I want to post a quick update on our garden since this is the first year we've had a real one of our own.  But first, I have to post about the monstrous hail storm we had in early June.  It came quick and out of nowhere with wind and thunder and lightening.  The locals said that this was not a common occurrence.  It's a good thing, our newly planted garden took a beating!  The hail was huge and came down hard.  It would have been more fun to watch if I wasn't worried about the damage it was doing.  Owen was brave and ran out to grab a hail ball so I could get a photo of it.

 

 

Look at the size of that thing!  Biggest hail I've ever seen.  After the storm passed, I went out to assess the damage.  The whole time I was thinking, "Nick is going to be so sad!"  And he was.  I was most sad about my blueberry plants.  They are young and didn't have a whole lot of berries to began with and about half of those were knocked off.

  

And my herbs were completely destroyed.  Some of the thyme survived, but I have since replanted the rest.

 The hail was piling up over knee deep where is was falling off the roof.  Right onto my azalea and hydrangeas. 

This is the next day after most melted away.  Carnage. 

Nick was almost in tears about the garden beds.  The plants took a serious beating and had scars for a few weeks.  We didn't think most would survive but we waited to see and they have all come back really well.  I bought a few more plants here and there to fill in, but the comeback has been surprising.

The rest are recent pictures I just took yesterday.  Up this far north, we are already almost a month behind the gardens of our friends and families down south. 

 

We are about mid-season for the strawberries now.   Our plants are young and only produce about a small handful every other day.  Next year should be better.

We are at the peak for our peas, one of our favorites!  It's fun to go pick a bag to bring along on picnics or to the beach.

Here is Teslyn posing by them so you can see how tall they are.

We have 3 different kinds of peppers and I think this is a banana pepper.

The kale and lettuce are also doing really well!  I pick a handful of kale each day for a healthy smoothie.  We have also eaten carrot and onions from the garden.

The corn is getting taller, and we really hope to have some to harvest by the end of our shorter growing season.

We will have more zucchini than we can use, that's for sure.  It's fun to share fresh garden produce though!  The banana squash also look great.  We hope the weather is warm enough long enough for that and also the things like tomatoes and cucumbers to ripen well.

Oh, and the hail knocked off all but one of our apples on our tiny apple tree. 

We actually just picked our first handful of raspberries today!  

 The blueberries are looking promising as well, at least what's left of them!  I actually went and bought 2 more plants so we have a total of 5.

I will have to post again when we really start harvesting something!

 We took a quick vacation and headed to Utah to see friends and family the first week of July.  We were gone for 9 nights, but it didn't seem nearly long enough.  We spread ourselves pretty thin trying to see and do all that we wanted to, but still didn't get to it all.  But we did enjoy every moment we could with the friends and family we saw.  Nick's mom and step dad hosted a bbq for us where we got to visit with the Miller's.  It was really great to see them and catch up with friends that stopped by.

We also spent a day at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City with Nick's parents (Nana & Papa).  It had been a really long time since we have been there!  I can remember this lion drinking fountain from my childhood.

We had to stop at the other cute photo ops as well.

The zoo has changed a lot and is much nicer now for the animals as well as the visitors.  There are some super cute things for kids to see and do, including a splash park area.

And that eagle's nest and this elephant.

This is a really neat new habitat area for the polar bear that we can see under water.  I got this shot just as he was diving in the water to cool off!   Owen is really into animals and creatures these days.  That's about the only kinds of books he will check out at the library now.  The zoo was right up his alley and he enjoyed every minute!

 After a weekend with Nana and Papa, we headed south to St. George to meet up with some friends from dental school who still live in Las Vegas.  We thought about driving the extra 2 hours down there, but decided it was hot enough in St. George.  And hot it was!  It was well over 100 degrees each day we were there.  So what did we do 3 days in a row?  Swim!!

Owen was reunited with his good buddy Jackson, and Teslyn with her cute friend Adalynn.  It's been 2 years since we've seen them.  That's too long!

 

Mia stayed cool in the pool too.

We took the kids bowling one day, something we used to do more often with our friends.

We love these friends and miss them like crazy!  

 These are friends worth driving 16 hours to see.  We love the Welch's like family and hope to someday be living at least a little bit closer to each other.  Even if we aren't, we are forever friends!

On the deck enjoying a sunset and the desert scenery.  We missed getting a picture with the Davis family who also joined us for a night.  We love them too and are so glad we got to spend some time catching up.

Our last night in town we headed over to see Nick's sisters Heather and Jamie.  Jamie and her kids drove up from Vegas just to see us!  It was not nearly enough time with them.  We love them and their families.  We wish we could see them more often.  Our next trip will need to be twice as long.  It's hard when we both have such big families and such great friends!

We left the heat of Southern Utah and headed to still some heat in Draper where my parents live.

We were in town and made it to a family reunion for the cousins on my moms side of the family.  Lots of them I haven't seen since our wedding.  It was great to visit with them.  

My parents have a huge yard with lots of trees.  The cherries were on so we did some picking.  And then were informed that they have worms.  We still picked and just washed out the worms when we pitted them, and froze them to take home with us.   

 

We lucked out and were with my family for the 4th of July!  We had a big bbq at my parents house with everyone that could make it.  

It was the perfect day for a backyard bbq.  

My dad built this neat pavilion in the backyard for such events.

I love my parents house.  It's like going home to the farm.  Mia got to meet the chickens for the first time.

My brother spent a little time tending to his honey bees.

My fun sister set up a slip and slide for the kids to enjoy.

 And of course there were fireworks!

 

Happy Independence Day!

It was hard to leave.  Utah in the summer with friends and family is pretty amazing.  We will make the trip next summer a little longer.  We missed out on seeing a few people I had hoped to.  I hardly got to spend any time shopping and we didn't make it up the Utah mountains at all!  But the time we did get to spend was priceless and we are grateful for that.

The drive home was extremely long, but it helped that we got up at 4 am to get an early start.  Sometimes it's hard to feel so far from family, but it helps that we came back home to a really beautiful place.  Summertime in Sandpoint is amazing.  

 

 Since summer has begun, we have been busy having fun!  In June we went to Silverwood Theme Park which is just about 30 minutes south of our house, almost to Coeur d'Alene.  The kids were way excited to go, and we were excited to see the place as well.

Silverwood is smaller than Lagoon, but it did not disappoint.  The kid rides were cute and fun, and the grounds are well maintained and has beautiful gardens.

 Nick and I took turns going on rides with the kids and staying with Mia.  Teslyn was pretty nervous about most of the rides.  Once she went on them she pretty much loved them.  Convincing her to go on them in the first place was the struggle.  Funny girl.

The longest wait was for this water rafting ride.  Nick went with Owen and Teslyn, and I found a good spot to watch and get a picture.  They are the 3 on the very left.  

And they got soaked!  Here is their after picture.  Good thing it was a warm day!

Mia was a pretty good baby, even though she didn't go on a single ride.  She had a good little afternoon nap in the stroller too.

The kids went on the log ride twice, so Nick and I could each have a turn.  We did that on a couple rides.  

Owen is super fun to go on rides with.  He will try anything, then tell us if he liked it enough to do again.  He wasn't a big fan of the corkscrew, but neither was I!   We had a great day and look forward to Silverwood again next year!

The weather warmed up enough towards the end of June for us to head to the lake beach.  We absolutely love that place.  It is so beautiful and we easily spend hours there.

We have job charts again this year.  Owen completed his first 100 chores to earn this spiffy new snorkel.  

He's so cute.