Our Garden

Strawberries and Raspberries

Beets

Tomatoes (Plumb) and Green Peppers

Onions and Carrots

Jalepeno Peppers and Banana Peppers

Watermelon and Cucumbers



Not pictured are Pumpkins, Summer Squash and Rhubarb

Why so many posts in one night??

I have two sick boys at home tonight :( Dan stayed home from work today with a really upset stomach and needing to be near home (if you know what I mean). He said he felt mostly fine but just didn't think he could be to far from the thrown. But since he felt fine, I was able to get out to the garden and get some much needed weeding done (the strawberries which were newly transplanted as well as the rhubarb were getting choked out and I didn't want all my hard work to go to waste. So I was greatful to get out there today. I also picked a bunch of veggies. I was finally able to get some refridgerator pickles going. And I finally got a couple of cherry tomatoes. I can't wait until the plants are loaded. I could eat them by the handful. Hopefully all the canning tomatoes ripen at the same time so my mom can come down to help me can. I just hope they don't all ripen while we are gone camping in two weeks. That would be a real bummer. Big sidebar sorry).

When I got in from gardening, Dan was dozing on the couch and Josiah had made his way to his room, lights out and in his bed. I just thought he wanted his pacifiers which he doesn't get unless he is in bed and we are now rethinking that since he can easily get into his big boy bed now. He was also complaining about his "owy back" He kept saying owie, but appeared fine. He didn't eat much lunch, but I just thought he was antsy and didn't want to sit still.

By the time I called Dan to see how he was feeling, Josiah was puking at daycare and he was on his way to pick him up. Almost 3 years old and this is our first experience with puking. Kim said that he was doubled over saying, owie, owie, owie. But she couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong and she knew that Dan was home sick so she was keeping a good eye on him. She called Dan to let him know that something wasn't right, but he was sick or anything. She had to call him back 10 minutes later to ask him to come get him because he was puking and puked until Dan got there 15 minutes later. Poor kid! She was smart to put a pull-up on him, but so far tonight he is only puking.

I got my work done by 6:30pm and took half a sick day. Because the last think you want to do when you are sick, is take care of a sick kid. Josiah sat on my lap from 7-10 when I put him to bed. He only puked one more time, but is now sleeping on his mattress up in our bedroom. Hopefully he just sleeps all night, but I am prepared for up on and off all night. This is definately new territory for us...hard to believe we have not had to deal with puke yet.

Hopefully they are all better by tomorrow...I don't like seeing my boys sick. And I am going to pray that I don't get it too, whatever it may be. We narrowed it down to bad sourcream or bad lettuce left behind in the ziploc baggie (we just kept using the same bag and there was probably bad lettuce in the bag). Who knows!

So in other words. Josiah went to bed at 10:00pm, Dan is on the couch not really moving and I have free rain of the laptop, so I took full advantage of the time :)

The camper!!

I get more excited every day :)

Baptisms

As I posted a while back this summer, Dan and I made the decision to find a new church back in June. The first church we attended is the church we have started to call home. Simply put, we feel at home there. We have made friends there already and we have only been there for a few months. One person that attends there I met at weight watchers quite some time ago, but neither of us attend the meetings and I kept running into her around town. So when I walked through the church doors and saw that she attended that church with her kids, it was one more reason to stay. The young girl in the baptismal pictures below is her daughter.

At the end of July, the bible studies had a get together for anyone in the church that wanted to come and the person having the party invited us, seeing that we were visitors to the church. It was a great way to meet people right from the get go. Just about everyone there had kids and they had a great time. One of the women that I met there was a fellow scrapbooker and scrapbookers instantly have stuff to talk about. Her husband is also a carpenter, so they had something to talk about. This was a party that Dan didn't want to go to because it was going to be a party where we knew noone, but I felt it was important that we go, since one of the main reasons we left our previous church was because there were very few young people and we were not involved with any of them. I am sooo glad that we did. Because in that one day, we were able to meet people that we could chat with at church. We instantly didn't feel like an outsider.

At any rate, the scrapbooker I was talking about has 2 children (Big mister and little mister). Big mister is about Josiah's age (about a year older, but they don't know that) and they hit it off and had a great time both at the party and at the baptism. Her husband is the man below getting baptized. I love my new camera...how cool that I was able to capture every moment like that.

Big Mister and Josiah

Big Mister and Josiah: Already best of friends :)

Little mister (Big Misters little brother) So sweet!Trey (a pal from daycare who also goes to our new church)
Mallory (Trey's Sister)

Showing off! I love my camera. My old camera would have never captured this moment.

A new friend from church and a cute little girl
Josiah with a mouth full of brownies A very precious moment that I was able to capture at the picnic after the baptisms.
Ella (another daycare friend who attends the church)
The group that was getting baptized in the river.
Weight watchers friends daughter right before her baptism.

Scrapbookers husband getting baptized.

New Bike

I don't think he cares at all that he is riding a pink, purple and turquoise bike. Well worth the $5. I love garage sales and look forward to hitting a few more this weekend.

Ghetto Slide

Look at this slide closely. What is missing???

Yep, you got it (or maybe you didn't :) but there is a support missing. I stopped on my way home from girls night out on Saturday (which was super fun and much needed by the way) in a very ghetto area along side the road. I couldn't imagine why this slide was on the side of the road (a signal that it was free for the taking). I was pretty nervous stopping, but I did it quickly and got it into the back of my vehicle. The trunk had to remain up for the 30 minute ride home, but I thought it was worth it...that is until I got home and took it out of my car and discovered why it was set out free for the taking. Oh well, Josiah is having fun and I am sure we can easily come up with a support for it. The slide itself would work out great if we ever got around to building a playground set though :)

Thanks for a fun time on Saturday girls (Mindy, Kari, Angie and Sarah). I can't wait for the next installment!!!

Random pictures...

Big Boy Bed....okay, so it is still the crib, but the cage part is no longer a cage. He still doesn't know that he can get out of bed before I come into the room. Hopefully we have a little longer until he figures that out :)

He looks so big in this picture...growing up to fast!
His first big decision. I laid out 4 costumes and asked him to decide which costume he wants for our camping/Halloween in September. Isn't he so cute.


A trip to the park with Grammy.

Lunch with Papa and Grammy

Camping Lists

I have begun preparations for our camping trip. We leave in 10 days and I feel like I have so much left to do. But I have made lists...boy have I made lists. I currently have 4 pages of lists...I love lists. I don't know what I would do without them. I know a friend recently posted how she has let go of the list thing because they just allow her to procrastinate...but I would never get anything done in my house or my life or at work without lists. Interviewers laugh at me when I talk about my lists...but I am pretty sure that is why I can function at all sometimes. After talking to my dad about my list addiction, I soon found out that lists were in my blood.

So anyway...onto my camping lists. We opened up the camper this weekend and started getting everything cleaned up. Plus I was going through all of the stuff in the camper and all of the camping stuff from the house. Currently it is all in the garage and I am washing all the sheets and dishes. It feels good to get all that stuff organized, figuring out what we had and what I need to stock.

So my lists consist of one page of the general house to do list, a page of meal ideas/grocery list/packing list out of our cupboards, a page of what I want in the kitchen area of the camper, what we have and what we need to still get, and a page of fun stuff/misc stuff to pack and bring.

I am having fun planning meals..because I love to eat our favorite foods while we are camping. So I am going to bake some cookies, but the rest will be bought on good sales and what not. I started food shopping last week and this week there were great sales at the local grocery store. So we are stocked up, only a few more things on the list and most of them I don't want to get until right before, like bread, milk and eggs.

I am soooooo looking forward to this trip. I am looking forward to not working of course, but I am looking forward to time with my family. I am looking forward to having dinner with my husband and child every day. I am looking forward to have Mike, Mindy and Luke join us in the food and fun. I am looking forward to the pool (so hopefully the weather is warm). I am looking forward to riding bikes (we got Josiah a bike at a garage sale this weekend, purple and pink. Dan said that he needs to be comfortable in his manlyhood so that he can ride on a pink bike, whatever, it was $5 and he will probably only ride it for a couple of weeks and be done). All in all I am looking forward to our first true family vacation.

Alone in a big building...

I am currently at work on a Friday night and I am all by myself. My co-workers get to leave 2 hours before I do and since I am the only one working this shift today, I am stuck here all by myself. I don't like it at all!!! But I don't really have a choice and I still get to leave early. There are sounds that happen that make it seem like there is someone else here and they creep me out. If I stay talking on the phone or watching a movie, it doesn't seem to be to bad, but there are a lot more noises back here where I am typing this that sound like footsteps or something. So in other words this post will be short.

I am not sure why I haven't been posting lately. Mostly, I think, because I forget!! Plain and simple. I could post at night while I am at work, but I don't think of it and I am often scrap booking.

Not sure really what to update first: Josiah is in a big boy bed and doesn't seem to have any desire to leave his bed. Not sure that he knows he can yet. I am sure that all in time I will have to worry about that, but for now there is a little lock that will prevent him from leaving out the front door in the middle of the night. Potty training is complete! With a small accident here and there, but pretty few and far between, including nighttime :) We discovered that he knows how to ride a 2 wheel bike last weekend, so I think we are going to get him one for our upcoming vacation.

Segue into vacation: We are taking our first family vacation and we are heading to a Jellystone Campground and couldn't be more excited. We will be there for 9 days!!! The first weekend we will have visitors (good ole Uncle Mike, Aunt Mindy and Luuuuke; our very favorite people to camp with, although they won't be camping, just visiting during the day, it will still seem like they are camping with us). They have go-karts, putt-putt golf, bumper boats, a heated pool, hay rides, games, a dance, etc. On the second weekend we are there they are doing Halloween in Sept. where kids from the area come trick or treating through the campground. They anticipate 300 kids! I am sooo excited!!! I have started to pick stuff up at garage sales and the dollar store to decorate our camper. And Josiah is going to be Superman with Dan and I as Johnathon and Martha Kent :) Should be a great time!!!

The biggest update that I have though is my new purchase :) I had a garage sale at the end of July and we made over $450. Way more than I ever anticipated. I was planning on getting a new camera (that is of course was if I met my weight loss goal of 20 pounds, which I did). But I had no idea I would make so much money and with Dan's blessing and encouragement, I bought a really good camera, a digital SLR camera, with 2 lenses. I ended up with a Nikon D40. We did a great deal of research on them to find out what would be the best for teh money we had to spend. With my birthday money and garage sale money, this is what we settled on.

I have taken more pictures in the last week that I have taken all year and for those of you who know me, that is a lot of pictures. I went to the day care and photographed their water balloon fight, I went to the company picnic and took tons of pictures and in general have taken a ton of pictures of Josiah of course. Here are a few of the pictures I took at the company picnic...that is if they ever upload.

Ok, so this post turned out to be much longer than I anticipated. I guess I just got so involved in typing that I forgot all about the noises happening around me.