I Swear! Other Stuff Happened, Too!

I've been a bit absent, the last couple months.  The late stages of pregnancy will do that.  Things happened, though, I promise.

I planted bulbs, and though only the paperwhites came up they were my favorites anyway.   One of then even bloomed!

We had the usual Easter party at my Mom's.  I missed having Dad there, especially with it being a new house and all.  So much change, but having family together will always be the same.

We colored and hunted our own eggs, at home.

The kids decided to film their own movie, a thrilling adaptation of Little Miss Muffet.  This would be one of the stills from the set.

The Aztex are back!  And we got tickets!  We've been to a couple games and it's always a good time.

We got a car, too.  It is a Mazda5, but not the one from the other post.  For $5k less we got 2 years newer, 50k less miles, leather seats and tinted windows.  Yeah.

A sunflower sprouted up in our back yard, fell over, then produced blossoms all up the length of the stem.  There's probably 100 or more flowers on it.

Joseph turned 6!  He asked for a square cake that was chocolate with chocolate and M&Ms.  He wore his Super Cape to the soccer game, too.

Yes, Lucy came two days later.  Several people asked me when I was due, at church.  I told them "Technically, a week and a half.  In all practicality, any day, now."  I was at that very moment having contractions that never actually went away.  Here she is at home, getting all settled in.

She makes the big kids (all 3 of them!) look enormous.

And finally, today, at about noon, Joseph lost his first tooth.  He's so excited!

Green

I had been hoping to post pictures of field day but Elena spent the better part of last week at home with a series of fevers and general yuckiness. In fact, she managed to miss all (and only, poor girl) the days that there was something cool going on at school. On Tuesday she missed awards and her fever didn't go down until late that night so she had to miss field day on Wednesday, too. She went back to school Thursday but woke up crying with a 102 degree fever and the dry heaves at 4am on Friday and had to miss the bounce houses. Sigh...

Anyway, we do still have interesting stuff to share. We found a caterpillar in the back yard and Elena decided she wanted to watch it turn into a butterfly. I decided this would be OK and would nicely follow up their recent science unit about butterfly life cycles. So this is her caterpillar. She named it Green.


I dug out my old fish tank and Jonathan found it some sticks and leaves to hang out on, and we've had a really fun time watching it eat. It tried privet and elm and tomato but seemed to prefer basil. It's probably going to be an ugly brown moth but we're OK with that. All the excitement has been very tiring, though, and she's taken a ton of naps, this week. She even fell asleep while draped over the exercise ball.

Green is currently curled up in a tomato leaf, wrapped in a silky little cocoon. I need to remember to take more pictures.

Tomatoes!

I plucked my first two tomatoes from my garden, today. They were cherries, so they were small, but they were just right for my daily salad and tasted so good. There's three more ripening up on they vine, and I'm excited to eat them, too.

Hope For a Better Season

It's time to renew hope and try again for a better world. Yup, it's tomato time. And maybe, this year, I can keep the stinkin' birds away from my crop. We went to the Natural Gardener with some of the ladies we Visit Teach so the kids (all 7) could run around and look at the chickens, goats and donkeys while the adults chatted and shopped for veggies for spring planting. Everyone had a good time, and I ended up with patio and sweet 100 tomatoes and titan (?) bell peppers. I've only got three good pots, so I have to limit myself. Anyway, I got them planted up this afternoon, and I think they look pretty good. Is anyone else growing something fun? If so, tell us please.

Garden Fairies

I went out to check on my tomato plants, today, and discovered that some little fairy (likely named Elena) had made a fairy ring on my table.

Gardening

Play group, today, was at The Natural Gardener. We started out all together, but as we explored we seperated and started looking at plants. I bought three varieties of cherry tomato--Juliette grape, patio, and large red--in the hopes that with smaller, more numerous fruit I'll get a better harvest than in past years. I also wanted my mom's fantastic flowerpots with the built-in wells, but of course those are nowhere to be found--so I made my own. I got two 5-gallon buckets and drilled a hole about three inches up from the bottom, dropped three empty yogurt cups into each one, drilled holes in heavy-duty plastic saucers and placed those on top of the yogurt cups, lined the new raised bottom with stretched out coco-grass (hanging-basket liner), then filled with potting soil and tomato plant. It's not as pretty, but it only cost about $11 per pot (includes the plant), and it has a handle. I know the real ones cost at least twice that much, so I'm very pleased with myself. Plus, if my seedlings work out, I will have a lot of very fine tomatoes in my kitchen, this summer.

As an aside--Mom, do you still have the huge tomato cages?