Shower

My youngest sister is getting married in a few weeks to this guy in mid July.  He is awesome and we adore him ... almost as much as my sister.  

We threw a shower for her at my mom's house.  Suzanne did most of the work, planning the decorations, and really fun games.  She did a great job of helping everyone in the room get to know Stuart and Barb.  She had Stu come near the end of the shower ... he brought her flowers ... so people could get to know him a little bit too.  They told how he proposed, a story I hadn't heard before.  It really was a lovely shower.  To explain the props below, I'll have to explain the games.  The mingler was the game where you have a famous couple on your back and you have to talk with people around you to figure out who it is.  Everyone had fun with this.  The next game was a bit of a quiz for Barb.  Suz sent Stuart a dozen or more questions and the test was to see if Barb could answer them the same way Stu would.  All the guests were given thumbs up cards and thumbs down cards to show if they thought Barb would get it right or wrong.  Very fun. 

Here's a quick picture of almost everyone who came. All the W's are on the front row, including my sweet SIL seated to my left.  

Barb and Stu are really into supporting local growers and farmers, so where ever possible they are going with small local companies for their wedding plans.  We tried to do the same with the shower.  Where possible we used family recipes and farmers market produce.  Mary Ann brought beautiful bars of handmade olive oil soap from Lebanon that we gave as favors to all the attendees.  And I crocheted a dozen or more wash cloths that we paired with handmade brown sugar body scrub and a small wooden soap dish as game prizes.  The food was light and refreshing.  Don't you love how my SIL served the breakfast casserole ... jumbo cupcake liners worked perfectly and helped to stretch a single casserole enough to feed the entire group. 

We (my mom, sisters and I) went in together to purchase a spice collection from Penzey's Spices and cooking classes from a local culinary shop.  Stu's family, mainly his dad, is really into cooking - their family cook book is one of their prized family treasures ... something I didn't really know before I decided to put together a version of  this idea for them.  I included a combination of plastic sheet protectors, magnetic photo sheets, and 4x6 photo pockets to hold everything from printouts, and recipe cards to magazine tear sheets.  Then I printed a couple dozen recipes onto different digital recipes cards I collected from sources online (thank you Pinterest) and filled a good portion of the notebook with family favorites from our family and Stu's.  Hopefully it will be something she will use and morph over the years to suit her families needs.   

My Dad and brother were super troopers and took all eight grand children geo caching and to lunch while we entertained our guests and cleaned up.  The kids had a blast and discovered a new restaurant they want to take the dad's back to when we come for the wedding next month. 

A day to celebrate

Today is my mother's birthday and all of her grandchildren and almost all of her children were home to celebrate with her. I love my mothers joyful smile in this picture.  It's tradition to light all the candles, turn off the lights and see the reflection of the candles in the window.  Mom's been having us do this at every birthday since we were very small.  The bay window in the kitchen really is perfect for this.  

This is one of many trips we'll be making to St. Louis this summer.  If only I could get frequent driver miles on I-70 and earn gas discounts.  

Suz will arrive tomorrow night just in time for all us girls to put on a bridal shower for our youngest sister who will get married in a few short weeks. 

Mary Ann and her girls arrived from overseas yesterday for their summer visit.  We hope the airlines will allow her luggage to quickly follow.  If they don't it will be a huge inconvenience.  

And today the kids and I managed to leave town on time, something that I honestly don't think has ever happened.  We packed up the car this morning, got to swimming lessons on time at 9:30, got everyone changed into their street clothing (except Alex who managed to only pack pjs, a church shirt and some socks), made a quick stop at the library to return a stack of books, pick-up books on hold and get a handful of things for the kids to read while I was at the dentist (yes all of us went) to have my teeth cleaned.  After the dentist we went through a drive thru for lunch and then made two Relief Society drop offs ... binders for Sunday and two quilts I'd spent most of Wednesday prepping and sewing binding on for an activity Friday evening.  We were on the highway by 1pm, just like I'd hoped.  I cannot tell you what a miracle it is that we left on time.

Taming the Wilderness

Saturday GR cut down the last of the trees in the field.  It's taken three Saturday's in total to get the job done.  Two were dead, and the other two were in the way of his annual fireworks display.  Because he was trying to get two trees down in a single day, he asked four friends to help with the project.  Five men, three chain saws, two trees.  It was a massive undertaking, that took two hours longer than they expected, but they got the job done and we will be forever grateful.  The trees were all cut into logs and stacked in the woods for winter firewood.   Apparently there is a lot of wood stacked back there ... stacked in six different locations.

If you don't remember what it looked like before.  Take a look at the last picture of this post from April, it's taken from about the same spot in the yard.

While the men were taking down trees, I tackled the garden with one of our young women and two of the children who came with their dads.  We too had a massive job.  In a few short days, the weeds had gone crazy and the garden looked like a jungle.  We filled our compost bin with 1/3 of the weeds and filled the wheel barrow with the other 2/3s.  It was an impressive pile.  After we uncovered all the plants, and I moved a few around to keep them from being crowded out and help to encourage them to grow. 

Sadly, we ripped out all of our broccoli.  It was a dismal crop ... we grew beautiful foliage, nearly 2 foot tall plants with no flowers ... nothing, not a single sign of flowers at all.  So out they went and in went some of my volunteer tomatoes from last years crop, and a couple extra green peppers we started from seed.  I have a half dozen or so more volunteer tomatoes that I will likely move into some of my back flower beds to give them space to grow and fill in areas that need plants. 

We've been working hard to get all the flower beds cleaned out of weeds.  I spent much of the Spring moving plants around and weeding.  Unfortunately, once I'd get a spot cleared of weeds, and move on to another spot, a second crop of weeds would emerge.  We've enlisted friends, young women and boy scouts in our full on weed war and we're finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel in the front yard.  Today two boy scouts and one very dedicated mother finished getting the last of the weeds out of the front beds!

Ashley, the mother of one of the boys, told me about PREEN.  They use it on Temple Square.  It's a weed preventor, not killer, so I'll likely need to use it in combination with my Round-up, but I'm not kidding when I say this single product may be an answer to prayer and keep me out of the loony bin.  It's suppose to prevent weeds for up to 4 months!  This coupled with the 10 cubic yards of mulch that was delivered 10 days ago, and we might have a fighting chance at keeping up with at least the front yard.  We thought 10 would be plenty, we've spread at least half if not more, and we've covered about that much of the front yard.  No where near the entire yard.  So we're now hoping it will be enough to mulch the front and south side of the house.  Tomorrow I'll order a second load to take care of the play area and backyard beds.  

Father's Day Art Project

Our Father's Day tributes were simple this year and given the schedule I've attempted to maintain in the last couple of weeks, simple was all I could do.  I saw this on Pinterest and loved it.  I decided to do this project with the kids way to late to order the PDF and ended up making my own using clipart from Microsoft that I edited.  This was so last minute that I didn't even have 11x17 card stock and had to print the image on two sheets of paper and tape them together ... real classy! 

The kids each choose a different shade of green pant.  We put the girls hand prints in the back ground in the darker colors, and layered the three younger ones on top.  Once it was all dry, I used a thin black ink pen to write each child's name and age on their hand print. 

Behind glass it looks even better and the seam, while noticeable, isn't too distracting.  I really love the results and it was a huge hit with GR ... though, how can he not when his other gifts were socks and the new Tom Clancy novel.