my son the airman

My son, Chris, just finished his basic training to become an airman. Basic training is meant to be extremely difficult and naturally it was tough on him, but he did a wonderful job and we are very much enjoying being with him for a few days before he goes on to his technical training. He earned many honors during training and it was fun to have it be publicly announced how well he did. In addition, it was a special joy to hear him talk in church this morning about the importance of families. Families are eternal and we are here on earth to form loving families. I love my kids and my husband so much. I'm so happy to be sealed eternally with them.

master gardener

I applied to be a master gardener here in Minnesota. We'll see if they want me. I'd really like to do this. It is a volunteer, community service job. Not a paying job, but a service opportunity. I'd get to be trained by the University of Minnesota gardening experts and then I would be a community liaison and occasional teacher. I like the idea of promoting gardening, especially food gardening.

one tree down

We had a dead maple tree in the front yard. It is now cut down. Watching workmen cut down a large tree is one of the most entertaining activities we ever pay anyone to do on our property. And thanks to all that entertainment we have a beautiful pile of wood in the backyard (and we were able to share wood with our neighbors). It feels really good to have fuel available. Now we need to have a chimney guy come and make sure the fireplace/chimney is in good working order. I'm looking forward to having some fireplace meals this winter. I've never had a house where we could do that sort of thing. I realize that a cookstove makes a lot more sense as far as truly being able to heat the house, but we don't have a cookstove and we do have a fireplace.

air conditioning

Yesterday, after church, one of the brothers in the ward said to me, "You know how people told you it didn't get that hot in Minneapolis?" I nodded and finished his sentence, "They LIED."

The air-conditioning man is here attempting to fix our problem. Living simply has its limits. It is near 100 degrees and near 100% humidity. Pretty miserable. I could handle living through this (I'd stay in the basement all day and night) but the kids are really complaining.

LATER: I now have a new favorite human being-- the air-conditioning repair man! It's fixed.

t-shirt quilt

This is the quilt I made for my daughter out of her high school t-shirts. We were both happy with how it turned out. I will always look at it and think of the Cosby show. We went through a couple of seasons of Cosby show reruns on the computer as we put the quilt together.

let the gardening begin

OK, so I'm just taking baby steps, but this is the start of my garden. I've got one plot, which will have composting stuff dug into the dirt until I can make it into a decent compost pile, next year this will be my first garden bed. In the plastic tub are my "Joseph Smith Memorial Tomatoes." When we were coming back from vacation we stopped by Palmyra, New York to visit the Sacred Grove and see a few sites from church history (sighhhhh, I wish I could've spent longer). At the Joseph Smith farm house they have a working garden and they were giving away some of the extra tomato plants. I took three of them and we'll see how they do!

before pictures

These are my pictures from yesterday. I'm officially labeling these as the "before" pictures. My goal is to develop this entire yard into an urban farm. I'm slowly making decisions and mapping out where things will be. First on the list is to get rid of that beautiful maple in the backyard. It's gorgeous, but I'll never have a garden with that huge tree shading everything. I've already talked with tree removal people. We're going to have so much firewood!