A Run Down of the Jones Household for the Past Few Months in Pictures

Sage's 8th Birthday Party

We celebrated Sage's birthday at the best place in town...the community center!

They have the best deal going....swimming and a party room. What more do you need?

Scott always comes dressed for a swim party in the right garb.


Roma's Piano Recital


Roma has gotten quite good at the piano, I must say. Although, she is not a fan of recitals. She did great though!

Here's a photo of the two other people in the ward who take lessons from Roma's teacher. The lady in the middle is a riot and takes Harp lessons.

All of the teacher's students

Here Roma is with her hard core teacher, Alexis. She's a super nice lady, but is quite serious about the paino playing and Roma has flourished under her tutelage.

The Garden

Last year my neighbor, Mia, and I split a garden plot at the community gardens and we did it again this year. We wanted to get our seedlings in the ground in late April/early May, but the winter was sooooo incredibly long here (as in it snowed in mid May...ugh), that it delayed our planting.


By then our seedlings had had it and they weren't lookin like they would do much. I decided to plant what I could of the pea seedlings and sprinkle some romaine lettuce seeds on a small section of the garden the first week in May. At the time Daybreak's water lines were broken to the gardens, so I just left it up to mother nature to make anything grow. I came back the last week in May to put a top layer of compost and peat moss on and look what I found!

All the new dirt was our top layer we put on, but the girls weren't so into doing things this year, as evidenced by the fruit juice popsicle heaven provided by the ice cream man. I had found some great organic seedlings on sale at Smith's Marketplace and put them in the ground, set up the soaker hose, and crossed our fingers. Daybreak thought they were doing us a favor by tilling our garden after the season last year, but with the method we do, you should not till, so we were a little worried things wouldn't work well.

Nonetheless, I will ahve to post pics of the garden right now. It's huge and flourishing. The peas did great and are pretty much done now. Lettuce season is almost done, too, but boy did we get a ton of lettuce. I used a lot of it for a cost vida salad I made for a family dinner. And the one spearmint plant I stuck in the ground last year and ripped out at the end of the season...some of it stuck around and commandeered the last 1/4 of the garden bed (you can see it at the end of the bed in the photo above).

I think we're going to make some spearmint extract or our own spearmint tea bags from it and give it as gifts. We are waiting on our tomatoes, spaghetti squash, cilantro, bell peppers and cucumbers and beets to ripen, and our zucchini is going mad.

I super love gardening, esp Lasagna Gardening. This year was super easy since we invested our energy last year.

Spring

Athena went hard core in April with the friend playing and is still going strong. We have 4 girls her age on the street. What an incredible blessing!

Athena with Evelyn, Grace, and Lexi. Genovah is missing in this pic

Zephyr has a pretty serious crush on Evelyn in particular. He pretty much talks about her all the time and even pretends to call her on the phone.

If Evelyn looks familiar that's because there is a picture of a little girl on the back of the Organic Horizon Milk carton that looks just like her but with black hair. Freaky.

Cousin Nathan Got Married/Jessica Came to Visit!

Cousin Nathan got married, and had an open house in SLC. Cousin Jessica was able to sleep over one night while they were here. The girls had a great time! It made us realize again just how much we miss our family!

Here is cousin Stephen with me

Zephyr putting on his dance moves

Scott with Lisa and Jon(his sister and husband)
Did I get any shots of the bride and groom? Nope....my bad.

The gang getting gelato at our favorite gelato place


June

June was a super crazy month. It was the conference. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then go ask someone who might, cause I don't have the energy to explain it after putting it on ;). Here is a picture of me and Becca, my friend who put this on with me.


Sad, I was so busy I didn't take any other photos, except this one of the cousins. I wish I had.

My sisters, Cheryl and Loretta and sister in law Danille came up with a select few of their chirldren. Cheryl and Loretta stayed at our house and we all had a blast. I super miss mi familia.

Anyway, the conference was a success and we really couldn't have been happier with the turnout (about 400) and the feedback. Here are our 2 newspaper articles, and I swear I never said that 'dude' quote.

Daily Herald

Mormon Times

I thought we were done with it all, but I am now knee deep in audio download oblivion trying to figure out getting them to people. The downloads are awesome, though.

Zermatt

We took a vaca to Zermatt. Much needed, and seeing as how the only vacation we've taken (outside of going to Vegas for family stuff) was Disneyland in 2005, this was much deserved, I must say. Why Zermatt, you ask? What is Zermatt? Well, here's what and why.....

1. Neighbors have condo there that we could use for next to nothing. Thank you Prazen's!

2. 45 minute drive - our sanity stays intact.

3. Authentic....this is a Swiss themed resort, and it was as authentic as it could be. It was fun. Here Sage is pretending to blow on a horn just like the 'Ricola' inspired statue above them on the mantel you can't see

4. Eat in kitchen, large room. Sanity plus saving $ on making our own meals! The girl you don't recognize is our neighbor and Roma's friend Courtney. That was another plus....having enough room to bring as friend along!

5. Cute shops. This was a sign for the pastry/gelato place at the resort. Eatin good in the neighborhood.

6. Quirky. What is that statue? Why, that's Maddy the Bear playing an accordian. Huh? I know....Well, every year Midway has the Swiss Days celebration and I guess for a very long time there was a Swiss man in town who would dress up in a bear costume and play the accordian at the celebration's events. This statue was in his honor.

7. Old school and retro. Midway is 5 minutes from Heber city, which had THE COOLEST bowling ally ever. Not much had changed in this place since 1955, including the employees. Old lady bowling employee can make a mean burger, which was cooked on a grill that had decades old fat drippings, I'm sure - Scott said it was the best burger he's ever had.

Athena pointing out the metal cup holders on the back of the very old benches

Look closely at the ball return.....can't get more original than that

The paint on the wall, the lanes...all colors reminded me of my grandma's bathroom. Love it!
Apparently the two theaters in town were both built in 1918, and the girls were going to go see a movie there, but there was a mix up and didn't happen. It's on the list for next time.

8. Heber Valley Railroad. Again very retro and authentic, but not cheap. Nonetheless, we were saving so much everywhere else, we splurged on this. The kids LOVED it! This is the same railroad that does Polar Express rides and Thomas the Tank Engine rides. Again, not much has changed since it's launch in the 20's (I think it was).

Zeph showing you his conductor's hat

A picture of the picture that the lady working there took of us.

Z man taking it easy.

9. Swimming! Everyday with the swimming. There was an outdoor and an indoor pool connected by a swim thru type thing. The indoor pool has quite an impressive waterfall as well. This, and the tennis courts, were a great past time for the girls.

10. A carousel? Yep, Zermatt has a full on carousel, and a mini putting green, too - open to the public, mind you. This was Athena's highlight.

11. Close to Park City. We also went into Park City for one day. It's only a 15 minute drive there, so it was nice not to spend too much time in the car. We went to the outlets there, which the girls loved, but Scott started feeling sick and we went back to the room earlier than planned. I wanted to do Park City Main Street and go to the Olympic Village there, but I guess we'll have to do it next time!

All in all, I'd highly recommend this vaca. It was fun and low key.


Rock On

My other favorite thing this month:

The highlight of the past month is this....Zephyr playing guitar AND singing. About 3 weeks ago he just started playing air guitar with everything. A ruler, the vaccuum cord, his stomach - you name it. Then I remembered my dad had given us a real kids guitar (don't ask me where he got it from) that I had put in the storage. I gave it to Zephyr and that whole day he wouldn't put it down. Diaper changing, riding in the car, even while nursing he held on to that thing tight. Since the first day he's not been so extreme about it, but it pretty much goes where he goes, even on our trip last week. Rock on future retirement fund!


Scott, Roma and I also gave talks in church last week, on Bednar's conference talk Watching With All Perserverance. Scott and Roma did really well!

Besides all this, I attended 2 births in there, taught classes until May and finished up my Way of the Peaceful Birth book (booksigning on Aug 12...please come!)

Needless to say I am slwoing down this month and focusing on homeschooling stuff.