Garden Goodies

Happy Mother's Day

We wanted to wish a Happy Mother's Day to all of you women out there with a Mother Heart.
The word cloud above was generated using Tagxedo. From the site - "Tagxedo turns words -- famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters -- into a visually stunning tag cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text."

We used the LDS Conference talk by Julie B. Beck in 2004 titled "A Mother Heart" to generate the above image. Added a few extra instances of Mother, Heart, Family, Joy, and Love to accentuate those words a little more. Also removed a few less desirable words like old.

Even though it's a little late, Happy Mother's Day!

Fun in Orlando

Mike's company held a symposium in Orlando Florida and we decided to take the family down for the event. We left a couple days early to go to Walt Disney World. Mike's sister, Jeanne, came out to help with the kids as well. Due to the size of our family, we could really only justify spending one day there, but it was a lot of fun. Here are a few pictures from our day at the Magic Kingdom.



The kids had worked hard to save money for our trip there and we gave them each their money in a fanny pack and let them know that it was theirs to spend, but had them wait until later in the day so they could make sure they knew what they wanted. It worked great, there was no begging for this or that souvenir. They each picked their own items and managed their money.

We also went to the Orlando Science Center while we were there. Our membership at the local science museum got us free admission there, so that was a sweet deal. The kids especially enjoyed the science of toys exhibit and kid town. We got to touch a toad, see baby alligators get fed, and look for dinosaur fossils. Lots of hands-on activities.

We're still here

With no posts for the last several weeks you are probably wondering what is going on with our family. Rest assured, we are all doing well. Things have just been incredibly busy of late and we have found ourselves too tired to post to the blog at the end of the day. Here is a quick update on some of our recent events.

Jon participated in the pinewood derby for his cub scout pack and got 3rd place for speed. He also won the Mario Sunshine Shines award for his car. He was excited. The dad of the boy who won ordered special wheels for his car. That seems a little unfair, but Jon was proud that he mostly did his car himself. Mike cut it out and sanded the wheels, but that was it.

We planted 8 raised garden beds this year. Lena is happy to see that we are seeing some good growth already. We have been eating fresh salad from the gardens this past week. Take a look at our fresh spinach! Now we just have to figure out how to protect the gardens from animals.

Ethan did a little magic show for family home evening this week. He pulled quite a few items out of the magic top hat that he found in the attic (a.k.a. The Room of Requirement). Here's a photo of Ethan the Magnificent.

Alyssa loves shoes. She can regularly be found wearing any pair of shoes that she can lay her hands on. Ethan's had been left on the floor of the living room and she promptly put them on and walked around the room. We'll have to get more pictures of her with the assortment of different shoes she likes to wear.

Lena made a some batches of fig jam flavored with Jell-O. You can find the recipe here. The strawberry is one of our favorites. Lena also made raspberry and black raspberry. Alyssa found some and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Mike and the kids went fishing with Grandpa a couple times recently at a friends pond. The first time Kirsten caught a fish, but she didn't want to eat it. So we threw it back. The second time we didn't catch anything, but did get several bites that got away. The kids still had a lot of fun fishing with Grandpa.

Many Acheivements

Jon and Rebecca went to the District Science Fair on Tuesday since they were both in the top three for their categories. Jon got 4th place in Earth Science and Rebecca got 2nd place in Physics. Jon was a little disappointed that Rebecca's project ranked higher than his, but overall they both did very well.

Jon's cub scout pack had their Blue and Gold Banquet this week. Jon received his swimming, archery, and BB gun belt loops. Jon volunteered Lena to make a cake and the requirements for the cake were fairly specific (lemon, colors, 100 year theme, etc.). It turned out good despite the fact that Lena did not have very much time to work on it.

Jon participated in a piano recital and played "Intrada", which is itallian for introduction. He did a good job. The other kids liked the refreshments afterwards.