1st Nursery Picture

Two Sundays ago Luke came home with his very first nursery drawing. I always consider a child's first nursery picture quite the milestone. It proves to me that he is willing to sit still for a few seconds, pick up a crayon, and scribble like no other.

Luke has such amazing nursery teachers. Katie Lewis is so wonderful with him. The other week, she brought some toy animals from home just for him because she knows how much he loves animals. Then Stephanie Juarez is always willing to read his favorite animal book to him. I am so thankful for wonderful teachers who help Luke feel happy when he is away from me at church.

Grapes

As I mentioned in the previous post my parents have a whole fence full of concord grapes. This year we decided to make grape juice on the last possible day before the snow arrived. My Mom and sisters spent 4 days working on this project and we had 53 bottle of juice when we were done. Honestly, I never want to see another grape in my life. I'm very thankful for a generous neighbor who let me use her juicer so we could do double duty.

Playing in the Leaves

This past week my sisters and I went down at my parents to pick grapes so we could make grape juice. While we were there, the kids had a blast playing in the leaves. I was inside holding a sleeping baby (Ben - my sister Lisa's youngest), but my Mom kindly took these cute pictures. I have so many wonderful memories of doing the same thing.

The Garden

Our garden this year has been a very big experiment. You see, this year my sister Amy used her garden lights to plant a ton of flowers for me. Every single flowers was tenderly cared for before we brought it to our house for it's final home.

This first picture is of the sun flowers. They are only about 3 feet tall with fluffy yellow blooms. I love them and so do the bees. In between these sunflowers we planted some mini pumpkins.

These are my snapdragons and daisy's. I'm pretty sure I will always have a special spot for multi-colored snapdragons.

This is the other side of the front walkway. We planted all sorts of flowers and they have become a giant hodgepodge of flowers. It's fun to which ones are blooming on any given day. Most of these got a lot taller then we ever thought they would.

These are some marigolds and cucumbers in the backyard. I don't feel like we utilized the space very well. Ah well, we've already gotten multiple cucumbers off these two bushes.

These are my tomato plants and they make me happy. They have grown so well and they are so amazingly tall. We are now starting to harvest tomatoes and Peter eats them as fast as I can pick them. I really love the support cages that we bought for them. They have worked out really well.

 

These next few pictures are just a sample of the many flowers we've had. They are actually my favorite flowers. I think it would be pretty if I planted only pink and white flowers next year. LOL, I guess we'll see how that work out.

Love, love, love these poppys. We also had some white ones bloom too which made me happy. 

Firestation Friday

Our weekly neighborhood playgroup took a tour of our local Fire Station today. Oh my gosh, what a lot of fun. Peter loved it and Luke just wanted to get out of the stroller and 'run a much'. The other kids were so respectful and attentive. It was a good review of the things I should be teaching our kids (what to do if they come across matches/lighters, fire drills, not to be afraid of firefighters in their protective gear). Thank you Fire Fighter Ben!

After our tour we walked to some nearby trees and had a little picnic. Peter loves picnics and Luke was just excited that I allowed him to play in the water fountain. What a memorable summer day.

SMA

When my sister Amy was here the other day we decided to take the boys on a grand adventure to the Springville Museum of Art. Right now they have their annual quilt show going on. My Mom is a big quilter so going to see these quilts brought back many memories from my childhood. I loved so many of the quilts that they had on display. My favorite is this first one. I love it!

Peter and Luke thought this one was really amazing. It is a small quilt embellished with all sorts of beads.

Peter thought this one was super neat and he wanted us to take a picture of him with it. BTW, this is his fake smile.

This one is a Halloween quilt. Enlarge it and prepare to be amazed! I would love to have a quilt like this that I could hang up every October.

Another amazing Halloween quilt. Honestly, some people are so talented!

The Tree of Life Quilt.

If you've ever been to the SMA you know what this is. If you are clueless schedule a day to go to the museum. 

This quilt was also pretty amazing. I could stare at it forever (and now I can).

This is just a small part of a larger quilt depicting Emma Smith waiting for Joseph when he was getting the brass plates. Luke and Peter loved the horse in this quilt.

Yet another beautiful quilt that was so impressive.

Flower Quilts - Love them!

I love this Log Cabin Quilt. It reminds me of my own pioneer heritage. 

Pretty sure this is Brigham Young, although I was too lazy to walk over to it and make sure.

Peter loved this part of the Museums sculpture garden.

This is a Moose which we had to get a picture of for my brother Alex.

Water = Fun!

In the basement of the museum they had an area where children could explore and interact with art. This picture is me trying to figure out how to make a origami chick. Sadly, my attempt didn't work out.

They had a bunch of fun blocks that the kids could play with. Peter made three big towers with all the blocks.

Luke getting super excited about the pig sculpture.

Luke loves horses!

Luke also loves birds.

He also really, really loves fish.

I was very impressed with the kids. They did a fantastic job on our first visit here. I hope we'll be able to go on a regular basis whenever they change up exhibits. It also helps that the SMA is free.