Jacob and Elise

Christmas happened, and it was wonderful! I love Christmas, and Jacob loves candy, so it was a good deal for the both of us :)

A bunch of awesome people came over to our house and made gingerbread (graham cracker) houses. It was so fun and we felt so cool to have real live friends at our real live house! Thanks guys!

Ethan Called!

He talked to mom, and the rest of us to, but mom's the most important. (and coincidentally had the cutest picture while on the phone with him :)

Ethan on speakerphone!

Erynn on Christmas. She is so pretty and grown up I can't even handle it. and I made her that hat.

I taught myself how to knit. sort of.

Why is Taiwan so far away from me?

Jacob and Kim battled on the Wii. oh, and we got a Wii.

Jacob got me these gorgeous things for Valentines Day... he's the best.

I had to take a bazillion pictures of trees for my Arboriculture class...

Sometimes Jacob would come to campus with me and throw snowballs at lamposts while I studied the trees... And sometimes he would show off and show me how far back he could stand and still hit the pole with the snowball. But sometimes he couldn't hit the pole so he would have to keep moving closer and closer... only sometimes though :)

And sometimes we ran into the resident campus deer!

I gave dad his first buzz cut... he was apprehensive

But shouldn't have been, cause it clearly looked amazing.

Jessie and Andrew came to stay with us twice! Once right before Christmas, and then again in March! We had fun, and wish them well in Louisiana where there are many more trees for Andrew to climb! :)

Jacob had a birthday!

He's getting old.

It was a big fat party after the mission reunion! Congrats to Jon and Jamie who are getting married next week!

My little sister went to prom. My little sister who is still supposed to be 7 years old (don't remind me that she graduated last month...). I'd like to say I made her beautiful, but my parents did that... I did do her hair and makeup though! She and her boyfriend put gold leaf in their hair so they were super glitzy and matchy matchy :)

I made bread. Bread from the wonderful book The Bread Bakers Apprentice that my mom got me for my birthday! (oh yeah, I had a birthday too... but I'm the one who takes pictures around these parts, and I didn't take any of myself celebrating getting older. sorry.)


And guess what I used to make that bread? Flour I ground myself in my brand new Wheat Grinder Jacob bought me for my birthday! I didn't have a picture of it (if you look closely, you can see the Wonder Mill box in the background...) but this is Jacob "helping" me with the wheat. Apparently its a lot harder than it looks to touch the bottom of a 5o lb pail of wheat. But my husband can do it. Can yours?

We planted our garden, and it's growing! This is quite exciting because it was the coldest May in something like 57 years... it SNOWED after Mother's day! Jacob is also slowly re-mulching the whole area, and it just keeps looking better and better! Jacob is really good about yard work and garden things... I think I would be better about it, but I just hate mosquitos so so much. I seriously went outside last week for 2 minutes and got 3 mosquito bites. AT NOON. My blood must be the tastiest blood ever.

The first fruits of our garden!

My mock-orange is blooming! It's my favorite thing in the back yard. ...or the front yard really.
You can come smell it and then you'll understand why.

We bought a peach tree and guess what! It ALREADY has teeny peaches on it! We were expecting to have to wait a few years, but our tree loved us so much it decided to give us peaches this year anyway :)