The Graduation!

Yesterday was my brother Jared's high school graduation. He looked so handsome! The evening was a little long...we arrived at the venue around 3:30 PM, and we didn't leave until almost 10 PM. Though his graduating class was small, the graduation was combined with the end of year awards ceremony for Grade 12. Here are a few pictures.

Greetings from Canada

I am visiting my home town of Calgary, Alberta for a few days. The official reason for the visit is for me to attend my brother's graduation this week. In the meantime, I've been keeping busy spending time with family and visiting friends. Here are a few of the highlights:

We (my mom, grandma, and I) visited my "Oma" the other day. That's a picture of her waving to us from her balcony. She has known our family for years, so even though she's not technically a blood relation, she'e still a member of the family.

The ground-breaking ceremony for the Calgary, Alberta temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was held on May 15, 2010. Though we didn't get to go to the temple grounds on the day of the ceremony (parking was limited), my parent's ward had a Ward Family Home Evening on the future temple site this evening. Our Bishop borrowed one of the official groundbreaking shovels, and so our family headed up to the temple grounds and a got a picture. There is actually a small picture of the temple engraved onto the shovel.

My grandma and I were excited to see that since my arrival a few days ago, two of the flower bushes in her backyard started to bloom! We got a picture in front of the bushes.

That's it for now. Unfortunately, Garrett was not able to come to Canada with me this time. He's in charge of the garden in Arizona, and has done a lot of work setting up a drip system for it. I can hardly wait to see it when I get back!

Melons and Peppers and Pumpkins, OH MY!

I finally got our garden re-planted. Having never tried to keep a garden alive in the intense Arizona summer heat, I'm not sure how it will do. I plan to water it a lot. I planted some honeydew, watermelon, pumpkin, corn, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and green onions. A friend at church gave me some bean and squash starts to plant. We'll see how it all goes! Now, perhaps you may be wondering how all of those plants could fit in our box garden. They can't! I am utilizing a narrow space of garden between the apartment and the sidewalk for increased garden space. It was growing a lot of weeds, so I figured I could get rid of the weeds and try to grow something useful in the space. A few sprouts have come up in the box garden (I planted that about a week and a half ago), but no sprouts yet in the other garden (as I just planted it the other day). There are before and after pictures of both the box garden and the garden space alongside the apartment. Unfortunately, they are showing up in the wrong order in the post-the after pictures appear first, while the before pictures appear after. Sigh. Someday I will figure out how to put the pictures in the right order.