The White House

The White House

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

School's Out for Summer!

I've jumped in to several summer projects and have photos of a few. The end of the pond is gravel and a wide swath of large rock. I moved most of the gravel and narrowed the large rock to make room for grass.

The large rocks went further around the pond.
Nick and Elijah helped me with the really heavy ones.
Olivia helped me bake multiple loaves of bread, cookies and brownies for baskets for the teachers at Elijah's school.

We gave them to Elijah's eight teachers, principal, secretary, librarian and basketball coach. I even got him to hand write 12 cards! What a chore delivering them all before school started!
There's been a lot of time spent outside. I love summer!
Friday morning almost 50 birds showed up at the post office. I was happy, but so busy getting ready for Elijah's graduation. It was bad timing for sure.
Here's Elijah with certificate in hand with the Bishop in the background. The second is with his friend Miaya.
We couldn't be more proud of our 8th Grade graduate. We've put a lot of time and effort into Elijah's education and dealing discipline issues. It's been a rocky, but rewarding road. I can't believe we got him to high school! Isn't he handsome?! He beats to his own drum and was definitely the only one in a bow tie.
The next day the 36 graduates and their families were invited to a BBQ at the home of one of the parents. We were having a great time until Nick called and said their was a forest fire in the neighborhood.
Homer and I went to check it out. Just down the road from our home a tree had fallen on the power line and started a fire. In the end about 10 acres and two yards were affected.
There were lots of fire trucks, hot shot crews, smoke jumpers, helicopters with water and a plane dropped retardant. I'm glad they were able to get it out and no one was hurt. Only one out building was lost. This is a populated neighborhood with a lot of black spruce, and this could have been a disaster. During the whole ordeal we were without power and without a heat lamp I lost several of the chicks. This has been the worst percentage I've ever lost. I think we are down eight now.
I've been working on lots of things, but one of them was planting six of the garden beds and mulching with partially decomposed compost. The mess in the back? I'm cleaning the greenhouse. Actually, I finished last night, but still have to get photos.
Yesterday started with sunny and blue skies and was up to 80 at our house. I hope we have a repeat today!

8 comments:

FlowerLady Lorraine said...

So glad you are having wonderful weather and being able to get so much done there. Your pond is looking great again, and your six beds will soon be full of good things.

Congrats to Elijah.

You are such a hard worker. You are an inspiration to me.

FlowerLady

Deb said...

You are sooooooo generous! What wonderful gifts for Elijah's teachers. Congrats to him on 8th grade graduation - I know it was worth all the effort :)
Love his bowtie! He's a handsome fellow.
So glad the forest fire didn't turn into a disaster. It's very dry here and the fire danger is very high. We had a little rain this morning but certainly not enough.

Enjoy your beautiful weather ~

stace41971 said...

Congratulations to Elijah!!! I love the bow tie! :)
Sorry to hear about the chicks, power outages are so hard, it happened to us last year I had to keep heating up water and putting it in bottles for them...then I just covered the box with towels to keep the heat in...but my chicks were a bit older than yours though. Losses like that really suck.
How often do you all get forest fires?! How scary! I think the last significant fire up here was in the 50's...it's just so wet.
Your yard looks fantabulous! enjoy your warm weather, its only 60 here and rainy. Yuck.

Lori Skoog said...

80 degrees???? What the heck! That's warmer than here. You have been super busy as usual...so glad that fire did not get to your place.
The kids must be very happy to be on summer vacation.

Tara said...

the weather looks beautiful!!! Blog posts like these make me maybe wanna visit some summer ;)

gpc said...

The teacher gifts look fabulous, lucky teachers! And Elijah looks so happy and handsome and proud -- love the shot of the three of you. Your yard looks great, even unplanted it looks so much neater than mine!

Anonymous said...

Lookin good....thanks for blogging enjoy reading your blog-site...
Teddi

Janie said...

Congratulations to Elijah on his 8th grade graduation. His teachers were lucky to get such wonderful gifts.
Glad the fire didn't cause any major problems in your neighborhood!
Looks like you're having wonderful weather.