Wanted: Alive

The thing I love most about spring is walking around my yard and seeing all of the plants and trees coming to life. I get so excited to see the leaves forming from buds and the blossoms bloom.
This year, however, has been very hard on my patience. I have thought several times that three of my trees have decided to die. No signs of life have been visible in them. It is the end of May and finally, in the last week, I'm beginning to see small signs that maybe, I won't have to dig up these trees.
I know that the photos don't look very promising but I'm sure that if I keep watering them and have faith, my little babies will come out of hibernation and spring to life. Soon? Maybe?

The Newest Addition to my Kitchen

I have been looking for a mixer since the fall when I started getting serious about cooking and baking. Every time I'd think about getting one, we would always find something else we needed or wanted worse. So I was pretty surprised when my darling husband brought this home to me for Mother's Day.
It's a Kitchen Aid Professional 600 and it really makes the kitchen look like I know what I'm doing. Jaycee loves to use it as much as I do and we've made some yummy treats and cookies in the past couple of weeks. I'm sure that it can do a lot more than I know how to at this point but I'm looking forward to the challenge. One of these days I'm actually going to get brave enough to try something really complicated- like bread.

Twin Falls Trash = Our Treasure

Yesterday was a great day. Matt and I found friends for the kids to play with and we drove to Twin Falls with Garrett, Tamarie, and Brady. The goal was to get the pool table out Tamarie's grandpa's house because he has moved and the house was getting cleaned out to be sold.
It turned out that the house wasn't quite empty, and everything left in it was going to be trashed. So as you can see, a few more things ended up following us home. Some of our treasures included a bedroom set for Garrett and Tam, a wheel borrow for my garden, and several tools and trinkets from the garage for all of us.
By the time we headed for home, we looked a little like the Clampetts and Garrett was starting to get "junk grumpy", but the trip was fun and we got some fun treasures.

And the Projects Begin....

This spring, while the snows were melting, I was busy making grand plans. I have decided to add vegetable gardening to my list of outdoor hobbies. And to do that, I needed more yard space.
So the fence that Matt put in last year came out and was moved to make a corner for my new garden.
And I have been doing research, this is not the plant in rows in the ground garden. Because our growing season is so short, I've decided to try Square Foot gardening. I bought the book and read it cover to cover and feel completely novice, but excited.

We found some premade boxes in Logan and Cody and Britnee helped me put them together. We have laid out the plan and I'm happily working on this new experiment. Stay tuned, it gets better. :)

The Best Kind of Praise

This year for Mother's Day I received homemade books from Cody and Britnee. (Jaycee no longer does this project in her school :) The messages seem to be the best kind of praise for reading these lets me know that somewhere my ramblings are getting through to them.

2 Sweet Addictions- 1 Convenient Location

Yesterday was a great day. Matt took the kids to help some friends brand calves in Randolph and I went to my semi-annual scrapbook day put on by the library.
On the first Saturday of May and November we congregate and scrapbook (or whatever) from 9 am until midnight. I don't scrapbook much anymore because I blog, but I was able to get a few sets of cards made.
We have outgrown the library and so this time we were at the Senior Citizen Center. And instead of door prizes, we had all you can eat Cinnamon Rolls. Yummy!! Around noon or one o'clock a group of us went down to the local Mexican restaurant and had lunch. I didn't stay until midnight, I came home at 6 when my family got home. But it was great fun until then.
A little added bonus to this day was that Montpelier Stake was having their annual Gardening Fair. I went over to it and was able to get some really good tips on how to water the garden, sprout sprouts, and even got to collect free seeds.
The weather outside was frightful, it snowed and the wind blew continuously, but I had a wonderful day anyway, indulging in two of my favorite addictions.