Sorry we haven't posted in a while.  Jared has a good rant in the works, but just hasn't had time to work on it.

Anyway, here is what we have been up to:

Spring jumped onto the scene with tons of blossoms on our trees.  Our apricot tree was first, of course.  We sang 'Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree' a couple times before they faded, of course.  Then the rest of the trees decided to compete in a most beautiful blossom contest.  Seriously, it was gorgeous.  Even the three trees out front that don't produce fruit got in on the show.  Personally, I think they won.  They get these huge pink blossoms that really weigh down their branches.  Any how, then we thought winter had come back for a while, but it was just the trees dropping all their blossoms onto our lawn.  It looked like it was snowing when you shook a branch.

In the meantime, we kept ourselves busy with vistitors from out of town, weddings, baby showers, Mother's day, and a singing performance.

My sister, Charese, and her husband, Andy who are both deployed to Iraq right now were on leave here for a couple weeks in April/May.  Their kids are living with my parents right now, so my mom's house was even crazier for a couple weeks. (She has those 4 kids, my dad's parents, and Jarom still at home).  It was really good to see her.

A couple days before she left, my sister Nannette came into town for my little brother Ivan's wedding.  So, my mom had an additional 4 kids and 2 adults at her house.  Let's see, the total being 17 people in that house.  Thankfully, Melinda, who was also in town for the wedding, stayed at her in-laws.  This was all on Mother's day weekend, so add in people coming in and out to wish my mom a happy Mother's day and talk to my brother, Jacob, who is on a mission in Georgia.  Crazy!  Let's just say that Jared stayed home that day while I made the visit with the kids.  I don't think he could have handled all that craziness!  Besides, he was busy at home making me a delicious Mother's day dinner.

May 10th, the Monday after Mother's day, Ivan got married to Monica.  That was a pretty crazy day as well trying to get everyone in pictures at the temple and keep the kids from playing in the mud.  I think one of my nieces even picked all of the flowers at the reception center.  I was really tired after all that, but I had to get up the next day and work and practice for a little performance my ward was doing of the Ten Virgins on May 13th and 14th.  After that crazy week was over, I finally could relax and let myself get a migraine.

Well, I guess we didn't really relax that Saturday.  Since it was sunny and there is some rule out there somewhere that you are supposed to do it a week after Mother's day, we planted our garden.  Not only did we put in a ton of pumpkins, watermelon, tomatoes, peppers, corn, cantaloupe, cucumbers, and who knows what else, I also had over 3 flats of flowers that had been sitting out there for weeks, waiting to be planted.  We got them all in, but that is about all we did that day from the time we woke up until a late dinner at about 6 or so.  It was back-breaking work!  We were both sore the next day.

After all that work, what do we find a couple days later?  Stubs of tomato plants.  Snails had eaten all the leaves off my tender little tomato plants that I had started from seed and watched grow for the last several months!!!!  I hate snails!!!!!  Only 3 or 4 out of 11 survived.  Thankfully, a coworker had some extras, so I planted 2 of those, but we will need to buy a couple more.  This coworker also gave us okra, squash, more watermelon, honey dew, tam dew, and cantaloupe plants.  So guess what I did yesterday?  Yep, I planted some more.  I am so sick of planting.  We are certainly following the prophet's voice of being self-sufficient.  We have an orchard and a small farm in our backyard.  Now all we need is some chickens and a cow or two and we would never have to go to the grocery store again!

To top all of this off, I am going to be huge this summer, so if anyone wants to come over and pull some weeds for me, let me know.  I will give you all the fruit you want if you come pick it!