Our first garden!

This summer is going to be a learning experience for us because we are finally growing our first garden...with the help of Curtis's sister!  We are fortunate enough to be able to use the land behind Curtis's sister's house.  She is renting but the owners said we could use some land for a garden.  I think our garden spot ended up being about 50' by 25' approximately.  We spent the last couple of weeks getting everything planted and Curtis putting in a watering system.  Some of our seeds have even already sprouted.  We are so excited!

 Not all of our plants are seeds.  We bought a bunch of starts too.

 Garrett got his shirt wet so he took it off.  I hope this doesn't become a habit later in life, lol.

 Our garden was 75% finished with planting at this point.

 The kids had plenty of room to run around and were having a good time getting dirty!

 Our corn is sprouting already this week!

And today we picked our first strawberries of the season which were actually grown at our house.  They are the only food we have growing at home.  They were the only things I planted last summer and now they are taking off and spreading.  Yummy!

May Days

 My beautiful flowers and cards for Mother's Day

 Nikki and I on her first field trip to the Birds of Prey and the zoo.  It was pretty comfortable riding on a charter bus.  We were very lucky!

 Nikki with two of her friends from her class and in our group.

 One afternoon we went to the park and had a picnic.  There were some nice big climbing trees nearby.

 Okay, my kids didn't actually climb that tree.  Curtis had to help them up but they had fun sitting up there, hehe.

 We went to Parade America a couple of weeks ago.

 Can you see us in the reflection of the big fire truck?

 After the parade it was chill out and eat time at Jade Garden.  Jack made himself right at home.

Then last week on the last day of May my Dad came home from Iraq for good!  I'm so happy to have no more family in Iraq!  Hopefully it will stay that way  :)

A clean garage is a happy garage :)

Curtis wasn't working last Thursday afternoon so we took the opportunity to do some spring cleaning in our garage.  Unfortunately I did not get a 'before" picture.  But here is what it looks like now.

 We previously had these shelves split up on both sides of the garage.  We decided to put them together to make our shelves deeper and it turns out that it utilizes the space a lot better and we have room to spare.  Of course some things that were on the shelves were either put in the attic, the shed, or given away.

 Our bike and recreation corner.

 Curtis made and hung up a coat hanger.  And the shoes that aren't in our closet are out here(mostly our dirty shoes like hiking, working, and snow boots).  That foil looking stuff in the corner is going to go in the attic which will help our insulation and hopefully our heating/AC bills.

 Curtis built another hanger for our cleaning and yard tools.  And now we have a place to hang our bike trailer and to park Jack's little car.

There you have it!  A nice spacious clean garage.  Lots of space for the van.  It's a wonderful thing!

All the white bags you see on the right are filled with baby boy clothes.  Not really sure what to do with them at the moment.  Hopefully my sister in law will come over soon and we can go through them and get rid of the ones we don't want anymore.  Then we'll go from there.

French bread

Last month my visiting teaching partner taught me and one of our sisters we visit how to make French bread.  Last Thursday I decided I better try making it on my own before I forget how.

I was pretty pleased at how they turned out, both in look and taste.  I am so excited that I learned how to do French bread that I can't wait to try something new.  Hmmm, what to do next?