The Challenge

My wonderfully fun sister Diana is the most active person that I know. In fact, she is usually good at any sport that she trys. You never know how athletic you are until you can keep up with Diana. She told me a little over a week ago that she had taken a class that encourages you to set a challenging but attainable goal and then accomplish it in 90 days. Her goal is to run a 10k (6.2 miles). She has never run long distances before but has always wanted to try a 10k, especially since Jeremy and my sister-in-law Anissa have been running races. So to support her I told her that I would run a 10k too. We will be training until about mid October and then she will run her 10k in Arizona and I will run mine here in NC. Maybe when I go out to Arizona for Christmas we can run one together. That would be fun! I've needed an extra excuse to keep running and to sign up for a race. This was the perfect "challenge" for us to do together and I am excited to see what happens. Wish us luck!

Lingo

Tanner says the funniest things. Usually what he says is close to what he means. Here are a few examples of Tanner's lingo:
root beard-rootbeer
basketti-spaghetti
mazogna-lasagna
scritchers-scriptures
miss-a-merry-missionary
topato-tomato
kajamas-pajama's
mustake-mustache
stummyache-stomach ache and tummy ache combined
sunscream-sunscreen
thlipflops-flipflops (you have to watch his mouth to see what he is actually saying)
Taytin-Clayton
Abblegale-Abigail
strange cheese-string cheese
pompkin-pumpkin
pah-corn-popcorn

Everytime we notice that he said something a little different, we all tend to repeat it as if to say "he did it again" and we all smile. We know that he is little and trying so hard to be big. His vocabulary is growing everyday but it isn't perfect yet and that is why we think it is so cute. It's just fun to watch him continue to do his best. We just love Tanner!

Pictures

Sleepy head Tanner was pretty tired this day. I thought he was being too quiet. I'm just glad that he didn't fall while he slumbered. Scary!

Our Garden!
This is what some of our garden looked like before we went to California. We had so much to harvest before we went, we even told some of our neighbors to raid our garden while we were gone so that nothing went to waste.

Strawberry patch-we've only had a few strawberries to eat because something is eating them before we can get to them. Probably squirrels or rabbits.

Peaches galore! Our poor little tree had so many peaches on them that the branches were sagging almost to breaking. The peaches were very tiny but extremely sweet.

Our tomato's were thriving so we had lots of tomato and cucumber salads. Tanner loves tomato's so he was excited for all the tomatoe's to turn red.

Raspberries, we had about a handfull of raspberries to harvest each day for about a month and then the birds and japanese beetles found them.

Corn patch, here is the corn patch. We had one particular stock that seemed to be a mutant so it is almost 2x as big as all the rest. We had one piece of corn come off just before we went to California but it was kind of small so we probably should have fertilized the corn. Then the bugs got to it.

California pictures

Shark attack! They loved pretending that they were being attacked by the shark. If you click on the picture you'll be able to see all the silly faces.

This is a life size statue of a baby humpback whale, there was a statue of the mom too but we couldn't fit it all in the picture. It was really cool to see just how big they actually are.

This is a 4 generation picture. Great-Grandpa Lund, Grandma Fowler, Jeremy and the boys.

Tanner at the grapevine playground.

Summer is finally here!

June has been a crazy month for us. School got out on June 10th so from the first day I made sure that the boys get one hour of quiet time in their rooms everyday, which means I get one hour of quiet time too. I want to make sure the boys and I stay active too so every Mon/Wed/Fri. we go out for some exercise. I run with Tanner in the jogger and the older boys ride their bikes. Sometimes we'll add a day so that we can have Jeremy join us. That has been a fun family activity. We hit the pool as often as we can. We have been on some fun hikes too and hope to go camping a few times.

Our whole family went to San Diego, California for Jeremy's grandmothers funeral. I'm so thankful that we were all able to go. It was beautiful and we loved being there with family we haven't seen in 7 years. It was fun to get reaquainted and hope to stay in touch better. It was a special trip, one that I will never forget for many reasons. Jeremy and I celebrated our 11th anniversary while out in California so Jeremy's mom watched the boys and we were able to go to the San Diego Temple, it was the first time for both of us to go inside and it was amazing. The San Diego temple is one of my favorites so I was so excited to go inside, what a great anniversary gift!

Well that's been our summer so far. I'm sure we will have many more adventures before it is over. I can't wait! I'll post pictures when I can. I have tons of pictures to share but our camera will not let us transfer them, not sure why, so I have no pictures to post until we get that figured out.

Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, A Camping We Will Go...

For the Memorial Day weekend we decided to join 3 other families in the ward for a campout at Linville Falls in the Blue Ridge Parkway. Aside from the 18 children (10 under the age of six) and the rain storm from 3am to 6am, we had a great time! It was our first camping trip as a family since moving to North Carolina, and the Blue Ridge Parkway provided a beautiful backdrop for the occasion.

After "sleeping" through the rain, we hiked down to Linville Falls. It was about 1.5 miles of rugged terrain, but the view was worth the hike. Having all this scenery so close is why we love living in North Carolina! Below are some snap shots from the adventure.

Strawberries

It's strawberry season here in North Carolina so on Saturday, we had a family outing; we went strawberry picking at a strawberry farm! We got 2 gallons (13lbs) of beautiful, red, sweet strawberries for $12.

Tanner was our official basket holder and he was so proud of his job...until the baskets got too heavy. The boys loved to pick the strawberries and snitched a few to make sure they tasted right.

We came home, washed, sliced, bagged, and froze our stawberries for later use.

Micheal and Clayton were very into helping, their job was to clean out the hull and help slice them. They were shocked when we let them use knives, something we have never done before.

We would rather have our kids see where our food really comes from and participate, hands on, in harvesting than just buying it in the store. Since our little "farm" isn't ready to harvest large quantities of fruit, going fruit picking to supplement our "farm" for a while sounds like fun to us, it's a good excuse for more family time! We also found out that they will have raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and peaches ready to be picked in June so I'm sure we'll go out again in a month to pick some of those fruits. Oh, and in October we'll go for pumpkins! There is nothing like freshly picked fruits and veggies.