the goings on this month

first things first, sorry, i'm a lazy blogger, i do have a really good excuse though! i's been soooo busy, really i promise... we planted a garden in early june... a really ridiculously big garden.  it's about 60'x8' but 1/2 of that depth is our grape vines so they're definitely a lot lower maintenance.  this is the garden the day jhubs and his minions finished it (thanks minions, you're amazing!), and was taken almost exactly two months ago

and here it is a week ago... which looks bare compared to what i wandered out to find tonight because we had a major watering last night, lots of sun today followed by a downpour tonight and it's getting a bit out of hand.  see those pumpkin vines in the way back growing out into the yard?

these pumpkin vines are taking over in a big big way... last week when i took this picture the 6 or so pumpkins that i could see were about the size of a golf ball and now, a week later, they're baseball sized and there's lots more golf ball sized ones too.  so much for having so much room in our garden we might not know what to do with all the space!

other than pumpkins we've got basil that i've dried several bunches of

pickles that ive canned 5 quarts of already and that was from only one great day of harvesting

4 english cukes, some hungarian peppers (hot and regular) that are just starting to mature, a small green pepper that i picked too early, a couple watermelons that we thought were ready but as it turns out were picked too early as well (at least we're learning!) and loads of tomatoes that better not ripen all together or i'm gonna have sauce coming out my ears!

along with all of our gardening the jhubs surprised me with a lovely early birthday present and i feel completely spoiled (thanks babe!)

i also got to head to the pool with my seester, nieces and mom on a couple of days and have helped teach the PH (youngest niece) how to swim without her lifejacket, she's also gotten up the courage to jump off of the 1 meter spring board and platform and go down the waterslide... that's a big deal for the girl that wouldn't go into the 6' deep end of the pool a few weeks ago

 oh, and i went to my 10 year high school reunion and got to wear this great dress

and these super adorable shoes!

oh! and work has been super busy and i'm working around 40 hours a week, every week, which doesn't seem like a lot but my position is supposed to be for around 25 hours a week so working the extra hours and doing everything else has been tiring.  the worst part is that everyone else has been working lots of extra hours... 

well, maybe not the worst part because keeping up morale is a big part of my manager's job and she does this by throwing quickly planned employee appreciation days (as in, pick someone working today that might not be feeling appreciated or maybe just a bit overworked and throw them a 'you're appreciated and super awesome and we love you please don't not come to work tomorrow' party).  the best part about these parties is that we get cake, or cookies, or something equally smile-inducing... usually our awesome boss gets the cake but one particular day i decided to get one kind of for our awesome boss and kind of for everyone.  i wanted to put "you're appreciated" but when i said that to the lovely bakery worker at Wal-Mart she said it might not fit, i asked her if "you're awesome" would fit and she asked me to spell 'awesome'... i should have spelled both words, serious cake fail

on the upside though, it earned lots of smiles and laughter and boosted morale right on up... so much that for a lovely lady's last day, our awesome boss decided to purposely misspell her cake as kind of a running joke

 oh lordy, they totally did misspell it and it was awesome...

we also had VBS last week at church but that's a different post for a different day, it was 5 of the most tiring and rewarding days and i wouldn't have traded it for the world :)

g'nite!