Briggy! Where are you?!!!!

Oh, there you are!

Christian is a good sport

With the weather warming up I like to spend a lot of time in the yard. I have been weeding like a mad woman. Christian is with me all the way!

Got all 3 flats of Impatiens planted just in time for a record snow to practically kill them. Needless to say, I was upset at Mother Nature, but I think most will recover.



I love seeing these Columbine bloom


We planted peas, carrots and some tomatoes in buckets up on the balcony to keep the deer away. I was telling Mike this morning that it has been a long while since I have seen a deer. Yeah! I sprayed all my roses with Invisible Fence to keep the deer off. Our house stunk like you know what! I counted 12 rose buds. So excited and the deer will suffer if they eat my buds! Tyler has been target practicing with his bee bee gun already.

The lawn is mowed, edged and the beds are weeded. I am going to enjoy watching it all grow!

Happy Birthday...

to the Cats! They are 4 years old. We haven't been able to locate Long Tail, but Short tail dropped in for a visit and we snapped a pic on her birthday. We will have cake and ice cream in their honor when we celebrate Mike's Birthday.

What the....

SNOW in May!
We set a record! Latest snow ever recorded in history! Since they have been recording weather, of course.

3.5 inches for Bountiful!


Those aren't our ducks in the picture. That is the Mallard couple that has adopted our pond and FOOD. ( Mike has already looked up when duck hunting season is here in Davis County. He is going to get him a pretty Mallard come October)

My poor Hawthorne tree. Luckily no branches broke. As soon as I could I was out there with a broom gently knocking the snow off. My poor peonies took a lot of snow too, but just a few broke. Luckily their buds were still small.

Ducks: 7 weeks Old

So our little chicks are ready to move outside. The weather might get warm soon and they are just to darn big for the box we have them in.

So Mike designed this duck house for them. They are getting used to the idea. They roam the yard and pond all day. At night we feed them and lock them up to "Keep our Duckies safe"!

This is not the final product so more pics to come soon. Hopefully, I will be able to catch them with my camera walking into the house.
Mike built it to resemble our gazebo. It has a plastic top so the sunlight can get in. Equipped with there own stall for hatching.

Katelyn did a little decorating. She choose different colors so when we retrieved eggs this fall we could keep track of which nest we got the eggs from.

All ducks need to learn their ABC's (backwards)!

The ducks view!

Our Treehouse

Because Mike is the coolest dad ever he built our kids a "tree house"!




The exterior is from the fence our back nieghbors replaced. All the railings for the outside and inside beds are from trees in our backyard that we removed last spring. Most structural wood was reclaimed from our gazebo that Mike took down. Windows and door were found on KSL.com.
Mike Black has gone green!


Inside there are three levels for "beds". Each level is equipped with its own outlet/switch/light. The custom windows add a lot of light.


Isn't he amazing?!!

Go Tyler!!

This spring Tyler decided to take another try at soccer. He was the tallest on his team of boys the same age. When he wanted to get ahead of the ball he just blasted off and easily got ahead of the ball.

I realized I didn't have many shots of him actually with the ball because we were too busy cheering.


Stopping for some aqua

Obviously not paying attention to his coach(who, I just noticed, has nicely coordinating his shorts with the boys uniforms).

Great sportsmanship!
It was a great season! Ty ended up making 3 goals and had lots of fun!
Way to go Ty!

Firm Retreat to the Arizona Biltmore

In April Mike and I headed down to Phoenix for his firm's retreat. It was just a bunch of meetings for Mike with some good food here and there. I got to relax a lot!

We were able to golf 18 holes together at the course on the resort. My first 18! Mike practicing his short game.


The hotel was built in 1919. Heavily influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was so beautiful and unique to what we are used to seeing. very true to the time period. It really was amazing. The detailing was incredible down to the furniture. I have a whole folder of just pictures we took of all the furniture. Ideas for the future!


The Wrigley family(Wrigley's Gum)has owned the hotel for most of its existsence.


The Pool


Every president since Herbert Hoover has stayed here. Lots of movie stars back in the day. They had pictures of Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe as guests. Maybe she played chess in this very spot.


This is the building our room was in. All buildings were made of block that were manufactured on site with a specific design for just this hotel.
It was a bit chilly in AZ. I had checked the weather and didn't bring a sweatshirt or anything. I was freezing.
I caught Mike relaxing once...