Nothing Like BYU Football

We are three home games into the season, with another three to go. I took Alyssa to the first game. Mike has gone to the last two with Josh, then Alyssa again. We tailgated at the first game. The Cougs are ranked 7 and 8 in the polls and I'm loving it. The first game was played in very hot weather and Grandpa got mobbed by the grandkids when they saw his cherry slushie. Josie will sing the Cougar fight song when she sees Y emblems or clothing, etc. I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.

A Novel entitled "Our Garden 2008"

If by chance you have thought to yourself, "I wonder what is Stephanie doing right now?" say anytime over the past five months, let me sum it up for you in one simple sentence: I have been gardening. And with that comes planting, thinning, weeding, watering, harvesting, cooking and preserving. . .oh, yes and eating. Now I will elaborate. The picture below shows just a sampling of what we grew. This year's harvest began with peas and spinach. The kids eat the peas fresh off the vine. The spinach did great---too great, it went to flower because I didn't go out and cut leaves often enough. Next year I will do better. Still I enjoyed what I harvested. Next came cilantro (it ended up the same as the spinach, but I did add some to yummy fresh salsa.) We had strawberries from our patch in June and nowadays we get a handful of berries every other day. The kids eat them up right away. I have an Anaheim pepper plant that has taken the admonition to "mulitply and replenish the earth" all too seriously. Bless the little plant's heart I can't count the number of peppers I have gotten and am still getting off of it. Because of it, though, I learned how to make some killer chili rellenos. I also have roasted them and used the green chilies in cheesy enchiladas and salsa, and frozen some. Right now I have a pile turning nice and red in my kitchen. I plan to roast them, maybe pickle a few, and dehydrate them. While we are talking peppers, I have two bell pepper plants. Unlike my sweet green and red peppers I had last year, this year's crop is lime green in color (think banana pepper.) I have added them to breakfast hash and fajitas, and chopped them up to freeze and to dehydrate. We had a pathetic carrot crop. Out of three rows of seeds only four carrots came up---4! Those four were absolutely delicious, though. A carrot right from the ground is sooo good. And since we are on pathetic, my red potato experiment has only yielded three plants (Again I planted three small rows.) We haven't harvested those yet. I'll have to let you know how that goes. We had a whole garden box devoted to corn again. We ate corn on the cob at dinner on three different occasions. Plus I used the fresh corn kernels in a mexican pasta salad. Next let's talk cucumbers---lots and lots of cucumbers. Actually this plant has paced itself pretty well (unlike my pickling cucumber plants of a few years ago that thought it was funny to give me 10 cukes a day for a month!) I have enjoyed having cucumbers and ranch dip several times, adding them to salads and giving them to friends and family. Green beans. I live to make Fresh Green Bean Soup in the summer. My mother and Madelyn love it, too. I made it twice, then also made Honey Cashew Green Beans and just plain ol' green beans. Josh loves to help snap the beans. We've got onions! Both green onions and white onions. I won't begin to tell you how many different ways we use them. In the picture below there is bacon, white onion and parsley that I used to make Bean and Potato Chowder. I don't have any pig in the garden, but the onion and parsley hail from my ground. I know it means a lot more to me than you, but I get a kick out of using my homegrown ingredients. My zucchini seeds never sprouted. I think that is probably the only way to kill a zucchini---don't let it start in the first place. Luckily I have had kind neighbors that have offered me a few here and there. I have made zucchini muffins twice, zucchini cookies, chocolate zucchini bread, fried zucchini sticks and grilled or stir-fried zucchini. My neighbors also gave me yellow squash. I made a Yellow Squash Cornbread---it was okay, and I have pan roasted some too. My pumpkins are still on the vine. I have four medium to small sized ones all orange and ready. I am certain I would have had a few more but I discovered Maddie had been picking off the small fruits in order to try to grow the others larger. The problem was that this is a sugar pumpkin variety and they weren't really going to get bigger. Sigh. At least there is one pumpkin for each child (hmmm, maybe that is what my carrots thought, too.) Anyway, I have a volunteer cantaloupe in my front yard with at least three nice melons on it, and more ripening. I didn't plant it with my petunias, but it most certainly has thrived there. I guess it was in one of my petunia packs, or a neighbor kid buried a seed there. Can anyone say peaches? We have two trees. We thinned them this spring, we did well on one tree, but the other we didn't thin enough. That meant that we had a lot of small peaches on the not-so-thinned tree. Still, the crop filled several boxes. We have enjoyed eating fresh peaches and I have made several peach pies (freezing some pies), freezer jam, peach frozen yogurt twice, peach bread, frozen peach slices, and peach fruit leather. Last Saturday I cut up enough to fill a big bowl for our YM/YW after-temple-trip-brunch. The young women arrived first and they ate them all up before the young men even got there. We just kept it hush-hush and they never knew they missed out! This year I also gave several bags of peaches away to friends, family and neighbors. You say tomato and I say to-mah-toe. The little plant tag says I planted Romas and a Beefsteak, but I don't have Romas out there. And whatever kind is out there the plants themselves are huge! I'm only sort of exaggerating when I say that I need a machete to cut my way through the massive tomato jungle. So far though I have only harvested a couple dozen tomatoes here or there. I used one dozen tonight in a very delicious Tomato-Pesto Sauce that we ate on cheese-filled ravioli. And I've enjoyed BLT's and homemade guacamole. I have a ton of green fruits on the vine so I guess as long as the weather stays warm I should still see a bigger harvest. (I don't think it will come close to Colby and Jamie's bounty.) Last, but not least. . .sunflowers. This is the first year that I have grown them. As you can see the heads got fairly big. Maddie, Josh, Josie and I sat on Saturday afternoon, listening to the BYU football game and pulling out the seeds (Alyssa was at the game with Mike.) I then boiled them in salted water and toasted them in the oven. Yum, they are a healthy snack. I am fully aware that this was quite a lengthy blog entry. If you actually read the whole thing, kudos to you! I wanted to record my failures and successes. This gardening thing does take a lot of time. It has its own rewards, but it sort of helps to see where my time went.

Starting Gymnastics

Alyssa and Josh started gymnastics this fall. They were so excited. Alyssa started practicing her cartwheels and handstands around the house. I plan to get some pics of her, also. I got these three shots of Josh during his class. Before we left to his first class he asked if he would need his back pack. I said, "No, that's just for school." Then after class he asked where the real gym was. I told him that this was the real gym. He said no this was the training gym and where was the "stadium gym"? It finally clicked---he watched mens' gymnastics during the Olympics and totally expected to be carrying a backpack to and from each rotation in a huge stadium! I love kids. I love that Olympic spirit, too. It all begins with a dream, right?

A Nice Visit

It was nice to have Grandpa Dee and Grandma Connie visit us a couple times this past month. (Yes, Josie is holding an ice cream cone. We had a treat before they left and she was still enjoying hers.)

Western Skies

I have visited several places in the world. Each place has something unique and intriguing about it. But I must say that to be able to sit on your front porch and have this view in the evening is something special. I love western skies.

Corner Canyon Fire

This was our view back on August 25th. It is amazing how much smoke billowed into the air. Luckily no structures were burned and there were no injuries, though they evacuated quite a few people. We went as a family to visit the new Draper LDS Temple, which is still under construction, this past week. The fire was very close to the site. The temple is absolutely stunning with beautiful tall windows around the base. We went after dusk and the views of the lit up valley below were awesome. Glad this fire wasn't worse.

Josh's First Day

Josh started kindergarten this year, on August 25th! My handsome little sidekick is leaving home every afternoon now. He was just so excited (he kept a Kindergarten prep book in his backpack half the summer in anticipation.) There are four other neighborhood friends that are in his class. On the first day he and Whitney took pictures together. Josie tagged along. Outside the school all five of them gathered to take a picture but spontaneously started peeking into the classroom together instead---I caught it with the camera! Then we had them all turn around for the real shot. His teacher welcomed them as they all lined up to go inside. I gave Josh about 20 kisses and "I love you's" between our house and when he walked through that kindergarten door-luckily he is still young enough that he doesn't mind too much. When he got home he showed me the papers in his backpack. There was a folded flier for me to read about buying school health insurance. Josh handed it to me and said, "I got kindergarten mail! I didn't know I would get kindergarten MAIL." He held onto the paper 'til he could show Mike his really cool "mail."