Staying Busy

Well, I seem to have gotten behind on my blogging so I'm going to try to catch up. So buckle up.

Here's a project I've been working on for about 24 years. It's our Jamie!

She is so much fun to be around. She always has a funny story to tell. We love that she teaches voice lessons at our house because we get a two fold benefit. We get to see Jamie at least twice a week and we get to see and hear the wonderful kids she teaches. Sometimes we find ourselves singing along with the songs the kids are singing. We love her so much. We hope you had a Happy Birthday!

Now we haven't worked on this project so much as Nick and Jamie did. But that doesn't mean we are not just as proud of him. He graduated from Weber State University this Spring. Congratulations Nick!


We see enough of our family and so here is a picture of Nick's family.

Okay, so here's a project we started around Memorial day. We had a railroad tie retaining wall that was rotting and falling down because it was being eaten by bugs, so we had to do something about it. We decided to go with this rock block. These great big blocks on the bottom weighed 100 lbs. The block with tops on them weighed 50 lbs. I could barely lift the 50 pounders. Gene and Nick had to do most of the heavy lifting. This was a project the whole family and neighbors helped with.


Even Squishy helped.

What a mess we had going! We had to get it done fast so we could clean everything up and get our garden in.

Thank you to everyone who helped! It really turned out great. And the garden is growing... weeds and all!

But the most exciting thing of the Spring was Laurie's mission call! She's going to Nashville! Yep, Nashville, Tennesee. Laurie was so funny. The day she thought her call was coming her and her friend chased down the mail truck so they didn't have to wait for the lady to bring it to our house. But it wasn't there, so the mail lady said she would call Laurie in the morning around 7:15 to have her come get it at the post office. Do you think Laurie could wait at our house for the call. No, she had to go down to the post office so she could be right there as soon as she got the call. She waited, and waited and waited. I was at home waiting to go to work. I pretty much decided it wasn't going to happen in the morning so I was going to go ahead and go. It was a good thing I was waiting around a little later than I usually leave, because my friend Maree who I teach with needed a ride because her car wouldn't start. I went down and picked her up and we were en route to work when Laurie called and said she had the envelope. I turned off to the house and Maree and I went in to get to see Laurie open her call. What a neat experience to see Laurie so excited at the opportunity to serve the Lord. Plus I'm sooo glad she is not going foreign. For a video of the experience click here.

Gene, Katee and I ran in a 5k at her school. Katee was very motivated to do well in the race. She worked out with Gene and by herself. And she did great. She even beat me!( Not hard to do). But she was pretty quick. She did it in about 30 minutes!

Katee had her end of year dance recital. She took 2 dance classes, Hip, Hop and Jazz. Nice job Katee!

Last year I made a post about our secret garden(click secret garden to see it). It was very prettty with the roses in bloom, but a lot of the year it looks very over grown. This year I decided I wanted to make a patio where the garden was.

Hand it to my good husband. If I want something, he makes it happen. So away went all the tulips and bulbs.

And after hours of digging, leveling, rumaging through the rock pile near Park City(two trips to get enough rocks), sifting through sand, carrying rocks, laying rocks, removing rocks, relaying rocks, hauling sand, washing sand, and sweeping sand, we have this! Our beautiful patio. We love it!

We still have more work to do to finish up the dominoe effect happening in the rest of the flower garden, but we are so happy. All the work, Ibuprofen and Tylenol was worth it!

So, that about does it for now. Next week we should have some stuff about Mesa Verde. Stay tuned.