Sister Day!

My sister Julie, and her newest baby, Peter, came to Utah for a visit! She lives in Minnesota, so I was so excited she was coming! We were able to plan a sister day a couple days before Macey started school. Scott stayed home with the four kids, and I took the car up to Amy's house in Spanish Fork! 

We started the day off at Amy's new home, and then we headed to lunch at Cubby's in Spanish Fork. We tried three different types of french fries--rosemary fries, maple sweet potato fries, and buffalo fries--YUM! It was such a good lunch and fun to go out to eat without having to worry about 4 small kids screaming or making messes with their food!

After lunch, we had scheduled pedicures and manicures! This was seriously the best way to spend my day, being 36.5 weeks pregnant!

In a last minute decision, I asked if they could cut my hair too! I really wanted to get it cut before Lucy was born, but I haven't had time to squeeze in a hair cut! The salon fit me in, and I got about 5 inches cut off!

Our fingernails and toenails!

I have had one major craving this pregnancy--lemon. Lemon anything sounds AMAZING! I have been really into lemonade this summer. Amy suggested frozen lemonades from Chick-fil-a, and I jumped at the chance! I saw on Pinterest a recipe for a copycat version of their lemonade, and I had been craving it ever since. It did NOT disappoint!

We spent the afternoon shopping! If you know the Christensen girls, you know that we love shopping for a good deal! We will dig through clearance bins and shop until we drop. So naturally, we had to do the same while we were all together. Julie suggested a Down East Warehouse in South Salt Lake. It was literally in a warehouse. They had giant boxes of deals. We dug for hours through the bins and we all walked out with bags of really great finds! Julie snapped this shot while we weren't looking!

We went over to my parent's apartment in Salt Lake after shopping all day. My parents have been living here since June, when my dad had his Bone Marrow Transplant. They are literally living right by LDS Hospital because they have to go for almost daily visits! They will be here at least through September, and it's a beautiful apartment! We were able to go visit and have dinner together before we all headed home for the night!

Our Garden, Part Two!

I am fairly certain the rest of the world doesn't find my gardening posts as epic as I do, but there really have been so many things I have learned from having a garden!

Most of my childhood memories, in the summertime, revolve around harvesting produce from our large garden: helping pull the carrots, washing the carrots off in the hose and my dad cutting the ends off with a pocket knife. We would always sneak a couple outside before they were brought in the house, climbing our apple tree, helping peel tomatoes for salsa, hand-grinding zucchini for relish, snapping green beans, making homemade strawberry jam--all while spending time with my parents and siblings.

As an adult, it didn't take long for me to understand the laboriousness of bottling produce! It also didn't take long to understand the money-saving side of it all! One of the things I got to enjoy this summer, was my kids help! It was fun being out there with them--teaching them about weeds, what we are going to do with all the produce and why mom is always in the garden! They were always willing to help, and they definitely enjoyed eating some of the spoils.

Deciding to do a garden was an easy decision. It must be in my blood because I got the gardening itch around February and it didn't go away until I did something about it! I knew we were expecting Lucy around the end of the summer, prime harvesting time. Weeding at 6-9 months pregnant was hard! My poor husband shook his head in frustration most days. He couldn't keep me out of that garden, no matter how hard he tried! No matter my aches and pains, this stubborn girl was out there. And no matter the aches and pains, I really have enjoyed every minute of it!

CORN!! Scott and I have never been able to master corn, in our 7 years of gardening. This year, we did it...or at least got a great start! We got two good harvests off of our corn. We ate it for several meals, and the rest we picked, blanched, and froze! We froze 38 cups of corn--not too bad!

This was the last of the corn! We cleaned off the stalks and then pulled them up out of the garden. This batch looked a little more hillbilly than the others, but the last batch always does. :)

JAM! We were running out of jam, so I knew we needed to make more! In our old home, we had 3 good fruit trees that I could kind of count on. We planted fruit trees, but I have learned it will be years before we see anything from those! So we stopped at Red Barn in Santaquin, and we picked up some peaches for $.89/pound and then I took grape juice concentrate to make some Grape Jelly. A couple nights later, I had grape jelly, peach jam, raspberry peach jam, and freezer peach jam!

CARROTS!! We had quite a few carrots. I may have planted two entire packets of seeds. I was really nervous about thinning them after a few weeks, so they weren't thinned very well! When thinning, it was so hard to pull up growing carrots! We have eaten many of these, too, and I still have a giant bag in our fridge! We washed, cut up, blanched and bottled the rest! We got 7 quart bottles and 33 pints of carrots!

Mom was really tired and sore this day. The kids picked almost all of the carrots! We wheeled them back to our carport, and I cut off all the tops. The kids then took turns carrying the tops to our mulch bin. They were great helpers!!

WATERMELON AND CANTALOUPE!!

These are still producing! We picked our first two watermelons, and to be honest, they weren't quite ready yet! But we still have 11 watermelon out there growing! It's a good thing this girl could live on watermelon alone. :)

In my other post, you saw the zucchini, peas and green beans! We ate all the zucchini (until I pulled up the plants), peas we froze a couple cups but mostly ate all of those fresh, and green beans we had 4 really good pickings off of them. We got 39 quarts and 13 pints of green beans and 4 pints of dill beans! We also have a cucumber plant that is still producing, and we have 6 tomato plants that are still going too! The last thing I did was 17 pints of salsa. We had 2 anaheim pepper plants and, with all our tomatoes, it cost us a few dollars out of pocket--win, win!

Also, should we take a minute to admire the workmanship of these shelves? Thanks again, dad!!

Grandma Bagley's Back-to-School Bash!

Grandma Bagley had a back-to-school party for all the grandkids. Our kids were so excited to go and spend time with cousins--everything else was just a bonus on top! They had such a hard time leaving at the end of the day because they were having so much fun!!

We had a big BBQ lunch, Grandma had a coloring contest--where the grandkids won awards, and a big water balloon fight! I only had my camera for the water balloon fight, but it was well worth it!