I've been tagged...

Jobs I've Had:

• Summer temp clerk for a patent lawyer
  
• Summer employee for CIA (2 summers)
  
• Computer lab assistant for Ricks College CS lab
  
• Software engineer for IBM
  
• Mother

Movies I Can Watch Over & Over Again:

• Ever After
  
• Star Wars (original trilogy)
  
• Emma
  
• Sense & Sensibility

Favorite T.V. Shows:

• None (I currently don't have any shows that I watch on a regular basis)

Favorite Hobbies:

• Gardening
  
• Sewing
  
• Blogging
  
• Music (flute & piano)
  
• Internet Indexing

Places I Have Lived:

• Virginia
  
• Idaho
  
• Utah

Favorite Foods:

• Chicken Saltimbocca
  
• Pizza
  
• Ice Cream Cones
  

Favorite Getaways:

• Family vacations or visiting family
  
• Trips to D.C.
  
• Camping
  

Websites I Check Daily:

• Blogs
  
• Yahoo Groups
  
• MyFamily.com
  
• weatherunderground.com

Vonae and Dan & Kami: You've Been Tagged!

Garden projects

We have put a lot of time and work into our garden this summer. DH was inspired after seeing the sprinkler system at my parents' new house to put in a watering system in our vegetable garden. We have also been wanting to put in a brick path through the garden since we moved into the house. The previous homeowners had a stack of bricks that they left in the garage that they had panned on making a path out of and never got around to it.

This year, I am pleased to say that the path is almost completely finished. We were finally able to lay out the bricks and found out that we were short by a few feet so we had to buy some bricks that were different and try to come up with a pattern that we liked that combined the two types. The bricks that were left were not paver bricks so they had the holes in them. Because of the wasp incident that we had earlier in the summer we decided to put mortar in the holes of the bricks that would be on the outer edge of the path so that we can hopefully prevent a similar incident in the future.

The watering system has also been put in and it has helped tremendously with watering the garden. In previous years I have had to water by hand with the hose which took a lot of time. Now I can go outside, turn it on and let it run however long I want and then turn it off when I'm ready. Thanks DH for all your back-breaking work!

Here is a bird's eye view of our garden
We are growing corn, tomatoes (3 different kinds), potatoes (also 3 different kinds), onions, carrots, cucumbers, watermelon & pumpkin. I had to cut back some on the size of my growing area this year so I could leave room to work on the brick path. We have several watermelons & pumpkins growing right now and I am hopeful that we will be able to get some orange pumpkins this year (last year we only had 2 small green ones by Halloween). My concern right now is that my pumpkin plants are being attacked by squash bugs and no matter how many times I spray the plants with insecticide, they still keep coming back. Squash bugs inject toxins into the vines of the plant which causes it to die... Other than that, the rest of our plants appear to be doing very well. We have a continuous supply of tomatoes & cucumbers and are starting to harvest the corn. This has definitely been a productive summer for us!

Success!!

After several years of trying, I am happy to say that we finally did it!! We were actually able to grow corn in our garden this year! Ever since we moved into this house that has a huge garden area on the side, DH has wanted to grow corn in it. Our soil is very nitrogen deficient and that's one of the things that corn needs heavily to be able to grow. So finally after several months of sweat and labor (and lots of nitrogen) I picked our first two ears of corn on Saturday. We ate them with dinner on Sunday and it was delicious! I had bought some corn at the store on Friday that I cooked as well and it wasn't nearly as good as our garden corn! I staggered the planting of our corn so that it wouldn't all be ready to harvest at the same time, so I am excited and looking forward to some more delicious corn throughout the season!

Opportunities

I have been blessed lately with several opportunities to use my musical talents. Yesterday I played a flute solo for the musical number in sacrament meeting. I was also approached yesterday about singing with several other women in a musical number in a couple of weeks. Shortly after we returned from our trip to Washington, I was asked if I would be interested in singing in a women's choir for the upcoming General Relief Society Meeting in September. Of course I said yes, how many opportunities like that does someone get? The choir is composed of women from the stakes in our area. They are only asking 2-3 altos and 2-3 sopranos from each ward. We had our first rehearsal yesterday and will practice the next few Sundays leading up to the conference. We will also have a dress rehearsal at the Conference Center the Saturday preceding the conference. The lady who will be conducting us is Merrilee Webb who works for the church helping to put together groups like ours. She is a very energetic and fun director to work with. We also had Sister Barbara Thompson of the General Relief Society presidency attend on rehearsal and speak to us for a few minutes yesterday. So be sure to watch the conference on Sept. 29 and look for me!

I was also called a couple of weeks ago and asked if I would be interested in playing my flute for a Christmas choral concert that our city sponsors. They started the group 2 years ago and they rehearse for a few months and then put on a Christmas concert. They already have one flute player who played with them last year, but they need a second one this year as well as a piccolo. I will definitely have to start practicing more if I'm going to play the piccolo. It's not as easy to pick up and play on a moment's notice (especially since I haven't really played mine since college). My only problem with playing with the choir is that most of the rehearsals are on Wednesday evenings which is when our youth groups meet. I won't need to be at rehearsals until towards the end so I can hopefully work something out (plus they just called a second Beehive advisor since our group is getting so big). I would love to sing with the choir on the numbers that I'm not playing on, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to work that out. I think my parents are going to try out the choir as well so it should be fun!

Principal's Pride Award

M&M received the Principal's Pride Award on Friday for her "Colorful Artwork". We are proud of the good school work that she does. She has always enjoyed (and been very good at) art!

M&M is 9!

Monday, July 30, 2007
Unfortunately with year-round school, M&M's birthday always falls during the first week of school. She got up and opened some presents before school. Then Grandma & Grandpa S and Aunt M & her boyfriend R came over for pizza dinner & ice cream sundaes to celebrate M&M's birthday!

Since M&M is not a big cake fan, I made some cookies earlier in the day and put the candles in a cookie. We then had ice cream sundaes.

I can't believe she is 9 and in the 4th grade already!

Evergreen Aviation Museum

The Evergreen Aviation Museum is located in McMinnville, OR and is the home of the Spruce Goose (see above picture). It is the largest flying boat and was built primarily out of wood (birch wood though, not spruce).
To get some perspective of the size of the plane, DH & the kids are in the above picture in front of the two doors on the side. I blew up the section with them in the picture which you can see to the left.


I think this was DH's favorite plane at the museum. It is an SR-71A Blackbird which is the world's fastest and highest flying "air-breathing" aircraft. It was built in 1966 and used for reconnaisance.

This is the A-26C which is one of the planes that Grandpa White flew in World War II.






While DH & his parents went on a guided tour of the museum, I took the kids over to the children's hands-on section.


They had fun climbing into the different model planes there and then I took them to a section that had dozens of computers running Microsoft's Flight Simulator program.


Once we figured out how to use the controllers and buttons, the kids enjoyed that as well.

Trip to the Beach

The kids had a lot of fun at the beach. Everything that you hear about the Oregon beach is that it is always cold so we didn't wear any swimsuits since I figured it would be too cold to get into the water. Well, once we got there, the kids immediately ran off to play in the water.
In no time at all M&M & Luke were both wet up to their waist and were begging me to let them change into their swimsuits. So I took the two older ones back to the car to change into their swimsuits and while we were there, DH brought Blondie to me because she wanted to change as well.

Kitty wasn't too crazy about the ocean water so she didn't mind staying in her clothes. I think she didn't like the fact that the water does not stay still and kept coming up farther onto the sand. So Kitty was content to play on the sand with her dad while M&M & Luke stayed in the water almost the whole time we were there. Blondie played about equally in the water and on the sand - one of her favorite activities was trying to jump over the waves when they reached her. Here is a picture of Grandma N. helping Blondie jump over the waves.

It was an overcast day while we were there, but it wasn't too cold or windy. The kids all had a great time and didn't want to leave.

Kitty helping her dad.

DH's sand creature.

Blondie is 4!

Sunday, July 15, 2007
Blondie got to celebrate her birthday at Grandma & Grandpa N's house this year. She opened the presents from us before church and then the presents from Grandma & Grandpa after we got home.





The hard part about having 2 sisters and 3 girl cousins is that Blondie had to share some of her presents because all the girls wanted to play with them (except cousin L who is a little too young right now). Blondie managed pretty well though.








Since I wasn't at home I just made a simple cake for Blondie this year.








It was fun being able to eat cake with the cousins before they had to leave for home.

Redwood Trees

The Coastal Redwood Trees in Northern California are truly an amazing sight. It is impossible to capture in pictures the tremendous size and beauty of these trees. You feel like a dwarf walking through them. The tree above and to the left is called The Big Tree. It is 304 feet tall, has a diameter of 21 1/2 feet and is about 1500 years old.

The weather there was perfect! I was a little concerned at first that I had forgotten our jackets because it was rather cool and there was an almost constant mist amongst the trees. Luckily though I had remembered long pants for everyone and that was fine for the day we were there (plus it helped that we did some hiking). The temperature was in the 60s there and it was just beautiful! If you look in the bottom left of this picture you can see me & if you look closer you can see M&M standing next to me.

We took a hike from The Big Tree that was supposed to be about 1.4 miles, but the trail was not marked very well and we ended up having to do some backtracking to get back to our car. I think we ended up hiking over 2 miles (and I ended up carrying Kitty & DH was carrying Blondie so we could hike faster).
These are two trees (above) that we had to climb over to get to the other side of the trail. We are standing on one and there is a second one in front of that one.
These trees are incredibly resilient. This tree had been hollowed out by fire, but amazingly is still alive.

I would definitely recommend the redwood trees to anyone who hasn't seen them. The hard part about visiting them is that there isn't just one place to go. These trees are all along the coastline of Northern California and there are National Parks and State Parks interspersed. We hiked the trail at The Big Tree and then we also hiked a one mile trail at a site called Lady Bird Johnson Grove where this last picture was taken (incidentally we were there the day after she passed away). It is a self-guided tour where you take a map with you and there are numbers marked along the way with descriptions of different spots of interest in the forest.

There are a few privately owned "drive-thru" trees that you have to pay to go through, but they were too far out of our way and we were running short on time.

Crater Lake

Crater Lake is absolutely beautiful! One of the reasons we were interested in visiting the lake is that Luke has a deep fascination with volcanoes and so we have read numerous volcano books.

Mount Mazama is a volcano that erupted thousands of years ago and then collapsed in on itself after the eruption. The island that you see in the first picture is the caldera that formed as a result of the collapse. The surrounding area then filled up with water to form the beautiful Crater Lake. (It was just a little windy at the top!)

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the U.S. and the 7th deepest in the world. There are no inlets or outlets and the water is crystal clear. The only boats that are there are tourist boats (that can take you on a tour of the lake - for a hefty fee) and some research boats. The sides leading down to the lake are very steep cliffs and there is only one area where you can get down to the shoreline. The only way to get boats in and out of the lake is by helicopter!

This is a picture of us taking the hike down to the shoreline. When DH heard that there was a trail to the shoreline where you could get into the water, he was determined that we hike it so that we could say that we touched the water. The National Park Service labels each of their hikes based on length & difficulty and the Cleetwood Cove Trail to the shoreline is labeled as "strenuous" - their most difficult rating. The hike is only 1.1 miles each way - so not too long - but it is very steep - up to an 11% grade in spots. They say the trail is equivalent to walking down and up 65 flights of stairs.

The hike down was fairly easy and we had numerous people that we passed who were going up that wished us luck going back up with all the kids and that they hoped we were ready to carry them...

Once we got down to the bottom we all sat down to take off our shoes and wade in the water. There was a man there who saw us all sitting down together and offered to take a picture of us with our camera.

You can actually go swimming in the water if you want to but the water is very cold so we settled on just putting our feet in. I was surprised at how sharp the rocks were at the bottom of the lake - it really hurt to walk on them! All of the kids loved it though and Kitty just wanted to jump in and couldn't understand why we had to hold onto her! (She is laughing/squealing in the picture here!)

After we had had enough of the water, we dried off our feet and started the hike back up. The trail is basically switchbacks the whole way and DH & I were both ready to carry the two little ones if we needed to. DH & I were both amazed at how well the kids did though. There were no complaints from any of them! Kitty & Blondie hiked most of it themselves, much to our surprise! Really the only time we carried Kitty was when she caused us to get too far behind the rest of the group and DH carried Blondie just for a little bit. It was mostly DH leading the trail with the 3 older kids and Kitty & me bringing up the rear. Kitty's biggest problem was that she wanted to stop and pick up pine cones and look at everything on the trail.

Most people who take the Cleetwood Cove Trail do so because that is how you get to the boat tours & the only way to the shoreline if you want to do any fishing. Fish are not native to the lake. They were introduced in the lake from 1888-1941. Six species were originally stocked, but only two have survived. Because the fish are not native, they encourage fishing - no license is required and there is no limit to how many you can catch.


Once we finally made it back up to the top and got into the car, it didn't take the two little ones long to crash!





M&M took this picture for us.


The lake averages about 45 feet of snow a year. The surface temperature of the water can get up to 56 degrees in the summer.


What does this island look like to you? This is called the Phantom Ship.






Overall we had a great time at Crater Lake and would recommend it to anyone - it is more beautiful than you can capture in pictures!