We had a fun 4th of July weekend, with Dwayne's parents in for a visit from Kansas. We went to the pool (on an abnormally cool 3rd of July),
attended the (Draper) traditional 4th of July parade in Carmel,

and then had fun with lots of boys and lots of fireworks!

Whenever Daniel goes unsupervised in our garage, he goes straight for the two kid-sized snow shovels and proceeds to scrape them across driveway, grass and sidewalks.
Daniel has definitely reached the age when he knows he's a (cute) rascal.


Stuart has been asking us for the last few weeks if he could take the training wheels off his bike. He hadn't even tried them unbalanced yet (he was basically riding a tricycle), but was undeterred by comments from a more fearful Simon like, "Stuart, it's not as easy as it looks." (Simon is not the most courageous kid I've ever met in terms of mastering new skills and has yet to let us so much as loosen his training wheels). Anyways, we unbalanced them quite a bit for him (I think he needs a couple more days of practice before we take them all the way off) and here he is, proudly sporting his helmet and gear and trying to ride "super speedy." Hmmm....I think his bike is getting too small.

So the obvious lapse of time between seedlings not yet in the ground (my last post) and harvesting vegetables (this one) shows how long I've been away from our blog, but I have two good excuses: a trip to Europe (with it's attendant preparations and recovery afterwards) in May, and a broken digital camera for most of the rest of the summer. I'm coming to re-acknowledge the fact that I have three children and a home to take care of and can't vacation carefree in Europe any longer, and my camera is now fixed, so I'm back!

I will post some pictures of the vegetable beds soon, along with a surprise that popped up and took over our compost pile this season. But back to the post title--beans! My mom gave me a pound of heirloom Vaquero beans from Rancho Gordo at Christmas. We cooked and savored most of them, but I kept a few aside to try in the garden this year. I knew what they should look like, but it was still amazing to pick the plain-looking dry pods today

and have these pop out!
I don't think growing bush beans for drying is the most efficient or cost-effective use of garden space, but I think I'll do a couple plants of different kinds each year, just because opening the pods made me so happy.

Simon and Stuart also helped me harvest some mature potatoes yesterday. If you've never done this with little kids (which I hadn't until yesterday), it's WAY better than an Easter egg hunt, and not just because the prize is potatoes instead of more unwanted candy. Digging in the dirt, finding earthworms and potatoes big and small--that is seriously my idea of fun! Yield was about 5 pounds for 4 eyes planted. Here they are:

We are so excited that Spring is here! We've spent a lot of time the last couple of months reading and planning and purchasing supplies for our vegetable garden this year. We chose a spot for raised beds last fall and had some stuff composting there over winter to kill the grass. When the weather warmed a couple weeks ago, we borrowed a tiller and mixed it all up. There were still some clumps of viable grass, but the mulched leaves/grass clippings mixture on top had decomposed nicely into a crumblier texture. We looked into the Square Foot Gardening method and decided we would try many of its principles in this year's garden. Dwayne has been busy building the boxes (with little helpers), and I've been working on making and acquiring good dirt, planning plant locations, and starting many of our veggies from seed. Here are Dwayne, Simon and Stuart, drilling holes in the wood to make the beds.




Here is the first set of beds, set in the ground. It's three 4X4 boxes, dug in slightly, leveled, terraced, and screwed together. Only six more to go! I think they look great and thanks to Dwayne's attention to detail, they are precisely level and should drain well.



Here are some of my little veggie babies. We have a shop light hanging from the rod in the guest room closet. It's been easier than I thought it would be to get the plants going, but now they're getting bigger, and I'm not sure where they're all going to live until planting time in May.... Part of the problem is that I I planted 60+ tomato plants, planning to share many with family and friends, but by the time they're ready to plant outside, they'll be taking up some serious counter space. I might have to give them away a little early and make people find their own sunny window.

For our St. Patrick's Day breakfast, we had an apple puffy pancake with green sprinkles and a green chocolate banana smoothie. Here are two versions of the recipe (the riper the bananas, the sweeter the end result):

2-3 overripe bananas, peeled, cut up and frozen
1-2 cups milk
1-2 T. cocoa powder
green food coloring (or spinach if you have a VitaMix)

Now the dairy-free version (taught to me by Veronica):

2-3 overripe bananas, peeled, cut up and frozen
1-2 cups water
1 handful whole almonds
1-2 T. cocoa powder
green food coloring (or spinach if you have a VitaMix)

The almonds definitely blend up better in a VitaMix, but make a respectable smoothie in my Bosch blender as well. Here are some testaments to its yumminess!

So back to Star Wars: We found some fun video games online that we've let the boys (Dwayne is included here :-) play occasionally. After Simon had been playing for a while one day, I told him that if he wanted to stay on the computer, he needed to do some "learning" games, not just fun games. He said, "But Mom, Star Wars is a learning game."

"What do you mean?"

"We're learning to use the Force."

Trying to capitalize in an uplifting way on Simon and Stuart's intense interest in weapons and battles, we had a family home evening lesson on the Armour of God. Here is our makeshift armour.

We enjoyed having Brian and Veronica and family visit in January as they returned from Brian's internship in sunny Florida to mid-winter Boston. Ivy is such a treat to have around. She is one of the smiliest baby's I've ever met (especially in contrast to Daniel who is slow to bestow a smile on anyone).

Lance, Spencer, Simon and Stuart were all so excited to have extra friends around all week that they usually woke up and hour or two earlier than usual just to enjoy each other's company. Only problem was the resultant fatigue and bad moods that usually surfaced right after breakfast and sometimes lasted throughout the day. They really enjoyed drawing together, and we can definitely credit Lance for Simon's recent interest (or perhaps better put, obsession) with drawing all things machine-like, especially things from Star Wars.

Dwayne is the birthday cake decorator in our family. He's much more careful and patient than I could ever be with that kind of project. I realized as he was laying a new tile floor in our laundry room how cake decorating and tiling were quite similar. He enjoys both and does a great job, so I'm just grateful neither task falls on me.

Simon loved his cake, especially the action figures decorating the top. He turned five in January. It's going by so quickly! We had a small party at my parents' after a Sunday dinner.

Daniel is starting to test limits. He gets so much attention when he stands in his high chair that that's probably why he does it. Stuart uses a very stern voice and says, "Daniel, sit down on your bottom bum!"

Daniel also has two very large top front teeth (plus some since this posting is happening 3 months after the picture was taken!).

If I were asked what Stuart's favorite toy is, I think I would have to say it is a blanket. He definitely has a preference for two or three particular ones, but in a pinch, any blanket will do. He turns them into boats by piling them up around him on the floor, into caves by draping them over a table, and most often of all, turns himself into a mythological creature that he invented named, "Tiki Tiki." Here is what Tiki Tiki looks like. Pretty cute creature, I think!

The snow fell a couple of times this winter. The first storm was just a dusting, but the boys were so excited to try out their new snow shovels. I hope they are this willing to help when they are teenagers!


At the end of January we got a lot of snow! It was enough for shoveling, sledding, and even digging out a snow fort complete with a secret hole in which to stow emergency rations--graham crackers, gum, and a fruit leather. Here are all the boys during a break from a tiring morning of clearing the driveway.

Simon insisted that we leave one whole carrot for each of Santa's reindeer.

Daniel cooperated by wearing the baby Christmas outfit that my mom has had since we were babies.

Simon is trying out multiple Christmas gifts at once.

We hosted a family home evening with Kara's parents and her two sisters and their families in attendance. We assigned everyone parts and acted out the nativity story, with Grandpa as the narrator. Stuart was a very cute sheep.

Simon was a shepherd who could have used some lessons on gentle sheep-herding. Dwayne was a donkey who was tagging along with the shepherd and sheep (to help them remember their lines).

Daniel wasn't thrilled to be laying in a manger, so decided to stand up.

Simon convinced me to buy some mini bananas at the store, just for Daniel. They did turn out to be just his size and it was mighty cute to watch him eat them!

The boys were great helpers decorating the tree.

This doesn't look like much snow, but it's the first time either of the boys remember seeing it, so they were very excited to get outside and play. Fortunately it was very wet and sticky, so making a snowman wasn't too much of a chore. He actually stayed there for a week or two before it finally warmed up enough to melt him.

Dwayne's dad visited us in Novemeber. One morning (after hearing me complain about Daniel's nighttime wake-ups) he snuck in and got a crying Daniel out of bed and took him downstairs so I could sleep. Daniel was hungry, but not wanting to wake me up, and not finding any food for him, he fed him some "Trix" that he had brought for the older boys. You can't see it well enough in the picture, but by the time I woke up, Daniel's white pajamas were multi-colored from Trix-drool.

Ed loves to make hopscotch and they boys love to help!


Ed made an awesome "Airplane Book," for the boys. It's complete with all-color images, a table of contents, and personalized pages with pictures of the boys' favorite planes and relatives associated with flying. Simon especially loves it!

One of the main things that excites me about finally owning a home is that I can invest time in a garden, which can hopefully get better each year. I enjoyed growing things in all of the places we've lived (community garden in Salt Lake, small garden plot behind our house in Colorado Springs, lots of containers in our concrete yard in California), but always knew I'd be leaving in a season or two.

Shortly after we moved here, I enrolled in a 14-week gardening course offered through the county extension office. I basically learned that I don't know much yet, but it gave me a good basis to learn from each year as I work in our yard on the landscaping as well as the vegetable garden. I'm also very excited about composting and started a pile in the back of our yard as soon as we moved in. By the time we put these beds in in November, we had some nice rich compost to add to the tops of them. We measured off each bed, put down several sheets of newspaper, covering the whole area, then layered on mulched leaves, grass clippings, compost, soil, etc. The goal is that by Spring, it will be broken down enough to till into the smothered turf below, after which we will build raised beds around each spot and bring in some more soil. I've made some good gardening friends at church and have my mom nearby who has gardened for years, so hope to be able to learn from them. The boys are excited to help, and Simon even dislocated his radius (while helping over-enthusiastically) when we laid these beds! They look very small in the pictures, but are 4X12 feet each, with room on both sides to put in more as we learn what we're doing.

Four cute boys on Halloween.



My mom hosted a Halloween party for the family and a few friends. We enjoyed yummy soups and bread, then the kids went trick-or-treating. They came home to homemade doughnuts made by my sister, Kelsey. Very delicious!