Legacy

It's amazing how 1 woman, Muriel Bywater....

...who had only 4 children (her youngest son,Kim, not pictured)...

...who had 17 grandchildren (Cody not pictured)....

...who then had (and are still having) 38 great-grandchildren.

All those descendants of Grandmother are so grateful for her legacy and her example. Especially in her 90th year of life! That's one good looking group of relatives whom all began with just one person.

The process continues to repeat itself.
Families are amazing, aren't they?
Here are Tom Heal's descendants:

Stephanie's Johnson's descendants:

Christie Pearce's descendants:

Kim Heal's descendants:

Grandmother Bywater's legacy is a great one. So, my sister and I decided we needed to celebrate her, especially as she approaches 90 years this September. You see, my sister Mandy and I married cousins and got lucky enough to be considered two of Grandmother's descendants by marriage. Mandy organized the group gift: a personal history book of Muriel's life from her childhood to today.
It's beautiful and it has messages from each of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. In order to gift her with this book we decided to have a birthday BBQ for GG and surprise her with all but 2 of her family members. After we captured the moment with family pictures, we had a potluck BBQ and a few gifts...and lots of fun.

Deagan enjoyed the desserts.

We're pretty sure Grandmother loved it too...

...the book and the family, the food, the fun and her beautiful legacy.

I guess we can never underestimate the power and influence of one wonderful person, and one beautiful life legacy.

Quick Update

I KNOW that I am SO far behind on my blog...and I DO intend to catch up, slowly.

For now, here is a quick update about what we've been up to:

Watching our fruit trees bloom! We went from the winter grays to the Spring greens, pinks, purples, and whites. Popcorn is popping all over our front and backyards! We love it!

Setting up the backyard for spring/summer entertainment, (i.e.- BBQ's, outdoor play). Jeff & Dick put together the trampoline that's been sitting in the garage in a box all winter and you would have thought it was Christmas all over again.Watching cousins play Spring Competitive soccer....and playing a little soccer ourselves.

The older boys finished up Spring swim lessons in March. Corbin and Quinton were in the same class this session. They had so much fun together! They can't wait to go to 7 Peaks this summer.

We have been planting flowers, playing in the dirt, riding bikes, taking walks, family runs, park play-days and more....
It has certainly been a WET and COLD spring here, so we have to squeeze in our outdoor play whenever we can. Needless to say, we can't wait for summer!

Fall Leaves...

Are so fun!

Ward Campout

Jeff and I have a great ward. Our Activities Committee knows how to put together a fun camp out with great food, fun, and entertainment. The end of August is a beautiful time to get outdoors in Utah. Kelly's Grove is far enough away from home.... but not too far-- and its a gorgeous location just up Hobble Creek Canyon. We got there just in time to put our dutch oven dessert together before a yummy BBQ dinner and then the kids enjoyed running around in the trees and the river with their friends. There were also water rocket launches and a water balloon launch. The "big boys" aka- DADS, got in on that action as well.

Quinton followed me around with the camera and was quite the poser. Here he is standing on the bridge, right in the middle of the water balloon launch.

Q insisted I take his picture next to this sign. I guess he wanted to be sure we knew he was there... at Kelly's Grove Church. Pretty cute little smile though.

Perhaps the highlight of the evening was the dutch oven desserts. Several of us were split up into teams and competed against each other much like Food Networks' Iron Chef. We all had to make a dutch oven dessert with peaches as the main ingredient. My peach cobbler with crumb topping won the award for the tastiest dessert. I was very proud considering my competition and my amateur dutch oven abilities. There are some mean cooks and bakers and dutch oven camp chefs in our ward!

Of course Hobble Creek Canyon is where Jeff's aunt and uncle live (right off hole 16 of the golf course) so Jeff took the boys on a "nature hike" and came back with his uncles 4-wheeler. Corbin and Quinton's friends thought the 4-wheeler was pretty cool and they played on it for quite a while..... which thankfully kept them out of the cold river water!

My 3 boys catching a ride on the 4-wheeler with their good friend Evelyn as their chauffeur.

Even at 10 months it's evident Deagan is ALL BOY. He loved the 4-wheeler and squealed in delight to play on it.

Once it started getting dark we gathered around for some fun games and entertainment. The adults and kids got in on a great "Minute-To-Win-It" game... in which the females dominated. Tasks like picking up sized paper bags off the ground with your teeth and placing them on a table were A LOT harder for the men and boys to do than the women and girls. Interesting.

A lot of the games LOOKED a lot easier than they were. Such as this sucking up an M&M with a straw and placing it on top of a vertical straw. That is tough!

After the games there were Paper Bag skits and songs before camping out. This camp out happened to be the weekend that I hurt my back and thus we didn't end up camping out, much to our boys' dismay and disappointment. Apparently we missed a really great breakfast the next morning, but we didn't mind sleeping in our nice warm beds and getting a full night's sleep.

Especially this little boy. It would have been much too cold camping in a tent next to the creek for Deagan. Maybe next year.

mmmm....summer harvest!

We are so lucky/blessed to live in a beautifully landscaped home where our landlord not only does all the work, but also lets us harvest the fruit trees! All year we've been watching the changing trees in the backyard and anticipating the summer harvest. We actually planted our own tomatoes (roma and grape varieties) this year and they make a great afternoon snack when the boys are playing outside.

Our plum tree turned out a TON of plums this year.... compared to ZERO last summer! I wasn't sure what to do with all those plums so I gave a bunch away. Next year I'll probably bottle them?Then there was the peach tree. MMmmm....just looking at those peaches made me salivate.

The tree wasn't pruned properly last season so it started looking like a weeping willow tree by the end of August. By the middle of September the peaches were PERFECT so I got out the bucket and the ladder and put the boys to work!

The boys didn't mind one bit. They love to help... and they love to climb the ladder.

With Quinton's green shirt and peachy-colored cheeks he was near-camouflaged in that tree!

Corbin picked most of the peaches. He was a good inspector, checking each and every peach to make sure there were no holes or bugs in it.

He picked them and sorted them to perfection!

The Saturday after we harvested our peach tree my Relief Society held a canning day. About a dozen women gathered in a nearby backyard and we bottled all our own fruit. I bottled 12 quarts of peaches and made 2 dozen 1/2 pints of peach freezer jam.
Just yesterday I picked 6 zucchinis out of our garden and pureed all of them. I now have 20 cups of pureed zucchini in my freezer for all kinds of zucchini baked goods through the winter.

The summer harvest has been good to us so far.... and we're not done yet. We still have broccoli, cauliflower, onions, zucchini, tomatoes, and almonds to harvest. The term "year's supply" has certainly taken on a new meaning. We're hoping all this produce will last us a full year and that we get the same great harvest next summer!