Annoyed

Is anyone else annoyed by blogger lately? I haven't posted as much lately because it just hasn't been as big of a priority to me. But I am also bothered by the way my posts get mixed up and the text changes to blue with underlines if I click in the wrong place (which always seems to be where I want the text to be). Am I doing something wrong? If you know some trick to avoid these issues, please share!

Fancy

Here are a few pictures I played around with on Picnik.com. It's a great site and I did all this with the free version. This first one our nephew Jarem (he's six) took while we were hiking at the cliffs in McCall. I know it's not the best family picture, but we seem to be unable to take good family pictures, so this is good for us.

Hy standing in some tractor equipment. Oddly enough, this was in the middle of a grassy area outside of church. That's how they do things in the mountains I guess.

Below is a picture of Selah at the Belagio Conservatory.

Uncle Jamie

For my brother Jamison's birthday on Thursday, I taught Hyrum to say his name. It was a little hard getting him to say it for the camera, but he did eventually. Listen carefully at the end because you can't see him when he says it. And please don't judge my singing voice. If you're not Jamie, feel free to ignore this video. Sorry if my game of peek-a-book gets you a bit dizzy, I was having fun.

Balloon

Here's a little video of Hy trying to get the balloon that is under the table. He's a silly kid.
I thought I was posting a different video, I must have clicked the wrong one, but this one will do for now.

Cinco de Mayo

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

http://www.vivacincodemayo.org/history.htm

We're having tacos tonight!

Tomatoes

This is my third attempt to grow tomatoes. I first planted one tomato plant in a pot at our first apartment in Orem. I don't think I ended up with any ripe fruit, and one of the neighbors thought it made a good ashtray. My second attempt was in McCall. We got two tiny tomatoes from four plants (I think there were four). The growing season there just isn't very long. So here we are with my third attempt. I planted 12 tomato plants, six cherry and six yellow pear. I may have gone a little overboard this time. I only had four pots when I set to planting them, so I put four plants into my biggest pot and one into each of the others. The five remaining plants had to wait until I could scrounge up some five gallon buckets. A day or two after I planted, it was windy and I hadn't staked the plants yet. I lost two of the cherry tomato plants. I had to plant some of the yellow pears into large yogurt containers until I finally got some buckets. (I called around and went to some local delis and they gave me the buckets. This was easier in theory than in practice, I got two buckets from one place and weeks later got one more from another.) The two plants that shared the final bucket had it pretty rough. One of them broke off at the main branch with just the two lowest branches left. I planted it anyway and now it's doing great! The other was all twisted because of the wind. Getting it staked was a little tricky, but you wouldn't know now because it is also doing great. These three pictures were taken when I got them all planted in April. By then there were already small tomatoes growing, and lots of buds too.

A few weeks later I took these pics to document the growth.

The pictures below are from today. My first almost ripe tomatos! I'm a little worried that the yellow pear plants won't ripen before it gets too hot, but I'm crossing my fingers that they will. Apparently tomato plants can go dormant in the the really hot months and then come back in the fall. I really hope that happens, at least with some of the plants. I do want to plant some other veggies in the fall. I'm really excited about my success and hope to build on it little by little.

I'm doing it! I'm actually growing tomatoes!

This experience has made me miss California and wish I had picked up more gardening knowledge from my mom when we had an amazing garden.