Spring in So. Utah

I've got blossoms on my nectarine tree!!!! I am sooooo excited. Spring does come early in Southern Utah which I am so grateful for. I get to the point that I can not stand another cold day and then here it is. YAY!!!!!!!! I love getting my garden ready, planting it gives me a strange high. Going to the Star Nursery is so much fun, they give you little red wagons to carry your plants in...or kids. Rissa and Zaya love to give eachother rides while I am shopping. We have shopped there for eight years so the longterm employees recognize us and it is fun to see them in the spring. Oh little six packs of Sweet 100 Tomatoes, aniheim peppers, and bell peppers...I have missed you so! While I am not a great gardner, my heart is. I look forward to when my strawberry patch will yield it's yummy harvest. Irissa loves to go out side with a bowl and collect that days ripest fruit. There has never been enough to put away in the freezer, since they only last a few mintues inside the house.
My goal this year is to plant a mega garden due to the rising cost of fresh produce. Odly green leaf lettuce grows well here and it's fun to pick your salad for the day, and I have some herloom seeds I ordered from the interent last year that I never got around to planting so well try them out this year. I have try atleast once a "Moon and Stars Watermellon".

Evidence of DNA

Jess and I have been working on our Genetree.com page. It's a cool free website that you can organize your family tree in a neat visual way. We have been on a mission of finding pictures of ancestors on the web as well as correcting some information that has been passed down for sometime. Both she and I have been possessed with the genealogy bug you might say. Such as our much more prevalent and controversial Native American ancestry. I am still working on that one and I believe to finally resolve it I will need to have my mtDNA tested so we will know of which haplogroup we belong. Of course one of my sisters could also, as they contain the same mtDNA as well as our Mother. After looking at many pictures Jess and I believe that the boys in our family carry a very familiar look to that of our maternal side of the family. Click on the picture below and tell me if you think the tall boy looks like someone we know. This picture is of the Losee family, whose daughter (not pictured) married a Cox, whose daughter then married Orville Johnson, Gram's dad. I also think the little girls look like Dean's kids, even though I think he looks like John Blakely.



If anyone in the family wants to hook onto our Genetree.com page send me your email address at kimamarmar@hotmail.com.

Well the Halloween 2008 season has now come to a close and we are rapidly approaching Thanksgiving. I did however take awhile to get on the bandwagon, I put up the lights, headstones, and cobwebs two days before Halloween. I was also up at three in the morning the night before so the little kids would have something to wear the next day. Some years I buy the standard gig and other years I feel I must some how create something from nothing to be original. Oh, the joys of a mother's guilt. I also have not taken a picture of Indy in his giraffe costume (which I did buy), oh the joys of a Grandmother's guilt.

The kids also carved some really cute pumpkins, which I did not get pictures of. There's some more guilt for ya. Rissa spent almost two hours working on her multi-personality pumpkin, while Zaya's was a quick study. Izzy and Broc carved the two largest pumkins the night of Halloween after taking Indy trick-or-treating. They used the cool patterns and created little masterpieces. Lara and Shane brought their family over as well as Jeff's sister Cindy and her kids. We were a large marauding group of candy seekers. I guess what's next is a large marauding group of turkey seekers.

Our new uninvited and not so friendly guest. Yes, it is a tarantula spider.
Somehow this little guy must have known that Halloween was coming and the odds were in his favor. Perhaps believing that he could remain incognito amongst
the Hallo-season décor . He almost had me too!!! I was walking into the laundry room and in the middle of the floor, there he sat. Not feeling the least bit alarmed I thought, "boy Isaiah has a really lifelike plastic spider". Then I proceeded to reach down to pick it up. Just then,........he moved!!!!! Someone should have coached him on how to act like a fake but realistic looking spider.

Rule #1 Don't stand alone in the middle of room at midnight, it can make you look quite suspicious and spider-like.

Rule #2 Don't move when positive sighting has occurred. This tends to insight fear among humans.

Rule #3 If for some reason you fail to follow both rules one and two, run like hell. Giant human women are not going to allow you to coexist in their homes with them and their children!!!

I am thankful at Jeff's quick response to my screams and the martini glass enclosure as I stood watch. I might add, had Mr. T been smart, he could have outran me. I must of somehow maintained a convincing poker face despite a rise in blood pressure. Tarantula's have both size and speed on their side, and are known world wide as a formidable opponent.

After taking our obligatory victory photos, Mr. T was released into the wilderness (over the back wall) and warned to never attempt to carry on this fruitless charade.

Wow, my first official blog post. I have been Myspacin' for quite some time but my sis Jess told me it was to to come to the Blog-side. Don't be afraid she said, it's not that hard and I will help you. So here I am, thanks Jessie this first blog is dedicated to you...

A quick summary of 2008 Summer Season at the Marshall home.

Three months of pure boredom as described by nine year old Isaiah, but in all fairness ten minutes without entertainment could be described as a lethal catastrify by him.

Talking about trips we would like to take but never took.

Well in fairness we did take a birthday celebration (Irissa's)/family trip down to the timeshare in Las Vegas. That was fun! Mom/Grandma Wheeler taught Irissa to swim in under four days. Like all trips there was the highlights and things you'd like to forget from your scrap book. Getting stuck at the Silverton Casino for four hours because of a flat tire kinda sucked even though the kids got to see the mermaid in the fish tank. Long story short, who ever thought you could get two flats in less then three weeks, should have fixed the spare.

Jeff and I did go see our Team USA Mens Basketball play in a pre-game in Vegas against Canada. Great game, well at least the half that we saw. Mapquest is not always right.... We enjoyed getting to see our Jazz guys play though, love Boozer and Williams!

We really wanted to take our boat out on Lake Powell but it wasn't finished getting repaired until today. What's the saying....Want to experience the joys of boat ownership. Stand in a cold shower tearing up one hundred dollar bills....

The upstairs toilet flooded in mega proportions and warped our hardwood floor both up and downstairs. Dealing with Farmers Insurance has not been a joy:D Back to the Vegas trip... Jeff was on one phone fighting with Farmers while I was on the other phone trying to get a tow truck out to the Casino, the sweaty frosting on the cake was temperature was in the hundreds that day in Sin City and there just isn't many kid friendly places in Casinos.

We did manage to grow quite an abundant crop of green grapes from our vines this year, the kids loved that. The tomatoes were so, so... I am not sure what happened to the peppers, they seemed to stay in a state of permanent retardation for the whole summer. I admit, I lacked in my Miracle Grow responsibilities and depended on the timer to water them. I also managed to kill two fruit trees I never got around to planting, so sorry little nectarines :C