Gardening 101

I am still by no means a "gardener." However, I have been really excited to watch the seeds I planted in May sprout and grown into a full blown garden. In fact, I think I over-seeded. My plants are too big for their containers now! I hope their roots are able to still do their job and I get some good fruits. It was the coolest Spring activity to water and keep an eye on the garden. 

Now we are close to harvesting some zucchini! There are a few baby tomatoes on the tomato plant, but they aren't very big yet and are still green. Maybe in a few more weeks?

The same zucchini two weeks later. Almost ready!

As for the spinach, I didn't realize I was supposed to harvest it within 7 days of leaf growth, so I missed out on eating it. Next year for sure. My broccoli plants are growing huge, but there are no flowers or edible broccoli sprouts on it. I know it's more of a cold weather plant so I'm still watering it and hoping it might yield a head or two of broccoli come Fall.

The herbs are beautiful and smell amazing. My cilantro went to seed before I could use it. :( Still learning about when to harvest what. Next year I will have a better idea and I will go with my gut about when I think it's ready. The dill tasted great. The basil smells fantastic and the parsley still looks good. I'm hoping to cut and dry the dill and parsley next week. The red pepper plant is getting bigger and bigger but there are no signs of any peppers. We shall see.

I made tartar sauce with some of the fresh dill. Yum!

There are green onions and regular onions in there with the tomato plant but they are kind of overshadowed and I'm not sure when I should harvest them. Another wait and see?

Overall it has been a super fun experiment and at least I will for sure be getting some yummy grilled zucchini out of it! I think it was the prettiest when it was first sprouted. I will definitely garden again next spring, but I may change up what I grow.

Home Sweet Home

If you just looked at our blog you might think we never stay home! But the truth is we are home most of the time. Every once in awhile we venture out and do something fun. This post consists of happy moments at home. They aren't even all this cute and happy, but I generally don't whip out the camera when the kids are grouchy and fighting or when I'm doing dishes or vacuuming. 

This is Talia at dinner grumpy about something we asked her to do. I can't remember what.

I am so grateful that for the most part my kids love each other, are kind to one another, and play well together. It's not always a party, but I'm glad that I'm home to see and capture some of their more loving moments. :)

Weston is such a good big brother. He loves to have Beckett climb all over him. He will even let Talia climb on him. He is good about including them when he and Dav are playing in the basement. He also gets along great with Davin. They play together for hours. Davin and Weston are buds and are entertained by Legos for days on end.

We also spend a lot of time playing on screens when we are home. The boys love playing Super Smash Bros. and Wii Fit games on the Wii. Talia would watch shows all day if I let her. Her favorites are Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, Doc McStuffins, and Super Why. Beckett is usually content to play cars in front of whatever is on the TV.

Davin and Talia are my kids that fight the most. They struggle to get along, but the other day we walked over to the little park and we were the only ones there. They did great playing on the playground together, then I looked up and they were sitting in the grass like this and my heart melted. I hope they will do better together over time.

Beckett loves playing in my closet while I'm getting ready for the day. Some days I swear he and Tal get out all of my shoes. It's kind of annoying, but pretty dang cute. Beckett also loves to play on the piano. I keep it closed most of the time, but when I open it up he's right there ready to play. :) He also is SO close to talking. He is finally saying more words: mama, dada, brothers, bubble, go, up, uh oh, wow. He also can do animal noises for horse, cow, bear, duck, pig, fish, elephant, etc. I'm looking forward to him learning to say yes, please, more, drink, and his siblings' names.

This was me trying to get him to say "brothers" on camera. He wouldn't do it, but he had said it perfectly right before this and he loved watching himself onscreen.

To sum up . . . I love that I get to stay home with these little munchkins and that I never miss a sweet moment. It makes all the grouchy, squabbling moments less awful. :) Also we stay home a lot. It's hard taking this whole crew out and about! 

Date Night

I had been wanting to spend a little quality time with Davin, so I took him out on a date! We had an awesome time. He is such a cute, funny kid. We used his In N Out gift card that he won at Mel and Brad's BBQ, so he paid for dinner. It ended up costing $.02 after the gift card. He was proud of himself for paying for dinner. We had some good conversation aside from the fact that he speaks way too quietly and I had to ask him to repeat almost everything he said.

We talked about his friends. Who is nice to him (pretty much he gets along with everyone) and who isn't (just one kid I already knew about). He told me out of the blue that he knows the difference between a cowboy and a shepherd. I was intrigued. He explained that cowboys have to push the cows along, but a shepherd walks in front of the sheep and they follow him. He said that it's kind of like how we follow Jesus. I'm always impressed with what sticks with kids. I'm thankful he has such awesome primary teachers!

After dinner I gave him a couple dessert choices, but he chose picking out a candy at the dollar store to take with us to the movie. So we ran into Dollar Tree and both picked a box of Junior Mints. Then we headed over to the theater to see How to Train Your Dragon 2. We were there a little early so we got to hang out and watch all the commercials and trivia. The movie was fun. Davin loved it. I maintain that the first HTTYD was better, but the sequel was pretty good too. :)

I had to laugh because Davin did not inherit my major sweet tooth. I kept asking him if he wanted to open his candy and he had to tell me about 4 times "I'll tell you when I'm ready for it Mom!" I had already almost polished off my entire box by the time he finally asked for his. I am glad I got to spend some time with my Dav man. Love him!

Discovery Gateway Museum

We took a couple of days off from major outings, but on Friday we were at it again. In the afternoon we went and picked up Ian from work and we all went up to the Discovery Gateway Museum to play. Jules and Rick gave us tickets to the museum for Christmas and the kids had been asking to go for awhile. It took forever to find a day Ian could come with us though!

We hadn't been to this museum in a long time, but the kids remembered some of their favorite things there. There were also some new things to do and see. We started in the ball room, which is always a hit. Talia only used blue balls. Weston was such a good helper with gathering balls for Beckett. And Davin was all about filling up the ball bins.

Next we went into the Kid's Eye View room. Basically kid town. It was a blast. The museum wasn't super crowded so the kids didn't have to fight to play with anything. It was perfect. Weston spent the entire time in that area being the mailman and delivering different items all over the "town." I mostly followed Beckett around. He loved it all. Especially the water table, the little slide in the baby section, and driving the cars. Davin was at the perfect age for this place. He knew how to use everything and spent a good amount of time in the store area. He also got into the dressing up and played police with another kid.

(Is it bad that I thought he kinda looked like a stripper in his cop outfit?)

When we finished in the kid town area we left and walked over to the food court for dinner. It was kind of stressful. Davin wanted Subway (it's pretty much his favorite), the other kids wanted McDonald's, and Ian and I wanted Panda Express. We got it figured out though and everyone was hungry and ate up!

We went back to the museum and headed upstairs. By then we practically had the place to ourselves. We did the puzzles and the magnet wall. We went outside to the helicopter and found that they had built a whole new exhibit out on the patio. It was an Intermountain Medical exhibit and simulated an ER. There was even touch screens to treat the "patients." Weston performed surgery on a kid's femur on the touch screen. He said it was kind of gross.

The Lifeflight helicopter was pretty much the same but with an added "patient" in the back along with instructions on how to treat him.

There was a temporary Bob the Builder exhibit set up in the back room. I spent the last hour there with Talia and Beckett. Weston and Davin popped in for a little while too. I thought it was really cute. Lots of interaction things to do. All of the life sized characters talked. The water pump installation was by far the favorite though. Beckett could have played there forever! There was a tube that sucked the balls up into the pump then spit them out the other end from the "spigots." Super fun.

We had a great time playing together as a family. Thanks again for the fun Christmas gift Garcia's! :)

Tracy Aviary

Our Pass of All Passes gets us $1 admission to the Tracy Aviary on Tuesdays. I had been wanting to go all summer, but we always ended up having stuff going on every Tuesday! I seriously debated about going the day after we did Daybreak Lake, but decided we may as well. I would just have to take a nap that afternoon. :)

I'm glad we went partly because we had a great time and partly because it has only gotten hotter since then. I hadn't been to the aviary in a few years. They had revamped it quite a bit! It really is a fun alternative to the zoo. Next time we will try to go see the bird show. This time I just wasn't up for trying to get Beckett to sit still for 30 minutes.

The kids all loved seeing the birds. Especially Beckett. He has loved birds for awhile now. He will stop playing and watch whenever there are birds flying in the sky. He babbles like crazy if he sees a bird on our fence or lawn or in our tree. It's very exciting for his little toddler self, so the aviary was pretty much awesome. It wasn't super crowded so we were able to see everything we wanted to see.

This little wetlands exhibit was neat because the birds weren't in cages. The whole area was enclosed. It made me nervous though with that water all around and no railing. I thought Beckett might run off the edge trying to touch a bird. These birds were super cool with looong, skinny beaks and legs.

Another highlight was the owl exhibit. There was a fun little tree house to climb in too. Beckett thought the owls were fascinating and he recently learned what they say ("whoo. whoo.") so it was adorable. We saw some pretty interesting looking owls up close.

Our favorite as a group was the King Vulture. It looked really exotic and cool. It also moved a lot while we were watching it and made noise. We watched it get a drink and fly around it's enclosure a little bit too.

We tried to spot all the species in the main bird building. We came pretty close. There were only a few we couldn't find. Everyone liked seeing the toucans and parrots. Talia liked any bird that was blue or had blue in it's name. She was excited when she found a blue flower while we were walking around. We all thought the Scarlet Ibis was the prettiest though.

I think Beckett liked the flamingos the best. They are fun to watch and they jabber non-stop. Beckett cried and kept running back to the flamingos when we tried to move on. Luckily the next stop was a little room you could go in and watch the birds run around your feet and fly over your head. It was awesome. Beckett stopped crying when we went in there.

Towards the end we happened upon this fun stone path and play area. The kids went crazy jumping around on the stones. They also took a little rest in "Fort Awesome."

Davin fell and hit his knee pretty hard on a big log by the stone path, so he was sad and sitting in the stroller. Luckily the next bird we saw was his favorite, a Golden Eagle. He perked up for a picture with them.

On our way out we peeked at the napping South American Condor, a few other south american birds, and the pelicans. The last stop was playing on the cool sculpture at the entrance.

It was getting hot and we were all hungry, so we went out and got our picnic and ate on the grass near the car then headed home. Amazingly I was able to keep Talia and Beckett awake the whole way home and they took naps in their beds! Yay! It was a fun outing. I think we will go back again in the Fall when the weather cools off and take Ian with us!

Daybreak Lake

We got together with our friends, the Matagi's, for a beautiful afternoon at Daybreak Lake! I had never been out there, but I had heard about it. Tara lives really close to it, so we headed out her way. She picked up a couple of pizzas to take with us and we ate and played. 

The kids loved the lake! It was simply beautiful. The only drawback is that there aren't bathrooms. Beckett didn't like walking on the sand at first, but after about 10 minutes he got used to it and was wandering all over the shore and playing in the sand. Tara and I actually got to sit back and relax and visit while the kids played. We reveled in the fact that our kids are all old enough to play together without us being within arms reach.

Weston and Kenzie were helpful with the babies and Weston loved being out in the water. Talia loved the water too. It wasn't freezing, which was nice. When they got restless with the water they could come play on the grass by us and eat snacks. Justin and Ian come and joined us after work for a little bit too. We will definitely have to go back!