15 Year Class Reunion

I had my 15 year class reunion the weekend before the 4th of July. Can you believe I've been out of school for 15 years? Sometimes it seems like I just left high school and at other times it seems like it's been several life times since I left high school.

This is a friend that attended all of elementary school, junior high, high school and church with me. I haven't seen her in a long time but she's just the same. It's so great!

One of my close high school friends was planning on attending...she paid her money...and at the last minute her husband and daughter got the flu and she was unable to attend. Luckily I had a few other friends show up. We had a great visit at our luau...enjoyed the food...enjoyed the entertainment and seeing so many friends.

Here's a photo of me and my cousin. We both got trophies. Mine is for having "the most degrees" and my cousin has one for the oldest child and one for being the first one to pay to attend the reunion. I really don't have the most degrees but I was the only one that attended the reunion and had the most degrees and my cousin doesn't have the oldest child out of everyone, but he did have the oldest child for those that did attend the reunion.

I can't wait for the twenty year reunion. Should be lots of fun....

Parade

Growing up in a smallish town means that there are traditions...fun things like a parade before the rodeo. I was so excited to attend the parade with my parents, my sister and her boyfriend, and my brother and his family. My brother actually saved places and parking spots for us. In the above picture his daughter is sharing her snow cone with a good friend.

Here I am holding my hands over my nephews ears while my mom is holding him. The local police and fire department were using their sirens. As a child I was always a little unsure about this portion of the parade. I still don't like loud noises but as an adult I can handle it.

Here's my empty seat, between my parents and my sister and her boyfriend. My brother is the lurker in the back of the photo. I had a great time and loved reliving a tradition of my childhood.

Of course, I can't help but post this photo of my cute, chubby nephew...and of course, my mom and dad.

And here I am...with a huge smile on my face since I so excited for the parade.

Knitting Hats

Today we had a "girls day." This is a day that all the girls in the family gather together. This time we decided to work on our service project. We are knitting or crocheting scarves and hats to give to a homeless shelter this upcoming December.

This is me being a little silly. The round green thing is how I made my hat...and it's upside down. The hat looked awesome when I finished it.

It was also a lot of fun just to sit around and talk. It wasn't as peaceful as I made it sound. We still had all the kids at the house and so we were constantly checking on them or putting bandaids on some little hurt. And little kids always seem to be hungry.

This shows the table with different colors of yarn from which we could choose our yarn for the scarves or hats. (That sentence feels really awkward...sorry).

Let's just say that we had lots of fun and now I know how to make a hat on a round "thing."

Weeding

As most of you know, I love working outside in the beautiful weather. Last Friday my mom and I went to my brother's house to help him get a handle on the weeds in his front yard. Luckily, I remember to take some "before" picture and then the "after" pictures.

Because we've been having such great rain storms...we didn't have to water the flower beds before coming. They were perfect for weeding.

That side flower garden was never finished all the way. We worked and worked but found the dirt hard towards the top. We'll try to finish it next week...after it has been watered.

It was fun to weed out an area and find different flowering plants or bushes that had been hidden by all the tall weeds.
And here are some of the hard workers taking a break and eating fresh peas from my mom's garden. Yum!!
I love how beautiful the gardens look after they have been weeded.

Garden Update

It was just over a month ago...I think one month and one week ago that we planted our little garden. And it is growing "like a weed" except that it is not a weed. You can see that we even have little baby tomatoes starting.

SM will come home from work, change out of his suit and go out to talk to the garden. He also encourages growth in certain directions by placing the vines or leaves in certain areas. In the above picture he is working on the cucumber plant.

One of the pepper plants also has a small pepper growing.

When my father-in-law cuts the grass, he lays it down in the garden to prevent weeds from coming up between the plants. It also makes it easy for SM to walk around in his bare feet in the garden.

Friends from Virginia

I thought I'd post some of my friends from Virginia. These are pictures we took during our trip last week.

I enjoyed meeting a few new faces...as I said before, everyone stayed the same except the babies and expecting mothers.

A Post For My MOM

My mom is out of town...she's helping my sister-in-law who just had her third child. So, for the next week I'm incharge of her garden, lawn and anything else I want to do.

And since she is away from her yard, I thought I'd bring some of it to her. Today as I was finishing mowing her lawn, it started raining. And so then I had to take pictures of some of her flowers with the rain on them.

Aren't they beautiful?

I actually enjoy mowing the lawn. There's something theraputic about making the lawn look so beautiful.

And here are some photos of her garden. Look how it's growing! I've been watering and weeding and the sun is doing the rest.

It was actually raining as I took this picture. The better picture would have been me on the riding lawn mower...with a giant umbrella. I was almost done mowing and it started raining...so I quickly ran inside, grabbed a giant umbrella and finished mowing. Mom's neighbors commented on it later when I spoke to them.

From top to bottom...peas, two rows of carrots, beats, spinach and lettuce.

And I saved the best for last...lovely, large, yummy, red strawberries. I'm sorry you aren't around Mom to eat these with me. They are really good. I will try to leave some for you when you come home next week.