Family pictures

I have the most beautiful family! Our family pictures went great on Saturday, lots of fun and cute shots of us all! Here is a couple of my favorites...

Wow, this picture is great-Bailey is such a beautiful girl.

Erin is giggling, of course, but love this one

Jam!

I have never made freezer jam before (my mom always made it), but I spent the afternoon making some today! I made 3 kinds: Strawberry, Blackberry, and Strawberry/Nectarine. This kind of jam is SO easy to make. Funny sideline-I bought twice as much fruit as I had estimated that I would need...oops! Better to have too much instead of run out I guess. So, instead of the 14-15 jars I was planning on, I got 31 jars! I felt so productive, and proud of myself!!

Notice--I ran out of smaller jars so I had to get out my quarts! lol I guess that is what happens when you have more fruit than you thought! Now into the freezer they go!

Happy Birthday Josh!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband-Josh! We celebrated his b'day yesterday since he has meetings tonight. The girls had fun decorating the living room a bit and wrapping some dark chocolate that they picked out to give him for his birthday. Josh requested a blueberry pie instead of cake, and it was delicious!!

Family pictures

At the end of March my brother and his family came to Utah for a visit. We all got together and took pictures. We hadn't all been together in 3 years.
Londa's family is wearing white, my mom is wearing black, Dave's family is wearing purple, and we are wearing brown. Here are a few pictures that we took....

Had to put on this lovely pose--we all got sick of smiling! :)

My precious family...

Some say this is my better side. I promised my niece, Cavin, I would post this...

My sister's family: Cassie, Mason, Londa, Ky, Marissa, Cavin, and Ray

My brother's family: Melissa, Dave, and Braeden

My Beautiful Bailey

I LOVE this picture-just like Erin.

Ray, Londa, Josh, me, Dave, Mom, and Melissa

My sister and her girls-posing for pictures...

And what life can be like in their home... LOL :)

Latest projects...and our green thumbs

We have been busy doing yard and other misc. projects the last couple of weeks. Plus this time of year our yard looks so beautiful.
Not sure if you can tell in these pictures, but Josh and his dad repainted the blue on our house (and put new framing around one of the doors as well). It is a slightly brighter blue, and just having a fresh coat of paint just makes it all look great.


I wish bulbs bloomed all year long, we have hundreds of bulbs planted in our yard and they sure to look beautiful.
In the backyard, we had a pile in the corner that served as our compost, but it didn't look great and wasn't very functional. So Josh built a composter. In the summer it will turn misc. yard waste into compost in 14-21 days!

So, now it's time to remove the ugly compost pile and put in the new one! Here are before and after pictures...
BEFORE:

AFTER!!:

Then, this last weekend we went to my sister's house and while Londa and I went shopping at IKEA, Josh and Ray made BBQ smokers. They did such a great job! Can't wait to smoke some yummy food for dinner soon...

We also mulched our entire yard-I love how fresh mulch looks! And we put soaker hoses in our vegetable garden-hopefully that will help the watering be more effective.

Each year our yard looks nicer and nicer--and our thumbs get greener and greener. :)