Growing Things

This week was the week for planting some growing things. Richard and I have been talking for a long time about having a garden - something we both wanted to do, but really weren't sure where in our yard we were going to put it. We couldn't do the back yard because (as some of you know) we have 2 incredibly fun, excitable, energetic and nosy dogs who would not be able to resist the lure of fresh dirt and yummy green things. We have a side yard to one part of our house that gets no sunlight at all - it would be perfect, if a garden didn't need sunshine. So that left us with the front yard - or so I thought. After years of trying to tell me where he wanted to put it, I finally figured out that Richard, in fact, did NOT want to build a huge garden right in the middle of our front lawn - but instead put it in the portion of our side yard that does get some great sun, just to the right of our driveway. It turned out great! 

We took a trip to Lowes yesterday morning to get all of our supplies - wood, dirt and veggie seeds we didn't have. Our garden is a raised garden - something we decided to do for a couple of reasons. One being that we eventually want to sell this house and didn't want to till up the yard, in case future buyers are not interested in having a garden. Also, it was a bit easier for us to set up, having never had a garden. So, we got the lumber for Richard to build the frame and once that was built, lined it with compost from our compost bin. After that came the dirt. Now, somehow, we walked out of Lowes with only 12 cubic feet of dirt - for an 8x8x1 raised garden. Does anyone else see the error in that math? Yep, Richard ended up taking another trip (this time to Home Depot) to pick up some more dirt. 

Once all of our dirt was in, we got down to the fun part - planting! We planted potatoes, green beans, peppers, zucchini, squash, cucumber, onions, lettuce and watermelon, yum yum yum. We're also planning on getting some tomato plants soon. We are going to have a veggies feast! (hopefully!). 

Earlier in the week I was home with Lily as she had been running a pretty high fever the day before and wasn't able to go to school. She was actually feeling pretty good (in fact, she was in timeout before 10am, so I'd say feeling fine), so we decided to go ahead and plant our indoor herb garden - some parsely, oregano, chives and cilantro. She had a great time getting to play with dirt inside and now we just have to wait on our herbs to grow! Sorry for the blurry pictures - for some reason, my camera didn't want to focus.

Instagram Fun

I am a big fan of Instagram and tend to use it a lot - or pretty much whenever I've taken pictures. Here are some of the latest Instagram shots, for those of you who might not have seen them. 

Cool baby in her new carseat

She wanted to wear her sunglasses on her head like mommy :)

Lily and mommy snuggles!

Yum, fresh homemade bread - delish!

Singing and Dancing and Jumping

This is actually a post I meant to do a few months ago, but was having some issues with blogger at the time and have just now gotten back to it! 2 of these videos were actually just taken today, but the others are a few months old.

Singing, dancing and jumping 3 of Lily's favorite things! Her most favorite song wasJingle Bells - actually, I should probably say tune. She will sing pretty much any words to the tune of Jingle Bells - very, very cute. Now she seems to be more on an Itsy Bitsy Spider kick. She also likes the ABC's, although her version is a little bit different. In the first video, she sings her first version from a couple of months ago and the second one show her current version. She loves to dance and she does it to any kind of music, although she seems to prefer the Hot Dog Dance on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and, of course, dancing to Dora. She figured out how to "jump" a few months ago and sometimes her feet even leave the ground! 

Check it out:

Happy Easter!

What a wonderful occasion to celebrate!! And celebrate we did. We went to Asheboro to celebrate the joy of Easter with our families - really, the perfect way to do it. We were missing a couple of key people, but we'll be able to celebrate with them next year (we missed you Phillip and Adrian!)

The night before Easter, we dyed our Easter eggs - the first time Lily was really able to participate. And wow, she had such a fun time! She cried when we were done and definitely was of the opinion that she should get to dye more than a dozen eggs. Mommy will remember this for next year...

On Easter morning, we woke up to see what the Easter bunny had brought Lily and enjoyed a delicious Butter Braid Cream Cheese pastry, which was a fundraising item Lily's school did. I am so glad we got more than one of those pastries - delicious. After breakfast, we got ready and headed on down to Asheboro.

 

We had a fantastic lunch, so yummy, and spent the day outside, enjoying the absolutely gorgeous weather. After lunch and before dessert (had to clear some space in our tummies with a little exercise..), we hid eggs for an Easter egg hunt for all of the kiddos. We separated the older boys from the little girls, to make it fair, and hid all the boys' eggs out in the yard and the girls' eggs up on my parents' awesome deck. They loved it! Lily picked up on what she was supposed to do really quickly and loved looking for the eggs, picking them up and putting them in her basket. And after she found all of her eggs, she loved eating what was inside them! One of the other best parts of the day - Aunt Margaret and Uncle Rodney brought bubbles!! They were a HUGE hit - there were bubbles, bubbles everywhere and the kiddos had such a great time with them.

After our Easter egg hunt, we had dessert - dirt cake, banana pudding and strawberry pound cake - oh. my. goodness. Our tummies were stuffed after this meal. By the way, I made the banana pudding this year and found this fantastic banana pudding recipe - you can find it here. I made a few changes - namely only adding about half of the sour cream it calls for (I know, sour cream in banana pudding?!) and put in about 2 ounces of cream cheese also. I actually used light cream cheese and I can't imagine it being any creamier. I also added Cool Whip on the top of the final layer and crumbled Vanilla Wafers on top, instead of layering like the picture shows - it was more pretty that way. I will use this banana pudding recipe from now on!

Ok - get ready for LOTS of pictures!