Peas!

  One of my favorite things about summer has always been fresh peas! They are sweet and delicious and better than candy. This is the first time since we have been married that we were able to plant our garden. The peas and the corn are the only successful part of the garden this year. Hopefully next year we will have more variety but I am super excited about the peas!

This is the first harvest of the peas. The picture doesn't really do it justice. They are filling up our huge popcorn bowl! Yum.

Fresh peas always remind me of my Grandma. For about a week or so during the summer we got to go stay at Grandma and Grandpa's house, which was also down the street from our awesome cousins. Grandma would spoil us rotten. We floated the canal, went fishing, played statues and sardines, and Grandpa even let me drive the tractor once. Grandma had a huge garden. The row of peas was forever long and us kids would help with the picking and of course the eating! I love that a simple thing like peas will always remind me of my Grandma who I love and miss!

Rock Climbing

 My friend Necia saw a flyer for a rock climbing class and thought it sounded fun and invited me to come along. I am always up for trying something new!

This was the rock we climbed. Necia is in the pink. Our instructor is in the hat. She is an instructor at the National Outdoor Leadership School and was very passionate about rock climbing!



We spent 10 minutes tying and untying this knot. Mine looks beautiful if I do say so myself :)

This was our group. There were five of us plus the instructor and her assistant.

Here is me learning how to belay.



This was my first climb, which was also my favorite. The shoes were the worst part. They reminded me of Chinese binding shoes. The instructor told us we would get used to them. It was a lie. My toes hurt so bad!

This was my second climb. This one was super hard. There was nowhere to put your hands and feet. My face pretty much sums up how I felt about this one, which is "are you serious?!?"

Rock climbing was a different and fun experience but Necia and I decided it probably wasn't our thing. On to the next adventure!

Week Off

We took a week off from work to spend some time with family and get out of town for a little while! It is really nice to have a job that allows us to leave for weeks at a time.

We really wanted to go boating so that was the first thing we did! And good thing because the rest of the week the weather was cold. Courtnie's brother and sister were home for the weekend and came with us.

Western Days was in full swing while we were there so we had to stop by and get an Elephant Ear.

Elephant Ears are a family favorite. Yum!

We played a round of disc golf at the park. The course was ridiculously hard! We couldn't even find a few holes. Luke and Eric were the only ones keeping score. Lindsey and I were just there for fun. Eric lost a disc in the water hazard. It sunk like a rock and was washed down the creek. That didn't stop Luke from jumping in and trying to find it.

The rain and colder weather gave us plenty of time to hang out inside and play some games. Here we are in the middle of an exciting round of Spoons. (Lindsey lost by the way).

The sun came back out so we decided to go for a walk along the canyon with the dogs. We tried to wait for a couple of base jumpers but they took too long so we left without seeing them jump.

We stopped and did a session at the temple. We love to go to the temple as often as we can.

The second weekend we spent with Luke's family. Philip and Cindy went to a play on Saturday so we went with Zach and Jayme go-karting (since the weather ruined our boating plans). It was pretty exciting! The karts went 40mph.

We forgot to set the camera back to color photos after shooting some black and white around the temple. Oops!

Zach slammed me into the wall for the win. Jayme came in second with Luke in third. Then we met up with the parents and had some delicious dinner at Texas Roadhouse.

Rainy Weekend

I had two days off of work to do some yard work and of course it rained both days all day long! So I decided to try a couple of projects that I saw on Pinterest.

I bought a couple of packets of buttons from the only craft store I have (Walmart). 

I used masking tape to make the lines.

Then I painted the lines. I didn't have any red paint so I used some red spray paint that I already had. The spray paint ran a little more than the acrylic paint.

 Luke had to help me make the star look more like a star.

The one I saw on Pinterest was the Valentine's Day one and since the canvas came in a pack of two I made one for the Fourth of July as well! 

Saturday

This spring is providing plenty of yard work to keep us busy. This past Saturday we went for a bike ride with the young men and women from church. We brought Baxter along and he loved it. Luke's favorite part was Blizzards at the end.

On the way home Courtnie got a flat tire and while she was walking the bike Baxter stopped in front of her and while she tried to dodge him she kicked her pedal. Nice bruise huh?

Once we got back we started in on the yard work. This back corner will be a garden area.

Before:

After:

We planted several rows of corn and carrots and some strawberries. Now we hope they will grow!

This space beside the house is for Courtnie's favorite part of the garden: Sweet Peas.

The last overgrown section will be next week's project. Once we get the grass and weeds out we will plant beautiful flowers. The yard work never seems to end!

  

Baxter is so helpful when we do yard work. He was helping me mow the lawn and this was the result:

The picture doesn't really do justice to how covered in grass he was and how green his feet were.

Temple Trip

Our ward had a temple trip this weekend to the Salt Lake temple. The five hour drive was a little long but worth it! After the temple session we walked around the grounds and enjoyed a little bit of the beautiful day.

 We were getting ideas for our flower garden as we looked at all the pretty flowers.

 The new City Creek mall opened just across from the temple grounds so we decided to check it out before driving home. We ate a delicious lunch at Kneaders. When the cashier asked for a name, Luke said "Luke", and the chashier said "Ok, Newton" and gave us our number. We laughed. Luke and Newton sound so similar :)

 

 The mall had a Tiffany's and I made Luke walk through with me just for fun. It sparkeled so much!



Yum!

The other day I got a craving for orange rolls. I am a seriously horrible cook when it comes to baking bread. It never turns out right, until I found an awesome recipe. Voila! I can make bread. So I thought I would give orange rolls a try. They turned out great!

The cinnamon rolls didn't turn out quite as pretty as the orange rolls but everything tasted delicious. Yum!