Secret Garden

Seriously, I found a secret garden at my house. Which is ironic considering all the time and effort put into the non secret garden.
I have a pretty good garden space at my house. Russ & I thought it would be so much fun to plant a garden this last spring. We planted a little late...maybe a lot late, and we planted all seeds but boy were we excited!

We planted a good $20 + of seeds and watered that baby throughout the hot summer.
You name it and we planted it. Zucchini, cucumbers, big tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, beats, peas, beans, cilantro...I could go on and on.
Nothing.Was.Growing.
We watered. Then we watered some more. And then I took one look at my water bill and one look at my chunk of dirt and had to put the kibosh on the garden.
Russ however was not ready to give up so I would catch him sneaking in some watering.
I told him if he wanted to keep watering it was fine if he wanted to pay my water bill, so he knew he was busted.
Then one day after a couple weeks of not watering, we got some growth!
We had our first pea! Seriously, it was sad how happy we were about this pea pod.
And it was perfect, it had 2 peas...one each!

Then we found this cute little guy. We called it the pearl pod.

And then, the greatest news of all! We had zucchini! Well, we thought it was zucchini but turned out to be squash. But we didnt care!

See that sad garden behind him? That should be FULL of veggies. But we'll take it!
We hadnt watered or cared for the garden in weeks. I noticed that there were some "weeds" or what I thought were weeds, growing in my walk way between my grass and my shed. So I just kept mowing over it every week.
Until one day Russ discovered we had baby tomatoes!!!

So here we are, taking all this time and TLC to plant this garden. I pay hundreds of dollars in seeds and water, and I mowed over the darn plant that we didnt plant and it grows tomatoes?!?
We had big plans with what we thought would be a massive harvest.
Like homemade salsa!
Sunflower market, Albertsons, and Russ's dads successful tomato plants really came in handy for us this year.


I swear we spent a whole week in my kitchen making salsa. We made 3 different kinds!
I loved the color of these peppers.

The kitchen(and Russ) was a total mess!

We had so much salsa!

Then we got done and were like...what do we do now? Neither of us knew how to can or had canning supplies so we had to freeze most of it! Mmmm mmm good.
This isnt even all of it. We had another huge bowl in the fridge.

This one was my favorite. We had fresh corn off the cob, and lots of beans and deliciousness!

We really were domestic. We also went up into the mountains one night and picked berries for hours! We picked so many raspberries that we were able to make a whole batch of jam!
I would suggest not wearing shorts when climbing a mountain to pick berries. OUCH. It seriously looked like I was attacked by a cat. I finally had to wrap my jacket around one of my legs.

Not only did we make raspberry jam, we had also gone up to Brigham City for Peach Days! It was a fun little old town festival. We had yummy peach cobbler and ate at Maddox.
We bought a box of peaches & made some peach jam too! Holy cow, I need a bigger kitchen.


Next year, plan on all of your freezers being this full because we are going to be so dang successful we arent going to know what to do with all of our produce.

Fore!!

I enjoying golfing. I bet it would be really fun if you were good!
My family used to golf quite a bit before everyone started having kids. Lately, the only guarantee times for me to golf is at my work and family golf tournament.
Every year my work has a golf tournament in August. I would say most people I work with aren't big golfers but the owner of the company is a big golfer. Its always a good time. One of our teammates couldnt make it last minute so there was just 3 of us on our team but we still had a great time!
Me, Ashley, & Lisa

In the tournaments they do a scramble or best ball. So you all take a shot, and whoever has the best ball you all go to that ball and hit again...
This is never good during a scramble! Both of us were in the sand trap at almost the exact same spot.

I usually like to golf bare foot, but this year I actually started wearing shoes. It hasnt helped.

Thanks girls, for making it a super fun day!


We also had our family golf tournament. Every year a tournament is put on in my grandpas name "Kel Kemp" and all proceeds go to Huntsman Cancer Institute.
Its always such a fun time. Every year my mom, sister, sister in law and I are on a team. This year, my sis in law had just had a baby and my sister couldnt find a baby sitter so my mom and I golfed with my dad and brother.
My brothers friend was diagnosed with cancer a few years back and has been struggling the last couple of year. One year he came to the tournament very sick and was watched us play. This year he was able to come join us and play!

There was a little mix up so we had a five some, but it was great fun!
I think 18 holes of golf is just WAY too long. So I brought along my fart machine and raccoon skin hat to spice things up. Real mature...I know. No one is perfect at golf, so I thought...every time someone has a bad shot, they have to wear the Raccoon hat the rest of the hole. It was hilarious. We all had a chance to wear it (shows what kind of golfers we are!)
My mom :)

Yes, I had my fair share of wearing the skin

My brother, although a very good golfer, had to take a few shots with the coon skin.

My dad was a good sport and took his turn after a not so great shot.

I especially liked Zach way of wearing the hat. He wore it so the tail could be tucked behinds his ear.

The fart machine, even though immature...was great for golf! Do you know how many times people bend over in golf!?!
Thanks team! You guys were all great sports!

Thanks also to my friends husband Dave for taking the time and money to help support the cause! We all really appreciate it!

After golfing we have a nice lunch and raffles and silent auction.
Every year there is a package with a chi, and tons of great hair product. Every year someone else gets it, but I lucked out this year! Hooray! By golly Im going to have the straightest hair in town.

My neighbors always are so generous to donate packages to the tournament to raffle off or include in the silent auction. It all helps so much to raise money for cancer research so its all VERY much appreciated by all.
Thanks also to my 2 cousins who put a lot of time and effort every year planning it.


After the tournament, we began out GIRLS weekend! We had planned to go up to Park City, but Kami wasnt able to get away so we spent one night in SLC before we headed up so she could be a part of it.
We went to Garner Village to browse the shops, and have dinner.
My mom loved this witch that had a diet coke in her hand!

I love Garner Village, especially during this time of year.

Thanks girls for a great kick off to girls weekend!

Bear Lake, Oh how I love you.

Russ and I went to Bear Lake...forever ago. I am really behind on my blogging but I hope to catch up soon!
We decided to drive up one weekend for a very quick trip. We both love to be in any kind of water and realized we hadnt been swimming in awhile so we drove up.
We had a nice lunch in Logan, and drove the rest of the way. I really do love Bear Lake. I have so many memories as kids going to Bear Lake a couple times a summer.
The lake was really high and we realized there wasnt a ton of beach area.
We pulled off to one area and saw an island we thought we would claim ours!

We loaded everything in the raft and I started to wade in the 6 inches of water to our Island.

Russ thought it was crazy to be pulling a boat and insisted we sit in and ROW to the island. We were basically dragging bottom and going .00010 miles an hr but he wouldnt give up. By the time I saw the two moms breeze past us with their beach gear, lunch, float tubes, life jackets, lawn chairs, etc etc I realized it was time for me to get out.

He pressed on. And made it.

Little did we know the reason our island wasnt already taken was because it was covered in Sea gull poop. Thanks you dumb birds.

But, we found another spot and took a good dip and swam around for awhile. Even if Bear Lake is unbearably cold, it was worth driving up to swim.
Russ is a whimp in the cold water so it gave me great pleasure watching him slowly wade it only to have me run, splash him to death and dive under. Feels so good.
We then went into town and had a delicious raspberry shake and hung out for a bit. It was getting later at this point and we saw an actual beach with real land, but you had to pay to get in. Everyone was leaving so we just drove in and hung out.
It was so much fun! We had our delicious chicken salad sandwhich from Costco and played soccer on the beach for hours!

It was a blast!

I think this picture is funny. Although we may look naked, we were fully clothed in beach attire.

Pretty little sunset.

The next day we did the same thing, but got there early to find the little beach that was available in the non paying section. Our little area was soon to be invaded so we hopped in the raft, and rowed out in the lake a bit. I was walking out into the lake and had stepped on the one and only huge rock in the water probably, so we loaded it up and made our own anchor!

It worked great! We threw it over board and didnt drift an inch.
Totally worth stubbing my toe for.


After spending a few hrs hanging out we drove back to SLC to meet my family up in the mountains. My parents have all of us over for dinner every other Sunday and this Sunday they decided to go for a walk to see the wild flowers in the Albion Basin.

The flowers werent at their peak that weekend, but it was still a beautiful walk!

We even ran into a mother and baby moose!

My goodness, I cant believe how big my family is getting...Love em all.

Manti

We had a family reunion in Manti awhile back.
I had been to Manti before but it had been awhile. I really thought it was such a cute little town.
My second cousin Kristie spent a lot of hard work planning it down to every detail.
My family went earlier, but I had to work, so I drove down alone after work.
Kristie had planned an "amazing race" type activity they had done the night before that sounded so fun.
My parents rented a really cute little house for my family to stay in. It was fun to be stay there all together and most of the activities for the reunion they brought to that house so it was convenient for us!
Cody brought the ranger so he loaded up his kids and I crashed their party for a little ride in the mountains.

I love how Bel does his thumbs up.
I think its safe to say my brother doesnt feel comfortable with me driving that in the mountains with his kids in it. Sorry again Cod. Ill do better next time I promise! haha.

The kids then made their own box cars!

We had a delicious dinner of ribs, corn on the cob, and cheesecake!
After, my cousin put an awesome movie of a collection of pictures from our previous family reunions and the kids got to pull their cars in for a drive in movie!



The movie was great. It was so fun to see pictures from all the other family reunions and so great to see pictures of my Gram. We miss her!!
I love these girls.

My great parents

That night I was getting ready for bed and looked out the back window to the most beautiful view! The temple was basically in the back yard...so gorgeous!!

The next morning we woke up and everyone came back over for breakfast.
The cute little kidlets having a snack.

It was a quick little trip for me. I had to leave right after breakfast to meet a friend that was coming in town from Cali, but the rest of the family finished out another fun day together.

Its so great to have such a fun family.
Thanks again mom and dad for the fun house and for Kristie for all her hard work in planning!