The Saga of the Garden

As i mentioned before, my friend Alyssa and i decided to grow a garden. We were going to share costs and work 50/50 but since she lives in an apartment, our garden will be at our house. I was really excited as this has been a goal of mine for ages. This is my M.O. - get interested in something , read a lot about it and then dream about it, maybe get around to doing it. A garden was sort of that way for me. I am glad that Alyssa brings some practical experience to this adventure. This picture is from a few months ago. The point of posting it is sort of a before picture.
Early Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago the Frost's came over to help cut down the tree and clear a spot for our garden. Dale and Alyssa have a baby a month or two younger then Jonathan named Maddie. She is cute. Anyway so while the husbands were out working hard and sweating a lot, Alyssa and i were inside playing with kids. I kind of felt bad that us girls decide to grow a garden and our husbands get to do all the hard work. This picture is of the tree almost gone. They found 4 golf balls embedded throughout the base of the tree. No wonder it was dying.

Husbands working hard - no tree.
So the boys built the box. I got information on where to go buy dirt and made arrangements to go out and pick it up. It is a place that is by the dump and well, it generally didn't smell very nice. Sometimes as much as it is a pain to bring Jonathan around, not that it is Jonathan that is the pain, it is getting a car seat in and out of the car and carrying it around that around that is the pain. Anyway, usually when people see that i have a baby they are very nice and helpful. This was the case with the man that worked at the dump. He was strange and i probably wouldn't want to meet him in a dark ally but he was very nice. He was joking that Jonathan had more teeth then he did and he called the stray dog that lived there his wife. Weird but nice and helpful. So we loaded the dirt, then we got back to the house and unloaded the dirt and we planted. This is the picture of the garden planted. It doesn't look like much but i hope to take pictures weekly!
Of course i missed the funniest picture of the kids. They both were standing at the garden box and looked up at me. They both had rings of dirt around their mouths. Oops guess weren't paying enough attention to them.

OK gotta go. We are celebrating Jonathan's 1st birthday tomorrow and i have loads to do. I still have another post that i want to do of all the things Jonathan is doing these day. It will have to wait.

Getting down with Jonathan

Here are some clips with Jonathan dancing. He is pretty darn cute. Sometimes if i am dancing then he likes to come up to me and dance with me.

Ellie Belly the Newest Edition

Her name is really Ellie May but i call her Ellie Belly. She is my new niece, daughter of Ryan and Kimberly. I am really sad that they don't live in Arizona anymore. I miss them. Luckily they were staying with my parents for the summer so when i went up for Mel's wedding i had the added joy of getting attend Ellie's baby blessing.
There is something wonderful about holding such a small human being. She is about 6 pounds at the time of this picture. I can't believe how great Ryan was with her. I have never really seen such a father take to his little girl. Ryan continually impresses me in so many ways.
I held Ellie and i felt a little spot in my heart that melted into longing for another little baby, but as soon Ryan and Kimberly talked about how little she slept at night and that longing fled. No thank you!

Mel's Wedding

My Sister Mel has been dating Clayton for a few months and he is in the Idaho National Guard and his Unit has been called to Iraq. They were in an unfortunate time crunch in progressing their relationship. Basically, without getting into too much unnecessary detail, she recently got divorced and was still sealed to her ex-husband. They (the Bishop and Stake President) expedited the sealing cancellation as much as that can happen as most of it is out of their control. We have all been playing the waiting game to see if the cancellation would come so they could get married in the temple before Clayton left. So Wednesday evening i get a call from Mel saying that they might get married civilly if the cancellation didn't come by, i don't know, Friday or Saturday. She said she would let me know. Well i didn't hear back Wednesday so Thursday i tracked Mel down and she said that they were probably going to get married Saturday. I purchased an airline ticket to leave the next day. So with not much notice and to every one's surprise, (Ryan didn't know until 2 hours before the event was to occur) they got married. It was a happy occasion and I like Clayton. He will be good for Mel and her children but it was a bittersweet occasion because i couldn't help wishing that we had more notice because CW could have come with me. To both CW's and my regret, a 2 day notice is not very convenient for CW's busy work schedule and cost prohibitive to fly 2 people at such last notice. Oh well what's done is done.
I was the unofficial photographer so the pictures didn't turn out so well. But Clayton looks sharp in his military duds and Mel is cute too.

Mom and Dad worked hard to make this weekend a success!

The happy couple.

Cute Elise.

Nate and Michelle

The happy family.

And would a blog posting by me be complete without a shot of Jonathan?

Growing like a weed

Here are Jonathan's 10 month and 11 month pictures. I could kick myself for not getting a better 10 month picture and this is all i have.

I was trying to get him to pay attention to me so i started making loud noises and he started copying my loud noises hence the funny face. I have this long list of things i want to do to my house and while i love my house i sometimes can't look past all i want to change. Looking at this picture from this angle, i really like the way my house looks. The wall looks greener then it is and you can't see the red kitchen.