Redoing the upper garden!

We made our upper garden a couple of years ago. However, we have been battling the previously established Bermuda grass. That grass is vigorous and this shows the extensive root system that is everywhere.

Last summer to battle this matted mess in the walkways and it kept trying to work its way into the beds. So in August, we covered a lot of the upper garden with black plastic and kept it there throughout the winter to try to smother the grass.

We have uncovered it and to get it out before this grass starts to grow, Michael has been digging out roots and then we are putting down cardboard and a heavy mulch.

We have also redid the beds by taking out the soil, lining the beds and putting the soil back in! It's been a ton of work but we are keeping our fingers crossed that this will help rid us of this problem and we can get this garden established as well as the lower garden is. (Our spring broccoli is beautiful).

I've also cleaned out the lower garden from Henbitt, which is an edible winter ground cover that dies out as it heats up here in the South. It looks much worse than it was to clean out the beds. Underneath, I found some blooming strawberries already.

Smiling baby

Little Seth was born November 30, 2011. He seems to be a colicky baby and has had some issues with reflux.

That has made him cry and have fussy sleepless times.

So, it's great to see these smiles and laughter the other night during family home evening!

New Office Shelves

Michael started some shelves for my office about two years ago but other projects kept pushing it back and keeping them from getting finished. For Christmas this year, I asked that he get them finished. . . and he did!


He made me two hutches and a media shelf.

Of course, that meant unpacking things. I had books and media all over the house.

It took two days to go through it all but I downsized what we had and got rid of as much as I kept.

Michael did an excellent job. Most of our home has Harper Provincial furniture style. He uses oak and a stain we really like. Here is the end result. It really looks neat and easy to find books.

Now to clean and organize the other half of the office!

Crawfish is a Russian delicacy

We recently went on a temple trip with Ryan and Sveta and afterwards went to a Chinese Buffet. Sveta got very excited seeing crawfish on the buffet. Evidently, they are a delicacy in Russian and one of her favorite foods. She showed us how to actually eat them.

Wall of family

With all of the family here and the wedding, I decided it was time to do some major updating of my family picture wall so that has been my project last week. In doing this, I realized that I never had put up a wedding picture of either Adam and Caprise or Todd and Amanda so it really was time to fix that! I now have everyone's wedding picture up.

I love how you can print up big pictures at Sam's for not much money. We had some outdoor photos done of the family and temple pictures. We also had an outdoor photo of each family and they all turned out great!

This is the big family wedding picture!

Christmas 2011 at the Harper's

Here are highlights from Christmas Eve and Christmas day!

We had our annual Christmas Eve program along with our very own Mary and Joseph.

Baby Seth starred in his first role as Baby Jesus. (We did have an unhappy angel/shepherd.)

Sunday because of church, we opened family presents after dinner around 4:30! Everyone had fun posing!

Ryan was also wearing new clothes in this picture.

Sveta loved her new table runner that Tracy made her.

Ethan loves to build with Legos. I think he got four different sets.

Sydney loves princesses and was excited to get these games.

Haily could not wait to open up more presents at Grandma's.

Sveta got excited about having a wireless router for their house!

I just love this picture of Ethan holding Seth. Little Seth pretty much slept through his first Christmas and visit to Grandma's house.

Sveta's Borscht

Sveta came over and made Borscht for us today. It is a lot of work. I grew some beets for her but they are small so we also found some finally to buy (the big ones).

The cook was reluctant to have her picture taken in the kitchen!

You have to cook meat, dice up potatoes and then shred cabbage, beets, carrots and onions.

Then you cook it with some special spice in a big pot.

Finally after a lot of tender loving care from our cook, it's ready!

It was great! Eric and the kids came over for dinner also and the children even ate some of it.

Greenhouse Broccoli and Cauliflower

I went out to harvest some of our broccoli and cauliflower from the greenhouse yesterday. These were grown in our 4" tubes hydroponically! Not bad for a harvest on December 12th!

I think I've now learned how to grow great broccoli and cauliflower. Look at the size of that one head of broccoli.

We have a bit more and the broccoli will make side shoots but I've started seeds for a spring repeat! After cutting our lettuce three times, I'm restarting our hydroponic lettuce tubs as well.

Ryan and Svetlana's wedding pictures!

Sveta has not wanted me to post any wedding pictures but I can't wait any more so figured I would at least put a few on my blog.

The wedding was just wonderful and we had a beautiful glowing bride!

Ryan and Sveta got married on 11-11-11 at the Columbia temple. The weather was great and the fall colors were pretty much at their peak.

It was great to have all of the boys and their family here and Richard and LaDonna! At times we had 25 in the home for meals but it all went pretty smoothly and like Caprise said the only meltdown's were the two year olds a couple of times!

I love this picture in the trees!

Sveta bent down and with her puffy dress she looks like she's sitting on a clowd!

Fun and Yum!!!!

We had our second annual chocolate dipping class Saturday at Susan Brown's.

What fun everyone had creating some wonderful Christmas chocolates!

We did peanut butter cups as well as fudge dipped in chocolate (is that enough chocolate for you?)!


Just look at all of that chocolate!

Between the stirring of chocolate with our fingers, the visiting and chatting was wonderful.

We did try to help clean up and it wasn't too bad after licking the bowls!