The jungle

Seriously, our garden is getting a little out of control this year. This picture was taken about 2 weeks ago and it's gotten even crazier since then. I'm happy it's producing so well but I'm a little worried it's going to strangle itself. The cantaloupe are being especially aggressive towards the raspberries, and if I have to pick between the two fruit I'll choose raspberries. I decided to try growing melons this year and every time I mentioned it to a fellow gardener I kind of got a "good luck" look. So I decided to start some seeds indoors and transplant them outside when it got warm enough. Just for good measure I also planted a hill of seeds next to each transplant. And for extra good measure I planted the hills and transplants less than half the recommended space apart. I figured I could thin them out later. I'd rather have too many successful plants than not enough and end up wasting all that precious garden space. But the thing is I have a really hard time thinning because that seems like such a waste a perfectly healthy plant. Well all the seeds and transplants have thrived except 2 of the watermelons, and I haven't really done any thinning. At this point I have watermelon and cantaloupe vines all clinging to each other and thinning is a real mess. And how do I choose which plants should live and which plants should die anyways? So I guess we'll just see what we get. I think next year I might build something the vines can climb up so we can utilize our space a little better.
It still never ceases to amaze me when I see some of these...

and these.

It's like magic the way we can grow food in our very own backyard. And this year we installed a drip system so I feel like I've done so little work to help them grow that I really can't take much credit. Besides we also have tons of these little ladies helping out.

They don't call them worker bees for nothing. These girls have been super busy in our garden! By the way, did you know all worker bees are female? Yeah the male bee's only job is to fertilize the queen bee so she can make more worker bees. I'm glad our species doesn't operate that way. Worker bees literally work themselves to death. So I will give them most of the credit for my thriving garden.

Haircuts

Haircuts for my kids are usually done at home in the bathroom or on the kitchen counter. I figure I can cut in a straight line and use a set of clippers and I'm a do-it-yourself kind of girl. Since we had family pictures coming up though I thought we'd splurge and go get "real" haircuts. Well now I've gone and spoiled them and they'll probably never want me cutting their hair again. We went to Cookie Cutters and it was a lot of fun. The kids each got to pick a movie and sit in a little car while they got their cut. Then they got a style which was especially awesome for the girls since it involved gold glitter hairspray.

It's hard to tell but Tanner had a good time too. He was done first and got to play video games and on the slide while he waited for the girls.

I've tried to copy what they did with Sydney's hair but I can't seem to get it to look quite the same way. I'll have to practice some more.

I made a short attempt at copying Natalie's hairdo until she was almost in tears and screaming "that hurts!" Ah, the fun of having girls. Boys hair is so much easier. Most days the kids look like little rugrats but sometimes I like to play with their hair.

Happy Birthday America!

We did most of our celebrating for the 4th of July on the 5th of July. It was kind of fun having the 4th land on a Sunday. There were celebrations on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Josh had work off on the 5th so we went hiking with our friends the Tuckers. We went up to Solitude Lake which is a 3 mile round trip hike. The kids did great considering the length of the hike. They were all pretty tired at the end though and at times Josh was carrying two of our at a time. Camryn slept through the entire experience.

Here are the kiddos up at the top (minus Camryn).

We went to my parents house for a barbecue that night. My aunt and uncle invited us over for fireworks that night too. They even started early so our kids could make before they turned into pumpkins. Sydney stayed up late Saturday night to watch the fireworks at the park by our house. I didn't think Tanner and Natalie would be that excited about fireworks but I was so wrong. After every firework Tanner yelled "IT WORKED!" and clapped. And Natalie was sitting with Grandma and Grandpa and apparently she told them over and over how much she loved this.

6!

To extend the fun of our weekend, Sydney had her birthday on Monday. We skipped friend parties this year and just did family stuff instead. I can't believe I have a 6-year-old already.
Sydney really gets into birthdays and tries to do whatever she can to make the birthday person feel special. On my last birthday she cut up a whole bunch of paper to make confetti and threw it at me. Then she cleaned it all up too since she knew I wouldn't want the mess. For her own birthday she worked hard on making this banner.

It says "Happy Birthday Sydney" and has a picture of her with a rainbow. I feel a little guilty that she felt she had to make her own banner but she's loves doing that sort of thing and I think she did feel special on her big day. We opened presents first thing in the morning.

I took a picture of the presents because I just love this wrapping paper. Grandma and Grandpa Ruben came and took Sydney to lunch before school and she got to take her class treats to school as well. Ring Pops! After school Sydney wanted to paint the piggy bank my mom gave her. Tanner and Natalie were feeling a bit neglected and were tired of being told they couldn't play with Sydney's stuff so I got them piggy banks too. My kids are fascinated with money lately. Tanner and Natalie don't have a clue what it's for but they love to play with it. Sydney will sometimes do extra jobs to earn some money and then the twins like to steal it. So hopefully this will help keep it all separated.

For dinner we went to Chuck E. Cheese's. Somehow I've made it this far in life without ever going there. The pizza was less than yummy but the kids had a blast and it was a really fun night. Somehow I forgot to take pictures though. Oh well!

Fun weekend

Well I'm very behind on the blogging. I know if I don't keep up on this I'm going to be at a complete loss about what to write about for our Christmas letter at the end of the year. So here goes! We had a very fun weekend a few weekends back. Sydney had her first dance recital. She decided to take tap dance this last spring and it was very fun. I'm not sure if we'll go back to it in the fall though. She seems to want to try a different kind of dance. But the outfits were sure cute and it was fun to watch her perform in something. I think her favorite part about the recital was that she got to wear make up.

On Saturday, Josh's work sent us to see Toy Story 3.

For those of you who don't know Josh got a new job back in March and he now works for 1-800 Contacts. This means he no longer works from home which has been a bit of an adjustment for me but overall it's been a very good thing and he loves what he's doing now. It's been fun partaking in the perks of belonging to a company, such as company parties! We all loved the movie although I wish it hadn't been such a tear-jerker at the end. It was a little more intense than the previous two movies, but luckily none of my kids cried. Well Camryn might have a little bit, but she has other reasons.
Sunday was Father's Day. Hopefully it was a great day for Josh. Here he is with all his loot.

And lucky me, I got to speak in church that day! It's nice that I have a great dad and husband to give me some good material to work with. I enjoyed the day much more after church was over. I'm not such a big fan of public speaking. We went out to my parent's house for a barbecue that evening and I brought cupcakes to celebrate both Father's Day and Sydney's birthday which was the next day. She picked out raspberry trifle cupcakes from my cupcake book. They were delish! Definitely worth all the work and almost worth all the calories.