St. George Temple with Adam

On April 2nd, Steven and I were blessed to accompany our oldest son, Adam, to the St. George temple where he received his endowments in preparation to serving a mission to the Hmong people in Minneapolis, MN. I can't express what a joy it was to witness my child make such sacred covenants with his Heavenly Father. To try to put it into words would somehow diminish the experience, but those of you who have had the great blessing of seeing your children walk in such faith and righteousness in such a sacred place know what I mean.

Adam is as well-prepared for his mission as he could possibly be. He is a true student of the gospel and a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ. He has not only read through the Book of Mormon with our family a few times, but he has personally read it 8 or 9 times, in addition to the New Testament, most of the Old Testament, and the Doctrine and Covenants (several times). He has been earnestly studying "Preach My Gospel" and is starting to read "Jesus the Christ". He's read most of the works by Skousen that relate to religious and world history, and loves to read and watch past Conference addresses by the prophet and apostles. Adam knows how to work hard, both physically and mentally, knows the meaning of sacrifice and obedience, and he loves to serve others.


Adam & I are hoping to take a temple "trip" together just before he leaves on his mission, and plan on going through as many temple sessions in as many temples as we possibly can. We definitely want to go through the Manti, Salt Lake, Draper, Bountiful, Mt. Timpanogos, and Jordan River temples. He'll be able to attend the Provo temple often while he's in the Missionary Training Center.

Happiness is reading together

Ah HAH~ Caught you both being good. AND - you're so nicely sharing my comfy reading chair. You are TOO cute!


The family that reads together... seeds together????
Bleeds together???? Well - they have a lot of fun - THAT's what, even if it doesn't rhyme.



Had to take these pictures of my two TEENAGE BOYS together. NO - they aren't playing computer games, Lasertag, or watching tv together. They are READING! Cody is finishing up the Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites series and Brandon is finally reading Brsingr. Don't they look like they are having such fun! Perhaps I'll just get rid of those nasty old computers after all...

Just a few more fun pictures of my garden

Our green table grapes. I've been looking everywhere for Concord grapes, and just saw an ad for IFA that said they have grapes, so I'm going to look tomorrow. Also want to put in red table grapes. My fav!


Onions sets


Blueberries (are supposed to be more prolific if two varieties are planted, so I'm looking for another kind to companion plant).

I LOVE MY GARDEN

Misc varieties of lettuce, and some wee little carrots in the bottom of the pic. As you can see, I'm doing square foot gardening, so plants are put in much closer together than they would be in a plot garden. You get a much higher yield per square foot than any other way. I still have some thinning to do, though.


Our raspberries we put in a shady location on the side of the house. I'm looking to get a few more varieties to plant elsewhere, and will be removing the railroad ties.



Noah is planting his strawberries. All the children help in the garden, and they all have the "favorite" things they like to grow and care for. Noah LOVES strawberries. You should have him do the strawberry dance for you sometime.




You can see that we have broccoli in pots (5 ) and also some in the bed. They were all planted at the same time, but the broccoli in the pots are far outgrowing the ones in the bed. They are even bigger now and growing their broccoli heads. This is our early season crop planting bed. It is 8' x 4' and is 12 inches deep.

What we've been doing in the garden...

We have plans to put in at least 5 more raised beds to accomodate all of the plants we have started in the greenhouse. We have about 7 varieties of heirloom tomatoes (including purple and yellow tomatoes), as well as "Stars and Moons" watermelon (has really cool yellow splotches on the green rind that look like stars and moons). I'm also growing quinoa this year. You can add the leaves to a salad or meatloaf or whatnot for Vitamin C, or allow the seed heads to dry, and it becomes a grain that you can eat like oatmeal. SO EXCITED! I'm SO weird, I know. We've planted multi-colored carrots, 2 kinds of peas, spinach, radishes, 3 kinds of onion, various types of lettuce, and a lot of broccoli. These are all in our early season box, which I'm including pictures of. In our greenhouse, waiting for the other garden boxes to be built, we have MANY varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, canteloupe, zucchini, crookneck, and of course... PUMPKIN! We've grown several dozen varieties of flowers from seed, as well.




We have put in grapes, black raspberries (from Grandma Fortune in CA), and blueberries (something new), and have started a new herb garden (echinacea, sage, basil, peppermint, so far). In addition, we have several semi-dwarf fruit trees in pots, and plan to add a few new ones. I still need to get my compost bin built and functioning. Adam now works for Wal-Mart in the gardening section, and he brought me home 8 tomato plants that they were going to throw out as they have a tiny bit of frostbite. These are their really expensive tomatoes, so I was giddy! No dozen roses for me... you can bring me vegetable plants ANY DAY! Okay - enough talk. These are pictures I took almost 2 weeks ago, so the garden is even bigger and better now, but its dark outside, so I'll post more pics later.