Fourteen!

My baby girl turned 14 in July!  I will say it again, the years go by so fast!  Carlin is such a wonderful young woman and we love having her in our family.  The first year of being a teenager actually went pretty well.  I hope it stays that way :).
To celebrate she had two birthday parties one with each of our families.  She scored with the presents - geesh!  On my side of the family, we celebrate Carlin and my niece Madalyn's birthday together for July.

New Pair of shoes

Money is nice!

Carlin and Maddie

And what is I am sure one of the highlights of her birthday was the surprise party her BFF Bailey threw for her!  The day before Carlin's birthday Bailey asked if Carlin could hang out with her and their friend Matt.  At around 3:00 p.m. they came to her door with their swimsuits on.  Carlin was like "You didn't tell me we were going swimming!"  So she went outside to leave and on the side of the house her friends yelled surprise!  They walked to the park up the street where they met up with Bailey's parents Mike and Bobbi!  They were so awesome to help out Bailey and put the party together.  Dustin and I had given them money for pizza and treats since we were both working.  

The kids had a blast playing kick ball (boys against girls), throwing water balloons and cupcakes at each other, hitting each other with socks full of flour (what a mess - LOL) and the highlight was spraying each other with a fire hose.  Mike works for Unified Fire and had some of his coworkers brought a firetruck to the park!

Carlin and Bailey

Later on they went back to Bailey's house to play games, jump on the trampoline and just hang out!

  

Thanks Bailey, Bobbi and Mike!

Happy Birthday Carlin darlin!  We love you!

Fun in the yard!

Dustin loves to work in our yard and this year we wanted to get a garden planted.   Baseball takes up so much of our time but he was able to get two garden boxes built.  Not wanting to plant too late, he hurried and filled one up with soil.
I planted two tomato plants, a cherry tomato plant, and two zucchini plants.  We wanted to plant more but we are not expert gardeners so we started easy.  Next year we will get the other box filled to try other vegetables.  We also are looking at trying Strawberries or Raspberries in another area.

Dustin also thought we needed some decor.  We found these cute items:

He had a creative bug hit and was busy making these cute items

 We bought the windmill but he re-painted it

Wind chimes with a sun and a wind

Our garden today!  We have gotten quite a few zucchini!
  Yummy!  We have a lot of green cherry and regular
 tomatoes.  A few have turned red.
 We are just waiting for the rest of the bounty!
Can't wait for next year to plant more!