john's garden

I love this time of year - when our garden is in its full glory. Actually, when I say our garden, I really should correct myself and say "John's Garden". He is the one who does 98% of the work. But to him it's not work. He is in his element when he is gardening. Each year he tills it, preps it, plants it (much from seeds that he has grown in his home-made greenhouses), tends it, weeds it, harvests it, and yes ladies it's true, he bottles it, freezes it, makes it into fruit leathers, juices, jams, etc, etc. Last week he made his first batch (of the season) of salsa, and several batches of fruit leather. He also did his first of many batches of grape/pear juice.

What's it like having a husband that's so domisticated, you ask? I'll tell you - it's sweet!

John is growing 6 different varieties of grapes, so we end up with several different colors of delicious grape juice.

The peaches will be ready to harvest this weekend.

Nubby squash

Broccoli

Four varieties of tomatoes this year. In addition to his salsa, he makes a mean tomato juice.

Eggplant

Raspberries galore. The sweetest you've ever tasted!

Sweet Dumpling winter squash

No garden is complete without a few gigantic zucchini!

Fuji apples

Barlett pears

Our cat Tache hunting her prey in the corn stalks.

Basil. Glorious basil!

Blueberries

Swiss chard

Every garden needs a spider the size of your fist!

Our little harvester Adam who loves to roam through the raspberries and eat them as quickly as he can pick them (if his mommy doesn't eat them all first!).

Mmmm. Can't you just taste them?

It doesn't get much better than this!

remembering

September 11, 2001

1:30 a.m. - I head to the airport to pick up our good friends, Steve and Becky, arriving from England for a 2 week visit. This is Becky's first time to America and we are so excited to see them. We collapse in bed at around 3 a.m.

9:00 a.m. - We are all waking up and the kids are so happy to see Becky and Steve for the first time in several years. I am in the kitchen cooking breakfast while Haylie and Matthew are playing on the floor nearby with Becky and Steve. They are all laughing having a great time.

9:30 a.m. - The phone rings and it's my friend Kris. She asks me if I am watching The Today Show. I told her that we did not have the t.v. on and she insisted that I turn it on immediately, which I did.

That's the first time we saw it. The two towers with smoke pouring out of them. As we watched with confusion, I will never forget how I felt when I saw that first tower collapse. I knew this wasn't really happening. It couldn't be. Surreal doesn't even describe it.

We had planned a full day with our friends - we were going to spend the day downtown seeing Temple Square, The Conference Center, eat lunch at the Lion House Pantry. It was all so new to Becky and we wanted show her wonderful Salt Lake City. With heavy hearts, still feeling very confused, we headed downtown. The day was very strange. Passing people on the street, you could see the grief and confusion in their faces. As the day went on and as people realized how truly huge and devastating this was, the stores and shops began to close, hanging signs in their windows saying "Due to the tragic events of the day, we are closed".

We went into the Visitor's Center and silently sat by the Christus statue. After a few minutes two sister missionaries approached us and offered us some tickets to a Tabernacle Choir concert that night in the Tabernacle, which had been planned for some time. They had decided to still go on with the concert despite of what was going on. All I can say is that concert was truly inspired to be held on September 11th.

We arrived at the concert that night, and obviously the program had changed a bit. President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke. He spoke words of comfort, love and hope. As we stood at the end and, with hands on our hearts, sang as a congregation, My Country, 'Tis of Thee, I wept. I wept in a way I have never done before.

It was a difficult time for our friends to be here. Their plans completely changed. There were no cars available for them to rent and travel around as they had planned. Becky wanted to go back home to England - surely she would feel safer in her own home, but that was not a possibility. The skies were silent for nearly two weeks.

Adam didn't join our family for almost 3 years after that tragic day, so seeing all the flags at the Healing Field this morning was just a play date for him. I wonder how he felt, though, as surely he watched from above as the events of September 11th were taking place, about coming into such a world.

But I believe he knew that with the Gospel of Jesus Christ that he would be okay. There he would find safety and shelter from this cruel and unpredictable world.

a conversation in the shower

"Dad, my hair has been really hard lately. Will you put some

AIR conditioner in it?"

whatever works

If blowing on your hot cob of corn doesn't cool it down fast enough, just grab the nearest fan. It'll cool that baby off like a charm! Just ask Matthew, the inventor of the awesome idea.

(The fan really was on, you just can't tell because of the super fast shutter speed of my super high-tech camera.)

an experience of a lifetime

The girls have been back from Peru for almost 2 weeks now, and in that time we still have not seen all of their photos! Yes, they took that many. I finally have few minutes to sit down and post some.


Machu Picchu. Brooke and Raegan say that the pictures don't even begin to do it justice. What an amazing place! And see that really tall mountain behind them? It's called Waynu Picchu, and they climbed to the very top of that thing!

Here they are about one bazillion feet up on the top of Waynu Picchu. Certainly not for those who are a just a little bit squeamish of heights (ie: my husband).

In my previous blog I told about Ida, the woman for whom the group build a new home (and her 6 children - the father left them). Ida's oldest son is serving a mission for the Mormon church which is a huge sacrifice for them. Ida earns a very meager amount of money by washing other people's clothing in buckets. Here is the front of her old house. It was literally crumbling apart. It had one room. That's it. One room with no plumbing, no kitchen. Pretty much no anything.

This was their toilet. It sat behind the house in the dirt with no water connected to it. It emptied into a sewer line, but they would have to dump buckets of water down it to get the......stuff to go down. Ida not only now has a working toilet but has an entire bathroom IN her house with running water.

Inside Ida's one-room home. This picture shows pretty much everything they own. It had all been pushed to one corner of the room so that the group could get in and start working on the new house. Notice the picture of Christ with the children taped to her wall. This family has so little, but yet they have more faith than imaginable.

Brooke with one of Ida's daughters.

Raegan with four of Ida's six children.

Their group was riding in a bus one day when Brooke suddenly could smell something really yummy. She looked over and saw this truck packed full of CILANTRO!

Then, out of no where, this kid pops up in the middle of it!

Apparently there are dogs in Peru. Lots of dogs. Lots of stray dogs. Lots of really UGLY stray dogs. Everywhere. (Too bad they didn't get a photo of the one with the mohawk.)

This is an alpacka. And yes, it is real. I love how it's just standing there - so astute and serious!

At the Lima, Peru temple where they did baptisms (all in Spanish, of course which Brooke said was so cool!).

Before Brooke and Raegan left for Peru, we had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: "Now girls, I trust you to be wise while you are in Peru. You remember when your cousin Zach went on this same trip last year? And we saw the picture of him hanging foolishly off of the cliff, dangling hundreds of feet above the ground?"

Them: "Yes, mom of course we remember seeing that picture of Zach, and of course we would never, EVER do anything like that. That really is something you do NOT need to worry about. We are not that crazy!"

Fast forward to night before last, as we are looking at Brooke's Peru pics on her laptop.

Brooke: "Oh! Oops. (As she quickly turns her laptop away from my viewing).

Me: "Brooke, what is that? What are you hiding from me?"

Brooke: "Nothing, just a bad picture. It's okay, you don't need to see it."

Me:"I want to see it. Show it to me."

Brooke: "No."

Me: "Uh, yes....show it to me now!" I then grabbed the computer and that's when I saw it. My two children hanging wrecklessly off of a cliff. There they were, dangling dangerously in the air over what appeared to be thousands of feet above the gnarly bottom. And it just so happens to be the exact SAME cliff that their cousin hung off of last year!

Me again: "What the.......?! You promised me!"

Brooke: "Mom, it wasn't a big deal. Really it wasn't. We were just walking along and I saw this cliff and I said to Raegan, 'Look, it's the same cliff that Zach dangled from - let's do it!'. It really isn't nearly as bad as it looks. I promise, mom, it was no big deal!

(Although apparently there was a Peruvian tour guide up there who, upon seeing their ridiculous behavior, started blowing his whistle at them to NOT DO THAT. They did climb back up, but of course not until they had their picture. Sigh....)

Some of my favorite photos (that Brooke took - she made me write that).....

salkantay, peru

Brooke and Raegan lay a stone walkway in the village of Salkantay, Peru. (Elevation 15,000 ft.)

Brooke told me how adorable the children are in Peru. And look how right she is! These two little girls just melt my heart. She said that she wants to bring ALL of them all home with her. I reminded her that she will have 2 empty suitcases when she travels home (they had donations inside), so she should be able to fit at least a few kids in them to bring back with her ;)

peru.....week one

Brooke and Raegan are in Peru for 2 weeks doing humanitarian work with Eagle Condor. Their experiences this past week in Trujillo have been both amazing and humbling. Their group built a home from scratch for a woman named Ida. She has 7 children (no father involved). She lived in a one room house (if you can call it at house) with one bed for all 8 of them. Her son is currently serving a mission in South America which is a HUGE sacrifice. He would be the only one to be like a father, to work and bring in money. So with him not there, the situation for Ida and her children is deprivable.

Ida's old house in a heap.

The work has begun. Plumbing is set (Ida has never had indoor plumbing, not even a working toilet), a new floor is poured, and the framing goes up.

Amazing to see these kids frame this home, most of which have never had ANY experience with this.

Brooke and Raegan painting the outside of Ida's new home.

Finished!

From their group leader, Adam:

"The best part of the day... we cleaned up the project, packed up the tools and gathered in Ida’s new kitchen. As the tears began to fall, she thanked each and everyone of us and told us that the Lord blesses those that serve. She said she knows this because the reason she has this new house is because her son is serving a mission and the Lord is protecting her family while his is gone. As we said our good-byes, she hugged everyone of us and now we are all a little better off."

Ida Pretell with her children.

Raegan and her group paint the front of a shop belonging to the Asmat family. They painted it a lovely "mango" color and installed a new awning above the entrance.

The job is now complete. Standing in front of the store with the owners, the Asmats.

Brooke eating a tiny Peruvian banana. This cracks me up because Brooke hates bananas! Oh well, when in Rome..... er, I mean Peru.....

Peruvian women selling at the local market.