Dinner with the French

My husband works with several Frenchmen.  Tonight, Xavier and his wife Apolline invited us over for dinner.  It was wonderful.  Their house is BEAUTIFUL!!!  Apolline likes to sew and everything had a touch of hand-made that tied everything together.  She even made slip-covers for the stroller and such.  Their little girl, Louise, is SO CUTE...but was not very sure about all the wierd strangers in her house.  She was very confused by the other children, but seemed to enjoy watching them.  Apolline showed me her sewing room.  She has a super-big table from Ikea (yes...I don't know how to spell) that would be AWESOME to quilt on...way jealous.  She sews alot of Louise's baby clothes and they are super cute.  She has a book for patterns and uses tissue paper (think gift bags with lots of tissue paper) to trace the patterns and then they are disposible.  Great idea!  I'd never thought of that.  Now I want to try making some clothes....hummm....

Mother's Day

My Mother's Day started on Friday when these beautiful flowers arrived.  Thank you Mom and Dad!

Then Spencer had me open my present Saturday morning before we headed to the waterfalls.  Makenzie took these pictures!

A New Camera!!!  So we charged the batteries and used it during our hike.

Spencer and the girls made breakfast for me.  Bacon and french toast with fresh strawberries.  YUM!

Makenzie and Hailey spent 2 days wrapping "presents" for me.  I got to open a bunch of "presents" on Mother's Day.  It was a near perfect weekend!

A Walk in the Woods

As I was driving home Friday, we passed the neighborhood playpark.  Hailey say, "Me want to walk to playpark."  Spencer and I realized that in the last month and a half almost all of our spare time has been spent working on our yard.  So we decided to take the day off go on an adventure with the kids.

Saturday, we loaded up and headed up to North Carolina to try and find some waterfalls.  Our first step was the Pisgah Center for Wildlife Education.  They have a trout fishery and gave us a list of directions to nearby waterfalls.

Then we headed toward our first falls...Cove Creek Falls.  We weren't sure we were even on the right path!  We found some nice spots to rest and eat our snacks.  The last portion of the trail was called "rugged" and at one point stopped at a creek.  We went over and under lots of logs and rocks.

And finally...we found it!

WOW!!!  It was wonderful.  We were completely alone.  We spent some time wading in the water and climbed up the first couple of rocks onto the waterfall.

Then we headed to our next waterfall.  It took probably about 1/4 of the time to walk back since we knew where we were going and were walking downhill most of the time.

On the way to the next waterfall, we found some rocks.  The girls and Spencer tried to push them out of the way, but alas, it didn't budge!

The paths were just beautiful!  It was magical!

Here is Moore Cove Falls.  There wasn't much water, but it was cool because we could go behind the waterfall and even walk underneath the water.

The coolest part was looking up!  Isaiah loved playing with the water falling down.

On our way out, we stopped at one last falls: Looking Glass Falls.  It is the most photographed fall in NC.  Spencer and I think that is just because it is right off the road and you don't have to hike to them!

Notice the look on Makenzie's face...she was DONE with waterfalls.  Both the falls were nearly a mile away...so Makenzie walked nearly 4 miles!

Right at the entrance to the National Park was an ice-cream stand.  So of course we just HAD to stop!  It was DELICIOUS!!!

Well...that was our wonderful, magical Saturday!

Retaining Wall

We are FINALLY done with our major re-landscaping of the front!  Here is our retaining wall.  The grass on the first section is growing beautifully and I'm excited to see the grass on the next section come up!

Homeschooling Blog

Hello Everyone.  As many of you may know, Spencer and I have decided to homeschool our children.  To chronicle our fiasco, I've started a seperate homeschooling blog.  So...if you are interested in following our schooling adventure, check it out!

http://www.the-everitt-homeschool.blogspot.com/

At the end of the day, in the springtime, you should smell like dirt!

I LOVE springtime.  The weather is finally warm enough that the kids can just run and play outside.  Thankfully, I do not have a grass-only lawn, so my girls bring me bouquets of flowers everyday!

Spencer and I have been doing some MAJOR relandscaping to the front of our house.  We've been at it a month and are about 1/2 done.  Here, we are eating a picknick dinner so the girls can eat and we can work.  Well...Heavenly Father sent us a thunderstorm instead.  So we watched the storm move in and then moved inside and watch the Princess and the Frog!

The Heirloom Hydrangea my parents gave us last year is doing great and will even flower this year!  The Hydrangea is a clipping from plants that we can trace back to the 1800's!

We built a flower box with landscape timbers about 2 feet from the house all along the front.  Then I moved all my bulb plants.  We have iris, lilies, amorylis, gladiolis, and spring lilies.  I still need to move my society garlic, but it's not all up yet.  The rest will be grass.

We also built a box at the front.  This is the girl's flower bed.  They will get to pick out the flowers every year.  Last year they chose snapdragons and marigolds.  But we didn't have the box so the weeds dominated the landscape.  This year, they choose African daisys and petuntias.

Here's a look at our newly remade front!  We pulled up all the overgrown juniper shrubs and will have grass instead!  It will look (and feel) great once the grass has grown in!

And here is the 1/2 that we haven't finished!  We'll build another box around the base of the trees and just keep it mulched.  Then we'll cut back the weeds, smooth out the dirt some, and grass the entire thing.

But first...we have to take care of our erosion problem!  We are in the process of building some retaining walls.  We'll probably end of with 2 tiers up to the top.  Then the side will just be a smooth hill with grass.  Cross your fingers...we are hoping to be done with the retaining walls this week and maybe done will the entire project in two weeks!

Then we can get our act together and build some raised beds so we can have home-grown veggies all summer!

Modesty Is More Than Clothing Choices

On Sunday, we had a fascinating discussion in Relief Society. 

Since we are studying the Old Testament in Gospel Doctrine, the Relief Society presidency has decided to focus on the "Women of the Old Testament" for their 1st Sunday Presidency lessons. 

This Sunday we studied Vashti.  She only has one small chapter in the entire Bible, but what she did was impressive and worth our time and study.  She is found in the first chapter of the book of Esther.  The king is having a HUGE party with all the other royals.  The queen is hosting a similar party for all the wives.  The king and guest get slobbering drunk and then call for the queen to come and "perform" for them.  The queen refuses!  The other royals counsil with the king to get rid of her because they are afraid that their wives will no longer obey and they'll have too much trouble on their hands.  So the queen is dismissed.  We don't know if she is killed or just banished.  As the queen, she must have known her husband and must have known the dangers of refusal.  And yet she did not compromise her standards. 

She knew that entertaining the men in that situation would compromise her values. 

This lesson really highlited for me that modesty is not just what you wear...it's how you act!