Happy Birthday To Me

I had a fabulous birthday! Presents and cards and visits and e-mails and facebook messages, and phone calls galore. I feel like Sally Field must have felt when she won her Academy Award and gushed, "You like me, you really like me!" In this crazy, busy life, it's nice to be reminded.I love Mondays! Sounds strange, I know, but it's my day off from work while the rest of the family is at school. It is my day for appointments, errands, cleaning, and recharging my batteries. I love that my birthday landed on a Monday this year. Kent took the afternoon off from work to take me out to a yummy Thai lunch. Later that evening, my hubby and kiddos, two sisters, one brother, a brother-in-law, and eight adorable neices and nephews all came to my birthday party. Wouldn't have wanted to celebrate in any other way.

Garden Harvest

We've been so pleased with our garden this year. We've had an abundance of peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, grapes and strawberries. It was also the summer of raspberries which grow all along the back fence. We put in 12 raspberry plants four summers ago, and this is the first year they've done well. For about a month I picked a big bowl every morning, and we were all--including the neighbor kids--picking sweet, juicy handfuls every time we were out in the yard. Next summer we'll have even more.Another surprise was the little apple tree on the side of the back yard. We couldn't believe the number of apples it produced! They are perfect...big, round and rosy...now we just need the actual tree to grow!

Each year we try at least one new garden project...this year we thought we'd give watermelons a try. Right now we've got five small watermelons plugging along...if the frost would hold off for a few more weeks I think they'd get to be pretty good sized. However, I'm not holding my breath, the first frost will probably happen this week.

And of course, I can't forget the pumpkins. Again, we have a couple of massive pumpkins peeking through, along with several smaller ones. Next week I'll pick them to decorate the front porch, and we'll carve them a few weeks later.

Adieu to my garden for a few months. Sleep well, I'll see you in May!

Labor Day at Boondocks

Labor Day has come and gone...summer is officially behind us. To celebrate, we spent the day at Boondocks and had a blast.

LASER TAG
4-D MOVIE

ARCADE

GO CARTS

BUMPER BOATS

MINI-GOLF

Running Varsity As A Freshman

Braden is doing awesome on his X-country team this year. He has run in two meets so far, and both times he finished in the top 5 on his team and is now running varsity as a freshman. Yesterday was the big BYU Invitational, there were 30 teams there from all over the state, including Kent's team from CHHS. Kent has been coaching X-country for six years now, it is super fun for him to have his kid competing at these meets. Braden came in with a time of 18:28, he was pretty happy about that. Out of 235 runners in the varsity race, there were only about 12 freshmen. Braden came in #129. If he had run in the freshman/sophomore race, he would have placed in the top 15 with that time. But he was glad for the experience of running varsity.

Homecoming Is Coming!

Last week I got a call from a young man who asked my permission to invite Rachel to the Homecoming Dance coming up later this month. Last Thursday night he came over while she was "conveniently" out shopping with her Dad. (I'm so sneaky.) He created an elaborate scavenger hunt which involved dozens of balloons and took her all over the house and yard before she finally discovered who had done the asking. Fun! Now we have to figure out a way for her to answer him back...

Jon Schmidt Concert

Jon Schmidt is amazing! He is absolutely my favorite piano composer, arranger and performer ever. Last night Kent and I went to his concert at the gorgeous waterfall ampitheater at Thanksgiving Point, it was incredible. It was his first public performance of "Love Story meets Viva La Vida" and it sounded even better live than it does on the YouTube video. I bought his newest CD "Bonus Tracks", as well as a Christmas piano book that I am so excited to begin practicing. For over two hours last night I was completely mesmerized as he performed to a sell out crowd. Even Kent loved the concert which is saying something because I pretty much dragged him there. Let's just say it wasn't his first entertainment choice for the evening, but we both had a fabulous time, and we're both in awe of Jon Schmidt's remarkable talent.