City of Rocks

We took a family day and went to the south hills to the City of Rocks.

Pioneer graffiti

One large granite slab

You can't see it, but there were people out there rock climbing up the face of those huge rocks

They made me nervous innumerable times on this trip.

5 months pregnant. I huffed and puffed a lot.

Playing see-saw on a log

Exploring the nooks and crannies

Blowing raspberries on daddy's head

Beauty and the Baby

This is what happens when a very girly 4 year old sees her sparkly pink chapstick sitting benignly in the drawer, and suddenly feels that her eyebrows could use some color.

I've been a lot bit sick with a little bit of baby. We're so excited to have one more little one join our family!

 

Parade and Fair

What parade have you ever been to where they pass out bricks of cheese? It helps living in dairy country.

Anne enjoyed all her siblings' efforts in the candy catching department.

Jacob and Xara enjoying the rides.

I don't have any good Bridget pictures from this adventure, but I promise she was there.

Fossils and F-18s

We decided to see some of the local sites the other day, and went to the Hagerman Fossil Beds. It was pretty interesting, and amazing that we haven't seen it in the 6 years we've been here.

They had a kids' corner at the museum, and the kids enjoyed the pelts. I think that was fox.

I've never seen the valley from this perspective. You can really tell where the water stops here in Idaho. Also, classic children faces.

Digging for fossils.

David's boss gave us some tickets to the Blue Angels air show. I stayed home with the girls, and had a special day with them. It would have been too hot, and not up their alley. I don't think they would have enjoyed it. So we did princessy things. I painted Bridget's fingernails, we played dolls, and I let her watch 2 princess shows, which she said were 'princessy enough'. I didn't get any pictures because David had the camera, but you can image the happy pink bubble she was in all day.

I think this is a tank.

Cool pose.

Cool planes.

Florida Weave

Here's how the Florida Weave is working out with the tomatoes so far. The corn isn't super happy right there, and I think it's because it gets extra water down at the end of the row. I'll be moving it somewhere else next year. I planted 60 day corn this year, and we're getting ready to harvest the first ears tomorrow. This is the fun phase of the garden, when everything gets big and fills it out.

There are Armenian cucumbers growing in the closest tripod, and pole beans on the one right behind it. (In case you were wondering, yes, Anne is playing in the mud, and Bridget and Jacob are getting ready to. It just has to be done, I guess, because they've never come away from the garden clean yet.)

Camping and Other Stuff

Here's what we've been up to in the month of June. It passed before I knew it!


We find the strangest things in our ditch from the irrigation water. This time it was a baby catfish. We went on a walk and took it back to the river. The kids always want to keep whatever animal it is as a pet, but second best is putting it back in the river. It's almost as much fun.

We demolished our old driveway, and poured new concrete. It went really well this time, and we're happy with how it turned out. We've decided that it takes a couple of times before you know what you're doing and it goes smoothly.

The garden is growing well, and has produced a lot of food for us already. This picture is about 3 weeks old, so I need to take an updated one already.

Kidnapper ice cream van... or so it seemed.

Camping.

 M&Ms

Bridget loved all the wildflowers growing.

The colorful swiss chard I'm growing.

Swallows had burrowed out holes in this hillside. I didn't know that did that, but apparently so.

This Year's Garden

I'm so happy for the extra warm spring we've had. It's let me get out and garden earlier than normal this year. We finished planting the garden over the weekend, and yesterday I got my first harvest of spinach and lettuce. (I planted those back in March) The kids really love the fresh spinach...go figure. It's a good thing, because we have plenty.

I'm trying to grow a lot of things vertically this year, and they've asked us to put flowers in our garden plots to help out the bees. No problem, I love flowers. So the long sticks you see have morning glory and black-eyed susan vine planted around them. The sticks that make up the tripods have armenian cucumbers, and pole beans growing up them. I also have peas growing between 2 sticks in the very back of the picture.

The things growing between the T-posts are my tomatoes. I've given up on tomato cages. They're pretty worthless. They always bend when I try to put them in the soil, and the tomatoes outgrow them and flop over every year. So this year I'm trying a system similar to the Florida Weave. I need to tighten up the twine, but you get the basic idea. As the tomatoes grow, I'll add another line of twine every 4 inches or so.

David made a better watering system for us this year. Mini gated pipe! It does a really good job, and waters the garden more quickly. It also saturates it better too, so we shouldn't have stunted plants in the middle like last year. You may notice that the garden is twice as big as last year. Let's call it "imminent domain". Just kidding. The plots around us weren't being used, so we asked if we could garden one more next to us. We've got pumpkins and winter squash growing in there, along with cabbage and eggplant, and some flowers and herbs and other random things. I love the growing season!