Our Garden

In early spring we planted seedlings for our garden. We kept them in our house for two months. Jason worked hard to build another bed to add to the one from last year. We had to move the one from last year over and refill it with dirt and fill our new one with dirt as well. It was a lot of hard work, especially while I was pregnant, but it paid off! We have zucchini, yellow squash, oregano and basil, and spinach that we've already enjoyed eating. Soon the tomatoes will be ripe along with the carrots, green beans, peppers, onions, and garlic. We thought we planted cucumbers, but we don't even see the plant or a space where they could have grown. Between my pregnant mind and Jason's being gone a lot, who knows what happened with those? Victoria and Karissa had fun helping us and picking our monstrous zucchini and squash.
Austin Update:

Austin is still an angel baby, even though he is awake more. He just happily looks around, as long as someone is nearby. He doesn't like to be left in a room alone when he is awake and will cry until we come back in the room. I guess he enjoys his sisters' loud noises, and believe me, they are loud! Austin likes to be sung to, to be outside, and he loves baths! Here is a little video of him in the tub.

College Roomie

On Tuesday, my old college roommate, Synthea, and her husband, Jay, and their daughter, Alyssa, came to visit. They live in Tucson, but came out here for her brother's wedding. We got to see them before they left. It was a blast having everyone play together. Alyssa is 3 years old.

We enjoyed looking at pictures and thinking back to when we were young. Thanks for coming Synthea!!

My Friend Eureka

We just bought the best appliance in the world! Actually, Jason's mom told me about it. It's called the Eureka Stick Vacuum. It is a light-weight, mini, bag-less vacuum on wheels that is used in place of sweeping. It's so amazing!! Sweeping takes so long and when you have to do it a billion times a day with kids (I can't stand dirty floors), it takes up too much time. With Eureka, it's just running the vacuum real quick, except that it's tons lighter than a regular vacuum and smaller so it fits under the cupboards and chairs. The best part about it is, even Karissa can do it and she and Victoria both love doing so!

Mine can be a hand vac as well and has a crevice tool. We got it at Walmart for only $15! It is corded, but they have some that aren't for more money.

Potty and Pink

On Tuesday night Karissa decided she wanted to use the potty, so she took off her diaper and shorts and went! The next day she continued to be successful with the potty. I took advantage of the situation and put her in training panties and gave her a spice drop each time she went. She has yet to figure out #2, but at least she's figured out #1, making it much easier than it was with Victoria!
P.S. That was written two days ago, and today she's regressed, but at least she's starting the potty training process!


Victoria has been in a pink-only phase the past six weeks (since the baby was born). Everything from her dishes to her panties has to be pink, not even purple, just pink. Even the toys she plays with are only the pink ones. The pink ponies, pink dolls, pink pencils, pink jewelery. If you look back at her in the pictures in the blogs, she has pink on in every single one, except for the Father's Day one, when I made her wear her matching purple dress with Karissa. (Later that day, she changed her clothes and put on pink.)

In this picture, she decided to wear purple, for a change and told me that she was happy about it, but later she changed into pink after we found the pink Princess Aurora socks from the dollar store, shown in the following picture. (Karissa is wearing her panties in that picture.)

4th of July

After a full day at the lake on the 3rd, we got to prepare for the dual-ward activity on the morning of the 4th. Being the co-chairs of the activities committee is fun, but busy when it's activity time. Luckily, the stake activities director is on our committee, so he did most of the prep and had the grand idea of combining with the other ward, making less work for each ward.

We pretty much just had to show up early with the paper goods for a bar-b-que at the park and the water jugs (which I completely forgot to fill up with water), so Jason could start grilling the 280 hamburgers with another fantastic member of our committee.

The activity went very well, especially since it was at the park with a fun playground and a splash pad (fancy sprinklers), where the kids had a great time playing.

Later that evening we went to our neighbor's annual party where there was a moon bouncer for the kids to jump on.

We didn't see fireworks this year since they start after 10 and Victoria said she was too scared to see them, or hear them, rather. She actually woke up and heard them and came to our room, she was so scared.

1 Month

It's hard to believe, but Austin is 1 month now! He's still an angel baby, mostly sleeping and eating, though he had one fussy evening recently. It was the night before my Dad and Mary Lou left, so he must have been sad about that.

Here he is smiling at me and trying to talk.


This was two days ago when he was four weeks and Karissa had her half birthday, making her 2 1/2.