" she said.
That's my Lucy.
...
She is holding some of the tomatoes from our garden. Yes, they are tomatoes, not small pumpkins.

We have certainly been enjoying our garden this year. We even have pumpkins out on the vines--a first for us. I've bottled quite a few tomatoes, about a batch every three weeks or so. This is in addition to all the tomatoes we just eat or I use in cooking. We love home-grown tomatoes.

The Great Wall of Hawkins

Here is the way the site looked for a long time:

Here is the wall two-thirds done:

Here is the final product:

We are glad it is done.

Wall and garden

We finally hired some people to finish our stone wall. It is a long story, and I've only bored a few people with it so far.

 We also have been enjoying the garden with the wonderful garden boxes.

On Sunday a couple stopped by and asked to see our garden boxes since she is a "Square Foot" gardening instructor.

 She even took pictures of them.

So I decided I should take some pictures as well.

  I think planting the flowers in the boxes helps make them look nicer.

Some of the plants are working, and others aren't growing that well. The 30-degree temperature swings in one day probably don't help it.

Copper Mine

I took the children to see the Kennecott Copper Mine in Bingham Canyon (now owned by Rio Tinto) this week. It was huge.

 

Here is a partial view of part of the mine. The tiny dots on the road are the extremely large mining dump trucks--the ones you see in the books of large vehicles.

 The children were impressed with the copper sheet, the final product.

 Did I say it was large? Everything, except the children, was huge.

Memorial Day

In advance of Memorial Day, we took a trip up to the Salt Lake City Cemetery. We took some peonies, including some white and pink ones that originally came from Grandma Wessman's garden.

The children put a flag and the flowers near the headstone and asked if they could come back when we could spend more time.

So, I told them that we would go back sometime and see the headstones for more family members. We are thankful for all of our family members, both those here and those in the spirit world.

May

An Excursion
We took a short camping trip to Capitol Reef National Park and Goblin Valley State Park several weeks ago.

My favorite part of Capitol Reef was a hike we took to Hickman Bridge. On the way, there was a 5-foot-high bridge. Just perfect for children (and short people, like me).

Here Andrew is sitting underneath the bridge. After cold and rain in the mountains near Capitol Reef, we traveled home by way of Goblin Valley. Goblin Valley was just as it always is. It was only 75 degrees, but it felt much hotter than that.

I couldn't get the children to stand still long enough for photos.

We liked this hoodoo, with his eyes and nose.
End-of-school
School finished up this week. Andrew and Edward participated in the school's dance festival on the last day.

Our neighbor, who moved here last year, said, "This is like the Olympics Opening Ceremonies."We thought that was a good description of the whole event.

Edward is the green "E" in the middle of the photo for the traditional "Jell-O" dance for the kindergarten. The sixth grade did their May Pole dance and didn't mess up this year. We think the dances have been the same for many, many years. I overheard one man saying to someone else, "I remember doing that dance!"

Birthday girl

Lucy turned 4 this past Sunday. We had a nice dinner of macaroni and cheese (her choice) and then a doll cake. I think the cake turned out pretty well. She was delighted with it. I spent some time and found an older (cheap) Madame Alexander doll for the center of the doll cake (I don't care for the dolls they sell for doll cakes; they look too much like Barbies). Lucy is a wonderful girl. We are so glad she is part of our family.

Andrew's baptism

Andrew was thrilled with his baptism on April 7. We were so excited to see his enthusiasm. He said he felt the Holy Ghost all day.

Here are the happy people. We love Andrew!

Cost of food

Sorry for the ramblings lately--and no photos of cute kids. However, after working on budget and finances I was frustrated with the increasing cost of food. I know my children are growing and eating a bit more, but they aren't growing as fast as the cost of food. Just to be sure I wasn't imagining it, I looked at the USDA's Cost of Food at Home reports. According to this, if we were cooking all food at home and eating in the very thrifty category, we should be spending more than $700 on food each month for our family of six. (Which we aren't since I don't have a budget that allows that much right now.)  I started to check back a few years and saw that in the past year or so, the cost of food has increased about $40 a month per person. In the past five years, the cost has gone up more than $100 per 4-person family, per month. So I'm not imagining the increasing prices (and decreasing sizes of containers). And I'm not suddenly becoming a terrible shopper who is throwing away money on expensive junk food. Food costs are rising.
P.S. Kirk blames the government for their policies on ethanol.

Outsourcing

A week or so ago, I happened to pick up the BYU Kennedy Center's alumni magazine and was glancing through it. I read a very flattering article about a woman who is a foreign service officer. She also has a husband who can follow her around the world to her different postings. And she has two girls. When she was asked the obligatory "how do you balance job, husband, and kids" question, she said, "I outsource the laundry. I outsource the cleaning." She also talked a bit more about changes in work culture and so on. Since I happened to be cleaning the bathrooms at the time, I thought, "I could handle outsourcing my cleaning and my laundry."
On further reflection, I realized what she had left out of her answer. She also outsources the care of her children.
***
So Friday evening, after dealing with grouchy children for several hours, I turned to Kirk and said, "I'm ready to outsource the care of my kids." He agreed that it would be a good idea--at least for a few hours.
Unfortunately, there was no one to whom we could outsource the kids.
So we put them in bed and watched a movie.

Spring

We have a nice spring, even though the flowers and everything aren't quite as gorgeous as usual. We haven't had any snow to speak of, or even much rain.

 I love my daffodils.

 We even have some blossoms on our peach trees.

A surprise

I opened the fridge and saw this.

Henry was busy adding things. He also likes to put things in the trash cans--and sometimes take them out.

The 'puter

Lucy built her own computer, which she calls a 'puter.

Here she is playing "Angry Birds." She is holding her "mouse."

Andrew's birthday

Andrew turned 8 this past week. He only reminded us every day for a month that he was going to have his birthday. He wanted both a cheesecake (nice choice) and a cake with a natural disaster on it. So Kirk made a cheesecake and I decorated it.

 The cake has a tornado that has destroyed a house and is on its way to destroy a pizza shop.

The children loved the decorations. We all enjoyed the cheesecake with raspberry sauce.