Fruits of Our Labor and Our Bug Man

our garden is AWESOME! tomatoe plants are huge. we have sixteen of them around four wire racks which are completely hidden now. buds and green tomatoes are everywhere and these ripe ones are our first harvest from the tomatoes. there were at least six more that i had to throw out because bugs and birds got to the first which is very frustrating. the corn is so tall and my cilantro has really shot up. i love cilantro, but the thing i anticipate most is the basil. ever since i went to oregano's and had their bruschetta, i have been obsessed with basil. so yum! the squash (we have four kinds) has taken over. thank goodness we made their boxes bigger. this zucchini was the first we have picked - isn't it huge?! making zucchini bread! we do have a problem with our green bell pepper which has brown rotted spots and we can't figure our why. it looks like a jungle. brookie says it's on steroids. i'm loving it. it's getting pretty hot though when we water it. argh!

now about the bees!

on sunday, kyle wasn't feeling well and came home early with addison. as i started to walk down the back porch toward our door when i got home, kyle was on the stairs and told me to go around the house. on our way to church, we had noticed about six bees flying around the grill. now it was around twenty. when i got in the house, i saw kyle was wearing my hoodie and he told me underneath was a windbreaker and his church clothes. he was wearing this to protect himself from the bees in the middle of JUNE! and he was dying. yuck. kyle also told me that he was pretty sure they were coming from the grill so he had turned it on earlier to kill them. he wanted to get a closer look at it, so he had me tape a net to his face and gloves on so he could go outside. so that's what the second picture is.

armed with bug spray, he started stepping on and misting the growing population of now 70 bees. once he began to get that under control, he went looking around the grill, tables, chairs, and other odd ends that are on the porch. not much. then BINGO! sure enough, when he opened the grill there was the hive like he thought. hundreds of bees were piled about seven inches high on top of the rack and even more below, dead from the flames and smoke. i was watching through the window and couldn't believe it! kyle finished killing as many as he could and the next day he cleaned it up. what a handy bug man!

Havasupai Adventure

Havasupai... Arizona's paradise! When my Dad said he was going down and offered to take Brittney and I, I was so excited. As the days were approaching we started making a list of supplies and food we would need down there. It was decided that I would carry the big backpack (weighing it at 45 lbs.) and Brittney would just carry her camelbak (10lbs if that) with water and snacks. We left Memorial day in the afternoon and got up to the rim later that evening. This was my third time going and memories started coming back and I told stories of my previous trips. We camped up on the rim and early Tuesday morning we began the decent into the canyon.

When we got to the Indian village, one of the girls was struggling with her pack so I had Brittney carry our pack while I carried hers. It was another 2 miles from the village. Brittney wasn't sore yet from the 10 mile hike we had just completed from the rim to village, but after those two miles, she became pretty sore, but she was a tough girl.

** note from brittney: i would like to clarify some things here. my camelbak was about 20 lbs with all my water, food, and other necessities - not 10 lbs like kyle says. plus our shared backpack was atleast 50 - 60 lbs not 45. so i was carrying 70 -80 lbs down a 3.2 mile hike (yeah the havasupai website will back me up on the mileage) again not like the two miles kyles stated. no big deal you think? well, when you got up at four am and started hiking ten miles for several hours, your already tired when 55 lbs gets added on your back. not to mention, kyle and i did nothing to prepare for hiking the grand canyon ( i assumed i would be fine since i was only carrying 20 lbs - or so i thought.) so the only reason that i pulled my groin, rotated my ankle, and basically did the havasupai shuffle every time i stopped moving for ten minutes was because of that dang backpack i had to carry 3.2 miles. thank you.**

We got to camp about mid morning and we rested, ate, and then got ready to go to Havasu falls. After the flood in 2008, the fall now only flows to the one side, but it still is as beautiful as ever. After hanging out there we went back to camp, rested, ate dinner, played cards, and got cleaned up in the river flowing next to us.

The next morning our muscles had stiffen up, so getting up was a real "pain." We ate breakfast and then got ready to go down to Mooney Falls (my absolute favorite). Mooney stands around 200 feet high (higher than Niagara). To get down you literally have to climb down a the cliff face with chains, latters, and stakes driven into the rock for hand grips. Being terrified of heights didn't work out in Brittney's favor, but she did a good job going down.

"DESCEND AT OWN RISK"

Exercise Extreme Caution!

Brittney descending down the cliff to Mooney FallsMooney Falls

About five miles down from Mooney Falls, is another fall called Beaver. We hiked through the river, jumping and sliding down from little water falls.

Mooney Falls in the Background

Fall hopping our way down to Beaver Falls

I think I'll name this "Garden of Eden" or
"Heard it through the Grape Vine"

Just Chillin'

Hanging Out

One of the best parts of the trip is that we didn't have to hike the whole way out. Dad paid for all of us to fly the helicopter out from the Indian village. It was a flipping awesome experience! The best part was when the we flew out and above the canyon. The pilot was heading right toward a canyon wall then the helicopter went straight up and over. It was intense. It was good to be in a car on the drive home, but I was already starting to miss our great adventure. Needless to say, we were both missing our baby very much and it was so much fun to see her.

My, How They Grow Up

this just shows how she is so much like her mommy who was videotaped trying to breastfeed her baby doll around three and couldn't wait to wear bras.

Just Some Pictures

Getting ready to go with mom to a photo shoot. Addison loves balloons. We got her a big one for her birthday a few months ago and for the first little bit she was terrified, then all of a sudden it was her favorite toy. Amazingly, it lasted for two months with her dragging it around, punching it, and jumping on top of it.

Aunt Jennifer did Addisons hair and put on a nerdy collared shirt to look like Alfalfa in "Little Rascals". She looks like a cute little boy!

Addison enjoying a bubble bath. She loves to lay on her tummy and slurp the bubbles. Aren't her little teeth so cute?

Easter

This was a great weekend! Not only was it Easter, but Gerneral Conference as well. It was such a privilege to see our chruch leaders counsel, edify, and uplift us with their discourses. It was addisons second easter, and this time she was old enough to go easter egg hunting. It was so much fun to see her looking for eggs. I don't know if baby was more excited or Grandpa McKay. It amazing how fast she is growing up.

Becoming Self Reliant

since kyle and i have moved, we have put several hours worth of paint onto the walls of our new home. we have hung pictures, moved furniture, and decorated. while we are still in the process of giving our home the "mckay touch", we needed to get out of the house for a while and thought planting our own garden would be a perfect opportunity. this is the spot we chose:

in our new ward, the bishop (a.k.a. - my uncle who lives next door) has been coordinating a ward garden. the 1/2 acre of land for the garden just down the street from us was donated several months ago by a fellow family in the ward. early on the morning of saturday, march 6, the whole ward got together to plant the garden. each organization in the ward is in charged with keeping their assigned area free of weeds and well watered.

after hearing my uncle talk so much about the garden, kyle and i decided to use spring break as our time to make a garden. we live on an acre of land and grandma said we could put our garden anywhere in the backyard that didn't have grass - about half of the backyard. so kyle and i picked a spot that will get the right kind of sun and got to work. in the corner that we chose, there was a flatbed trailer, luckily we had kyle's dad's truck to move that. next came the worst part about gardening - removing any unwanted plant life. and believe me, there was a lot. for two hours kyle and i hacked at the shoulder height weed-bushes that seemed to be plentiful in the area we'd chosen. we raked several piles of shrubbery and filled up the bed of the truck. once that was done we took the rototiller we borrowed from kyle's uncle and tilled the rock hard ground. that handy machine saved us hours of work! i told brookie - my aunt next door about the garden and the rototiller and she and loren (uncle and bishop) came over to see it. loren asked if he could use it next door so kyle showed him how to work it and turn it on. loren got so excited that he walked it over to his house and used it right then. funny thing is he had just come home from church meetings and was still in his sunday best - down to his shiny shoes. i laughed so hard seeing him walk through the dirt in those shoes and his church attire, using that machine! too bad i couldn't take a picture. that ended day one.

i woke up on day two pretty sore in my back. (one thing about me: i love being sore. like after a great workout - like weed killing - and i can hardly move. that kind of sore. call me crazy, but it just feels good!) we dumped the weeds and pick up some fresh and *free* manure down the street at fisher ranch. (illene fisher is the young woman's president). then kyle backed the truck into our garden and we sprinkled it everywhere and tilled it in. then we were off to home depot to get seeds, soil, transplants, and a few other odds and ends. we came home and dug trenches on the south and east sides of our garden where we put walls.

addison was hard to take care of during this time of gardening. g-ma has a fenced in trampoline that we put her on with many toys, books, and a drink. she was always fine until she would see one of ours heads peek out from over the wall, or we had to run past her into the house. we tried to let her roam free, but she would just get stuck trying to climb over the berm to see us, or whine for us to hold her. so she had lots of tramp and quiet time. (quiet time is something we have started recently to encourage her to learn to entertain herself. quiet time means she is in her crib with books and a bottle. she does very well with this. i heart quiet time.)

day three was the sabbath, and on that day we rested from our labors.

day four. we made a grid on our garden and placed tile for our two paths. we then planted - which takes a surprisingly long time. we watered our garden, kyle did many excited fingers, and we celebrated with dinner - pb&j. i love pb&j. kyle said the blessing on our delectable dinner and asked God to bless our garden. we both will be very disappointed if it dies. family prayer had the same pleading. there is a sign on the ward garden that says " as the seeds grow, so does the gardener". i'm sure some things will die, but gardening is a process of trial and error and kyle and i have many things to learn.
this morning we woke up and learned it had rained. i think God is looking out for us.

Second Aniversary - A Scavenger Hunt

Since last year I planned and executed our first year anniversary, Brittney decided it was her turn to plan this years. I knew she was up to something making mysterious phone calls, and deleting the history on our Internet. The big surprise actually came a week before our anniversary. After going to the temple, I was walking out to my car (we drove separately) and I saw a note on the windshield. The note told me to look in my glove box and from there I was sent on a scavenger hunt.

I went to Barnes and Nobel to pick up a book, and in the book was another note telling me to go to an address in Tempe (thank goodness for map quest). I soon found myself in front of Brittney's favorite restaurant the serves an authentic cuisine of India. After eating there she gave me a note and left. The note was a puzzle in which I had to go through my book and find letters to figure out my secret password for my next destination. In the car, I found another note that led me to the Arizona Grand Resort.

I was forced to say my passward (it was naughty) several times because she "couldn't hear me" outside our room - quite embarrassing. She had bought some fun finger foods and I brought our leftovers from the restaraunt. It turned out to be a very fun and unexpected stay-cation. Sorry, no pictures.