Sara and the Flowers

Since plain old flower pictures may be getting boring to some veiwers, I added Sara in these pictures. She has never said no to getting her picture taken!

Here's my beautiful "Incrediball" hydrangea. We're adding acid to the soil, so we'll see if they come up blue next year.

More Fireflies

Since I now realize that it is impossible to capture these beauties on film in their full glory, I'll have to settle for a picture of them in broad daylight. This is a quart jar full of all the fireflies Melissa and Ashley caught last night. You'll have to use your imagination to picture what it must have looked like glowing in their room all night.

Fireflies

For those of my blog viewers who have never been to the east and experienced the true magic of the bug know as the firefly, this is for you. A camera cannot come close to doing them justice. They are, hands down, my favorite bug in the world!! The trees look like they have twinkling Christmas lights in them. I have tried every kind of lighting possible and can't get the camera to capture them in the trees, so this is the best it gets.

The tiny little figure singing in the midst of them is not a wood nymph. It is actually Melissa on the hunt to catch as many as she can fit into a jar. My girls do NOT like bugs, do not touch bugs, and usually run screaming at the very mention of a bug. However, if a bug happens to have a light bulb on his backside, suddenly it's wonderful and worth touching!

Flowers

This post is mostly for my mom and sisters. Pretty orange flowers...

...and some white ...

...and some pink. All from different plants, right?

Nope! All three colors are growing on the same plant! This is called a Gay Butterfly Weed. Jason and I found it in a seed catalog last year and thought we'd give it a try. It bloomed this year and has put a big smile on my face! I've never seen anything quite like it. No butterflies yet, but I am still hopeful.

The view from above. The only flowers not on the plant are the pink geraniums in the top middle. Very cool plant!!!!

Another Birthday

Rachel had her 7th birthday this week. I can't believe she will be baptized next year! They are growing up too quickly. I love all my girls so much.

She wanted an Oreo cake. It has a cream cheese, mint Oreo filling and ganache on top. By far the easiest cake I've ever made and soooo delicious! Good choice, Rachel.

Piano Duet

I had my first official piano recital this past weekend. I have 16 students (including 3 of my own kids) and it went very well! The theme was "Songs from the Movies" and I found a great Pirates of the Caribbean duet book for me and Ashley. We played "The Curse of the Black Pearl". Neither of us is brilliant on the piano, but we sure had a great time with this song! It's flipped on it's side because Melissa was filming with the camera turned, and while I can view it normally on my camera, I can't seem to get it upright for this post. Also, blogger won't allow more than 100MB video clips, so there is a lot of the song missing! This is all you get.

Goods from the Garden

This little one is growing, but not in my garden. Just had to throw in a cute picture of my Emily, now 5 months old.

This, however, is straight from the garden! We had a fantastic amount of enormous radishes. Melissa thought this was a tomato when she first saw it. Yummy! Excuse my very dirty hand. I had just finished pulling weeds.
Here's a small amount of our own home grown strawberries that Sara can't get enough of. We have picked about two cups of strawberries each day for the last week, and they just keep coming! They are so delicious!!! Sara is covered in chocolate from her chocolate milkshake we had with dinner tonight. She's still way cute.