Hollyhocks for Joanie

I love nostalgic flowers... you know the kind... you see them and they take you back in time. Hollyhocks are one of those flowers for me. For as long as I can remember we had hollyhocks growing along the wall in our backyard at our little Greenville house. I will even admit to being one of those kids who had to taste everything... I can tell you that the inside of hollyhock stems resembles packing peanuts! (Although I haven't TASTED packing peanuts!)

JOANIE'S 6TH BIRTHDAY- NOTICE THE HOLLYHOCKS IN THE TOP RIGHT (I'm on the far left)

I've tried planting them in my yard at previous homes, but never had much luck until we got to our house here in Springville, where I had red ones already established.  I've learned an interesting thing about hollyhocks, they don't look so hot the first year... but if you are patient with them they will reward you greatly... guess that's just how  it is.

The other thing about hollyhocks is that they attract bumble bees! Again with the weird personal facts, but I love bees, especially bumble bees. We have a mutual understanding... I don't hurt them, they don't hurt me.

Honeybees come for their share of the pollen too... look how the bottom guy is covered with it!

This particular stand of hollyhock lives in my raised garden area. They are volunteers! I use grass clippings to mulch my garden area and they must have tagged along! Last year, as described above, they were sad. This year when I was laying out my drip system I ran some drippers to these hollyhocks. wow, WOW, WOW!

To paraphrase a song... hollyhocks as high as an elephant's-eye! These are about 9 feet tall!

I love these happy flowers, they just make me smile...

One last photo... a digitally altered bumble bee... well, the photo, not the bee ;)

Little-Man-Shirt

Our sweet-baby-Jude has a big day coming up. He's going to be blessed this Sunday. Jessica was telling me that her sister bought matching tiny-baby ties for Jude and his two boy cousins, who were born within days of each other, to wear for the big occasion. I happened to arrive at Jude's house while Jessica was looking online for little-man-shirts to go with his blessing tie. They were $28! So I blithely said, "Oh, I'll make him one!" and took his measurements. (How many 7 week-old babies have you seen getting measured for a shirt?)

That was Monday... Tuesday morning the sinus infection that has been lurking in my... well, sinuses, took over my head! I felt like one of those cartoon characters who has an air pump hooked up to their head and someone is inflating it. Luckily I was able to get an appointment in 20 minutes (how soon can you get here... 20 minutes to wash my hair and get dressed)...turns out I had an ear infection as well! Bah!

After my first dose of antibiotics, some more Benadryl Severe Sinus and a rest I thought I could tackle the task of making up a little shirt for Jude. HA!

HOW HARD COULD IT BE?

First I looked for a pattern, any pattern, that would give me a start... I'd forgotten that all pattern makers believe that BABIES are born at 15-20 pounds. What planet are they from when they think a *newborn* pattern will fit a one-year-old?

Well, let's scrap that idea... so I got to do my favorite thing... make it up as I go! So using the GARGANTUAN newborn pattern, my handmade pattern pieces from the little blessing dresses I make for granddaughters and Jude's measurements I made this...

But by the time I got to this point I was exhausted, my head was starting to inflate again and I just said... NUTS TO THIS, I'll buy something!

To cover my bases I stopped at Kohl's and picked up a somewhat acceptable substitute on my way home from the Temple yesterday. It's very cute monkey-wear for our newest little Zoo creature.

But then I walked into my sewing room today and here was this little white onesie shirt all cut out and calling to me... Oh ALL RIGHT!

So I put in a few hours working on this little shirt for our newest little man.

As I was sewing on the snaps I remembered that sometime in the last 52 years I thought that when I finished sewing on the snap I *NEEDED* to run the needle through this tiny hole! Why? I can't even remember.

I'll be back on Sunday of Jude in his first *Little-Man-Shirt*!

My Funny Boys

One of my callings is teaching course 15 in Sunday School. This is my third year and each class has had such a different personality.

The first year (of which I only taught 3 months) were great kids, but I really didn't have much time to connect with them since I only teach every other week.

Last year I had 7 girls and 2 boys. They were the *Golden Class*.  They always had astute comments and there was very little goofing around.  I miss them...

This year...

These are my funny boys...

HUNTER, HELAMAN, RYAN, MAX, JORDON

I'm not sure I need to say much more than that, but I will! Several months ago I was talking to Camille about my class, whom I often refer to as a bunch of squirrels, and she said, "Mom, you otta' like that! They are just like Stuart and Devon!" How true her statement.

And you know what? I do love these boys. Yes, they are more challenging than last year, but they are such outstanding young men... and they do remind me of my Stuart.

Maynard Family Photos

Ever since Camille and Kevin got married almost two years ago I've offered to take photos of their family and we just never seemed to make it happen. But last Saturday, Father's Day weekend, I finally got my chance! I just love this part of *Grammie-Duties*.

When I arrived Camille told me that Kevin had it all set up in the backyard for us. Wow! He had his whole (well, not ALL) band set-up out there.

Unfortunately the light wasn't quite right and there was too big of a disparity in depth-of-field for a good portrait, but I loved this one where they were all jammin'!

What a good looking family.

I also got individual photos of each of the kids...

Brennan, 10 1/2

Kaia, 8 1/2

Elise, 6

... and Kevin and Camille

Starfish Hands

Thursday I did a little Grammie-duties over at Suzi's house. Little Chloe is at that I-can-stand-by-myself-at the coffee table but don't let me fall down, Grammie stage! She was pat-a-patting on the table when I saw it!

A tiny starfish hand...

I haven't seen one of those for about 26 years or so... not since Miss Camille was that size and had those same baby-starfish-hands!

A Three-Hour Tour

On Tuesday I borrowed Kevin-son's pickup so I could haul several loads of branches/lilac trimmings to the green-waste lot. Harley rode along, cuz- DOGS LOVE TRUCKS! And that got me to thinking... I'd sure like to take a little dirt road jaunt.

My first thought was to take Harley but then I knew who REALLY needed to go... my Dee-Lor-EE-us! So I called and arranged to pick her up in about half an hour.

I really wanted to take the right fork of Hobble Creek Road to Diamond Fork Road that comes out on Hwy 6 in Spanish Fork Canyon; about half of the drive is paved so it should be a piece of cake.  It's about a 3 hour trip.

DeLoris and I love to take these types of road-trips backwards... you know start on the other end and work ourselves back. Hmmm... maybe that's not such a-good-fing-idea! I HAVE a Atlas and Gazetteer of Utah with back roads, recreations sites and GPS grids... but did I take it with me? NO... I knew where I was going. Urm... when we got the the fork in the road, we took the right fork (WRONG) and went for about an hour on an increasingly poor road before I finally stopped listening to DeLoris and turned around.(What, I ask, is wrong with me?  Hmm, that's too long a subject!)

So, SOMEWHERE on a road that isn't even on my Atlas and Gazetteer is this beautiful mountain, covered with fir and aspen.  It was a wonderful sight and I'm glad I got to share it with my DeLoris.

Chloe's New Trick

Kevin is such a good daddy! He was so pleased when he announced, "Chloe has graduated to a new trick!

Look at her precious little face! She is so thrilled! (Don't even THINK about this trick for baby-Camille... she hated heights!)

She has NO FEAR!

Now here is the rub! See little Ethan looking on? Yup... he's to big for this trick anymore! Now I have a very vivid recollection of doing a similar blog post about Ethan and Kevin demonstrating their prowess with this same trick! I wanted to reference it in this post.

I searched, nope, not there!

I went looking for the photos... nada! How could this be?

I hate it when I do that!

NOW CAN I JUST HAVE A LITTLE RANT HERE?

I had this whole post written on Monday evening... after looking, in vain, for the post or those photos of Ethan, when my phone rang at 10:59pm from *Unavailable Unknown Number*. It was from *Tom*, who had a very heavy Indian accent telling me that he works for Creative Solutions and my computer is sending mal-ware and he's going to help me fix that! (Right!)

My first question was WHY he was calling me at 11pm!

"I'm sorry I don't understand that question!"

I told him I knew he was scamming and did a quick Google search on *Creative Solutions* (Yeah, creative solutions for scamming you out of your person info!) I asked to speak to his supervisor; he clicked the line a few times and came back on posing as the supervisor... when I called him on it he told me, "Go to sleep and call me back in the morning.

R-I-G-H-T

And when I went back to publish my finished post... P-O-O-F! It was gone... maybe I really do have mal-ware... AND HIS NAME IS TOM!

OK... I'm official finished with the rant...

Jude- 4 weeks old

OK now that I've given Jessica time to post her favorites of baby-Jude now I can do MY post about my newest grandson! It's always a good thing to start them young and get them used to a paparazzi Grammie. (His first shoot was when he was just hours old!)

I just love his little Shar Pei puppy forehead! Seriously, how cute is this baby?

I just love being able to do a newborn photo shoot of my very own grandson...

I love the mama & bebe photos...

I love his tiny, fuzzy little head...

(And can I add that Jessica has the most beautiful hands? Some girls have all the luck... cute babies AND beautiful hands!)

I even got a photo of Jude with both eyes open!

He is usually sound asleep.

Cutest Grandkids!

I know that we all think our grandkids are the cutest... but in my case... it's the truth!

Ashton- 12 1/2 (and 5'8")

Christian, almost 10

Roxie 5 1/2

Sophie 2

And, no, I haven't forgotten baby Jude, but he gets his very own post in a day or so!