Vacation 2010 Day 10

Day 10 of vacation was spent at Zion National Park. This is one of my favorite National Parks. I love the contrast of the deep green colors with the orange rock formations in the canyon. It became a family favorite on this trip because we were able to do some hiking. Because it was one of our favorites I took a ton of pictures at Zion. I'll only give you a taste here. If you want to see more, call me and we'll have coffee and look at them together. The kids also enjoyed counting the lizards. I think they saw a total of 16. We loved the falls. The first ones we hiked to were the lower emerald pool.

The kids loved the weeping rock trail...mostly because it was hot and the rocks dripped water on us while we hiked. It was also beautiful. On the way there we saw several deer and wild turkeys.

Our last trail was the riverwalk trail. It led to the narrows which is a place in the trail where the canyon is so narrow that you can only hike through the water. Unfortunately, since we were there in what is technically spring the water was too high to walk through the actual narrows. However, we did enjoy a splash in the river.

What a great day...it wore us all out.

This year's garden

Yep, the toe is broke. Well, I've not had x-rays done or anything, but a big purple line developed along the side of it and the whole top of my foot has a sickish purplely color to it. It is actually feeling better this afternoon. I'm not sure if it because of the 3 ibuprofen I took or because Joe finally convinced me I needed to stay off of it today. (It's kind of amazing...I can't walk very well but I can do the eliptical machine. Hurts like the dickens when I get off the machine, but...) Well, it was Joe telling me that I needed to keep off of it and the fact that it was so swollen at the end of the day yesterday that my sandel put a really decent imprint on it. Alright, enough about the lame foot.

I thought you might enjoy some pictures of our garden for this year. Planted were big boy tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, Marconi peppers, ancho peppers, and jalapeno peppers. Not planted, but growing are cherry tomatoes. Not planted, growing and pulled were some zucchini plants. I still have zucchini in the freezer from last summer. The gal with the green thumb at church shared some tomato tips with our MOPS group last spring that really helped with my romas this year. I've been pruning the "sucker" branches off. I love to prune. Just ask Joe...some plants I prune so much that he's convinced they will never see life again. But I have yet to kill anything by pruning. There's just something satisfying about snipping junk off of a plant. Anyway, we have the largest romas we've ever had. They are almost ready to ripen. I just keep hoping they wait until after VBS next week, but with this heat they will probably all be ready for salsa making the middle of the week. Good thing I have next weekend free. I just need to encourage my jalapenos in the same direction.

our jalapenos

maroconi peppers

the beautiful romas--one of about 5 plants

July at our house

So I'm pretty sure I broke my toe. It is the next to last one on the left foot and I know it would make me feel better if it turned black. Then I would feel a little justified in the amount of pain it is causing me. This really isn't a convenient time for me to have a broken toe. I've just gotten back into my exercise routine (you may have heard that Joe & I are participating in a weight loss challenge with the office staff at church) and I have VBS next week. Not sure at this point how I'm going to jump around on stage like I need to. I've really started praying that by next week the toe is back to normal. Joe (the medical expert in the house) says it is very unlikely. Sigh...

The middle part of July has been pretty active for us. Here's what's been going on....

• We've been borrowing some videos from the library for our evening entertainment. (There just hasn't been anything child worthy on TV lately.) The other day Nathan talked me into letting him get a nature video Deep Blue. It's not that I'm against nature; I'm just not a fan of some of the videos about nature. Anyway, we settled in to watch it with me warning them that if it got crazy on evolution we would be turning it off. It actually turned out to be pretty good, right up to the point that they started showing the killer whales. After seeing them in a action, I'm kind of wondering who at Sea World thought it would be a good idea to try to tame these mighty beasts. They had a scene where a pack of killer whales attacked a baby gray whale. After 6 hours they wore the mama gray whale out and killed (yikes!) the baby gray whale. It was really horrible. We had major tears going on with Nathan and I'm afraid he will probably never watch a nature video again.
• On the same theme of nature, a monarch catepillar somehow ended up on my foot outside last week. So we brought it in a put it in Sara's "butterfly pavillion". It ate and ate this last week and we woke up this morning to it hanging upside down in the pavillion. Here's hoping for a butterfly in two weeks.
• The girls had an Anne of Green Gables marathon while visiting their aunt a few weeks ago. Now I know who Ashley reminds me of...Anne of Green Gables! She is now devouring the books and her dramatic side has come into light even more in the last week. She was in tears when we took the video back to the library yesterday (yes, they had to watch them again when they got home). I think there may have even been utterances of "how shall I now live?"
• Speaking of Ashley, she lost a tooth this last week. It put me in a panic when she came upstairs one afternoon with blood coming out of her mouth and she announced a tooth fell out. I didn't know she had a loose tooth and you just never know what is going to happen with that child. Fortunately, it was one that was suppose to come out this time.
• We have VBS here next week and once again I'm in charge of it. I guess that sounded a little like I didn't want to be in charge. I enjoy it. It could be an interesting week. Last year we had 38 kids on our first day and ended the week around 60 or 70. We have 41 preregistered for this year. Here's hoping we have enough of everything!
• I've been studying Hebrews this summer. I usually end up my Bible study with more questions than answers. But it has been really good to be in the Word.

We are off to the orthodontist and to do a little shopping...that will be fun with a broken toe. Oooo, maybe I can drive one of those little carts at the store....