our labors

Our little strawberry plants have berries!! I ate the first berry!! YUM!! We also planted two different kinds of tomatoes, cucumber, cantaloupe, raspberries, and a blackberry plant. The raspberry and blackberries have a few new leaves. I'm not expecting much from them this year.  But the other three are growing and growing. They all have blossoms too! I check them regularly in hopes to see something to eat. 

Thursday the kitchen was pretty much complete. There are a couple of doors by the microwave I'm waiting on but they are finished. The rest is up to us. 

Friday, I attended the temple. It was nice. I still try and attend once a month by myself. It's something I've been doing since January 2012. I think I've missed once. I started to make it a point to go every month when I attended that February on Mom's birthday. I miss her...and Dad too. 

Saturday we started the wood floors. We found out on Saturday that the wood we chose needed to be glued down. We were not excited to hear that. We worked 6 hours on Saturday and finished about half of the eat in kitchen area. Not very much. 

Today we worked on the kitchen for 7 hours and we finished the eating area, cut the tile by the laundry room and finished the area between the island and the sink. All the way to the end of the island. We fill like we accomplished a lot. We're hoping to finish tomorrow. It will be another long day. 

We are having more terrible storms this evening. Thunder, lightening, it's too noisy to sleep. I hear this rain we've been getting is not normal, just like our extreme winter. It's been nice not worrying about watering our new plants, but we haven't had one week of nice, warm, summer weather. I hope we get some soon. Before our summer is over. 

twilight camp

Last week was Carson's first time at Twilight Camp. He was a little nervous the first day but loved every bit of it. 

Monday:

Tuesday:

I chaperoned on Tuesday. Brody and Carson wanted to be the first ones to their team flag, Apollo. 

We started out the day at the BB and archery range. It was a beautiful day!

Safety first, gotta love the glasses. 

Carson is making the solar system. 

Wolves and Bears from Pack 105. 

Teamwork to build a rocket. 

Blue arrowhead earned from archery. 

Wednesday:

Black arrowhead, all 5 arrows hit the target. 

Thursday:

I chaperoned again. 

The boys are doing some team building activities. 

Nerf darts. 

I had a turn to shoot the BB gun. 

All 5 of Carson's BB's hit his target. Mine did too! I even got a bullseye!!

The boys then had a chance to dissect an owl pellet. They loved it!! The gloves, the tweezers, everything. :-)

Carson's alien. 

Friday:

They had a family picnic at the end of the day. It was nice. Carson earned a gold arrow at archery and he made a marshmallow shooter. 

It was a fun night, as long as you had bug spray on. :)

past week remodel

Brian started pulling up the tile on a Wednesday. The boys wanted to give it a try. They ended up pulling up maybe 2/3 of the dining area by themself. It was coming up pretty easy. 

Then Saturday we got serious and pulled up the rest of the kitchen. 

The boys helped a ton!! Brian made a game out of hauling the tile out to the dumpster. He told them when they throw a tile in the dumpster and if it doesn't break then you need to haul two more out. They loved trying to break them! They ended up hauling out most of the pile Carson is laying on. 

Tuesday morning many men showed up to remove old and bring in new. 

I love the wood grain!!

For a time our ceiling looked like Swiss cheese. :)

At one point Mason removed two tiles at once. But Brian holds the record when he removed the tiles from under the fridge. 

Wednesday morning granite counters were installed...heaven!!

But my favorite, I have to admit, is this beauty. A double oven!! I used it for the first time this morning making muffins. 

In my old oven these three silicone pans wouldn't fit. I scrunched them together since they could bend. But now it's perfect! Maybe I'll bake cookies today. :D

all by hand

Many areas of the kitchen is complete. The double ovens are installed and working. We have plumbing finished but no electricity to the dishwasher. 

Mason was not pleased when he realized they he would need to do the dishes by hand. Once he accepted it he played in the bubbles!! He said it wasn't that bad. 

still no kitchen

This is day 5 without a kitchen. We've survived fairly well. Except one night when the boys had cold cereal for dinner. They loved it!! 

After Brian mowed the lawn and the boys and I weeded flower beds Brian made breakfast for us on the grill. 

We ate downstairs in hopes to stay out of the way of workers. As you can see there's one on a ladder behind us. 

Then tonight as a storm was rolling in Brian was grilling burgers for us. He wasn't finished quick enough. He got wet.