October Court of Honor

If you can't tell Ian is the short kid 3rd from the left. Court of Honors are about the only time I can still refer to him as such! He is doing his version of "standing at attention" because the older kids are teaching the younger boys a Native American chant.

This picture was from Octobers Court of Honor were Ian earned his Tenderfoot & 2nd class awards. We count ourselves very fortunate Ian is always very respectful at his scouting events. I'm please that he treats them with such reverence. I hope this phase last a long time!!!

Sabbath Day Bliss

We caught Kya trying to call Grandma Nancy to rescue her from her crazy family! Kya was able to stay with Grandma & Grandpa Stricklin (thanks again!) last night so we could chaperon the youth dance and she DID NOT want to come home, I wish I had a camera to catch the evil look she gave Dad when he tried to take her from Grandpa's arms!!


Jonathan and I were hamming it up to get a reaction from Ian, the next picture tells it all!

It was a peacful Sabbath day! We could not have asked for a nicer evening together as a family!

Boy's Night Out!

The boys were sooooo excited to be able to go see the WWE when they came to Spokane this month and when I say boys I do mean Ian AND Jonathan. Ian could hardly contain himself on the day of the match. I don't think he has ever done his school work so fast!

The match was at the Spokane Arena, it looks like a full house.

This one is my favorite! This is Finlay and Hornswoggle. I actually stop what I am doing to watch these two wrestle!

This is Jeff Hardy, I call him the acrobat since he does some seriously high flying stunts.

Big show and Triple H. (Big show is like 7 feet tall!)

Ian came home and told me all about his adventures at the wrestling match. Then Jonathan proceeded to tell me his version with just as much excitment! It really made me grateful that we have the life that we do. Jonathan is an amazing father! Ian will always know that he is important to him and that is priceless.

Building the Greenhouse

Well it was an incredibly long and cold winter, so I got a bee in my bonnet and BEGGED Jonathan to build me a greenhouse. We chose the design and location based upon the best use of passive heating. It is located on the master bathroom wall, so we are able to feed it heat in the winter from the wood heat inside the house and the angled window wall is to make the best use of our low winter sun.

Hey look we have a window!! I was on cloud nine by the time I took this photo, since my starts were already big enough to put in the ground. I guess I had gotten a little overzealous.

Coming right along.

YEAH!!!

Jonathan worked late into the night trying to get everything finished, I was having a hard time being patient waiting for a new home for my babies. Look around you'll see that we have 18" of snowpack and it's late MARCH!

The final window going in.

We have electricity & walls!

This is the start of a beautiful friendship. I might even be in love!

The plants are all ready to get put into the garden box. It was a very exciting day for me! I think Jonathan had to finally come get me at 12:00 to make me go to bed, since I was having way too much fun getting dirty! It was a LOOOOOONG winter!

Our Garden

We had so much fun tilling, digging, planting and weeding this year we can't wait to do it all again next year! OKAY, mabey only I had fun, but it was still worth it!! For those of you who are not familiar withour area, we had a very strange start to our growing season. It snow here the first week of June so as you can imagine that made getting any sort of decent crop hard to come by. Thank heavens for my greenhouse!

We knew going it to the season that the corn was a BIG mabey, but it sure is pretty and the animals love eating the stalks for us!

I have all of our major veggies going on in these 2 -16'X4' gardenboxes this year, but next year we intend to add at least 2 more. We would like to have a total of about 16 boxes, but of course I need a large root cellar before that is going to happen. Ian next year wants to create a "Community Garden" were people can come use some of our garden space to plant theirs. I'll let you know if we sort out all the red tape.

We planted 5 semi-dwarf fruit trees this year (2-cherry, 2-apple and 1-peach) Next year we will add at least 5 more and so on until we have a orchard of 30 trees!! A good friend told me that semi-dwarfs are great because at least then you can reach all of the fruit at harvest time without risking your neck -I thought that made a lot of sense since I'm scared of heights!

I said about 50+ times this year, "If I can harvest just one melon this year, I will view my garden as a success!" This one was delicious...YUM!!

Nermals Catch!

If you look closely you will see that the cat has caught himself a SNAKE!!!! We could not believe it! Ian is a very proud "daddy" and took tons of photos to share with you all.

Nermal "Cutest Kitten in the World" Ninja Hunter

Meet Nermal, he is Ian's newest addition to our little family. We got him one day when mom got suckered into taking him home from the grocery store. (eh, we needed another barn cat anyway...right?) As you can see he takes his hunting duties very seriously, and the barn is exceptionally cozy this time of year!