It is finally final

Yesterday was Paul's birthday but we all celebrated it on Sunday evening with dinner and family out on the deck. I will post photos later.

We spent a large chunk of the day in Court again for Justin's divorce and Custody case. Yes it was supposed to be final the beginning of March but his ex decided not to sign the papers. She wanted some changes that were not agreed on during the hearing. But after setting thru the entire morning session, our lawyer had 5 other cases and said she would not be available until 2pm. Even though our lawyer told the other lawyer this, the other lawyer still wanted to put us on the morning schedule. Weird!!

So we rush home to change at lunch time and head to the Nursery for a lunch bbq with the gang for Paul's birthday. Then back home to change back into court clothes and back to the courthouse.

We luckily were the 1st ones on the schedule and it only took maybe 5 minutes. The judge said this should have been brought up in the 1st hearing and he saw no evidence to change anything. So our son is now officially divorced.

WOW this is not something I EVER thought I would be Happy about! 1st I never thought I would be in this spot and 2nd I NEVER thought I would celebrate it. But I am glad to have it over and everything down in writing. WHEW what a LONG drawn out thing.

So Justin will always remember when his divorce was final, on his DAD'S BIRTHDAY!

I could not post without a photo or two of the little cutie! She is such a tough little twerp, one who loves to play in the dirt and yet such a girly girl too!! She LOVES shoes, I mean she LOVES them and jewelry too. She is always asking to put on my shoes and walk around in them.

What is it that takes us from such cute little kid feet, to the ones we end up with! lol I guess it is all the years of WALKING ON THEM ha ha She had my shoes on then she wanted Auntie's shoes next.Auntie is telling her she has to keep her toes together so she can keep her shoes on.Success!! Notice all the shoes in the background, yep she had them all on at one time or another. :)Tomorrow I will post about the smoke in the valley, wow it has been bad and it is supposed to get worse this weekend!

2008 Garden

Finally I am back! WHEW now to catch up!
Here is Justin rototilling the ground for our corn patch. We really need a bigger tiller but we have so dang many rocks. I figure each year it will be a little bit better. Ok, well we ended up renting a tiller because the little one we have just bounced around on top of the ground! lol Notice how Fleeta is watching Justin, I swear if we let her out she would follow Justin around like a puppy!
I Planted 6 rows of corn so we ended up with 50-60 stalks, I am hoping for better success than last year! Isn't my garden helper a cutie :)
We planted 8 tomatoes this year, crazy I know but I wanted to try some different varieties.a Goliath that Harold Simons gave us
a sweet 100 Cherry tomato
a Sungold cherry tomatoes (these are so sweet they are like Garden Candy)!! I circled the ones that are almost ripe, they really are a golden color and oh so yummy!Heritage tomatoes:
Brandywine, does anyone else think this tomato plant is odd looking? The leaves do not even look like a tomato plant.
Now this is a normal tomato leaf!Black Russian
Purple Cherokee
Green Zebra I don't remember how many peppers total but these are the varieties
Banana Peppers - Serrano - Thai Hot - Habanero - Jalapeno - Cayenne
a couple of pumpkins
3 burp less cucumbers
2 Lemon Cucumbers
3 or 4 Cantaloupe
3 or 4 watermelon
1 Honeydew

1 Delicata Squash because I was talking with a customer who said I would love this squash, so I told him I would plant it and let him know! lol Something is chewing on it and that totally ticks me off! We just sprayed with Dr Earth (all natural) So I hope that will take care of the nibbling. Plus we needed to spray for the cucumber beetles cause they are thick this year.
Edited to Add: To my GREAT disappointment my Delicata Squash turned out to be a zucchini and I DO NOT LIKE ZUCCHINI!! I double checked the label and it says Delicata, so I am hoping this was a freak mistake by the grower and I truly hope no one else got the wrong squash from the nursery!! YIKES bad enough for me to be disappointed but for someone else to, that would be awful. We did plant a bunch in the nursery garden so if anyone else got the wrong squash at least they can have a couple of the right ones!!
I think we should have a BUMPER CROP THIS YEAR !!
This was the corn patch this morning, it is almost up to my waist!
Who is ready for some fresh produce??
Well besides this little muncher, she loves fresh fruit and fresh veggies!

Crazy busy, but it's all good :)

Sorry to have been MIA for so long, but again I have to say it is Spring and we are in the Nursery business! That pretty much says it all. lol

We are having a huge sale this weekend so yes, we are just Crazy busy!! Everything in the Nurseries are marked 20% off and that is on top of what ever is already on sale. We don't open until 9am, Paul and I got to our farm location at 7:30 yesterday morning, we had people already waiting in the parking lot! Oh my gosh!! I told them they were welcome to shop and load their carts but the staff would not be in until 9. They were quite happy to head out and do their shopping :)

We also did Kids Club with about 20 kiddos, planting up a flower and decorating the pot up for a cute Mother's Day gift. I love working with these kids, they are just so much fun! Hey if anyone knows of a NON TOXIC waterproof glue PLEASE LET ME KNOW! I have been looking for one because of course with the kids I do not want to use anything toxic. Luckily Judy (Carma's Mom) brought Bryson and Trystin and her CAMERA cause Anita and I had our hands full helping the kids. So she said she would pass me the photos, gosh I LOVE DIGITAL CAMERAS!!

I know I owe lots of people blog comments, emails and such. I will try and play catch-up this week. I got a sweet email from Laura just checking in on me since she had not heard anything out of me for a bit. (thanks Laura) :)

Ok, gotta get moving but I will leave you with a Photo of Justin and Kaylie. She is talking more and climbed up on her Daddy's lap just to give him a love. Ok, that just about melted my heart! :)

I ran 'Rusty Cage' action on this photo by Totally Rad Actions and Stylish in Black frame action from Photo-licious by Natasha Whitely.

Finally with the SUN

WOO HOO finally we have some nice weather. So I headed outside, here is my quad with the little wagon we use. Fleeta really wanted to come with me and if she would have stayed with me I would have let her out but heaven only knows what kind of mischief she would have gotten into! lol

So I headed up to the Aspen trees to pick up rock and weed. Paul planted these last year on the 'ridge' of our property, thus the name of our place is 'Aspen Ridge' :)
Here is our 'rock pile' we have these all over the property and the 1st year we picked up soooo many it was crazy. But each year it is less and less (thank heavens) Dad and I did manage to gather 3 wagons, love that it has a dump feature. Makes unloading it so much easier, plus we found if you don't overload it the wheels won't go flat. ha ha Oh my yes we learned that one the hard way!
Love the way wildflowers grow in such a scattered random pattern. I try an mimic this randomness but it always looks forced. Seems I do not have the artistic flair that God has :)Here is a closeup of these dainty little flowers, they are tiny but in a mass they are quite beautiful. I spent the rest of my day hand watering this years crop of trees, TID comes on the 2nd of May THANK HEAVENS!!! It takes forever to water cause you can't turn the water on to high or it will take all the dirt out of the grow bag and you have to fill it up at least twice. But on a beautiful day it really is a nice mindless way to spend some time outdoors. Well that was my Saturday, Sunday was spent cleaning house. You know the kind where you wipe down all the cabinets and get down on your knees and scrub. Not nearly as nice as being out in the beauty of the day but I sure am glad to have it done!!!

Is this April or DECEMBER!!!

Today is Justin's Birthday and we have NEVER had snow on his birthday for heaven sakes! We are doing a BBQ tonight and it is going to be interesting to see how we fit every one in the house instead of inside AND out on the deck!

Here are some of the views from our house today.

1st this is to the south towards Talent and one of the windows in our upstairs computer/office/craft area. Here is our Patio Furniture, we are sooooo ready for some 'Outdoor Living'!!!

This is to the east of the house

Crazy that the sky is so blue this direction (North) and so nasty if you just do a 1/4 turn. The dark line towards the top of the photo is the easement road on the edge of our property for our 4 neighbors. The rows of 'twigs' are the trees we have planted for the last 3 years, we grow them and sell them to the nursery. Last year was our 1st harvest, each year we are getting the planting timing down a little better. We now will just plant back in the same hole of what trees we harvest, we are doing all our trees in grow bags for less shock in transplanting.This view is to the west and off towards Phoenix.

Fleeta is not real happy with the snow covering her grass either!

Here are my poor little tomato plants, Silly me for thinking I was going to get a head start on getting my garden in, I SHOULD KNOW BETTER! The milk bottles covering them is supposed to help protect them. My MIL is a fabulous veggie grower so I always go with what she says will work.
I know I have been missing in action a lot this month, it is Spring (believe it or not) in the Nursery business and 9-10 hour days often 6 days a week are pretty much the norm for us.

We did Kids club at the nursery again yesterday so I will try to get some photos posted soon! Now I need to get some shopping done for the BBQ tonight.

Most Beautiful

Just another one of the cutie and her daddy. She was totally giggling cause Justin was tickling her. When he stopped she would say tika tika tika cause she wanted him to tickle her more! lol Now she comes up to me and tries to tickle me, she thinks it is totally hilarious if you laugh! When she is sitting on her daddy's lap nothing makes her laugh faster than if I tickle Justin, oh my gosh she just goes into fits of laughter! I love it :)

Credits:
Cinzia Loosemore's Urban Grunge at The Digi Chick

Cori Gammon's Dirty Notes and Closeline Paper I just picked these up at the digi chick but I when I headed over there to get the link I can't find her in the store? So what is up with that??

Natasha Whitely's Clock at DSSA

Hallelujah Eggs!

Something I want my grandchildren to know about my Mom. Even after all this time, I still miss her so much. What a beautiful woman, inside and out. She had such a love for life and oh my goodness she would have smooched on her Great-grand-babies from here to eternity and back! lol My Mom 'Ruby' taught a private Christian kindergarten from the year I was in 1st grade till after I had kids. Where ever she went little children just seemed to gravitate to her and she loved each and ever one!

This is truly one of the best things about scrapbooking. Keeping memories like this one alive for the future generations and to enjoy the moment of reliving them while creating the layout. Thanks for walking down memory lane with me!

Credits are:

Weeds and Wildflowers Anniversary free quick page by Petra
Misty Cato's Gridwork Alpha
Fonts

Journaling - Amanda's Hand

Pristina

Base 02