Thursday, July 31, 2008

Beets

I love beets so much! The taste and smell of them cooking takes me right back to when I was a little girl and my mom was cooking them for us. I think it's great for the boys to see where some of our food comes from. There's nothing like fresh veggies from the garden... 












Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Fender Benders


Adam and I have both gotten in little accidents over the last 2 weeks, which I thought was kind of weird. The picture above was a few minutes before mine occurred...
 
I  went with the Young Women to the temple for baptisms. We came out, took pictures and piled back into the cars we came in. I had 4 girls in mine. I was backing up and thought I hit a pole or something, but looked back and it was a car. I jumped out of the car to see the shiny, red LEXUS that I had just hit!!! I almost died! It was an older woman, who seemed pretty nice. I started taking all the blame, although I had gone out of my parking spot and turned and she was still just backing up out of her spot, (I know, it was totally my fault too, but I like to think a little less...) So I'm blabbing and then of course start crying and she's just as calm as ever. I kept saying, "Should we call the police? Do you want my insurance info? Do you want my phone number?" She just kept saying things like, "Well- it looks like we both weren't watching where we were going, so I don't know how we can do the insurance thing, or the police." I just kept thinking about her nice Lexus- but the damage was minimal- it looked like a golf ball had put a tiny dent in the bumper. My car had the paint rubbed off  the bumper in a couple of spots, smaller than the size of dimes, so I wasn't too worried. I don't know if it was that she was the older one, or the one with the more expensive car, but I think I was waiting for her decision. She finally said, "I don't want you to think about this for another minute." And we drove away. Me balling my eyes out to my car full of girls. 

This was kind of like dejavu (sp?) from another accident I was in. When I was in high school, I was driving 5 other girls (due to the bench seat in the front of my car) to an indoor track meet from South Jordan up to Logan. It was snowing and I had started to drift a little past the white line, so I turned the wheel a little and started to slide, and spin and we finally hit a post (facing the wrong way on the freeway...) on the side of the road that flipped us around and put us in the ditch. But all the girls were screaming in that one (including me) and we were going freeway speed so it was a lot scarier. We had to get towed out and stand in the snow for a while. None of us ran in the track meet, we just headed for home. I had to pay Coach Arbogast back the $70 he paid the tow truck driver too. And my parents knew I was going to a track meet, I just hadn't told them it was in Logan, so they weren't too happy. My little brother fixed my car door in his auto body class in school the next year.  
 
Anyway- on to Adam's mishap. He was driving our brother-in-law, Brian's car when his accident happened. Since he carpools to work with Brian, they take turns driving. So if they need to run errands, they just take the car that is there. So Brian had just gotten his car back from getting fixed from another accident the day before (that one wasn't his fault, and he was hit by the back of a horse trailer or something...) Adam was stopped at a light and was the third car back. The turning lane next to him started to go, and so did the girl behind him. She ran right into him and left a few marks from her license plate on his back bumper. Poor Brian and his car...
 
I'm glad there were no serious injuries and the damage was minimal in both cases. It's just funny that it happened in the same couple of weeks.
 
P.S. Isn't the picture above crooked and a little far away? It's funny when people take pictures so different than I would. I think I'm more of a put the feet at the bottom of the picture and get the view at the top. But some people put the people in the center of the pic, whether or not it's beautiful underneath, or if it cuts off the landmark that you're taking the picture for anyway... It may be a pet peeve of mine.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Timpanogas Cave

For the 24th of July (Pioneer Day) we decided to go hike Timpanogas Cave. The last time I hiked it was with Adam ten years ago, before he left on his mission! The boys were so excited the night before when we were telling them to go to sleep so they could have energy. Adam woke them up at 7:00 and they were this happy and giddy all the way to the trailhead- they were dying to go hiking! 
Ollie collecting rocks even before we started up the 1.5 mile uphill trail.
Elliott and Benny discovering mountain treasures.
Let the hiking begin!


Adam's Dad, Steve, Sini, Adam, Ollie, Benny, Elliott, Linds, Elli, Brian and Addie.
The views were amazing!! We took it really slow and the kids did suprisingly well!

We made it to the top! E was so excited to get in the cave, but as 
soon as he got inside, he wanted to be out again because it was too cold.


I really felt like I was Wanda in the book 'The Host' the whole time- it was crazy!
Adam, Steve and Brian were all so tall- I can't believe they fit through some of the tight spaces.


"The Heart of Timpanogas"
Warming up outside the cave. 
There were some really steep cliffs to walk on with a 2 and 4 year old! We had to be really careful.

The Swalberg Boys

 I would go on that hike again in a minute. The way down was probably the longest because the kids were tired and we had to carry them or pull them along. We saw lots of little animals and some awesome views of the mountains and valleys! I need to get out into the mountains and hike more.
After a long nap and a trip to the park, we had our own little firework session. It was a great day!


Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Aquarium

We went to the aquarium today with my friend, Naoma and her kids. It is such a cool place- the boys could get really close to everything to get a good look. Elliott even pet the stingrays!
This is in front of the shark pool. You can see a shark swimming by in the background. The sharks looked so fake because they are so smooth and exactly like the movies.


In front of the eel aquarium.
The Jellyfish
This was a different kind of jellyfish that glows under a black light. They were almost soothing to watch. I would love to have this tank in my house, just to watch them and relax. 
E took this pic of the octupus. It was so cool... and GROSS!!!
The coral and the fish were so pretty to look at! We had lots of fun! The best part is that is cost $6 for a one day pass for kids and $9 for an annual pass! So we got the year pass and will go back for sure!

See how our garden grows...

We have a little tiny area of our flowerbed that I use for our garden every year. I've had people ask if we use it like a sandbox, and let our kids play in it, because it seems too small for anything else. But it works out perfectly for our little family. 


This is Elliott helping me get all the weeds out earlier this spring. Then he helped me plant the seeds. We had corn seeds, and I told him there wasn't enough room this year, but he insisted, so I let him plant a row. 

We finally had our first harvest from our garden (besides the strawberry patch that borders it to the left.) We watched these tomatoes for weeks. We would check them every day, so I finally let Ollie pick them. They were delicious!! I could eat tomatoes all day, especially home grown ones! Other things we planted were: green beans, beets, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers and pumpkins (along with the corn and tomatoes.) I'm so excited for everything to be ready, so we can eat them!! We also have a cherry tree with 4 different kinds of cherries, an apple tree with 3 different types of apples (it's really fun to see yellow and red apples on the same tree!) and a plum tree that also grows apricots. My mom was the one who knew about all these special hybrid trees and thought they would work perfectly in my little space. 

Last year I only planted two pumpkin seeds, and one pumpkin got as big as an apple before it froze. So this year I planted a lot of seeds, two different kinds. I just spread them throughout my flowerbeds and they are taking over! But that's okay- I hope we get lots of them. You can see a tiny one to the left of Ollie's legs, sitting on the curbing. It's so fun to have a garden, especially with kids. My parents always had a huge one that we had to work in all the time- so it didn't seem that fun to me (although I loved the veggies and fruits we got from it and it was fun to play in...) But I can do this little size.
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