Happy Birthday Emily!!! You're now 16!!

Emily turned sweet 16.  She had a very fun birthday party to celebrate this occasion.

Hope you enjoy the pictures:

Friday after school, the gang came and we had barbecue for dinner.



Jay's the master bbq chef :o)

These girls are talented and funny....

limbo?.....why not!!

never a dull moment waiting for the Clue game to begin....

still waiting...still having fun....

I'm sure our neighbors were as entertained as I was ;o)

utter exhaustion from carrying each other across the grass

The game begins.  They are going to play Clue all over the house.

Look at our choice of lovely suspects....who dunnit?

Remember Clue? Our house is labeled appropriately.

We made cards for Ms. Green, Ms. Scarlett, Ms. White, Countess of Cobalt, and Ms. Peacock.  There were fake weapons and clues hidden about the house.  Only one of the girls who came had ever played the boardgame...so explaining the rules got a little more involved than expected.

One enormous homemade New York-style cheesecake with fresh strawberry sauce loaded with strawberries....thanks Aunt Nancy for the recipe (Emily's choice, of course).

Spring Gardening

In the back of our apartment complexes there are about 18 very small and raised garden plots divided among each with a little string and given a number.

This year I decided to throw all caution to the wind (haha) and try for the "garden lottery."  There are so many families living here that, of course, they don't have enough garden plots for everyone.  Each year they do a lottery so they can be fair about who gets to plant a garden.

Well, guess what? I won the lottery!!!! wooohoooo ;o)
Emily, Ivan and I planted our garden over the last two weekends.  Here are some pictures of our gardening extravaganza:

Emily is ready to start digging in the dirt. You can see that last Saturday we planted half the garden.

Ivan is mixing in the compost.  This ground is mostly clay soil.

a few finishing touches and....

time to plant!!

A nice pepper plant awaits its new home.

Emily is beautifying the garden with marigold blooms we cut from the plants.

Ivan gets to have some fun, too.

Another pepper plant? Yep.

We have a little corner for herbs.  Emily is planting Rosemary.

This pic kind of gives an idea of how all the garden plots are laid out together.

This will be the "before" picture.  (Let's hope the "after" picture will look like the plants all decided to grow big!)



Book of Mormon: Alma 32: "Now let us compare faith unto a seed." We take time to read about how faith is compared to a seed from the Book of Mormon.  A nice finishing touch.

One garden project complete...time for lunch.  We now have to "nourish" our faithful little seeds (and plants) and wait for the fruits of our labor (and pray a lot for success....we are going to need all the help we can get!)