helping papa

We helped papa in the garden between sessions. its awesome to see my boys get their hands dirty in the garden, I need to do more of that with them.

also I made a grapevine wreath, and then forget it outside... pretty ssure my dad dumped it- its kinda one of his things. Not that I'm judging him, remind me to tell you about "the great purdge" that took place when I was nesting....

poor bird flew right into the window

Spring

We planted 2 new trees this spring and tons and tons of flowers! It is so fun to plant with the kids and take care of living things in that way. It unites us and teaches the boys SO much. We have worked a little in the vegetable garden but not too much yet, the weather is still a bit crazy and cold.

Yard work.

We had a few trees die this year, it was sad we did everything we  knew how but in the end one of the trees had boars and one got hit by the frost in the spring and never recovered.
My Handsome husband dug the trees up and my awesome father and my sweet strong sons helped him cut up and remove and replace the trees. We got a lot done. I supervised. I am sure they could not have done it without me... cough cough.
Also bragging moment. My dad gave up his entire planned day off to help up with these thing. BEST DAD EVER!
Other bragging my man totally conquered these trees. Oh yeah he is a strong one, He was all sweaty and muscle- y ,gets a girl all excited that shes married to him!

Peaches & Raspberries

The taste of late summer.

I know it looks so good and it tasted even better. I love this time of year!
The peaches are from my dad, the raspberries from our garden. Nothing like enjoying fruit out of you own garden!

Planting

Monday this week we had a BBQ at Grandma & Grandpas house. My kiddos LOVE that we are so close to them! Its one of the nice things about being close to home. I never thought I would live back in my home town, really, NEVER, but it is so very nice to see how well my kids know and love their extended family.
We planted a new thornless blackberry bush is our small garden this week. We talked about Testimony and faith. We talked about caring for things consistently so that little by little they get stronger and give fruit.
I love being a mom.

Summer Raspberries

Raspberries
Yummy! Our raspberry bushes are finally covered in berries ripe enough to eat. The kids will run outside any ole time they want to grab a handful of ripe berries.
My childhood home had TONS of raspberries bushes in the yard and I cant think of childhood or summers with out remembering the taste of picking and eating fresh berries. I am so glad my kids can have some of those same memories.

excuse the poor picture quality( but see how seriously he takes the berries?)

Memory:

The other day E came inside with a raspberry that was 1/2 ripe- as in red on one side - not red on the other. He told me it was because it was a baby raspberry and for at least an hour he toted it around in its "bed" (which went from being a washcloth to a large kitchen mixing bowl, oh and it also spent time in its "room" under the bathroom sink). He told me to pet and be nice to it and to be careful with it.  I tried to be very serious about the whole thing and not laugh.(good mama that I try to be)

Then after at least a hour of this, he came to me looking very philosophical ( I don't know if a 4 year old can look that way, but trust me he did) and very solemnly told me that it was  not a baby but that it was a raspberry and raspberries were food and so he was going to eat it " is that right mommy?" I (again very seriously) nodded and told him he was exactly right.  I figured it would take a few more sentences of discussion or minutes of thinking for him to move past this,, since he was so very attached to the little berry. But I was wrong.

Quick as a wink he ate the berry.  

Then with a large amount of joyful enthusiasm he declared  "yum its good mommy!" and ran off.

Well all I could do was try not to laugh and I cant help but think that the berry couldn't have been all that good tasting seeing as it was only 1/2 ripe...

Orchid

I had an orchid plant last year and it has bloomed again with 5 blossoms.
Happy days.
 I am SO prod of myself for keeping it alive and healthy!
and since it has five flowers I feel like its a good omen for our family of 4.

Helping at Grandma and Grandpa's

In between our own tedious but simple yard work plans we helped at my parents house as they carried out much larger scale impressive and fun plans.
Not to brag but my husband was a big help!
I will say that the kids helped with some planting but overall I think they played while we worked. :)
However I think that planting things as a child and watching them grow as you water and care for them can teach some deep and simple truths to children!
Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!

Yard work

We are fixing up the yard this spring break and it has been so fun to work outside as a family. Call me crazy but when we are all outside kneeling in the grass planting flowers, weeding, mowing the lawn or fixing landscaping I just feel so happy. Our little family, all outside working together. It doesn’t get much better.

... Well Mitchell actually dislikes yard work but I just ignore that fact and soak in the sun!

When we moved in there where a lot of overgrown and half dead bushes- mostly rosebushes. We took them out and began to try to fix up the over grown flower beds and try to add landscaping to the virtually bare backyard. As we began these projects we quickly realized that when whoever did the landscaping put the decorative rock down- they did not put that black tarp stuff underneath it. So over the years at in rained and snowed the rocks began to sink down into the soil, this makes it crappy, almost impossible to dig to work with! Hugh!

So finally we are painstakingly taking up the rock - digging out the parts of rock that is sinking down into the earth with grass growing all around it, and we are fixing the problem.

We are putting down the ground cover and recovering everything with bark. We are reusing the rock in the back yard.

I am planning the garden, $$ and time means that I will have to do a little at a time over several years but I am so excited!

I forgot to photograph the actually work but we watered the plants on Sunday and I took some pictures then.

new shoes!

Ice and flowers

Today when i got Eli from Preschool 2 favorite things happened:

1st- his preschool teacher talked to me about how much she and other moms she has talked to love having my husband teach their kids math! She said she knows so many people who want to get their kids into his class because he explains everything so well! I am so proud of him!!!!

2nd- Eli picked me a flower. Covered in icicles!

For my Gratification a Fall house tour

Its not really a full house tour.

 And its truly being posted purely for my own gratification. Seriously, taking pictures of the crafts I made and putting them on the blog is like giving myself extra credit points or gold stars. Silly I know. I do actually enjoy the process though. It just that I don't have a lot of people over and since my sisters both are far away the only way to show them is this way. (hi Becky and Jessica) My wonderful hubby and the boys really could care less if i decorated for the different seasons, but us girls are different, we like to decorate and compare notes.

Confession, I had what the women in the movie "moms night out" refer to as a "moment". -by the way that movie made my laugh SO hard!- meaning I kinda freaked out because the kids peed in the tub and the other thing (so gross!) and I had a ton to do around the house and there was a huge spider .... you get the idea, it ended with me going out to shop and everyone else staying at home. The confession part is that i spent like 3 or 4 hours at Michael's and target getting ideas and trying on a lot of clothes that I did not buy...

Anyways so I ended up buying that adorable Owl in the table center piece , the kids love it because one of our favorite books is Owl Moon.

without further rambling

Pictures.

PS the kids helped clean up (and Mitchell) while i was out, they are so nice!

Look at how much our raspberries grew!

This may seem like an odd picture; It is. We just recently tore up the sod and put in the gravel under the garbage cans! Its looks so much nicer now believe me!