The Prophet said to plant a garden.....

Lea was singing this song the other day and it's been on my mind for a few months now. The idea of a garden, not the song. And since I was blessed with anything but a green thumbs - I can kill off a cactus and rose bush. Supposedly two of the hardest and almost impossible plants to get rid of...........oops. :)

In our first trip to Home Depot for the water barrel platforms, we purchased 4, 3ft boards from the clearance bin (51 cents).....note to self, don't buy the cheap stuff. Much easier to work with boards that are straight and fit together. And have a work space big enough to hold the project.....lesson learned. This past Saturday it was my turn for power tools, trips to Home Depot and staring at boards hoping they'll just put themselves together. We built a lopsided, parallelogram, Square foot garden box. You'll just have to look at the pictures to see what I'm talking about.

See what I mean.....not an exact square, but it works for the purpose. My plants aren't going to care. :)

Lay down a ground cover (we used two garbage bags), put the box down, filler up!

Home Depot sells these bags of soil especially made for the square foot garden and there was a display in the garden section - go check it out!

 One of my cute helpers - she tried to eat the dirt, spread it out and then dig up what I had planted, but she was soooooo helpful.............

Add the grid with string attached to nails - gotta have the squares - one crop for each square

Wah-lah! We have a garden.....cross your fingers we can make it grow!!

Corn, corn, peppers

watermelon, watermelon, cucumbers

strawberries, strawberries, flowers the kids were given at the Home Depot workshop last week with Jeff

Spring break

Last week was spring break for Lea. After 2 days of pouring rain, it was time to do something!?! What can we do.....A GIRL PARTY! Surely there were other friends of Lea's who were bored as well and needing to fill their time elsewhere. :) So we threw together a girl party and Erin was there to take Lucas. It was an unusually busy Wednesday morning for us. We had the Dish Network guy here, Beckers came by, Findlays came by, Beckers came back and Jeff was working from home for the morning. Jeff finally went to work and the Dish guy left. Beckers came back to get Lucas, the girls started showing up and I get this from the house. "MOM! Abbey took her diaper off at the table!" WHAT?! Sure enough, walk back in and there the girl stood in the buff.......diaper sitting on the table and her booster seat "wet"......ugh!? Hurry clean her up, answer the door, get her dressed (wrestle mania smack down to get this done), put her to bed. whew - time to start the fun. (Don't worry I cleaned the table and put a table cloth on.) :) A few highlights from the girls.

We rocked out to the Hannah Montana soundtrack and had a great Girl/No boys allowed/party. :)

Doing the splits....wow!

Scooters and chalk drawings: Laura, Rachel, Halle, Lea, Halle

Lea fell off the scooter and her friends were there to help out. Rachel was so sweet and held her hand all the way down the street back to our house.

Backyard fun

Ate lunch, decorated cupcakes with a lot of M&M's and a little bit of cupcake, painted nails and had good ole time.

Erin called from the park to tell us about the helicopter flying close to our house. We ran out to see what was going on - happy to say this is not a staged picture - it's just dang cute!

The helicopter turned out to be a crop duster, but it was literally finishing the turns for the field about 100 yards from our backyard. Hope you can see it - was recording into the sun.

Soccer........again.

I feel like every 10 posts are about soccer, but it's so much fun and Lea finished another season! Part of the reason I love AZ is the kids can play soccer year round and anything else outside year round without freezing - although that's part of the fun they get to miss out on. Playing with gloves, hats and long sleeves, while fans are wrapped head-to-toe in winter gear and layers upon layers of blankets.

I wish I still had this photo of my family watching my niece play soccer - makes me really appreciate the nice winters we have. Plus that was how I played growing up - in the cold. Every time the ball hit you, it stung and left the occasional ball print on your leg.........that was a lot of fun. :)

Back to Lea: the Sharks - again this season we struggled to get her excited to play and the practices were within walking distance of our house. The first few practices she was sick, but I made her go watch anyway. Another she refused to practice and lucky for her, Grandma and Grandpa and Great-Grandma were coming that weekend or she would have missed a game too - no practice, no game. The last 3 practices, she finally got into it. She loves to play defense and gets quite embarrassed when we cheer overly loud for her, but deep down she loves it! :) Not a winning season - not even sure they won a game, but they did score a few more times this season, than last. A few photo highlights:

 

Abbey loved to run and give Lea a hug and high five when she came off the field.

  

 

 

 Ethan celebrating after scoring a goal (goalie is a friend of Lea's from school - Taite)

 

Check out those mad defensive skills... YEAH!

 

 Playing goalie with Jeff close by to give pointers and to help the inexperienced ref.

  

 SHARKS Team photo: Charlie, Elizabeth, Carson, Lea, Aedan, Coach Elison

Caeden, Madison, Theron, Ethan

Missing: Brisa

  

 

And the pizza party! This time is was Papa Murphy's instead of Duner's - HUGE improvement! Big THANKS to the Laveen Soccer crew - another great season! Next fall, Lucas gets to play so we'll be doing 2 games every Saturday......can't wait! :)

Child #4

So after my rant a few posts down about our rough Sunday morning, I've had time to reflect and there were a few tender mercies to make the day bearable and somewhat enjoyable - in hindsight. It's rare when Jeff gets to attend our ward with us and he was even there before we were. Which he should be because his commute is about 100 steps from the Stake Offices to the chapel.  We were sitting behind the Lisonbees (we are in the babysitting co-op together) and their daughter Laura (she's Lea's age) was turned around with her fingers on top of the bench. Jeff started teasing her trying to get her fingers. Then they switched roles and Jeff was too slow and there was this loud SLAP! She had hit his whole hand! I look up to see Nerissa (Laura's mom) turn around in surprise because it was Jeff! and not Lucas as she had expected.......She jokingly scolded him she was going to send him to the hallway and did he need to be moved.....yes, please! :)  So who knew I had 4 kids.......thought I still had 3........Thankfully Nerissa's husband Darin agreed he was the same way - just made me feel better I didn't have the only disruptive husband in sacrament meeting......love you hubby! :)

I think he gets it from her...... :)

Realization

Another Sunday moment......a harsh realization that I'm getting older and my kids are growing up so fast! In RS there was an announcement for "It's Great to be Eight" for all kids turning eight this coming year. Lea is turning 7! We are only a year away from attending this and a year and a half away from her baptism.......where did the time go?! Seems like yesterday we only had her but at the same time that seems ages ago. I look forward to her going to Activity Days and being baptized. She's excited too as she's been to plenty of Activity day activities in the past 3 years when I was leader. She looks up to those girls and they were good examples for her.

Sunday Highlight

Lucas was asked to give the opening prayer in Primary (unlike his mother at age 3, he can do it by himself!) Jeff and I were both there and in the back row. He stood up to the microphone - a counselor was behind him and I think asked if he needed help. Instead he pointed to the back of the room and said something to her about his dad being on the back row. :) Little shout out for his dad and buddy. He said the prayer and sat down - what a cute kid!