I have a garden!!!!

My landlord finally moved his jet skis so I was able to put my garden in. These are the before pictures.

The pictures below are the after pictures. It is amazing what a few hours of sweat, some blisters, and a lot of mud on your shoes can accomplish. I have a little pot of herbs outside my backdoor so I can get to them easily for cooking. I am so excited to try gardening, I am hoping that I will actually have something to show for my efforts, I will keep you all updated on my progress.

I have little tomato plants, they are protected by stakes so that if it gets cold I can put plastic over them. There are also some bell peppers, a couple of cantelope and cucumber starts. I even found an unopened box of miracle grow in our storage room, so I can make an even better effort to make my garden a success.

My Sewing Machine Works again!

My sewing machine has been having issues for the past couple of months making it difficult to do any fun projects. I had it serviced last week, and voila! it works like a dream now. A week ago at enrichment we learned how to make reusable shopping bags. I didn't have the supplies at the time but it ended up working out great because I stumbled on a sale that provided the fabric for three large bags for about $5. Below are pictures of two of the bags, I am rather happy with them. I am already figuring out ways to put pockets through the middle to change it from just a big open bag to something more like a tote bag, diaper bag, etc. So if you are interested in having a custom made bag let me know.

My Nephew Austin's Wedding

First of all I have to apologize, I didn't realize how low the battery was on my camera, so I have a total of three pictures from my nephew's wedding. And they are all of the rehearsal dinner the night before. Oh, well I guess I will just have to make due with what I have.

Austin married a lovely young woman named Alissa, the color scheme of the wedding was bright pink and chocolate brown. The picture below is of the flower arrangements, I love the cute little cowboy boots.

Both Alissa and Austin are somewhat country, Austin wore cowboy boots with his tuxedo. They also provided a CD of music as a wedding favor, all of great country love songs (Brad managed to suffer through). I loved the fact that the music for the wedding was two beautiful fiddle pieces.

My cute parents enjoying getting to see their grandkids and other friends.

My adorable niece and nephew, I don't know about you all but I definitely didn't look with together and with it when I was 13 almost 14. Must have something to do with having cool older siblings ( in Elle's case) and a styling set of parents (in alex's place) I can only hope to look this cool someday. It was a great weekend. Brad took some time off, so he could come with me, the high point of the weekend for him was when he got to purchase his new handgun on Thursday. So we now have a Glock 22 and a Glock 23, we are so proud of our new acquistion.

Jeff's Graduation

Last week my nephew Jeff graduated from BYU (Go Cougars!) it was a great weekend, not only did we have the fun of celebrating his accomplishment I also got to spend time with my parents. Here is the handsome graduate and his proud parents.
My adorable parents with their grandson. You will notice that the graduation gowns are navy blue, back in the dear dead days when I graduated they were black. I guess somebody decided a change to the school colors would be a nice way to update the look.

Onward and upward, the future waits.

Isn't he just the cutest kid ever, I am so lucky to be the aunt of a bunch of attractive nieces and nephews.

We had a great dinner at Rodney and Marja's house to celebrate the graduation. This is a picture of the graudation cake, I couldn't resist taking a picture of the little decorative diploma that sported a "Made in China" sticker. It was especially funny because of the engineering graduates that were honored there were quite a few who were double majors in Chinese.

That evening Mom, Dad, and I went to the wedding reception of my cousin's daughter. One of Uncle Robert's grand daughters, of course she had no idea who I was because I hadn't seen her since she was a little girl. But it was a fun occasion to see some members of the family. This is mom with one of my cousins.

See what did I tell you, I am the aunt of some really cute kids, and Matt now that he is home from his mission can actually enjoy the "scenery" at a place like BYU.

A proud Grandma giving a hug to the new graduate.

You can't tell, but I promise Jeff is getting is diploma on the stage.

Dad with his omnipresent book, he always has it with him, just in case he has to kill some time. We have similar pictures of him at my wedding reception and at my nephew Craig's reception as well. It makes things easy if we are looking for daddy, we just find a quiet corner and the chance is he will be sitting there with his book.

Waiting for the festivities to start. Don't we all look so enthused to be there an hour early.

Life in Utah: Scrapbooking & Firearms

Brad came home from training for the Sheriff's Department the other day. This is him looking all rough, tough, and law enforcement like. He had been at the shooting range all day doing manly type things and he came home to find the TV room covered in scrapbooking materials.

This is definitely something you don't see everyday, except maybe here in utah. Handguns and scrapbooking all in one convienent package.

Simple Things

I have discovered www.goodreads.com and it is so much fun. Of course, I am a complete and total book nerd so keep that in mind. This site is another social networking type site, but the fun part is that it is all about letting your friend know what you are reading and what you think of those books. I have been having a blast looking at what my friends have been reading and compiling this great reading list. I am sure the Logan City library is going to get completely tired of me. Just thought I would share my newest little obsession, which will come in handy here in a week when Brad switches over to swing shift and I have my evenings free.

I also have to say I am so glad that we have a had a couple of days of wonderful weather. I spent Sunday afternoon in a chair on my back lawn, enjoying the decadence of reading a book out in the sunshine. Sometimes it really is the simple things that are the best.

Conference Weekend

This past conference weekend I decided to make the trip south and spend some time with Rodney, Marja, and Alex. Along the way I also got to see a former roommate Katie Anderson and her cute family, and have dinner with Erica and her family. I made the trip alone because Brad is currently working the graveyard shift, and a second job so he spent the whole weekend working or sleeping. I figured he probably wouldn't miss me, so I decided to take advantage of my sister-in-laws great cooking.

On Saturday morning we spent the time putting together some quilts to use of some fabric that Marja cleaned out of her linen closet. I have decided that she has the best method for making quilts. She turns the fabric so it is essentially inside out, pins the batting to one side and then sews the whole thing together. This works great because then when it is turned right side out the edge of the quilt is already done. Here is my brother Rod and his beautiful wife Marja getting the first quilt ready to go.

Here is my brother showing of his domestic, pioneer quilt tying skills. Of course this is before I managed to completely smoke him with my quilt tying skills.

While the boys were at the Priesthood Session of conference Marja and I decided to go out to dinner and do a little bit of shopping. I was even brave enough to try sushi, to my surprise I actually liked the types that we had. One was a sunset roll and the other was a diva roll. Quite yummy.

This is the beautiful sunset we saw as we were driving home.

Saturday evening I managed to display an absolutely amazing amount of gracefulness at my brothers house. I was asked to take a pan of enchiladas down to basement refrigerator, well I thought I didn't need to turn the light switch on, I know the general lay out of the room, and was confident in my ability to get where I wanted to go. Well as they say in the scriptures it is better to choose to be humble then to be forced to be humble.

What I didn't see in the dark was that a drawer of the media cabinet I had to walk by was standing open. With one hand full of an enchilada pan and the other hand full of a cell phone, I didn't really have much to break my fall when my knee made contact with the drawer. So the previous pictures are of the damage I managed to inflict on the cabinet. The next picture is the damage I managed to inflict on myself. On Sunday my brother's family followed their conference tradition of going to the William's house for brunch. Accompanying us was a ton of delicious food. This is just a small example of the bounty we took with us.

On my way back to Logan I stopped off at Erica's house for dinner. It was fun learning how to make toothpick dolls, getting to see Erica's gorgeous dress for the big dance, and being treated with a scoop of chocolate ice cream because I ate my dinner.