Choosing Our Adventure

 In mid-August we celebrated the Bear's birthday just the way he wanted to.We went to the Pineview Reservoir to swim and play for the day, picking up Subway sandwiches for lunch. (His favorite.) Then when we got home for the evening we had dinner and a Minecraft themed cake that I made.  We sang and ate cake in the backyard so that our neighbors could join us to celebrate.     Our Bear has had a seriously eventful year- here are just a few high (and low) lights...       Allergy testing turned up a LOT of severe seasonal allergies, and led to nearly fainting afterwards. A juice and a lollipop helped.   He got baptized this year!   And he went to his first BYU volleyball game.   He loved Disneyland and Universal Studios and wasn't afraid to go on anything!   The Bear proved that he is an excellent hiker and camper. He loves being in the mountains.    He earned several Junior Ranger badges this year, learning about our Nation...

     Short answer? The garden is growing great! In fact, we had so much produce, that for a while we were putting out a free table to share our veggies with the neighbors.     Early July   Sunflower number one opened!   The zucchini! Oh my gosh! We picked 95 pounds of zucchini. We have grilled it, curried it, baked it, fried it, shredded and frozen it, and whatever else you can imagine. Our favorite ways to eat it are zucchini bread, muffins, and brownies. (Obviously.) And including it in minestrone and pasta primavera. Taco boats, in zucchini, were eaten really well too. We ripped out the zucchini plants just recently. We can't take any more zucchini this year!   Late July     Early August   We are now solidly in tomato season... the best part of the garden calendar, if you ask me. I am planning our meals around what we are harvesting in the garden, and our grocery spending has actually been down for the past month or so. I love fe...

 In July we took two camping trips in southern Utah. Camping in the desert in the middle of the Summer is hot! But we really wanted to visit some of the be-Utah-ful State and National Parks, and this is how we could do it while social distancing.   On our first trip we stayed at Dead Horse Point State Park and hiked around the Rim Trail.    The views were amazing!   We roasted hot dogs around the campfire and had some pasta salad I packed along too, and all seemed well.   But then a freak desert storm hit with pouring rain and wind gusts.  Our tent was being thrown around so we had to drop it and go wait out the storm in the car. When the wind and rain died down we put the tent back up, but had a broken pole and a few small holes in the rain fly.  Everything in the tent was wet! It was pretty disheartening, but we decided to stay and tough it out. Then during the night a mouse was trying to get into our kitchen bin outside the tent. (There was no ...