Gardening

So I've been working hard on our garden this year. We've had a million zucchini's...exaggeration of course, but not too far off. Our freezer is full of shredded and chopped zucchini. We are all excited about the amount of pumpkins this year too...at least 37 pumpkins. SO exciting. We were able to enjoy some watermelon, cherry tomatoes, and green peppers. We are still waiting for our sunflowers to make it. It was fun watching the sunflowers grow to see how tall they were going to get. I think we had one that reached an estimate of 10 feet. So tall! So I've been doing lots of canning this year. My total number of jars canned this year so far is over 100. Yay for preserved food! I went over to Iris and Bill's house and got produce weekly to can...LOTS of tomatoes and cucumbers. We are very thankful for their generosity. Grandma Flores and Grandma Olsen has helped quite a bit this time of year with the canning also. I love all my moms :) They all take really good care of me and my family.  We are so blessed! We've been paying tithing, being frugal, and praying hard for finances to work out. We are trying to have faith that those prayers will be answered soon!

Balloon Festival

Fun family activity...go see the hot air balloons lit up at night. It was a good labor day weekend activity. We went with Ame and her kids, had a picnic dinner and watched them get all lit up. So fun!

3rd grade

Yay for the first day of school! The summer went really fast though...it was crazy how fast it went. Melissa started 3rd grade. I didn't take the other kids the first day so I only have her picture. Anna is in 1st grade which makes me SO happy that she goes every day just like the other kids. Tony is in 5th grade, Elena in 6th, Erin in 8th, and Audrey is a sophomore. It's just me and Elly at home and I am loving it.

Makeover night

Unleash 6 kids and makeup and this is the result...They all got in on the action, even Tony Jr. It was good fun and they all enjoyed it...until Tony realized we didn't have any fingernail polish remover. That was funny going to work with pretty nails.

August 18, 2012 Meet the Schenkels...

 

 August 18th...is now a shared anniversary. DaraLynn got married to Shawn and her family grew to 7 kids all together. She shares this anniversary with our parents. My parents have been married 45 years this year. My parents have been through a lot in their 45 years and I love them very much. It was a great day. I'm happy that DaraLynn is happy and so proud of my parents for making it 45 years. Tony and I made a video montage for them that I was very pleased with. Good memories!

Elly is 7 months old!

 7 months old and showing a ton of personality...and this little girl absolutely LOVES her daddy!!

 She likes to just stare at him and keep staring until he looks at her and she gives him really big smiles.

 She really likes to try and sit up...she puts her arms out everytime you lay her on her back and try and push her head up...it looks like she is doing crunches.  She'll have strong abs if she keeps that up!

 Yes...she is sitting up now and scootin herself around in circles when she is on her belly. 

 She chews on her thumb sometimes and loves her stuffed animals. Bambi is her favorite. She holds on to his legs and chews his nose and talks to him as she falls asleep.

 She really loves to play with daddy. She loves his attention and always watches him, while she's eating, laying down, playing. She always has an eye on him.

 Just hanging with dad...she looks so proud of herself.

 She reads the paper like a pro...especially the olympics. She watched a lot of Olympics this last couple of week, and gives me weird looks when I'm screaming for someone to win!

 She loves carrots and is getting used to this solid food business. She also loves Nilla wafers, bananas, pears, apple blueberry, sweet potatoes, and squash. She is not impressed with green beans or peas. 

 She loves to be independent and feed herself. She holds her own bottle and gets mad that I won't let her hold the spoon to feed herself solid food. 

 This is what happened when she got mad enough because she couldn't feed herself. I wasn't looking and she flipped the bowl and covered herself in rice. As you can probably tell, she did not think this was very cool. 

 When sisters get ahold of her this is what happens...if you can see she does have 2 teeth on the bottom now, that was a rough couple of days until those broke through.

 Sleepy in the bumbo...I wore her out that day and couldn't wait to go to sleep. So tired!

 She crosses her legs...

 and bites the nipple on her bottle...

 Smiles at most everyone...

 Feels her new teeth with her tongue...

 Makes funny faces...

 Is super happy and shows that by opening her mouth REALLY big...

and Loves to eat paper...she is becoming mobile...good luck to us all!!

August so far...

Well, this month so far has been full of produce...kinda coming out our ears! Our garden is growing really well and we also get to go pick produce from Bill and Iris's garden every Friday...I've been able to can a lot of vegetables and make lots of raspberry and apricot jam. It's been a good produce year. I so far have 17 bags of shredded zucchini and more growing. I just picked 9 more just the other day. Plenty of zucchini! We have lots of cucumbers to go through too. We will have plenty of pumpkins this year too. That's always fun to have...hopefully we can have some for Halloween and have them last that long. They are already turning orange and it's only August!!

The lovely jacket we found at the clothing exchange. It was meant to brighten my wardrobe (as Iris pointed out lol) so I brought it home and posed with my sunflowers. SO hilarious when Tony put it on. I love it!