Sarah is 1

Today is my little Sarah's birthday! A month ago she finally stopped army crawling and went to the regular crawl. She was never in a hurry to reach any of the landmark steps. As an example, she learned to sit up before she could roll over from either tummy or back, which was more around the 5 1/2 month mark. So I figured that she'd be more like Ellen and not try and walk until 14 months or so. But sometime when we were at Tonya's at the beginning of July, she decided that walking might be fun. Every time I tried to put her down, she would straighten her legs and grab my hands tight, wanting to go walking. Then she started letting go and balancing for a few seconds. This last week and a half she started trying to take steps. Her best is 16 steps from me to Aaron! It's fun to open my door in the morning and see this cute little girl standing there, holding onto the wall. She is such a good little girl and we are very grateful to have her in our family. Happy Birthday Sarah!!!

OUCH!!

Last Friday I was out watering raspberries when Samuel came running out saying, "Mom come quick! Ellen is bleeding!" I ran inside and sure enough, just above her right eye there was a big gash and it was bleeding down her face and onto the floor. Somehow Ellen had ran into the kitchen table and she did a good job cutting it open. I called my nurse friend down the street and asked her to come and tell me if she needed stitches. She walks in, comes over and says, "Yep!" She took the rest of my kids and Ellen and I went into town.

Ellen was my best patient. She did cry and holler during the stitches, and three of us had to hold her down, but up until that point, and as soon as I picked her up, she was calm as could be and happy. The doctor had me try to put some numbing cream around her wound, which had to set there for an hour before the procedure could be done. I was afraid of it getting in the wound, so I grabbed a pillow at Walmart and had Ellen lay down in the cart as we walked around the store for 30 minutes. She was my little sleeping beauty. People would stop and ask about her head and she'd just smile and keep her eyes closed as I told the story. Here are a few pictures, don't worry they aren't gruesome:
She got five stitches. For some reason she didn't want this picture taken. Her head doesn't hurt anymore, but the distress on her face is from fighting me about getting her picture taken.

There's my happy, tough girl! When the doctor was washing out her wound, he had her lay down and close her eyes. I told her, "Ellen you can sleep, but you can't snore!" So of course she starts doing her fake snore, and kept it up until the stitches began. We get to take the stitches out this Friday!

Drum roll please....

I am on the.....

LEFT!

Yep...the one wearing the blue shirt....not the green shirt! And YES!, Brad and Aaron can tell the difference. They actually don't think we look at all alike in this picture and were surprised that it wasn't obvious to everyone else. Thanks for playing along!

I'm gone for 10 days, and look what happens.....

Our garden at a glance. Doesn't it look pretty?! I couldn't fit the whole thing in the picture. I'm missing a few mounds and the rest of our corn.

Zucchini

Pumpkin.

This one really took off.

Cucumbers.

They have little buds where flowers will be blooming soon!

Potatoes

Corn.

By the 4th of July corn is supposed to be about knee high, and it was!

Beans. We started seeing holes in the leaves a few weeks ago, so just before I left, I sprayed them and now they look great.

Peas. No pods yet, but they're looking good. They are up to their third string now.

Carrots.

The sprinkler kind of knocked them down in this picture. We've pulled up a few and there's a little carrot on the end. The kids are helping us thin them by going out in the garden and eating them.

Peppers.

We planted our peppers inside in April, but you can't tell a difference between the half of the row that we started early, and the half that we planted from seed. Lesson learned, why waste all the time and energy of planting indoors :)

Onions.

We've pulled a couple out, they're small but definitely have the right taste!

Lettuce. We actually ate a salad tonight for dinner. We used about a foots worth of lettuce and fed 12 kids and 3 adults. We topped our salad with chicken, cheese, and ranch and had bread for a side. It was so yummy. I think we have enough for now, but we better hurry and eat it before it goes to waste. We might try vacuum sealing it...what do you think...will it work?

Can you tell us apart?

Sarah and I got to go visit Tonya and her family this last week. We flew from Boise, Idaho on Wednesday, June 29th and we are leaving tomorrow, July 6th. I'll write more about my trip later. Tonya and I tried skyping with the kids a few days ago, but they didn't think we looked much alike because we had different shirts on, my hair was longer, I had a mole, Tonya had glasses... so Tonya and I thought it would be fun to try and look alike. We took showers and put our hair up in the towel turbins, we switched shirts so I wore one of hers and she wore one of mine, and Tonya put a mole on her face and left her glasses off. We tried skyping, but couldn't ever get a hold of anyone, so when Tonya's friend stopped by, we had her take a picture.

Later we were able to skype. By then Tonya had wiped off her mole and we had pulled our hair back. To add to the confusion, I had Tonya hold Sarah. I'm not sure what did the trick, but we were able to fool 99% of them. Jacque was the only one to get it right on the first try. Tara and her family were up, and she wanted us to talk so she could hear our voices. We were little smart alecs and we counted to three and said the same thing. When we finally talked, they knew who was who.