I love that our ward has a garden! We didn’t hear much about it during planting time at all, and we kept waiting to hear information on who is going to plant and what. Last year the relief society had a meeting where they went and planted the potatoes and onions and garlic. Then the young men and women went and planted other things. But this year we didn’t hear anything at all, and we were starting to get worried that there might not be a garden. I guess the guy that is in charge of it just took care of getting it all planted on his own. But as soon as we heard that it was in need of weeding we decided we needed to plan a family home evening to go pull weeds at the garden as a family. There are also some scout requirements for both Ethan and Tyra that can be passed off by helping to tend the garden and since we don’t have a family garden this year, we are using the ward garden to be able to sign them off. Ethan decided to wear his uniform to the garden since he knew he was going for the purpose of signing off scout stuff. 
Look at that sunset: 
Working on the beats and carrots: 
It was dark before we left, but we filled a whole bag with weeds, and we harvested some lettuce to have with dinner in the next couple of days. 🙂 
Category: Our Family
Cat Fish!
Girl Scouts Cabin Trip #2
This weekend our troop had our second trip to the cabin to take up the other half of the troop. This trip was to be for all the brownies, and one of our juniors since her sister is a brownie and we didn’t want to make them come to the cabin twice. Amy said that she intended to take Eliza up again since it was their family’s cabin, and then I asked if Tyra and I could tag along as well considering I am the leader of the whole troop, and Amy is just to be over juniors next year and Michelle is to just be over the brownies. Well we hadn’t heard any sort of RSVP from a few of the girls and found out the week of that three of them weren’t going to be able to attend. Two because of other plans for the weekend, and one because she broke her elbow and that needed to be taken care of instead. So the trip to the cabin ended up being Amy, Michelle and I and our daughters. As fun as our big troop is, it was kind of nice and quiet being such a small group. Michelle’s brownie daughter had already earned the brownie badges that we were planning on doing at the cabin, as we had basically planned on doing them for the other girls but since none of them came, all of those activities got wiped off the plans. Amy had been planning on doing a couple of different junior badges with Michelle’s junior daughter than we did at the first cabin trip, and so we worked on those, and we helped her earn some of the things that we did at the first cabin trip. One of the badges that we worked on this time that we didn’t last time was the Independence badge. For this one the girls got to create a design with some buttons to sew onto a shirt.
A couple of the girls had issues, like sewing the front of the shirt to the back, but I guess that is why we do activities like this, right? So they can learn of the possibility of mistakes like that and figure out how to prevent them in the future. 🙂 A little later Amy took the girls out to show them some things under the hood of a car. They got to learn where the oil is and how to check it, and where the windshield wiper fluid is and other basic stuff like that.
Once we did what we could with the badges the rest of the time was spent with the girls playing around, and Amy and Michelle and I played a few games of Rummikub.
After dinner we talked about taking the girls on a night hike, since that was one of the things needed for a junior badge that we did last time, which Michelle’s older daughter missed. We told the girls to go get their water and their shoes and other supplies, as we were getting ready to go out, and they all proceeded to go up to the loft to get their stuff. Then we heard Tyra scream and say, “A BEAR!!!” Michelle flipped out and said that we weren’t going to be taking her girls outside, and Amy and I were just thinking “there is no way she saw a bear!” The girls had been quite noisy all day, and any animals which heard their noises would have steered clear of our location. After questioning Tyra about what this bear looked like, how big was it, where did you see it, and which way was it going, Amy and I went out to see if we could find any sign of any wild animal. We went to the back of the cabin and we didn’t see anything. No tracks, no trampled bushes, no sign that any animal had passed by. Tyra said that it was small so we are thinking that maybe it was a badger or something else like that, something that could have gone under the bushes. So we finished up the night, not by taking the girls out on a night hike, but by having our dessert, and sending the girls to the loft for bed. However the girls were having a really hard time falling asleep. They were really freaked out about the possibility of a bear. They kept talking about bears, and thinking that they saw a bear looking in through the window at them. NOBODY slept well that is for sure. In the morning we got up and had breakfast, and then we cleaned up and headed home. I’m sure everybody was thinking of getting home and taking a nap!
Update 1 Aug:Amy and I went to a service unit meeting tonight, and on our way there we were talking and Amy said that her uncle called her, and asked if we had heard anything about a bear while we were up at the cabin the last time. She told him the story of how Tyra thought she saw a bear and how freaked out the girls were over that. Then he told her that a bear was actually just caught, up in the same area as where their family cabin is. Now we are thinking that maybe Tyra did see a bear….but we aren’t going to tell the girls that!
Webelos Rank
Ethan earned his Webelos rank and he received it at pack meeting tonight! The leaders had a dialogue to present the awards, starting with any bobcats, then any wolf awards then bear awards, then the webelos, and lastly the arrow of light. Kyle was part of it as he is the Webelos leader and he got to borrow a costume from brother Hacking.
However, this dialogue only included awards for rank advancement, not arrows or activity badges or any of that. So Ethan was given his awards, by Brother Graham in a crazy wolf costume, but it wasn’t announced what was in his bag aside from the Webelos rank. So in addition to his Webelos rank he also received the Citizen, Engineer, Naturalist, Outdoorsman, and Traveler activity badges.
Independence Day 2013
There was to be no “dead end of fire” at the end of our street this year, as the family that usually hosts it is in the middle of moving. So the neighborhood decided that we would do “Independence Day on Independence Way,” which is the street behind ours. Due to Kyle’s sudden unemployment, we didn’t purchase any fireworks to contribute to the show this year. But my dad bought some so we didn’t go empty handed. So after eating the yummy shish kabobs and corn on the cob that I had barbecued we loaded the little ones into the strollers and we walked down the street and around the corner to the next street. Almost as soon as we got there Jeff asked if we brought any chairs to sit in, which we didn’t, so he and Kyle went back to the house to get the two chairs that we have. The rest of us waited for things to get started.
The festivities were already underway when we arrived, with kids running around with sparklers, and one of our neighbors DJing music for the evening. He ended up playing all the way through, past the last firework. Once dusk came on, the fireworks began with an announcement that nobody under the age of 18 would be allowed in the street to light any of the fireworks. I think that upset some of the older pyro boys in the neighborhood, but it made the parents feel better. 🙂
I didn’t take any pictures of the fireworks this year. They never look as good in a picture as they do in reality, but I love the look on Lydia’s face that I captured in this picture as she looked at the pretties in the sky:
Oh the wonder and the excitement that are in that look.
Once the fireworks were done, we headed back to the house to finish the night with the almond praline chocolate swirl ice cream that I made earlier this morning.