Our Garden

Way back in March for family night, we started our garden. We carefully planted all the seeds and even let the boys help a little. We planted 3 kinds of tomatoes; Cherry, Roma and Beefsteak. We also planted bell peppers, jalapenos, and zucchini.

We brought the seeds inside to germinate under a light and here they sat for the next month and a half. I watered them everyday and spent hours just staring at the dirt, waiting to see something.

Within weeks, everything was up and thriving.
We transplanted the young plants into barrels outside and let the sun do its thing.

They suffered a bit of shock the first week and then took off.

Sterling built me these amazing bamboo cages to contain my tomatoes. I love them!

Here is our first and only zucchini. We waited till the perfect day to pick it with the boys.

They loved it almost as much as we did. I made it into some delicious zucchini bread that was devoured in 2 days.

I started my herbs weeks after we transplanted everything outside.

It was a slow start, but now they are growing like crazy. I have basil, cilantro, chives, thyme, and oregano. The fresh cilantro has been our favorite.
We also planted acorn and butternut squash in the ground along our fence but I didn't get a good picture yet. They are behind our row of sunflowers that we are battling the birds for. The birds here are ridiculously selfish when it comes to gardens. They take everything if you don't net it right away.

We are loving our garden. We have 30 or so tomatoes that we are just waiting to try. It has been a weird growing season so we'll see how everything else goes. I look forward to many more years of gardening.

7 Years Ago Today...

I married the man of my dreams.


Thanks Love, for making me happy everyday since! Love you!

Berry Picking

We've been berry picking 2 times this year and loved it. We missed the strawberries, but hit the blueberries and blackberries. Both days were super hot, but we still had a fabulous time. Both times we met up with Angela and her boys.

Here are the boys on the tractor riding out to the blueberry fields.


The blackberry rows. They had more blackberries than I ever could've imagined. Here is Sterling, Isaac, and Dellin working hard. That's me in the background. I was all business. That's what heat and humidity do to this pregnant momma.

Sterling and Dellin showing off some of our blackberries.

They have a pretty cool play area for kids as well. Angela took the kids and let them play while I sat in the car with the A/C blasting trying to cool down. THANKS ANG!

The boys love these big wooden tractors.

The fruits of our labors.

This amount cost me 12 bucks! It made 3 big jars of jam and kept our tummies full for 2 days.

3 LITTLE MONKEYS JUMPING IN THE CRIB

One jumped out and now there's two.

These little monkeys make me smile all day. Dellin and Gouverneur started out in there together and then Sterling Henry joined them. Cutest little monkeys ever if you ask me!

A TRUCK OF HIS OWN.

Our boys are sort of obsessed with trucks around here and we love it. Sterling Henry got his first dump truck for his first birthday. Dellin got the same on for his. We looked everywhere to get one for Gouverneur and finally got one for him as a late birthday present. (Thanks Grandma Fillmore.)

Needless to say he is thrilled to have a truck of his own.

Big brothers checking out little brother's new wheels.

And he was off. Pushing it around like one of the big boys.

He loves it!

The trucks all parked for the evening. We may have ordered a 4th for baby boy #4. He will need his own someday too.

I had to include this last picture of our big boy standing. He stands a lot and takes lots of steps but has no interest in walking just yet.
We sure love our little Gouverneur. It's fun watching him try to do everything that the big boys are doing.

COW APPRECIATION DAY 2012

I met up with my friend Angela today to go blueberry picking. I don't have a single picture since I left my bag in the car, but we had a great time.

After we filled our bellies and buckets full of blueberries, we headed over to Chik-fil-a- for Cow Appreciation Day. I'm a sucker for free things and especially free Chik-fil-a. We dressed up like cows and headed in for our free meals.

The boys look darling. Here's the "herd".

Here's Angela with the boys. We each have three boys so it's fun/crazy to go places together.

The boys were pretty hungry picking all those blueberries. Dellin ate every last bite and then proceeded to drink the remaining fries. I'd do the same if I looked as cute.


I found this cute picture from 2 years ago when I went with my friend Jessica. This picture of Matthew and Sterling kills me. They have grown up so much.
Thank you Chik-fil-a. We'll be back next year with one more mouth to feed!

How do you beat the summer heat?

We slip and slide right through it!

Notice Gouverneur cheering in the background.

Little Man started doing tons of thumbs up as he was coming down. He is such a cool kid.

It was 105 degrees yesterday with some serious humidity. We had originally planned to spend most of the day in the yard. The boys worked outside with dad for about 45 minutes and then came in.

We spent the afternoon in the house taking naps and relaxing. At about 5:30 we busted out the baby pool and the slip and slide, and spent the evening cooling off.

Little Man must have gone down the slip and slide 50 times or more. Dellin went down once and sat on it for the rest of the time. Gouverneur spent more of his time in the pool.

I foresee a lot more days like this over the next few months!

Big Time Boy.

We finally flipped Gouverneur's car seat and he loves it. Look at him, he knows he's big time! So serious.
My first pediatrician recommended waiting till they're two. We'll we never wait that long, but we do give them an extra month or so.

4th of July

We had a great 4th of July this year. Having our power back on and A/C might have been a factor into why it was so great.

We started out the day at our ward pancake breakfast. Brother Choate has by far the coolest 4th of July costume and let me get a picture with him and the boys. I was trying to pose him so that it looked like he was holding up the flag pole. Dellin decided to try it.
We came home and got ready to have some friends over. After living in dark house for 4 days, I had some serious cleaning and organizing to do. Sterling worked outside with the boys and we got a lot done.

After the BBQ, we headed over to a country club near our home to watch the fireworks. We had a great time. It took us 5 minutes to drive there and then a five minute walk. My hair was down and styled when we left the house... Gotta love this humidity.

Look at those cute boys.

Gouverneur freaked out and then laid on my chest through the whole show. Dellin plugged his ears through most of it.
And then he got real comfortable and couldn't take his eyes off them.

It took us about 10 minutes to get home. This firework show was all around awesome. We bathed the boys and put them to bed expecting a nice, quiet evening.

Dellin started crying at 1:30am and then started puking in our bed at 3:30am. I bathed him while Sterling cleaned up. He and I snuggled on the couch for the rest of the night. Here he is this morning. Don't let that smile fool you. He puked again minutes after this photo was taken!
Now we are home bound and praying that we see no more puke. At least we have A/C!

4 LONG DAYS WITHOUT POWER OR A/C.

Well folks, we survived the major power outage of 2012. We were without power for 4 LONG, HOT, DARK, days. It sounds dramatic, but this whole thing really worked me over. I feel lucky that we even have power at this point because there are still many without.

This power outage was the 3rd largest in the state of Virginia and the only one in the top five to NOT be caused by a hurricane. On Friday, they had predicted a 30% chance of showers. After 105 degree temperature that day, most people were looking forward to "chance" of showers. Our power flicked on and off at 10pm, and within 10 minutes the power was out and the most aggressive winds and lighting started. The lighting flicked on and off for a good hour or more. At the time we sat in the dark enjoying it not realizing what the aftermath would be.

The next morning we woke up to no power or A/C and the heat started setting in. We already had a heat advisory for the whole weekend so we started to get nervous but still thought that the power would be on at anytime. Sterling headed out to Home Depot to grab some non-emergency items and realized just how bad things were. All the stoplights were out and Home Depot was running on a generator with lines a mile long, only excepting cash.

When he got home, we covered all the windows and prepared to spend the day outside. We covered the inside with towels.

And the outside with foil to block as much light and heat as we could.

Our neighbor had paper, foil, and a sheet.

The first day was pretty fun. We barbequed and let the kids play in the pool all day. Sterling and I cleaned up the millions of branches all over our yard.

On Sunday morning, I woke up hotter and sweatier and realized this was getting serious. We got the kids ready for church and headed off to enjoy 3 hours of A/C. We learned that about 1/3 of our ward never lost power, 1/3 had their power already turned back on, and we fell into the last 1/3 who were still without power. We had some friends over that night for another BBQ and pool swim for the kids.

Sunday night we slept in our cool basement. Monday morning I headed out to my good friend Angela's house for the day with all my dirty laundry. We spent the day out there doing laundry in a nice cool house. Ang feed us lunch and dinner and the kids were in heaven playing with her boys. Thanks Angela!

Monday night, the power was still not on although I noticed the street directly behind us had power. I became pretty depressed at this point. It had been three days and I was tired and worn out... Not to mention HOT!

Tuesday morning was a bad morning. I packed the kids up early and left the house. We went to Walmart, Unique, McDonalds, and then headed over to my friend Kathryn's house. Their power had come on Monday night so she knew how we felt. She fed up lunch and dinner, and the kids napped and played and had a fabulous time. Thank you Kathryn!

We were going to spend the night at Kathryn's house that night, but decided to come home. Sterling had stopped at our house after work and was at the store buying more ice. He had confirmed that the power was still out. As I drove home, I took a different route. I drove slowly from house to house admiring all the windows with lights. As I rounded the corner to our house, I saw that the porch light was on. It literally had come on 2 minutes before. I called Sterling who was still at the store and started screaming. "The power's on. The power's on!"

It did go out again that night for 45 minutes and I almost had a heart attack but it came back on again and I screamed even louder than before.

This whole post may sound a bit dramatic. I have to admit that a side of me came out that I hope to never see again. I knew before that I didn't like the heat that much but had no idea how much. I took 1-2 FREEZING cold showers every night and loved it. I would just stand in the cold water for 20 minutes dreading getting out.

Being pregnant and having 3 little boys was a factor I'm sure but the biggest issue was the uncertainty. I felt like I was living hour to hour waiting of the power to just come on. The weekend was easy while Sterling was home but Monday and Tuesday were tough. I was emotionally and physically drained. The boys knew something was wrong so they were needy and clingy. I was a pill. Sterling was the force that pulled us all through. He stayed positive and put up with my craziness. Love you babe!

Things I didn't document with pictures.

-Chilling our watermelon in the baby pool while the kids were playing in it.
-Driving up to Safeway to see if they had ice and seeing a man making coffee with his coffee maker plugged into the outside of Safeway. Classic.
-Me elbowing my way through 7-11 to grab the last 2 bags of ice and then bribing the worker in the parking lot to sell me one more. (I'm really glad I don't have pictures of these two things.)
-Our backyard the morning after with the millions of big and small branches all over it.
-Huge power lines on the ground all over Arlington with HUGE trees on top of them.
-My sweet, wet ponytail for 4 straight days.
-Because we had foil on the window, it was really dark, even during the day. We wore headlamps around the house.
-My face/tears when I turned the corner and saw our porch light was on.

Thanks to everyone who put up with my crazy phone calls and texts... Oh and my meltdowns. This whole thing was a huge wake up call. We aren't at all prepared for a real natural disaster. I feel truly blessed that we were taken care of through this one but we might not be so lucky in the future. Time to prepare!