Category: Our Family

During the latter part of July I had been taking the older kids with me, and visiting the ward garden every morning. We have filled, many bags with weeds from the pumpkin patch, and we have started harvesting green beans and squash. But it kind of feels like we are the only ones going to work in the garden. I don’t know this for sure, but we have never seen anyone else there, and every time we are there we check on all the produce that is growing, and none of it seems to be getting picked, unless we picked it. We have been picking everything that is ready every other day or so, and we have been taking it home and planning meals to include squash and fresh green beans, but there is no way for us to eat all that we pick and really I don’t want to eat all of it. It came from the ward garden and I felt like we should do our best to share it. So we have been putting squash and green beans on our porch and asking the neighbors to come get whatever they want, but that just isn’t working either.

This morning when I was on Facebook, I noticed that a friend of mine from my home ward in California posted that today is “National sneak some zucchini onto your neighbors porch day”, and I knew what we had to do. The kids and I planned it all before Kyle got home from work, and when he came home we all got in the van and went over to the ward garden. It was dusk when we got to the garden and we knew we had to work quickly. We were only planning on picking whatever squash was ready, and then leaving but we had to keep the kids together too. On our way to our ward’s plot I heard Jeremy say “snake” as he pointed at the ground ahead of him. I had to call to some of the kids that hadn’t heard him and tell them to stop walking. We saw the snake pass across the path in front of us, and we moved on more cautiously. The older kids and I went to the squash plants, and I picked all the squash that was ready, and handed it to the kids to take back to the wagon. We FILLED the wagon with squash! Then we went home to get ready to start sneaking.

I stayed home with Lydia and Adam, it was getting late now and they were getting cranky, and I didn’t want them crying the whole time we were out. So Kyle took the older kids after we explained to them that we are TRYING to be sneaky, they cannot make noise or fight with each other over who gets to pull the wagon or who gets to put the squash on someone’s porch. They didn’t come back until they had distributed all of the squash. 🙂

This morning when I got on Facebook I saw that one of my neighbors posted a thank you to “who ever left the zucchini on our porch this morning” and throughout the day more of our neighbors that also received squash commented as well on how excited they were about finding that someone had left them squash too. I am glad that we were able to make so many people happy with squash that we didn’t even grow ourselves, and I am glad that all that squash produced by the ward garden won’t be going to waste as it might have if we had waited for neighbors to come get it off our porch. Considering it went over so well, we may have to make this an annual tradition! 🙂

A couple of months ago, Kyle called a local landscaper about getting our sprinklers all fixed up. He must have been really busy, because we didn’t hear back from him until just this past week. He came over and took a look at what we needed to have done and he gave us a quote for much less than the quote we were given a few years ago, so we thought that we might as well get it all taken care of.

He came over and got the front fixed up in just a day. He figured out that the front strip wasn’t getting water because of a leak in the line and he dug up the area of the grass in the front of the yard before the sidewalk, and got the leak fixed, and now the front strip gets water again! 🙂 We also had him move all the valves out of the flower bed and into the grass area. I really didn’t like that the boxes that covered the valves were right in the front, center of the flower bed and that that made it difficult to be able to plant anything in the flower bed. Now, having the boxes in the grass area in front of the flower bed, it doesn’t really look bad, and they are easy to mow right over. I would have preferred having them on the side of the house, completely out of the way, but that just wasn’t possible because that is where all the gas, electrical and phone lines are running up to the house.

These past couple of days he has been over to work on the backyard. We had originally put the backyard on one station, and it wasn’t meant to go all the way to the fence, just the area in the middle of the yard, and there was no water to the garden boxes. I didn’t plant a garden this year, just because I found it very difficult to remember to go out and water the garden every day, and I told Kyle that I wasn’t going to do a garden until we got a water line to the garden boxes. So we ended up having him split the main part of the yard into two stations, and they go all the way to the fence, and we had him add lines to all of the garden boxes. 😀

I am SO excited that we have finally gotten this taken care of. Timing wasn’t really optimal, considering Kyle is still unemployed, and here we are putting money into the yard without knowing when we will get the next paycheck. But it is something that has needed doing for quite some time, and I’m glad it’s finally done, so now the grass can start getting green again and I look forward to having an awesome garden next year. 🙂

The UTA was doing a special to encourage people to try out the train in an effort to help keep the air quality nice. So Kyle signed himself and myself up for the freebie train tickets. We got a group ticket at the station and the littlest kiddos rode free and we went on an adventure on the train.

The kids were so excited. I remember taking a train trip when I was younger, but I don’t remember where we went, I just remember being on the train, and I think there was a snack bar, and I vaguely remember some Cinco de Mayo celebrations going on wherever it was that we got off. So I knew that this would be something that the kids would find fun and could end up being a happy memory for them when they are older.

The train goes all the way up to Ogden, so that is where we went first. We had lunch in this old train car turned into a restaurant.

Then we got back on the train and headed back south. We decided to get off in Salt Lake and walk around a bit, which turned into doing a tour at the conference center.

The kids thought it was funny to all lay down on the bench in the middle of the room.

Towards the end of our tour we got to go up on the roof of the conference center, which was pretty cool. The pyramid looking things are actually the skylights that shine into the main room of the conference center. Here they are covered, to keep the light from shining through.

The kids were instantly drawn to the water, as they always are. The trees in the background are part of the gardens on the top of the conference center. On either side of the roof there are plants are trees planted that are native to Utah, which I found pretty cool.

Once our tour of the conference center was over, we got to walk around the temple grounds a little bit.

I think those trees in the background look cool.

Lydia saw all the other climbing up the stairs of the temple and wanted to do the same, but I really didn’t want to pull her out of the stroller and end up needing to chase her, so I made her happy by taking a picture of her in front of the temple. 🙂

Once again….kids attracted to the water… 😛

By this time in the day, we were all tired, and some of the kids were starting to get cranky so we decided it was time to walk back to the train and go home. I think it was a good day though, and I’m pretty sure the kids had fun. 🙂