Summer is here!! Oh yeah, baby baby!!

We have done some very fun things over the past couple of weeks and the hot weather has finally arrived. Summer is officially here. We have been busy enjoying every minute of it so far. Here is a quick update on what we have been up to!
I have really been working on getting our year supply of food. I think we are pretty close now! I recently got a wheat grinder and here is some bread I made from the wheat and also some whole wheat cinnamon rolls that are sooooo yummy. I have been making bread 2-3 times week. It is so yummy and makes the house smell so good.

Little Hema is now officially potty trained! No more diapers day or night! He does such a great job of going potty on his own and can easily get his underwear back on. He struggles with the pants, so this is how he spends most of his day. He doesn't mind going without pants or a shirt, but he always wears his boots and hat! He loves to come running out of the bathroom and say "I peed in the potty! Oh yeah, baby baby!" We have no idea where he learned that, but I seriously am so glad he is potty trained I feel like saying it too! My next summer project will be getting him to wear clothes!!

Hopefully he will figure it out before he is this guys age!! YIKES!!!!!
We have planted flowers around our yard. Hopefully this planter will fill in and look nice!!I have always wanted to do square foot gardening. This is my year! We got a late start getting the garden started with all of the other yard projects we have going on, but it is now planted. Notice the weeds and thin grass around the grow boxes? This is one of the areas we seeded this year. Hopefully the grass will fill in nicely as the garden progresses. Here is one of my boxes after everything was planted. I will update the blog with it's progress! This box has pumpkins, watermelon, yellow squash, cabbage (2 varieties), tom thumb lettuce, fat and sassy peppers (I have no idea what those are, but liked the name!!), bell peppers, and walla walla onions.

This is the other box planted. I did two 4' x 6' boxes. This one has cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes (2 varieties), jalapeno peppers, banana peppers, broccoli, beets (2 varieties), Nevada lettuce, carrots, radishes and a few herbs. I am so excited for this garden. We haven't planted a garden for the last 2 years and I LOVE eating the food we grow!
Here is a view on the garden area, which is one spot we have seeded. Notice the grass and WEEDS!! Hopefully the grass fills in and chokes the weeds out!Here is a close up of one of the seeded areas! Still thin, but coming along!
This is our play area. We are loving the play set and finally got the curb and wood chips in. Now if Hema falls and hits his head, he hopefully will live! It is such a fun play set and Daddy Hema and I love to climb up in the fort area and play too! Vela and Hema both love the swings the most. You can see where we took out the rock wall and leveled and seeded on the left hand side of this picture. This is my recent enemy!! We have loved having this wire fence in our back yard. In the past there have been goats and horses back there along with the cows. We have really liked the animals and Hema loves to feed them. Now there is only this one cow and she and I have been at war over my grass! She loves our grass and pushes and pushes on the fence until she either can come into the yard, or eat along the border. We have added lots of posts and weird stuff along the fence to try and keep her contained. We absolutely LOVE those neighbors and have really enjoyed the farm backing our yard, but may end up having to put up a wood fence. We'll see, our recent fence work seems to be holding! Little Hema would be so sad with a wood fence. That cow is his "friend." He stands by the fence and moos at it and she moos back. It is so funny!

Daddy Hema gets to be home so much more in the summer! This is a picture of my Hemas playing in the sprinkler!

Of course we have been doing some fishing!!

We went camping for the Katoa reunion last week for a couple of nights. It was so much fun. We had a great turn out and everyone had a good time.

I was surprised at how well our kids slept in the tent and smiled as they were passed around and kissed by everyone. I love getting together with family! It is so much fun.

We played games, ate great food, visited, played guitar hero (by the way, the guitar hero was played 24 hours a day - some people really stayed up all night both nights playing!), had a family home evening and lots of other fun stuff. People came from all over - even all the way from Texas! We can't wait for next year. Our niece Hunter got baptized.2 of Hema's cousins graduated from high school. This is La'a Angilau, she graduated from East High. Lynn Katoa graduated from Cottonwood. He actually finished high school in December and went out to the University of Colorado for spring football. He came back to walk and we went to the graduation and took pictures, but apparently our camera lost them. Here is a picture of him at La'a's graduation. He is the one in the cream shirt on the left. Congrats Lynn and La'a!!

I'm sure I have missed lots of other important events from the last couple of weeks, but as you can see we have been busy! Now I just need to do laundry and clean the house and we will be ready for the next few crazy weeks! We are going to St George to see Les Miserables at Tuacahn (yeah we planned a trip when it is supposed to be 104 degrees!), my sister Jen and her family are coming to visit from California and the Lehi Round Up Rodeo is next week! There will be more fun and pictures to follow!!