Trying to keep cool

This has been the hottest week yet in Maryland with high humidity and the heat index in the 100s. Almost all of my kids playmates are on vacation, including nana and pop and all of our babysitters are at Girls Camp. It's a survival kind of week. I'm all ears for suggestions for restless boys who are cooped up in the house because its too hot to play outside. 

Garden Pizza

I like to make garden pizza every summer when I have a lot of veggies from the garden to use up. I have this idea that its a way to get the kids to eat vegetables too but they always pick them off and just want plain cheese. I think they liked helping make the pizza though.

Utah!

We had a great 10 days in Utah. Here are some of the highlights:

Bike rides at Bear Lake. These things are harder to pedal than they look.

Our little cowboys rode horses for the first time. They were a little nervous at first but loved it and were  so proud of themselves for getting on it.

Jonny brought materials to make these cool rockets out of pvc pipes and duck tape. Bryce loved it and shot off his rocket over and over again for hours. He also carried around his backpack filled with toys from home most of the weekend. 

After we left Bear Lake, we stayed at Shelly's for two days in Lehi and then Andy's parents in Provo. We went to Tara's pool one day and Miriam loved this little kiddie pool. She screamed and showed us some of her best tantrums when we had to take her out. 

Watching movies at Grandma and Grandpa s with Bella and JJ.

The Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point. The kids were acting scared of the shark.

All good things must come to an end. The plane ride home. Although they don't look it here, Bryce and Miriam came down with fevers on the way home and consequently slept and peacefully laid on my lap the whole way home. It made for a much more relaxing ride home. Miriam was quite the busy tornado on the flight out.

Lots of Bryceys

Bryce was playing with my Ipad while I was in the shower the other week and  a few days later I discovered about 30 pictures of Bryce like this on my Photo Stream. Andy later sent me this pic with the message "Julia's nightmare after a hard day with Bryce."

Summer Gardening: Tips and help from my kids

     My garden has done surprisingly well so far this summer. The constant rain storms and moist air over the past several weeks have definitely helped.  I've already picked a few pounds of green beans and had a zucchini too. Unfortunately my spaghetti squash is getting so large its growing out and over the fence making it susceptible to all the critters in my yard to chomp away at each evening. I feared it was deer initially and was told that urine around the perimeter of the garden would keep them away. My boys were quite excited when I told them for the remainder of the summer they were allowed to occasionally urinate around the edge of the garden when they needed to, making sure to tell them not to do it when company's over or their friends. I kind of regretted this open invitation when I watched four different times Tyler and Bryce walk out into the yard this afternoon and walk around the garden urinating with their pants down around their ankles. I'm grateful we at least have a private yard. 

  Tonight as we ate dinner I watched our resident ground hog who lives under our shed run out and start eating away at it again. I opened the back door and he quickly ran off. For the third summer in a row, I said how we really need to get a trap for our friend the ground hog and find him a new home before he ruins all of our hard work. My animal loving boys are always dead set against it. I decided to ask their advice on how we could keep the ground hog, but still protect the garden. These were some of their ideas:

1. Put up a big wire bubble over the entire garden (Tyler). wasn't sure how we'd actually get into the garden to pick vegetables though

2. Build the ground hog his own house next to the shed and put food in it every day so he wouldn't have to go eat out of our garden (Bryce)

3. Make a trail of food leading away from the back yard and into the front yard so the ground hog can live in our front yard and leave the garden alone. (Tyler)

4. Plant another garden in the front yard thats just for the ground hog to eat out of (Tyler)

5. Put out a trap to catch him but then let him be our pet inside the house (Bryce)