How does your garden grow?

Ours grows AWESOME.

This garden is like my baby. I check on it a million times a day. I looooove it. I have been looking forward to a garden for years.I can't believe how much the plants can grow in just 2 1/2 weeks! It's crazy!

Do you see the little baby blackberry?

Our first bean sprouts!

Yesterday we were out watering the garden and I was like, "Wow, our squash have gotten huge!" and Jordan was like, "Have they? We should have taken a picture." And I said, "We did!"

Now

Then

I've never done onions before so this should be interesting. They came up out of the ground which is a good start.

 

Tomato plants

Jordan and I also did our first bit of landscaping this past Monday for FHE. We dug out all the old pine needles (they call it "pine straw" here) and mixed compost in with the dirt and then seeded it with a special flower mixture that is supposed to attract butterflies and hummingbirds. And we put the bricks and rocks around it.

Only 3 days later there are little tiny sprouts!

We also added these lily plants around our patio. Hopefully they will bloom soon.

And we planted these cute little marigolds that our YW advisor gave me. So bright and cheery!

I love spring! More updates to come!

Lexi's First Agility Title

Well, we certainly had a LUCKY St. Patrick's Day! Lexi was SO awesome at the trial yesterday! I was the proudest puppy mom that ever was! She qualified in BOTH her AG-I rounds and so she got her U-AGI title! That's basically the beginners title in the United Kennel Club (UKC).

As icing on the cake, she won both of those classes as well! We've figured out that Lexi is so fast that if she runs a perfect run, no one else is anywhere close to her in speed. She was 30 seconds ahead of the next dog in both classes.

Remember, if you have any questions about agility see my quick&easy agility post here.

Proudly posing with her ribbons

Close up of the ribbons

Here is a video of her beginners runs:



It's a huge improvement from her first trial, which you can watch here.

We also had a chance to compete in AG-II, which is the intermediate level. It has the weave poles as well as some other more tricky obstacles. Lexi made some mistakes but she still did really well. Her second run was beautiful except she popped out of the weave poles early (you only get 2 tries) so we didn't qualify, but I was still extra proud of her.

Here's the video of her intermediate runs:



We had a great time. Everyone was so nice and friendly, and 3 of my other agility friends came with us and competed their dogs and did well. It was just a fun day! And I'm so grateful for my husband Jordan who supports me and is becoming and excellent videographer with our NEW videocamera! Woohoo!

We've got one other trial lined up. Well, actually two days at one trial. We'll be competing April 12 & 14 at a HUGE trial in Perry, GA. It will be our first AKC trial so hopefully Lexi does as well as she did yesterday! Go Lexi pup!

Scroll Cake

I have long oogled those gorgeous wedding cakes with all the scrollwork. They are sooo pretty and if I could go back in time I would have probably incorporated scrolls onto my cake, although I did love the flowers...but I digress.

In January I decided that one of my new years resolutions was to learn to do scrollwork and hopefully become proficient.

Last night Jordan went to YM and I didn't have YW because we're doing something with the Relief Society tonight. It was so nice to have a Wednesday off. I still had red frosting left over from the New Beginnings cupcakes and I was craving cake, so I decided to try out my new tiered cake pans that Jordan had bought me for Valentine's Day.

I found some scrolls that I liked online and while the cakes baked and cooled I practiced on saran wrap. Don't they look so pretty?

I thought it was going to be so easy.

Here's the tiered cake before scrolling...

And here it is after.

It's about a million times harder to pipe on a vertical surface than a horizontal one. I tried to describe it to Mom in horse riding terms and we came up with, "It's like riding a perfect circle on an almost vertical mountain."

I think it turned out okay, but I'm going to need a lot more practice.

Yum yum yum.

The Craftiness Continues

Pinterest has really fueled my not-so-crafty soul lately.

This was my project for today:

Didn't it turn out cute? I think Jordan might hate it a little tiny bit...he said, "I like the letters." Ha ha ha.

I took a picture of Lexi then made it all dark like this and cut out the outline. She's so adorable.

This is a menu board I made a couple months ago off of Pinterest. Isn't it adorable? The little boxes hold all my menu ideas and it makes it really easy to plan out my week of food. Which is very important.

I think I did a pretty good job!

Cute Lil' Garden

I have wanted my own blackberry bushes for ages. We always had blackberries growing up and Mom made an amazing blackberry pie. There's nothing like fresh blackberries. Mmmm...

So even though they take 2 years to produce fruit I convinced Jordan to buy some for me. :)

Did you know you can take your dog to Lowe's? How awesome is that! Except everyone thought she was wearing a muzzle :( It's JUST A HALTI!

We actually ran into one of my preschool kids. He was a little scared of Lexi. I don't blame him, she's terrifying.

I'm so friendly it's SCARY!

And then we planted our little garden! We had these awesome garden boxes that the previous owners had put in so we obviously had to use them.

All my cute little squash plants.

Here's Lexi in front of the tomatoes.

Funny story...I called my dad (because my dad is an expert on all things outdoors) and asked, how many tomato plants to you guys usually plant?

Dad: Two or three. And that's plenty. Why, how many did you get?

Me: Um...eight?

Dad: Well...you're probably good.

Whoops. Teehee. We're going to give them away. We just ended up planting two.

The little cluster of plants in the front are the leftovers we are giving away. We went WAY overboard.
Also, in the back left we planted onions. Fun!

It was such a gorgeous day! It was perfect weather. I loved it and I loved being with Jordan again! I missed him so much.

I am so excited about our garden and I really hope it grows! Eeeeee!

Let it Rise

Before Jordan and I got married, I had an irrational fear of yeast.

My mom doesn't bake anything with yeast. She's an EXCELLENT homemaker (her pies are the best I've ever tasted), but she just never used yeast, so I figured yeast must be extremely tricky and scary, so I avoided it at all costs. If I found a recipe that had yeast in it, I'd find another one, no questions asked.

Well, things have changed thanks to my husband and his amazing family.

Jordan is NOT afraid of yeast. His amazing mom Laurie makes lots of delicious yeast-y things like breadsticks and rolls and the most amazing cinnimon rolls ever. This was a little intimidating, as I was a little concerned that I might not fit in with these yeast-wielding super bakers. The first yeast-filled thing I ever made (with lots of help, mind you) were the aforementioned cinnimon rolls. Laurie was very patient with me as I helped and I was quite proud of myself (and did you know that the best way to cut cinnimon rolls is with thread?! Wow. Life-changing).

Since then I've made lots and lots of breadsticks and cinnimon rolls all.by.myself. Although it took awhile--I made Jordan help with those for the first year of our marriage. I'm good with Laurie's tried-and-true recipes. But I'm still kind of terrified when I'm trying a new kind of bread. I made some bread bowls about a month back that didn't turn out great...

But I found this cheesy garlic pull-apart bread on Pinterest and I knew I had to give it a whirl.

Jordan's coming home RIGHT NOW (okay, in about four hours) and I called a few hours ago and told him about the bread.

Me: I found this delicious-looking bread on Pinterest and I want to make it for the Bachelor finale party...but I'm scared it won't turn out.

Him: So you're going to make it right now and have it ready when I get home?

Me: Um....yes.

And I did. And it is REALLY good.

First you mix up the dough and let it rise for a couple hours, then you break the dough into pieces and roll them in a butter-herb mixture and throw it into a bundt pan. Then you cover that in cheese (I subbed mozzerella for parmesan and it worked great). You do three layers.

Next time: more cheese

Then you let it rise for another half hour then it goes in the oven for 25 minutes. It comes out all pretty like this:

And then you flip it over so it's more like this:

Then you eat pieces of it so it looks like this:

And then you enjoy the deliciousness of it. I need to find some sort of garlic or ranch dipping sauce so I can bring that along to the Bachelor party along with some marinara sauce. Mmmmm.

Thank goodness I've gotten over my fear of yeast! Thanks Cline family for your help! :)

New Beginnings in Excellence

Our ward is kind of different. I love a lot of the people in it, but it's kind of a weird ward because it's basically run by young people. Our bishop and one of his counselors are in their early 30's. Jordan's the YM president at age 26, and one of his counselors is 22. The primary presidency is pretty young. And in YW, Kristi (the president) is 27, I'm 24, and our secretary is 26. We have a few "mature" people sprinkled in the auxilliary presidencies, but for the most part, it's young leadership.

Anyway, we're all sort of bumbling about doing the best job we can without really knowing what's going on. So we totally forgot that we were supposed to do a YW in Excellence and a New Beginnings until it was January...and then NO dates seemed to work. There is always SO much going on with the youth! Anyway, last night we finally put on our New Beginnings in Excellence (our YW program is so small that we just combined the two).

Our theme was Be Your Own Kind of Beautiful.

It was based off of that MormonAd with the roses and the daisy. All the girls made their own special flower to decorate the room.

We started off with a getting to know you game where everyone had a little-known fact about them and we all had to match them up. It was fun!

Mine was "Loves apple pie but hates applesauce and apples"



Then we talked about how all our girls are unique and special to their Heavenly Father. Some of the girls sang "Every Star is Different" from the Children's Songbook. Then we introduced our new Beehive.

After that, each of the girls shared a value experience or project that they had worked on in the last year and what they had learned. I was absolutely floored. I wasn't sure that the girls were getting anything out of our lessons or activities but they proved that they were! What they said was so perfect and sweet and gave me hope that I might actually be doing an okay job in this calling.

Of course we served refreshments. We tried to do things with value colors. I only ended up using four colors in my cupcakes but oh well.

My cupcakes were supposed to look kind of like hydrengea flowers. Even though they weren't perfect they were still cute and colorful!

It was a very enjoyable night and made me glad that I have an opportunity to serve these girls. I love all of them so much!



Simple fast agility definitions

I'm sure my agility posts are boring and confusing for most (if not all) of you. So here's some definitions that will (maybe?) help. If you are at all interested.

contacts: in a trial, a dog must touch the contact zone (painted a different color) at the bottom of the contact obstacle (either the teeter, A-frame, or dog walk). If the dog doesn't touch the contact, that is a non-qualifying run

The red part of this A-frame is the contact

qualify (or "Q"): If you follow all the rules during a course (not knocking over poles, getting all the contacts correctly, not going off course, etc), you can qualify with that run. You need a certain number of qualifying runs to compete in the next level of agility.

non-qualify ("NQ"): If you make ANY big mistake in a course (go off course, miss a contact, fail to finish the weaves), or make too many (the number depends on the organization)  little mistakes (refusal to jump, or up and down off the table), that is a non-qualifying run. But you can still place if all the other dogs NQ as well.

organizations: There are several agility organizations. The 3 that Lexi and I compete in currently are UKC (United Kennel Club), USDAA (United States Dog Agility Association), and AKC (American Kennel Club). Each has its own rules and titles.


title: A prefix or a suffix that is attached to a dog's name after earning a title with a specific organization. You have to have a certain number of qualifying runs to earn different titles, and you have to earn the titles in order--for example you can't complete for your AKC Open title until you've got your Novice title. Titles are MORE important than first place ribbons in the agility world!

weave poles: when a dog is doing the weave poles, they must always start with the first pole by their left shoulder. If they do it any other way, that is a failed weave entry and an NQ run. Also, they must finish all the poles...if they leave early it's called a pop out and is an NQ.

Here's a REALLY cool video of a 60 weave challenge. Dogs do either 6, 9, or 12 poles in competition (usually 12) but this was a special event and it's really fun to watch.

Lexi's Second Agility Trial

Yesterday was Lexi's second trial and...

...it was a learning experience.

Had I had the same trial yesterday when I was 12 years old, I would be in a VERY bad mood today. I was extremely competitive as a kid and when my horse didn't do exactly what I wanted him to do I'd get really upset.

Fortunately I've come a long way in the last ten years or so.

The trial was way down in Flordia, so Lexi and I got up at 3:45 am to drive down there. Lexi looked at me like I was crazy when I started getting up that early! But we hopped in the car and made it in time for her to be measured by the judge.

The day actually got off to a really good start. They had a raffle for all the contestents and I won! We got about 25 tennis balls, some toys, and about a million dog treats.

Side note: if you have any questions about agility I've made a short post here that has simple definitions.

In her first class, she did great except she missed the third jump and jumped it backwards, which disqualified us. We were only competing against one other person and she didn't qualify either, so we won first, basically making us the best of the losers. Ha ha! But it really wasn't that bad.

In her second class, she missed the first jump, jumped the second (non-qualifying us again), then ran to greet the ring stewards, and then ran out of the ring (getting us eliminated). Had she not run out of the ring, we could have finished the course anyway to practice. That was VERY frustrating. And, unfortunately, the only "run" I have on tape. Also it would have been the only run we'd be able to do weave poles in, and we've been practicing them so hard!

In her third class, it was a pairs relay, which we did with our mini aussie friend, Lucy, and her owner Hope. In that class, Lexi did pretty well but she missed her contact and greeted all the ring crew around the ring. I am not quite sure where her brain was. We got 3rd out of 3 pairs, which was a bummer.

Lexi and her pairs partner Lucy chill out between classes

However, it wasn't a total waste. In Lexi's last class of the day, which was called Snooker (I guess it's based off of a billiards game?), she was abosolutely fabulous. She listened to everything I told her to do. Unfortunately, she missed her contact on the A-frame so it was a non-qualifying run, but we still won, just like in the first class.

Lexi with her ribbons that she probably doesn't actually deserve

Lexi set the bar pretty high on her first trial which was probably why I was so surprised that she didn't just knock them dead yesterday. But she is a baby, and I have to remember that.

I'm glad we ended the day on a good note. We have another trial in a couple weeks and again a few weeks after that, so we'll have a couple more chances to get it right. I still love you, Lexi pup!