from the garden

Some days you're a bug, some days you're a windshield.

August 2, 2009
Some days you're a bug, some days you're a windshield.

~Marisa drove us to church today! And we are all still alive to tell about it. She actually did pretty well. She is a cautious driver and for now I am grateful for that. She started her drivers ed last week and it will be great to get that out of the way before school starts. She is also plowing her way through French, but worried she may not finish by the time summer ends. She has pulled many a late night!

~Kayla was able to spend the night at a friends house this week and go see HP again! (I still haven’t even seen it yet)

~Tyler got to go with a friend to a huge water park called “Lost Island:” for a whole day and he thought that was pretty awesome.

~Alayna woke up sick this morning. I am hoping she doesn’t have this nasty cold/flu thing that is going around our ward. Its supposed to be a doozy. We don’t have time for anyone to be sick!

~Marisa, Kayla and I did a MASSIVE 7 hour shopping trip this week to get clothes for school. It was actually a huge success even though I could NOT move a muscle by the time we got home.

~My new favorite series is “Jericho”. I raced through both seasons in a week and now I am on a manhunt to shoot whoever’s brilliant idea it was to cancel it. What an idiot! I am trying to get Bob to watch it with me now.

~Yesterday we worked on the garden for a while (weeding and picking). Then we made 3 batches of zucchini jelly which Alayna says “is to die for!” We made orange, peach, and experimented with tropical fusion. I will let you know how it turns out. This was my first time ever making jam so I was pretty proud. We also had a MASSIVE green bean crop so I froze several bags full and then we took some to church which got picked up almost as soon as I put it down. Next week we will be doing salsa and canning tomatoes all day Saturday.

~We have a busy, busy week ahead with some physicals, dentist appts, hair appts, and buying school supplies. I CANNOT believe its almost time to go back to school. Wish us luck…

Awesome storm brewing

Zucchini, anyone?

Volleyball camp

Alayna after curlers in her hair

Time for relaxation?

July 26, 2009
Another busy week whizzed by! Where does the time go? I spent 30 hours this week doing my professional portfolio. It’s required here in Iowa. There are 8 Iowa teaching standards and each of those has about 5 substandards. You have to have 2-3 artifacts showing proof that you have met this standard in your classroom. So, if you do the math, it was about 120 pages that I had to include and write each thing met a standard. It was a flipping nightmare that took over 30 hours. My back end was planted at the kitchen table all week. Thank heavens the kids were perfect so I was able to complete it.

Tyler and Kayla went to volleyball camp this week and loved it. Out of all of LM district, Tyler and Hunter were the only boys that attended. I told him the other boys at school would be jealous that he and Hunter had a whole gym of girls to themselves! We have alos been going to play tennis as a family because the weather has been GORGEOUS!!! The summer has been so lovely. We had this incredible storm move in this week so that so majestic we had to open the sliding door and watch it (while praying it wouldn’t turn into a tornado!)

Our garden is flourishing! Our zucchini’s are out of control. We have been shredding them and freezing them. I have made yummy zucchini bread too. Now our green beans are taking off- any idea what to do with them all? Our tomatoes will be ripe soon and then we plan to can homemade salsa all day. Yummy! We also spent 4 hours as a family deep cleaning and organizing the kitchen yesterday. It looks so great now and we even know where everything is. Now maybe I can FINALLY relax this summer? Maybe??