Update: My Veggie Garden

Well everyone has been asking me how my garden is growing so here it is....


Yesterday I went out to check on everything and found these! Little tiny tomatoes! I was so excited I ran to get my camera.

Today while I was out there weeding and putting some cages around my tomato plants I noticed these!

Tiny little beans! This one is bigger than all the rest.







Here are my zucchini. Which are growing like weeds, actually better than weeds. I think that I will have a lot. I planted 2 plants because I figured that at least one might survive. I never thought that they would both make it. Yet here we are.


The potatoes are doing great. at first I was worried because they weren't sprouting up. But then all of the sudden they were there and they were big. I guess the just had to wait until they were big enough to push through the hard soil. I am still waiting for 3 to pop up. My next thing I need to do is figure out how you know that they are done.



My strawberries are still pretty small so I am worried that I wont get anything. Everything else has blossoms and they barely have leaves.

My corn is about 3 times the size it was when it was planted so that is a good sign. It looks like I only lost 2 pea plants and the rest are doing well. The carrots.... well they never came up. I think that there might be 3 but I cant tell if they are carrots or grass. The peppers are twice the size they were but other than that they haven't done much. No blossoms or anything. The same with the cucumbers.

New to the garden are a pumpkin and a watermelon.

Update: FHE Boards

Well here it is. I finished it yesterday. I Love It. So far we have had 2 consecutive FHE's. So now hopefully this will help us to get many more Family Home Evenings under our belt. You can't really see the sign well in this pic so I've posted a close up.

Some Easter! A very long Easter story.

Well Easter day was fun. We had an Egg Hunt after Church and then we were invited to the Fordham's for Easter Dinner. After dinner is when it turned from fun to scary, when we ended up in the ER.

So to better tell the tale you need a little background info on Little A. About 2 yrs ago we were told she has Asthmatic tendencies. So basically sometimes when she gets sick and gets a cough, the cough never goes away until we start the breathing treatments with her nebulizer. We used it a bit that first half year. Since then we haven't used it once until about 2 weeks ago when she got a cold. I did a few treatments on her and she was fine. A couple days later Little D got a cold and naturally gave it to his sister.

So this time I started giving her treatments only one day after her getting the cold, when normally I wait a week or so to see if it will go away on its own. (for the last year it had been) Anyway, Saturday night was bad in terms of her coughing. So Sunday morning we decided to keep her home from church so she wouldn't be coughing all through Sacrament. I gave her a treatment before I left for church and when I got home Big J said that he didn't hear her cough once. So we were glad that she was ok and we could still go to the Fordham's for Dinner. All day we didn't hear her cough or anything. While at the Fordham's the kids had a little Egg Hunt just for fun and had a great time. When we got in the car to go home I looked at Little A and thought that she looked funny but I didn't give it a second thought until we had gotten home and where outside playing with the Egg Chalk that I made for them. I looked at her and noticed that her Neck was all swollen. I immediately hooked her up to her nebulizer just in case her throat was closing! I thought that maybe she was having an allergic reaction to something.

While she was doing her treatment I took this picture of her neck. I wish that I had taken one with her shirt off because it was much more noticeable with it off.

I told Big J to come and look at it and he wasn't too worried and thought that she was allergic to something too. Then we gave her a bath to wash off whatever she could have touched. In the bath I noticed that her arm was "crunchy". (by "crunchy" I mean that when you would squeeze it, it would crackle like rice crispies.) Her neck would do the same thing. That was when I thought that we really needed to take her in. I'd never felt that before in something that was swollen. I almost gave her some benadryl but then Big J said that if I was going to take her in I probably shoul'd give her anything. So I took her to the urgent care at the hospital (at 7:30pm) and he stayed at home with the other kids.

After waiting for about 45 min. we were taken back to the nurse and she immeadiatly went and got a Doctor. He was like "Yep, she has sub dermal blah blah blah(thats medical jargon)". And I was thinking "WHAT IS THAT!" So we were taken back to the ER. At this point I was starting to worry a little and realized I wasn't just going to get sent home with Benadryl. They took her for an X-ray and hooked her up to oxygen. Now I was worrying. The Doctor came back and told me that her air was leaking from her lungs I don't remember all what he said but it was about being admitted and seeing a lung specialist. Then I called Big J and told him that he should probably come down here. (Mostly because I knew that they were gonna tell me a whole bunch of stuff and that I would never remember what it was when Big J asked what they said.)

By the time Big J got there, they had drawn blood and tried to insert an IV in her arm with no success. (veins were too small I guess) So with all the crying and coughing her neck size had doubled since when I had brought her in. So you can imagine Big J's shock. Anyway they called an NICU nurse to come down and get the IV in and he was able to do it. Then the doctor told us that she would need to go to the Children's Hospital in Fresno. And they would get an Ambulance as soon as one was available. I told Big J, in between tears that she wasn't leaving without a blessing. After the Blessing I felt so much better. It said that she was going to get better and be her old self again. So now I just had to have faith that she would be ok. Minutes after her blessing the Ambulance arrived. I rode up with her and Big J followed in the Car. (It was 1am) We got to the Children's Hospital at about 3am. We waited, took x-rays, waited and were admitted.

They told us that her lungs had a leak in them and that it was going into the space between her lungs (where the heart is) and traveling up to her neck and that the swelling was trapped air. They told us that she was really lucky because it usually will stay either in that cavity and compress the heart or it would travel to one side and collapse a lung. Most everyone there said that they never see this in children unless they have received some sort of trauma to the chest like a car accident or something like that. They were also surprised at how much trapped air she had considering both her lungs were still inflated. They said that it was most likely from her wheezing and coughing. (which we find odd since she didn't cough all day Sunday)

So they needed to keep her for a few days to monitor her and make sure that it went down and didn't start effecting her heart or lungs.. They said that they needed to get rid of the wheezing cough and that if they could do that then it would likely heal itself. So after 3 days it is almost gone, there is only a small area that I can still feel the crackling. We still have to keep up with her treatments for a while until we can be sure that her lungs have healed. But otherwise she is going to be just fine.

I am so grateful that even though we don't have immediate family here we have a huge family of friends that are so willing to help. I am so grateful to have the power of the Priesthood in my life. I know that without the power of the Priesthood it would have been a lot worse. And I am definitely grateful that my Little Girl is home and well. Thank You for all of your prayers and support.

FHE Boards

Here is a picture of what it looks like after Thursday. I still need to get the knobs and make the little names that will hang from them.

I will update this post when I get it all finished.

Well I finally made one!. Its been on my list of crafts to do for a while now. I finally made Big J cut out the boards for me. I had him cut out 4 boards 2 for Kathy, 1 for Selena and 1 for me. So all day Thursday we painted and cut out the lettering on the Cricut. It took a little while to figure out the size but once we got it down it went pretty fast.

I love that I have 2 friends that have a Cricut. They even have different sizes. It makes it nice when we get together and do fun things like this.

We had 10 kids here for most of the day and it wasn't bad at all. They had so many friends to play with that they didn't bother us much until they were hungry.

Here is a picture of Selena putting her letters on.
Don't mind the mess.... its organized chaos.

Homemade Sidewalk Chalk

I found this Idea online a while ago and have been waiting for Easter so that I could make it. Although you could make it any time really. But here is how I did it.


You will need:

• plastic cups
• Popsicle sticks
• Petroleum Jelly
• Plaster of Paris
• Egg carton
  
• Tempura paint (multiple colors)
  
• Molds. (You can use just about anything I used plastic Easter eggs, small and large, and Popsicle molds.)

First you need to coat the inside of your molds with the Jelly. This makes it easier to get the chalk out at the end.

Note: each batch will make 3 halves of the small plastic Easter eggs. So if your molds are bigger you will need to adjust.

Once you have coated your molds you can start mixing 1/2 c. Plaster of Paris with 1/4 c. cold water. Mix well and then you put your paint in. You can put as much in as you want to get the right color. Mix well and pour into molds.


You need to let these sit for a minute or two so they can firm up a little so that you can put the 2 egg halves together. When you put them together (This is the messy part because it will ooze out) give them and good shake and give them a tap on the table and let them sit. I let mine sit for 24 hrs but the Plaster sets in about an hour so you probably could take them out after that but I wouldn't use them for 24 hrs.


As you can see from the first picture I made the little eggs and big eggs the big eggs I had a problem with because i didn't fill them enough. I wanted to try and be cleaner so when I put them together they didn't ooze. That is why they are flat on one half. I will fill them all the way next time I make them. Whats a little mess right?

Now about the Popsicle molds. For some reason I couldn't get them to come out. Maybe I didn't grease it enough or something. But I ended up cutting the bottom of the mold to get them out. Maybe there is a better way. If you find one let me know. But in all I think that the Kids will like to have these in their Egg Hunt. Big J thinks that they could color the whole driveway with the amount that I made. We will show him.... Monday when he comes home from work there will be a rainbow driveway to park on!

Canning Fridays

So for the past couple Friday's Kathy F and I have been getting together and canning. The first week we did this we canned some cry beans. I canned Pinto and white beans. Now I can just open and use my beans and not have to soak them. I still have a lot more to do but we wanted to start and try it.




The next thing that I canned was Butter. And that was cool and very easy. I was surprised at how easy it was. I made 12 jars with 11 lbs of butter. And I went and helped Selena can butter this morning. We only made a small batch though. Just enough so she would know how to do it on her own later.

And last summer when Kathy B had chicken canning at her house I wasn't able to go so I never go to do it. So last night I thought that I would try. I canned 10 lbs. of chicken. I was able to stick 4 chicken breast into one quart jar. Thanks to Kathy F for lending me her little pressure cooker, I was able to do it last night. Ever since Kathy B told me about one exploding on someone I have been a little weary of them. I made the Kids stay out of the kitchen until it was done. I think that it turned out right but not having seen any before I'm not quite sure. It looks like a science experiment so I wont picture it. But I hear that it tastes good.

I plan to can Chocolate cake, Salmon, and hamburger (again) soon.

Boys and their toys

In Little D's pockets today: 1 broken Lego Man, 1 Lego wheel, 1 Transformer gun, 1 Rock, and 3 Pennies.

Today while Little D was in the shower I was putting his clothes into the hamper and he promptly reminded me to make sure I get all the stuff out of his pockets. I said, "whats in here?" and He said, "Pennies, Lego's, a rock, and a gun." I told him that he needed to put them away. He looked at me puzzled and said, "But where does the rock go?" I said, " Probably outside. He quickly burst into tears and said, "No Mommy, don't throw my rock outside!" I was surprised that a rock would generate so much emotion. I told him he could keep it and we put it on his shelf. In his defense he is a little sick with a fever/cold.

What is it with Boy's and carrying everything in their pockets. Big J is the same way. I'm always washing things that are in his pockets.

3 going on 16

So today at dinner I looked at Little A's face and this is what I saw.......


Yep this is the first time that she has tried to put on my Mascara. Last year when Grandma White House was here she had fun mixing Her make-up with replenishing cream. At dinner our conversation went something like this...

Mom: "You can't get into Mom's make-up."
Little A: "My eyes are make-uped"
Mom: "Your eyelashes are beautiful. You don't need mascara until you're bigger."
Little A: "But my eyes are big so that means I'm bigger."

I hear that they grow up fast but this is a little too fast. I told her no make-up until she was 16.