Live with in your harvest.

1 Ne. 18: 24

24 And it came to pass that we did begin to till the earth, and we began to plant seeds; yea, we did put all our seeds into the earth, which we had brought from the land of Jerusalem. And it came to pass that they did grow exceedingly; wherefore, we were blessed in abundance.



We are probably a little behind, but this past week we planted our garden. It took us a while to get all of the yard work done to have a garden spot, but we finally got it started!!! Rich and the kids went out and planted the peas. We are hopefully going to have a TON of peas! They are my favorite! He started out with 3 rows for peas and after planting them, he had barely made a dent in the bowl. So we planted another, and another, and another...till we have 7 or 8 rows of peas! Yumm! We have a lot more to plant but ran out of day light and good weather, so there is still more to come.


This is Mackenzie. She is my perfectionist! She hand placed each pea with precise placement and spacing! She has been this way since birth! All I have to do is choose my words right, like ...Mackenzie, could you please "organize" those toys over there? And she is so excited to jump and do it.... the words "clean up" doesn't get quite the reaction that "organize" does.

She then had to go and show Brinley how to do it better.

According to Mackenzie, Brinley wasn't quite doing it up to par.

This is Richie adding rows in between his rows to make me happy and not waste any of my precious pea seeds. What a good hubby!


This is one of our 4 fruit trees we just planted. We got a peach, pear, apple, and nectarine. I can't wait till they start to produce fruit. We also got some blueberry starts. We've heard they are kind of hard to grow, so we'll see if they live.



Water it down slightly before the rain & wind hit later that night.

Jordan jumping on the trampoline. He loves it and it is such a good muscle builder for him!


Micailey & Mackenzie jumping.

It's on our grass until we get ground cover and gravel in the corner where it is supposed to go.

Dallas's Creation

Dallas has quite a creative side! He loves to build things with his Lego sets. This is his most recent creation. He came up with it all on his own. It is a carousel, complete with an outer frame and a spinning inner frame that holds to white horses. He did such a good job on it and is so proud of it that he was begging to put it on the blog. Good Job Dallas!

When Rich and I were thinking of going through with the adoption, one of the things that I wanted to make sure of if we did adopt is that our kids never felt lost in the family, neglected, or that our family had "so many kids" that we couldn't do the things we used too, or what ever the case may be. That is one of the reasons for the trip in November to Disneyland, and why I let him take the "big" kids back to Disney in March.

So with that introduction, I introduce you to our 2- yes 2 - new puppies!!! We had a puppy once when we were debating the adoption, moving, and then pregnancy, but the puppy was biting Mackenzie who wanted to mother it all day long & with all that was going on, we decided we needed to wait a while for that addition. So, now that we are settled and have had the boys for almost a year now, we decided we could have one again. Yes I said one! We were going to get a dog that was a yr or so old, but every time we looked at one or called on one, we were one or 2 people too late and missed them. Rich then found an add for puppies at a good price and we decided to look at them and maybe get one of them. They were the last 2 of a litter and there was 1 boy & 1 girl. When he called to tell me how cute they were, I told him to probably get the little girl then and he called back and said that they were playing together so cute that he didn't know if he wanted to separate them......so I said.... then get both :O) And he DID!!!

So we now have a little Sadie, and a little Jack (maybe Max - we can't decide) They are little Yorkshire's and only weigh 2 lbs right now and will only grow to be 4 or 5 lbs. They are so cute and good with the kids! And I'm glad we got 2 because when they are playful and no one here wants to play, we put them on their leash out back and they wrestle with each other and then come in and take a nap. It's kind of nice! We are loving having them around!

Brin has Sadie & Jordan has Jack (as in Jack Sparrow & Jack Bauer)

It's so cute to see Jordan with the puppies. He copies everything I do. He says "come on Jack, come on Jack, ....JACK!" as he pats his legs to get it to come. or "mere puppy, puppy!"

Just his little voice his so cute!

...Please... hold the "are you crazy?!?!" comments to a minimum :o) ...cause I know they are coming & I've already heard them.... and I already admit it!

Mackenzie lost her 1st baby tooth!

On Saturday, Mackenzie was complaining about her front tooth. We noticed it was loose a week or two ago, but it was barely loose so I kind of forgot about it. This time when we checked it was pretty loose so I told her to keep wiggling it and one day it would just fall out. A few hours later we were eating dinner and it DID fall out! I didn't think it was that loose! The other kids teeth would dangle by a thread for days before falling out! So she was excited! ...but there is more to this story!



After taking pictures of her newly lost tooth, I set it on a clean plate on the cupboard for safe keeping until bedtime when we could put it in the Tooth Fairy Pillow and excitedly wait for her visit! Meanwhile, Rich came down and thought he would do me a favor and gather up a few things, dust off the ONE "crumb"- (or what he thought was a crumb!) off of the clean plate! He then proceeded to wash it down the sink AND run the DISPOSAL!!!

At bedtime, we excitedly returned to get her 1st lost baby tooth and there was NO TOOTH, no plate, no trace of it! We then inquired about it and came to find out about her Daddy's kind deed, which leads us to the next few pictures. :o)


This is Richie and Brinley taking apart the pipes under the sink in hopes that the tooth would have stayed in the "goose neck" that a genius came up with for cases just like this!

And it was there! All 3 pieces of it! :o)

Mackenzie with the Tooth Fairy Pillow for the 1st time!

Hooray Kenzie! You're are growing up!

After all of that- the Tooth Fairy forgot to come!

But she did come the next night and brought her $3- one $ for each piece!!!

Happy Easter!

Doesn't that look yummy!

Before the Sugar High!

And After!

Before Easter we were talking to our kids about the real reason for Easter and after explaining about the entire week leading up to the Crucifixion, we paused and asked them if they understood, and Dallas said... "I understand all of the parts about Christ, ....but what I don't get is why the Easter Bunny??? How does he fit in?" ........Does any one have a good answer to that question? We gave him a simple answer, probably not a good one or the right one, but it satisfied him in front of all of the other kids for the time being.

The rest of these pictures are after church, in a hurry to get to dinner at Rich's parents. But you HAVE to take Easter Sunday pictures in your church clothes!
Isn't that some kind of rule somewhere! :o)

This is Macie almost crawling, she is getting better and better every day! She can move to get stuff now, it is still a little of a chore to get there, but soon she will be cruising right to it!



This is the kids and 2 of their cousins in their shirts

that their Grandma Smith gave them for Easter.

Decorating Cookies!

Micailey and her cousins from Saint George

Cousin Madison decorating a very colorful "Easter Egg" cookie

Micailey's Bunny cookie- can't you tell!!!!

I didn't get a picture of all of their cookies, but these are the 2 that I did get.

Dallas's chick

His was an egg but I didn't get a picture of it before he started eating it

Happy Easter!

We decided to get the kids a surprise this year for Easter! We made them close their eyes until we said! Dallas wasn't home but soon found out!

When they looked in the box - this is what they saw!

We got 2 little Ducks!

They are so cute! The kids love them and play with them non stop!

-especially Mackenzie who is the little mother of the family!

Even Macie is intrigued by them!

Here they are together. We haven't named them yet. We don't know if they are boys or girls until their adult feathers start growing in, so we are trying to come up with non-gender specific names. But they are so cute and are growing so fast!