Elk sighting on the farm

Kade was so excited to see these elk on the farm that I just had to post the pictures he took for him... You see, elk are not in this area so it is a very rare sighting, so Kade got his camera and got some pretty good pictures. Too bad he can't just hunt these, that would save him a trip to Colorado...


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Utah Trip 9/27

So, the weekend of September 27th I traveled to Utah to see Krista! It was so much fun. I left Friday and came back on Sunday. Kade couldn't go because he had a Young Men camp out to go to at the farm. He took the Young Men to the farm to shoot rabbits and camp out for the night. So I traveled to Utah on my own. Friday night I got to Lehi, Saturday morning Krista shot her bridals in Salt Lake at the Memory Grove Park.
I had never been to that park, it was absolutely gorgeous! I was so jealous of the people that get to run in that park everyday! It was so much fun helping Krista with her bridals. I didn't do bridals for my wedding, and wished I had after seeing how much fun it was!







Saturday night we went to Cornbellies at Thanksgiving Point. It was great; there was a corn maze shaped as (no joke!) David Archuleta. We were trying to find his face, but gave up and cheated to get out. There was also a huge blown up haunted monster. You would go through the mouth and come out the butt, we were too chicken to go through! We had a lot of fun acting like kids haha :) Sunday I drove back after church.
I guess Kade had a lot of fun with the YM. He said the boys got so excited they started mutilating the wounded rabbits with knives and machetes. Good thing I wasn't there..

Garden goodness

I picked my first watermelon today, so Kade took a picture.









I also took a more recent picture of my garden.
The watermelon and cucumber plants have pretty much turned into one, then the broccoli and the tomatoes.

Sod!!!

Wow! Yesterday was crazy and awesome. We started this week with a yard full of weeds and ended with gorgeous grass!
After I labored for hours in the yard digging up the enormous amount of weeds in our yard, Kade was motivated to get the sod down. Kade and a couple of employees leveled the yard this week. Then on Friday morning Kade got the fifth wheel trailer to load 14 pallets of sod, yea we have a lot of grass, he took 2 trips. In the morning the first half of the sod was put down by about 11am, and we got the rest down by like 2pm. But we ran out in the back and went back for another pallet. So I guess we had 15 pallets and it still didn't completely finish what we were planning, but close enough.
I can not believe the difference it made! Kade and I set the timer on the sprinkler system and stared at the grass forever! haha.. its so wonderful...






This link will take you to all the lovely pictures
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2208631&l=ea264&id=17806428

Woohoo!

Yay for me! I picked my first vegetables today, two delicious cucumbers. When I checked the garden today there were plenty more that were almost ready to be picked.
And the tomatoes are getting ridiculous, there are about a billion green tomatoes. I'm just waiting for them to turn red... And I have also spotted some grape sized watermelon, who knows if I'll get any of those.



And here is my flower garden, after I ripped out some plants and trimmed the sunflowers. The sunflowers have really gotten out of control. I ripped out the flowers next to them because the flowers weren't visible, and it was starting to look like a weed. Though this picture doesn't show it, our front yard is terrible. From the street you can't even see my flowers because of the enormous weeds blocking everything! Kade assures me that once it gets a little cooler we are putting in sod, thank goodness...





Kade also had an exciting week. Both him and his brother Brandon shot and killed a buck. I love this picture of Kade in his camo for the hunt. He looks like swamp thing.. :)
Kade got his at the Diamond S Ranch. While a herd of deer were coming into the field, Kade ambushed them. He got a 30 yard shot and hit right in the vitals, breaking the arrow in half. The deer got about one hundred yards before dying. I got a call that night explaining he would be very late because they had to find it and gut it.





While it's not as big as the buck he got in 2006, he was still happy he got one. And I was happy he was done hunting and would not be going for 3 days in the wilderness. :)

Family fun in Utah and Yellowstone

I have about a billion pictures from the trip so follow these links to see the photo albums on my facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2199215&l=46520&id=17806428 http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2199223&l=229db&id=17806428
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2199229&l=73a95&id=17806428

Well, this past week was awesome! Not only did I get to see my family for a whole week, but we went to Yellowstone; and it was gorgeous!!! :) The only bad thing about the trip was that Kade had to leave early to get back to work. It's not easy for him to leave the farm during the summer, the busiest time of the year, for a whole week.
Kade and I drove to Utah on Saturday, July 19th, in time for my Grandma Blood's 90th birthday party with Dad's family. We also stopped by Mr. Mac for Aaronhead's mission clothes, where mom decided I needed to try on shoes they were buying for Stephen because we have the same size foot, very weird...
Sunday, we also spent with Grandma, going to her church and staying for dinner. Monday we drove up to the cabin. Kade loved it! I knew he would, that's why I bribed him to stay just until Tuesday, so he could go. The cabin was very nice and relaxing. The cabin supplied us with horseshoes, tetherball, pingpong, and fooseball. I beat Kade at horseshoes once :) hehe... Kade, Aaron, and I also went for a bike ride down the road. It was pretty hilarious when I first got on the bike. First, I probably haven't ridden a bicycle in who knows how long. And second, when I got on the bike there was a monstrous hill right in front of me. So, I gracefully flew down the hill completely forgetting where the brakes were. Kade was already long gone, and Aaron just sat there and laughed at me. Thankfully, I did remember where the brakes were before I got to the huge bump at the bottom of the hill, which would have sent me flying. Those dang seats are so uncomfortable! I couldn't sit down for a couple days after that bike ride...
Tuesday we drove to Trial Lake to go fishing, also very beautiful. I like this picture of dad. Sadly, I was depressed most of the time because Kade was leaving at noon. Kade loves fishing, so he was having a good time even though he didn't catch anything. But right after he left they caught 11 fish!! He missed out..
Then we went back to the cabin and ate them all.. I love fish :)
That night we played some more games and watched a movie.


Wednesday morning we left for Yellowstone from the cabin. It went by fast because the drive was beautiful. We stopped at the Grand Tetons National Park at Jenny Lake for lunch. Wow was that gorgeous!! I now have this picture as by desktop background. Then we kept heading up to Yellowstone. We were lucky enough to make it to Old Faithful right before it was about to erupt, so we didn't have to sit around for an hour waiting for it to go off again. That night we stayed at one of the four Best Westerns in West Yellowstone. We got confused trying to find the hotel because there were 3 within a block from each other.
Thursday we got to spend the whole day in Yellowstone, and got to see almost everything. Though hiking some of the trails would have been fun, but we didn't have the time. First thing in the morning we followed very slow cars up to the Mammoth Hot Springs. We saw an elk there too, just chilling right next to the hot springs. There were plenty of elk in Yellowstone. And you always knew where they were because there would be a crowd of cars on the side of the road watching the animals. Then we drove down to the Canyon and waterfalls (my favorite)! We stopped for lunch and ice cream and headed down towards the falls. I was kind of scared looking over the edge at the Lower Falls because we were extremely close to the edge. But my favorite was the Upper Falls, it was breathtaking inside of the Canyon.
Then we started heading back to the hotel, but mom, dad, and I wanted to go see the paint pots down by Old Faithful. So after forcing Timmy and Joanna to come with we headed down, while everyone else went back to the hotel to swim. We stopped at the Fountain Paint Pots where there were turquoise pools like this one, and bubbling mud holes, and small geysers that were constantly erupting. It was really cool, I'm glad I went, as were Timmy and Joanna. :)

Friday morning we headed back to Utah going through Idaho this time, not a scenic route but quicker. That night for dinner we had a picnic at West Jordan Park with Mom's side. The playground at the park was very impressive, it had a huge castle. While taking this picture, it was difficult running back to the group after hitting the timer on our cameras, but I did make it back. Sadly, I have my eyes closed.. haha..

On Saturday Daniel, Wendy and Jocelyn had to go to the airport in the morning so Dad and I took them. Then later in the afternoon Dad drove me back to the airport so I could catch my flight to Reno, where Kade was picking me up. I was sad to leave my family, but also glad to see Kade again. While I was away he was able to look for deer with Brandon all he wanted without worrying about me. I guess I'll see everyone again at Christmas, except Aaron of course he'll be in Chile on his mission.
Oh, and while I was away my garden exploded! Everything got huge, and I even see small cucumbers and watermelons forming! Unbelievably, my flower garden grew even bigger when I was gone! My sunflower plant has dwarfed everything we put in there. I'll have to get some pictures of that. The next thing I'm looking forward to is the release of Breaking Dawn :) Only 3 more days!!! Yay!!

First time gardener

So I was extremely excited to start my first garden in our backyard. I began very small so I would actually be able to take care of it. But being a novice, I forgot an important step. Luckily, I had Kade's dad to point it out to me. Last Sunday his parents came over to check out all the work we have been doing on our house (including my garden). When he looked at my beans, he knew right away I had a bug problem. I was in shock, even though it should have been obvious. The bean plants were pretty much just the stalks, no leaves. But because I didn't really know what bean plants were supposed to look like, I figured they were supposed to look like that.... Well, they're not. Not only were the beans missing their leaves, but the cantaloupe plants were completely gone. I noticed a few days before one had disappeared, but I thought maybe it died or something. But then both disappeared, so I don't have anymore cantaloupe plants. :(
But, thanks to Kade's dad I have now put some bug killer on my garden, and hopefully I'll still get some vegetables out of it this year.
I hope I'm not missing another important step...
Oh and I should comment on my flower garden. The sunflowers I had started from seed in my window seal have no grown so huge they are bigger than the bushes we planted this spring. Hopefully, the stupid thing will produce some more flowers, right now it just looks like a big green monster...
Ok I got some pictures, thankfully the sunflowers have bloomed :)
And I have a mini-green tomato! yay!!