Evelyn's gymnastics

I haven't been great at updating lately. I got my (four impacted) wisdom teeth out a week ago and it hasn't been the most pleasant experience of my life. So I've mostly been wallowing in self-pity. Today was nice, though. I had my post-op checkup and found out I had a dry socket, which doesn't sound great but means that he could pack it and now it doesn't hurt as much. So maybe I'll actually be able to sleep tonight.

My appointment was over at 10:30 which is the time that open gym starts at RRVG, so I took Evelyn over there to play. She had so much fun getting to play on the "big kid" equiptment, although I'm kind of wondering if it's going to make watching that much harder tomorrow. The first thing she did was head for the trampolines, but then I introduced her to the foam pit. Honestly, it was with some trepidation at first that I helped her down the slide and into the pit, thiking that she would panick admidst those huge cubes of foam and that I'd have to climb in somehow and rescue her. But it didn't happen. In fact, she spent the rest of the time in the foam pit, climbing over and around the cubes and only needing me to pull her all the way back out once she got to the edge. Silly girl.
 
 

Fruit picking

On Monday, we drove out to the house of a family in our ward. Peter is their home teacher and they had invited us to pick fruit on their land. The kids had so much fun. We picked apples, wild plums and chokecherries. They played with the kittens and ran around. It was almost like being transported to a different time... this old homestead out in the middle of the prairie and fields.

I need to give North Dakota more credit.

What would you do with $2000?

I'd buy the new camera that Canon just announced.

I've been looking at cameras for a little while. While I'm greatful to my Rebel for introducing me to the world of DSLR, it's limitations have always frusterated me and aren't getting less frusterating. But really, the higher end cameras either didn't have everything I wanted or were a little...um, too higher end. Which was kind of good, because it made me more patient.

Now Canon has announced a camera while I swear they designed exactly for what I need it to do. Now I just need a way to pick up an additional $1900 along the way..... just pocket change, right? Well, at least I have a dream.

What would YOU do with $2000??

Back to gymnastics...

Alex started gymnastics today, so life feels normal again. Amazing how quickly herding a bunch of kids into the car after school becomes a routine. Amazing how how NOT paying the fees every month became a routine. Alex is doing the "grasshoppers" class this year, which is all boys and starts on the mens' equiptment. He seems to be loving it.

From Gymnastics

I was a little disappointed that Allison spent most of the time I was there in a 'team meeting' so I didn't get to watch her much. I thought she looked bored, but she said it was interesting.

From Gymnastics

Meanwhile, Xander was having a blast.

From Gymnastics

And we got to see a little bit at the end from Allison. She's still working up to tumbling on the floor.

From Gymnastics

You can click on the link to see the rest of the photos from last night.

And here I was doing so well....

Peter pointed out that I haven't updated the blog for a few days. Oops. Sorry about that. So here's my little monkey. Evelyn's turned into quite the little climber. I wanted to get pictures of all the other things she's scaled, but I guess those will have to wait.

From Keyes Life

And I just like this picture of Xander because it's so sweet.

Garden update

I thought that it was time for another garden update. Hard to believe that it's been a month since the last pictures, and yet our garden is coming right along. In this first picture you can see how the whole thing is laid out. Weedy, very weedy, but still productive.

The Zucchini is... plentiful. What else can you say? I've been grating and freezing it. Zucchini bread in January is a wonderful thing. The cherry tomatoes have been doing well, but this tomato is the first slicing tomato to begin to ripen. I sure hope we can a lot more before the first frost. The lettuce is doing so well! Usually it all bolts in our one week of "real" summer but it miraculously survived and needs to be thinned (again). I read somewhere that the mark of a good gardener is being able to have a salad with both lettuce and tomatoes so I guess that means I've succeeded (Even if I don't know why). And we are getting tiny sprouts on our Brussel sprouts! I've never successfully grown Brussel Sprouts before so now I just have to save them from the cabbage moths, I guess.

I don't know how well you can see in the first picture, but both our pole beans and cherry tomatoes are growing on arches made from cattle panels. They cherry tomatoes haven't gotten very tall and so aren't impressive, but I'm loving it for the beans! They've almost met in the top and today was the first time I got to just stand underneath the arch and pick. Blissful. The corn is filling out... I actually picked my first ear today and the beets are going crazy. This is also the first year beets have survived in my garden. It's been quite depressing to me, since beets are an actual crop here... they should grow! But at least they finally did. And chopped small, roasted and put into a salad they are quite divine!

Next year we won't be doing a big garden... just the pots in the backyard. And while I'm somewhat relieved, I'm also a bit sad. It's just so fun to see the improvement over the past three years!

Tumbling Toms

Hey Mom, this is for you.

This year I decided to try some Tumbling Tom tomatoes (wow, how alliterative is that?) They are small cherry tomato plants that are supposed to do very well in hanging baskets and be very prolific for their size. I've always been very curious about them, so when I decided to put windowbox planters around our wooden playset, I decided to give them a try.

The result: I'm very happy. By the time I decided to do this, it was too late to start my plants from seed so I ordered them from a company on ebay since that was the only place I could find live plants. I was very concerned at the beginning, as they were extremely root bound and already had small tomatoes on them. However, after vicious tearing apart roots and breaking off all the small tomatoes, the plants did very well and have been my earliest producers.

They don't look very happy today, but that's mostly because I spaced watering (they're in self-watering containers, but you still have to water at least occasionally). I had decided to go out and take some pictures of them today and realized that they were wilted. But, never fear, they will come back. At least you can see how densely packed the tomatoes are. I've been impressed with how many tomatoes they've fit into a small space and they taste pretty good, too.

My mom and I had talked about these earlier this summer and I wanted to update with how they are doing. But I also thought that others of you might have very limited space but still be interested in growing a few tomatoes. These really amazingly heavy producers for such a small space. I think you could plant one or two hanging baskets or put them in the edge of a pot and be eating at least a few tomatoes every day. You can see I have 3 tomato plants as well as 3 flower plants in a 23" container. Not bad.

And that's my public service announcement for the day. Thanks for tuning in.