Sleeping

I think I will have more accountability if I blog about it. Ben fell asleep in his own room. Night one! (Okay he's done this before but it's always such a battle I always give up after night three.)

So my goal is one whole week and all you people out there say that that should be enough. He fell asleep in his sister's bed but I was holding his hand while he fell asleep. I put him down to bed and walked away. He came into me saying he wanted mom's bed and I brought him back in. I didn't even have to do any yelling and there wasn't any screaming on his part. Then I went back to my room. After I did a load of laundry and went to my bed he started crying a scared cry. His brother and sister had both fallen asleep. So I sat next to his bed and held his hand until he fell asleep.

I think I probably shouldn't have held his hand, but my goal is to be in there less and less every night. I am hoping I am strong enough to not turn this into a habit.

So now I am off to bed! Nighty night! There's no Ben in my bed!

Garden pictures

These are the potatoes. Potatoes were an experiment, and so far so good. Next year I will have to plant them more in the back because they grow so big they take away sunlight from the other plants.

Most of the garden. We have another section of our backyard that we are dedicating to the pumpkins. But some mole or something dug up the giant pumpkins that we planted. So this next weekend we have to plant again. We have pumpkins growing up in a random spot where we threw all the dead pumpkin plants at the end of last year. And they are growing really well. So I think I will leave them.
The plant in the front is squash, and a little plant behind it is the little strawberry plant. It was behind the potatoes, but it was dying so I moved it and it is coming back to life.

The spikey plants are the artichokes. They look good. No fruit or blossoms yet. This is another experiment. We have no idea what we're doing, or what it will look like. But so far so good.

Lettuce, carrots, and amongst the carrots is lettuce from last year. Makes for a delicious salad. Just had another one for dinner. I'm hoping this garden will help me to lose some post-nursing weight:)

Clock

I have been on a hunt for a clock that I love to go in this spot above my couch. (Speaking of the couch, I made those pillowcase covers. It was totally easy. And one of these days I will go back to the fabric store and buy a bunch of different fabrics so I can change up the look in my front room all year long!) While I'm teaching I always have to look at my phone to know what time it is. I wanted a huge clock here to take up most the wall. But they were all ridiculously expensive.

While shopping at Deseret Book getting new scriptures for Alex because he is turning 8, I found this clock, and loved it. It was on sale. And I love this saying! Families are Forever!!

Pizza

I've been following some fun food blogs, so I thought I would do a little dinner that we love and that is so easy to do. We do this for those nights that I teach until 6:00 and there's not much time before the kids start going through the cupboards for snacks so I better hurry and feed them dinner.

I'm pretty sure the directions to making homemade bagel pizzas are self explanatory! But just in case we just tried Bagel Thins, and really loved them. Usually we would do english muffins or french bread. I guess you could be fancy and make your own dough, but I'm not that fancy at this stage in my life.

You spread on a little spaghetti sauce. ( I usually have half a jar in my fridge from spaghetti the night before.) you could add spices if you want, but I don't.

Sprinkle mozzerella cheese, or whatever cheese you like.

Put on your toppings. Sometimes it's just cheese. This time I thought ahead and bought pepporoni.

Since there's no cooking of the dough, I put it in the broiler for about 5 minutes until the cheese is all bubbly delicous and golden brown.

The pizza was gone before I had a chance to take a picture. But here's what's left!

Church

Today Joel was called to be Elder's Quorum President. We're excited, and nervous, and I'm so proud of him! It was nice knowing you Joel! :)

Garden

We planted a garden again this year. We are growing pumpkins, squash, peas, carrots, lettuce, potatoes and artichokes. It is so great having our own garden.

We've had a couple of different plants pop up from last year. So now we have two different types of lettuce, and we will have have two different types of pumpkins!

Today for lunch I wanted a salad. I didn't have any lettuce in our fridge and since it's sunday I won't go to the store. But now I will never have to go to the store because our lettuce is delicious and I just sent Katelyn out to pick me a couple of leaves. I poured on some homemade ranch, and yummy! I'll post some pictures soon. Did you know that when you grow your own lettuce you don't pluck the whole head of lettuce? You can just pick off some of the leaves and it will grow right back!

Homeschool

Just thought I'd "brag" for a little bit, Alex was tested and he started off the year testing at 2nd grade level (which is what he is), now at almost the end of the year he is testing 4th grade level! Great job Alex! He is so excited to "skip" 3rd grade!