Busy Busy Busy

Things have been pretty busy around here lately. Here's some of the things we've been up to.
In June we went up north for a wedding. While we were there my mom took us (my mom and Loni went with us and Lex and Shanna met up with us there) to the aquarium in Sandy. It was pretty cool. The building used to be a grocery store.

Crue in front of one of the fish tanks - we found Nemo. :)

You could touch the sting rays. It was pretty cool. Crue didn't want to touch them.

He didn't mind touching the big snake though! (I wasn't about to touch that.)

Cooper didn't mind touching it either.

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Desiree is due August 24 with a girl (the first granddaughter). We had a shower for her at our house. She got a lot of good stuff. I was excited to make her some things (I've been into sewing lately).

This first one is a dress that I found a pattern for on Made by Rae. I think it turned out so cute - I was really excited. And I was so excited to find such cute material.

I also made her a rag quilt out of flannel with some batting in the middle so it'll be warm this winter for her.

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My garden has gone crazy. I have learned some lessons for next year.
1. Follow the directions on the seed packet. When they say to plant several feet apart, one and a half feet is not enough.
2. Do not plant plants that vine next to each other. They will combine to be one big mass.
3. Do not plant plants that vine next to anything. They tend to be control freaks.
4. Plant corn in several short rows rather than 4 long rows.

This is from our deck looking left into the garden. Far left but closest to me are the Jack Be Little pumpkins. On the bottom right of the picture are the tomatoes and you can see the bean plant poking out behind the tomato. Then going further back in the garden are corn (obviously) and then the Jack O Lantern pumpkins that are taking over. They are seriously like ten feet across. To the right of those are potatoes. To the right of the pumpkins and in the back of the garden are cantaloupe and watermelon (two other vine plants that are mixing together with some of the pumpkin).

In this one you can see the tomatoes and beans and then the one plant by itself is a cucumber. I've already gotten one off of it (we haven't tried it yet) and there's a couple more growing. Then to the right are crookneck and straightneck squash. We're getting tons of crookneck. Then you can see the corn and behind that are potatoes on the left and zucchini on the right.

Some of the Jack Be Littles. Crue loves to go find them. We seriously have at least 30, if not more in there at all different stages of growth.

This is the biggest of my Jack O Lantern pumpkins. It's fun to go out every couple days and see how big it keeps getting. There are at least two more that aren't too far behind it in size.

This is one of my watermelon. It's a Black Diamond variety. I'm excited to try home grown watermelon.

This is another watermelon that I noticed growing today. It's obviously still little but I think they're so cute when they're little.

It's been fun getting squash and zucchini out of the garden (and a cucumber). The biggest pain is all the squash bugs. I have to go out every night and look for them and it usually takes at least an hour. Stupid bugs. At least everything is still growing. There are some leaves they've killed but leaves don't produce a vegetable so that's good. I also have grasshoppers eating my leaves. And they're big. Jared makes fun of me because I don't like to get close to them. You never know where they're going to jump and I don't want them jumping in my face (when I'm looking for squash bugs). As much work as it is, I think my garden will be bigger next year. Mostly so the pumpkins, cantaloupe, and watermelon don't crowd everything out.