Utah....this is the place!

We had a wonderful trip to Utah and just made it back to Kansas late last night. We got to spend lots of great time with family and friends - and got lots of pictures to show how much fun we had. It would take all day to post everything we did, but here are a few of our favorites!

We had a great time at the cabin with Jerrell's family - and we got to spend some time at beautiful Whitney Lake in the Uintahs where Abe and Tilly (mostly Tilly) had a ball swimming for the tennis ball, rocks, and nothing in particular...

Josh picked me a bouquet of wild flowers...

The view from the cabin...

Josh and Henry hanging out...

Cute Ana - posing in the back of the side-by-side, with spaghetti on her happy face!

We had fun at family dinners...


Josh rocked the lacrosse field...


and we had a blast on the 24th in Heber...


I tried water skiing for the first time...

and I even got up on my first try!

We went to the Heber Demolition Derby...


and ended our trip with dinner at Lorena's!


Here are my boys driving home...

and some of the beautiful Colorado mountains on our drive home along I-70!



Thanks to everyone for helping us to have such a fun trip!

Busy, busy

It's been a busy few days. I started off Saturday morning with a 5k for the Lady of Guadalupe church,
then Rachel and I froze 2 bushels of corn.
I felt like all the years of helping (okay, watching) my mom and dad finally paid off. We had what seemed like so much corn (2 sinks full...twice) that didn't make as many bags as we thought. But we were corn-freezing maniacs. We had 3 pots going on the stove, I was cutting the corn off the cob with my electric knife, and Rachel was putting the corn in bags.
It was a pretty slick process and we are all set with fresh corn for the rest of summer, fall, and winter.
On Sunday, Josh had a family barbeque for his National Guard Unit that was right during our Sacrament Meeting time, so I went up with him and went to the Hiawatha Branch that started earlier. I wasn't sure what to expect - I didn't know if they met in a house, or a rented building, or what. I was relieved to see when I pulled up that it was an actual church - and it was tiny, but so nice. The people were so great, even though few in numbers, and I even got asked to say the closing prayer.
So far this week we've been trying to get everything ready so we can head home for a while. I finally got the deck finished (I've been staining it for a few days. . .what a LONG job!) We got a whole bunch of yard work done, including getting the lawns mowed (which is a whole day job by itself), I got the dogs shaved, we got the truck cleaned out (we are turning it in tomorrow), and a ton of little things trying to get ready for our trip. We will definitely get some pictures of everything packed into our little car - with our two big dogs. I'm glad we don't have a baby that has to sit in the back with them! I may or may not post anything until we get back, so I apologize in advance if this is the last post for awhile! Hopefully I'll get to visit some of you instead!
Oh - and Dad, I know the difference between frogs and toads now. We have both of them, and they look completely different! We have tons of little baby frogs and toads...they are everywhere!! In fact, I had to not look right in front of the lawn mower while I was mowing. I was getting really close to some of them...probably too close - so I stopped looking.

Check out the video at the bottom....

My friend Mark from New Zealand sent this movie to me. It is so funny and makes me miss New Zealand so much! If you need a translation let me know...

catch-up

Josh is waiting for me to watch Vantage Point with him, so I don't have much time. In no particular order, our photos are described below.
We have an almost new lawn mower after some sharpened blades, an oil change, and a new air filter. My neighbors better watch out!
Also, we took the four-wheeler out for a spin last night.
We woke up to a very foggy day this week.
It is Josh's mom's birthday tomorrow, so we got some new family pictures taken to send to her.
And our toad is still keeping the bugs to a minimum (we actually need like a million more toads to keep the bugs to a minimum out here, but he's still hanging around.)

I'm a gardener!

A couple of months ago when I got my garden planted, I sent an instant message to my parents letting them in on the good news. I told them, "It's official - I'm a gardener." My dad, however, busted my bubble by saying, "You're not a gardener until you get a harvest."
I've spent the past couple months watering, weeding, replanting things that got blown away in storms, etc. But now it's official - I'm a gardener. I harvested one sugar-snap pea pod from my garden. I took a bite of half of it (I love raw peas from the garden) and I offered the rest to Josh. He ate it and decided it tasted like grass. Delicious!

There it is: my one picked pea!
We've also got peppers...


corn...

pumpkins, cantaloupe, and beans (not pictured). We may have watermelon, but I'm not sure if what's growing is an actual watermelon plant or a weed. I'm leaving it there to see if any watermelons show up!

While I worked in the garden, the dogs shared their frisbee and Josh was the official photographer.

Look what's growing!

Kansas IS the sunflower state!


Tuesday is garbage day here at the Mikkelsen house. I went out to gather some things that needed throwing away yesterday (like my obviously dead hanging plants). I chucked one of them and went to grab the other one and a bird flew out of it. I thought, "That's strange." When I actually pulled it down, this is what I saw.

So I hung it back up. If you come visit don't judge my 'green thumb' skills on my dead hanging plant! I opted for the dead plant and living birds instead of a thrown away dead plant and dead birds!