Fruit salad

I'm not the best gardener. But that doesn't keep me from imagining that one day I will have a garden/ yard that looks like this

 

or like this

or even this

It's a big dream of mine that one day I will have a really lovely garden. That the things I plant will actually grow and grow well. I have had a few successes. We had corn one year, green beans, carrots. I have little teeny tiny strawberries every once in a while and we did have 5 delicious peaches this year from our new tree. I always grow lettuce because that seems to be the only thing I am really successful at and the last few days I keep making Italian food so I can use our fresh basil. 

So today a box came for me. Inside was a Peach Sorbet Blueberry bush. It's supposed to have leaves all year - they get purple in the fall and winter and in the spring they green up and there are pink blossoms. The blueberries are supposed to be sweet and taste like peach cobbler with blueberries. When I read that I had to order one. And it was on sale! I planted it in the same area as my peach tree and then inspiration struck. I should have a fruit salad garden. So I went to work. I moved my strawberries from one part of the garden in with the peach tree and blueberry bush and moved my sad looking Clementine tree in there too. It's not the most lush looking garden but it's not too bad. And I imagine that it will look really pretty in the spring with all the blossoms. I keep thinking that if I keep trying, one of these days I will finally get gardening right. 

This is my pumpkin patch. It's growing so well this year, but I am not sure if I'll get any pumpkins. All I seem to have are male flowers so far.  I am trying to be patient and hope that one of these days a female will show up and we'll get at least one pumpkin this year.

My new Fruit Salad garden. My peach tree did really well this year and the fruit was so good. I transplanted the strawberries along the boarder so I hope they survive and don't die on me. The bush on the left is my new blueberry bush and the little branch in the middle is my sad Clementine tree. It still has green leaves so there is still hope for it!

The dorm room

When we first moved into this house we wanted all three boys to share a room. We were going to do bunk beds and a twin bed, but then I had scary images of boys jumping off the top bunk and trying to swing from the ceiling fan. So Dave just put their beds down and I loved it. I thought it looked like a dorm room. For a short time Trevor had his own room, but after sleeping on the floor almost every night in his old room we just moved him back. I love that they all share, but lately I have been wanting to make some changes to their bedroom. It's always a mess with crap everywhere and even when they clean their room they can only keep it that way for about a day. I knew I needed to get rid of the junk and that we needed more storage or something. I searched Pinterest yesterday and came across images like these:

If only my boys' room looked like a magazine page. But it doesn't. And I didn't want to go spend money on shelves or storage/organization stuff. So I used what I had, rearranged the room a little, threw away a bunch

of junk and ended up with a neat and tidy room. 

We don't have any shelves up for their stuff, so under the beds each boy has plastic storage bins for toys. I also used dresser drawers from a broken dresser under Colin and Logan's beds to store their pajamas since we don't have big dressers for clothes

I love these little storage cubes we got from Target years ago. They have held up so well and served many purposes. Logan's holds his clothes and Colin's is for all of his drawing notebooks and has a shelf for books

At night the boys get to sit in bed and read. Now we have some storage for books. I can switch out the books every month so they have new choices

A while ago we added a shelf/rack to their closet. After cleaning out all the junk I realize my boys really have hardly any clothes. No wonder Logan wears the same three shirts over and over again

Colin's side. The extra shelf/hanger space will be good as they get older and get more clothes. I wonder if they will still want to all share when they are teenagers...I hope so

I love how the beds are arranged now. There is still space to play and it's nice that everything can be stored under the bed or in the closet

And since their room was finally clean they all wanted to play in it together. We'll see how long that lasts.

 

Favorite 4th memories

Some of my favorite childhood memories are from 4th of July at my Grandma's house. I don't remember everything but the thing that stood out the most was me as a little girl, looking around at all the people there and thinking how lucky I was to have such a big family. There were always lots of aunts and uncles around, cousins to play with, my grandparents and friends and neighbors. You could never be bored because there was always someone there to be with or play with. Even when I got scared of the fireworks and ran in the house to watch form the front window, my cousin was there right with me. Last night my family and I all gathered at my grandma's house to watch the fireworks. There were aunts (just one uncle) lots of cousins to play with, grandparents, and a great-grandma. All night I watched my kids with their cousins. It didn't matter how old they were or if they were a boy or a girl or if they saw that cousin last month or last year, they all just got along. They all played and talked and joked and laughed. I love that my kids have their cousins to grow up with. I love that they are all friends. I love that, like me, they will look back and their favorite memories will be of the times they got to spend with their family. I'm so grateful to live where I live. To have my family close. To be able to have the religion I want, for my husband to have the freedom choose his job, for my kids to go to good schools with good teachers who love them. I'm so grateful we can sit outside at night and play and watch fireworks and celebrate the birth of our nation. Happy 4th of July!! (And Mom, I like Macy's idea - "We should have a cousin sleep over.")