Our garden

Shawn has done a garden for the past 2 years. The first garden that he ever did was in 1996. He loved doing it. Our squash plants got so huge, and our squash got so big. I didn't think they were suppose to get that big, but you couldn't tell him that. I mean, HUGE!! The next year, I went to HEB and bought a squash, and brought it home. I told him his squash needed to be that big only. He grew them right after that. When we moved to our house on Ethel Blvd. we couldn't have a garden. We could've I suppose, but the dirt in the backyard was horrible. Shawn didn't want to have to mess with it just yet. 5 years later we sold the house, and never once did he plant a garden. The year we moved here, Shawn's dad had somewhat of a garden in my backyard, and Shawn did not like that. He surveyed the land, and decided that part of the front pasture could be turned into a beautiful garden. Shawn, Josh and his dad went to work over the fall/winter months to have the garden plot ready. By Spring of 2006, it was ready to be planted. We had a good crop of squashes, watermelon, tomatoes, peppers, onions, corn and purple hull peas. This year, about 1/2 of tomato plants have died, and Shawn has replanted them. He also planted 50+ blackberry stalks last year, and this year they are beautiful plants, and we have tons and tons of blackberries. As I type this, I am making another blackberry cobbler. See why I can't loose weight? And what has to go on blackberry cobbler? Vanilla ice cream of course! Anyway, so we have more squashes growing, and have had a few zuchinni here and there, but not as many as yellow squash. The other day I made zuchinni nut bread, and oh my gosh it was good. My kids loved it...only because I told them at first it was banana bread, and once they were done with it, and told me how good it was, did I tell them it was zuchinni bread. Only Kayley knew it wasn't (banana bread) because she helped me make it. I made a yellow squash bake today that they sell at the Black-eyed Pea, and it was really yummy. Don't know if I will make it much again, but it was good and it used up 5 lbs of squash. I froze 1/2 of a 9x12 pan of it. I've already froze about 7 lbs of squash as well. We are hoping for a good crop of purple hull peas. What are those, you ask? Well, they are like black-eye peas, but aren't. Shawn's mom makes them during the winter months with a ham-hock and corn bread, but this fall, after spending hours and hours picking them, washing them, freezing them (Lauren & Kayley helped with all of it), we lost it all. Shawn's mom had them in the deep-freeze, and Shawn's dad unplugged the freezer months later to use the plug, and forgot to plug it back in. About a week later or so Shawn's mom and Kayley goes to the freezer (this freezer is in the outside storage room, BTW), and they noticed the smell. Let's just keep it at that. Shawn's mom got a new freezer for Christmas from her children.

I figured this out!

I finally figured that when you download pictures, you can choose a size you want, so it doesn't matter if I have already fixed the picture on Adobe. Make sense? Now I am going to go back and post about some of the pictures I have taken of the kids...

When mom was here visiting a few weeks ago, we went to Dollar General. I let the girls buy a $1 make-up kit. This is what Lindsey did with hers. It was promptly thrown away after that.

The stroller

You can kind of see how long Lindsey's hair is (no I didn't cut any of their hair like I previously said). This is also the doll stroller that Kristen, Lindsey and now Joey have all been pushed around in. The picture was taken the week of May 20th.

Lindsey is chillin' in the stroller as a baby. Unfortunately I don't have a dig. picture of Krissy in it as well, but she liked it too.

My baby

I can't believe he is 5 months old in this picture. This is my new favorite one of him so far.

Lindsey is 5 months in this picture of her too. Look at all that hair she had!! Poor Joey has nothing compared to her.

Both are cuties though. I absolutely loved doing Lindsey's hair. I still do. Her hair is down to the top of her boo-tay.

Life

I never know what to title the new blogs that I post because nothing ever exciting happens here. I did call Mom the other day telling her something, and I remember laughing about it, but I have no clue what I was telling her about. My memory is going fast, and it's scaring me since I've always been able to remember everything.

Josh has been debating of going to Ellison HS. I've called the school and talked to a counselor there about his grades and classes he would need for next year. Apparently he was going to have to take the TAKS test, but now they went away with the TAKS, so I don't know now. On Sunday we heard that a new family with 4 daughters in Young Women were moving into our ward! Talk about excited!! We go to the church last night for activities/meetings, and they were there. Well, only 3 of them were. The oldest, age 17, is kind of inactive and had already found her a job working a Sonic (my fav. place!), so she wasn't there. Josh hit it off with the 15 yr old, who turns 16 in November. Not sure yet what he will do now. He may end up staying here because of her. She is cute, I will say. They are from St. George. He is currently mad at me. I had to almost yell at him this morning (yikes!) to shush-up because he would not listen. We upgraded his cell phone last month, and he swears he has already paid for the upgrade. I told him he had not, that he had paid for the bill before and for some fishing stuff that I bought him at Walmart (he said he would pay me back). He swears he paid the $18 upgrade. Would not listen. So now he is mad because he knows he is going to have a big phone bill this time. I told him from the start as well, with this new phone, that he only had 150 text messages for this phone period and anything over that amount he would have to pay. In 1 week he said he already used them all, and was over 200. I told him I hope he had the money. Anyway, teenagers...wait until you have them!! LOL!!

Rest of the kids are doing good. School was out for them last Friday, and we have been enjoying sleeping in until 7:30 or so. Can't sleep all day, even though I would love too. I've been making sure they are up, dressed, beds made, dishes done, chores done and breakfast done so that we can read scriptures and have prayer at 9am abouts. They have been doing really good, and playing with each other really well since this is all they have. We don't live close to neighbors, or kids for that fact. Lauren and Kayley love using the riding lawnmower about 1-2 times a week. Next week is the Miller Family Reunion. On Sunday it's at my house after church for lunch. I don't think we'll have as many as we did at Thanksgiving. At least I'm not planning on it.