Monday, September 19, 2011

The Home Improvement Summer of 2011

My beautiful accent wall in my living room, dining room, thanks to my youngest son and his wife and the missionaries and my visiting teacher and her son!
Ever seen a round zucchini that looks like a pumpkin? I hadn't either. Someone gave this to me out of their garden.
Brent removed all the deck railings to be replaced. However, with the major painting project inside, he wasn't able to replace them. Tomorrow the missionaries will be doing that as their service project for the week!
The bare naked railing supports waiting to be covered!
Bare naked fence waiting for some stain!
New stain does wonders for the look of a fence and protects for years to come. We had not stained it in the 17 years we have been here. I did not realize how expensive stain was. The Elder that sprayed it did a great job. His long sleeved white shirt is now polka dotted with stain. It will be his permanent work shirt, I'm sure!This is a picture of the fencing before the Elders stained it.
We paid our Home Teacher to replace this gate post that had rotted out and we are thrilled with the job. We just have to cover it with some soil and re-plant the grass there.
Some of the decking flooring needs to be replaced. So, while the Missionaries are replacing the deck railings, they will replace the flooring as well. I'm confident in these Elders' ability because they just helped tear down and replace at deck for a member of the ward. They have borrowed his nail gun and saw. They know how to do this project!
We bought a box of beef steak tomatoes from Wenatchee. Frank loves the beef steak and we can't grow them here. The weather is never warm enough for long enough. We had to make our trip to Wenatchee worth it. I also bought some raspberries, but they are already tucked away in the freezer for freezer jam.
We bought some apples in Wenatchee and some people in the ward gave us apples. I will make freezer cinnamon applesauce.
Rex Helton's wife gave me a box of huge, roma tomatoes. They grow them big in Wenatchee. I asked her where I could get a box of tomatoes and she said, "right here in my garden. I just picked them yesterday! We were thrillled! After giving a lot away, I am ready to make Pico de gallo. I have a great recipe that is super delicious.
This is what is left of 2 twenty-five pound boxes of peaches. The rest were frozen for peach smoothies and cobblers when the weather is rainy and cold. Comfort food at its best!
My geranium plants have done the best this year! Fred Meyer was giving away free Gold Bond potting soil if you brought your own containers. It had the compost and fertilizer already in it.
They just continue to bloom and bloom and bloom! I think I will try to over-winter them in the garage. Another lady in our ward does that every year. And each spring she has geraniums before any one else.


Frank took this picture with my I-Pod and accidentally put it on video, so you'll hear his voice. This is Uncle Rex, and Aunt Ella. She is 82 and he is 85. This is John Frank Helton, Mom's father's son from his second family.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Church

This is June, a service dog belonging to my friend Susan. In Sunday School Class.



Layton, Utah the last Week of May



David's family - Rhees, Rachel, Parker, David.

Our youngest son and his wife came down from Rexburg to spend Memorial Day weekened with all of us.
Parker loves the movie "Cars" and so I bought him a sippy cup with the cars logo.

In Daddy's shoes! Those are big shoes to fill, size 13!
David and his Dad.

Random Family Pics

Camron and his Dad at Church Creek Park watching the younger kids have fun.
Frank and his oldest son.

Kelli and Ady swinging, having fun.
Owen on the slide.
Jennifer, Terrin, Kali and Ethan playing keep away.
Jennifer at her house on the trampoline.
Ethan and Jennifer were playing soccer trampoline.



Whenever the grandkids come over, I have a collection of dress-up clothes they love to wear. This was Colin's favorite. For his birthday I just gave him that and some of the other dress-ups. He wore this outfit everyday for the rest of the month. When we took him the end of June to Hoopfest in Spokane, that is the outfit he wore in the car!
I gave Owen, for his birthday, two sets of warrior outfits, complete with armour and swords so he and Colin could battle each other. Who puts it on? Ady! They did enjoy the gift and the boys had fun fighting. We just had to tell them that the swords were plastic so they had to be careful not to break them.
Xena, Ady, warrior princess!



Random Summer Pictures

At Benjamin's house, Ady and Benjamin with his mini swimming pool in the background.
Ady asked me to take this picture, showing how strong she is to hold up the huge exercise ball at Benjamin's house.

Frank doing his annual weeding of the landscape.
One day Ady came to visit for the day and we went to work in the backyard raking up the grass.


She decided she wanted to put on Ethan's old Mickey Mouse hat while she was working. You can plainly see Ethan's name on the front.



Summer Flowers

The ever bloomin' petunias. Gotta love em'.
This is the front door view of my home. "FLOWERS FEED THE SOUL!"
I love summer time for that very reason. And now in August that we have temperatures at 70 or above the flowers are responding so well.
I have never had such great luck with geraniums. They are blooming and more buds coming on all the time.
Dianthus and carnations with geraniums.
I don't remember what kind of rose, but this is my only rose in my garden. Living in the NW I have a lot of rose rust that attacks the rose leaves. So I usually just finally dig up my roses. This one has lasted three years.
A lighter color orange crocasima, planted as a bulb.
The humming birds love this one with its brightly colored orange flowers. This "Crocosima, " is planted as a bulb.
The favorite hanging fuschia basket I try to hang every year always feeds my soul as I always walk past it every time I leave the house and return.

I don't know what this is. but it came with the tulips I planted last year.
Beautiful fragrant Phlox, a perenia,l that comes in bloom every summer.
Bee balm is another perenial that the bees do literally love. I counted 3 bees at one time getting nectar from the flowers.