"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow." Audrey Hepburn

For me, the best part of Spring is seeing everything come to life again.  The bright green grass speckled with all of the fun colors of flowers. I love the hustle and bustle of birds and butterflies in the air.  I love Spring! Slowly, slowly, slowly we are planting perennials around our house, but they are expensive to do everything at once. So to get the bright, full colors, we are still planting annuals in the large pots lining the front of our house. The kids love to help pick the flowers out, but they really love putting their gardening gloves on to help dig in the dirt.

They helped unload all of the plants and were really cute about taking each plant to the right location.  This video was filmed at the end of the process...still cute, but not filled with cuteness.

Boy + Dirt + Shovel = Happiness

It finally warmed up enough to get out veggies planted. I knew most of the veggies we needed in our garden, but I asked Megan to list was she wanted.  The only veggie she picked that I hadn't planned on planting was radishes! 'The only radishes I could find were seeds, so she loosen up the dirt, read the directions and planted the seeds, all by herself. Joey might have stolen a few seeds so he could plant radishes too...randomly through the garden :)

Joey getting a lesson from his sister on the proper why to plant the seeds.

 

 

I thought I had a picture of the whole garden, but I guess not. As you can see we built tiered raised garden beds. The lower tier is approximately 10'x6' so we have lots of space to plant veggies.  The bed to the right, has different types of strawberry plants all around the bottom. They were planted last year, some didn't survive the hard winter, but my fingers are crossed for strawberries this year. This bed also has 3 different blueberry bushes slowly growing, but doing well, so hopefully they will have yummy berries this year too.

 

The veggie garden, on left, has heirloom tomato plants, cucumbers, red/yellow peppers, jalapenos, peas, radishes and once the plants grow and provide a shaded spot...lettuces. Last year, most of the veggies grew well, hopefully, this year will have the same results.

 So excited to plant radishes!

Just call me MacGyver MacGurber

 

Mid April, high winds blew a tree over knocking out the power to our block. We were smart enough to install a 10' gate just incase a truck needed to get in our back yard. So of course, the quickest way to get our power back was to have the power company drive across our yard...ALL the way across our yard, to reach the power pole with their truck. The pole was not technically ON our property, but after 1 1/2 days with out power, it was cold, so I didn't really care what they had to do. The crew was very, very nice, even after getting their huge truck stuck in the mud causing truck #2 to drive on our yard to tow truck #1 out.

 

Anyways...the MacGruber in me, needed a way to water a 200' path that was 6' wide without watering the rest of the yard...while entertaining a 2 year old...ah ha...prop up the hose with a tomato cage...genius! I moved the cage every 5 minutes down the path, the grass seed was watered and is now growing nicely. (Yes, I am well aware that I am a nerd)

Memorial Day: 3 Day Weekend, lots of fun...lots of pictures!

Memorial Day: A day to remember the brave men and women that died protecting of freedoms.

Thank You!!!

 

Because it was a 3 day weekend for us, plus the "official" start of Summer, we didn't have ANYTHING on our schedule! Nothing was planned and it was perfect! Because we did't have to worry about being anywhere, fun, simple things just kind of happened. Saturday morning, I found Megan and Joey cuddling in a chair, then they ran off to play.  I think Joey started off playing hockey, but then he moved on to other things...Megan still used her mic to do a "play by play" of Joey's moves..."And there goes Joey, dumping the puzzle to the floor." Yep, kind of priceless if you ask me. 





 The weather was perfect all 3 days (much needed after our crazy winter!!!) I wanted to check things off of the to-do list, so Mark took the kids our to his parent's house, to put the dock in and to just relax...I stayed home to clean/organize Megan's room...fun right!?!

 While I was waist deep in clothes, stuff animals and art supplies, Mark sent me these pictures :)  Not going to lie, my heart broke just a little bit because I wasn't there. Minutes after getting the dock in, Megan charmed Papa into fishing with her (she didn't have too try hard) then Joey caught his first fish of the year!

This picture might not look that special, but to me, it is priceless. Some of you might not know that Megan spent all of Kindergarten and part of 1st grade in a special reading program at school. 4 kids went to another room for 1 on 4 instruction, to help bring reading levels up. I knew Megan was a sponge, soaking all the info up, but she just couldn't get the info to make sense. But once the "light bulb" turned on, there was no stopping her! She is reading above grade level now!!! To see her, playing with an electronic 20 questions game, where the words scroll across the screen...I was so proud of her...proud for her. I love this picture!

 Back at the lake for Memorial Day, again perfect weather and again, Megan and Joey wanted to fish (they even dug up their own worms at our house!)

 Megan caught a HUGE bass! (well, huge for her) Normally, the kids catch 6-8" bass, but today Megan caught a large catfish and a 13-14" bass. I won't let her be one of "those" girls that scream at bugs/slimy things etc. but this big guy was just a little too much for her to handle, I think he got her with his tail...then she wanted nothing to do with him. (He is currently back home, swimming around the lake)

 Somehow, Joey learned to like corn cut off of the cob...he gobbled up the first ear quick!

 I wanted Megan to prove that she could take a bite with 2 missing teeth...she did it! Then asked me to cut it off the cob.  Yeah...this habit isn't going to last long...unless there is a good reason.

SMORES!!!

Megan has been begging for smores since the snow melted. She finally got her smores tonight...made from roasted marshmallows and fudge stripe cookies, so yummy! A little messy, but worth it!

 

And here is to the start of summer and all the fun we will have...let the fun begin!!!

 

Sports in the Spring and who can teach me about this iPhone thing!?!

Both Mark and I have always loved sports, watching them, playing them and teaching our children about them. We both feel strongly that being involved with sports teaches children lots of life lessons.  Plus they are fun family activities the keeps everyone moving. That being said, we would never push our kids to do anything they don't want to do.  We want them to find their passion, whatever it might be, but in childhood that normally means starting out doing what you parents did.

 



 After the seemingly endless, bitterly cold winter, Megan and Joey were so happy to play in the backyard!  Pretty sure Joey was just happy to be out of the house! (Most of the winter the snow accumulation was at least waist deep on him = Joey not being able to move = Joey stuck inside!)

 He knew catchers needed to wear a mask...he only has a hockey goalie mask...I see this as good problem solving!

 Spring soccer! This year Megan is playing on a team with 6,7 & 8 year old girls and since Megan is on the small side for being 6, she really looks tiny next to some of the 8 year olds. She is also dealing with allergies (I know nothing about them, so this is a learning process for me) Plus she is dealing with other minor health things, so soccer just hasn't "clicked" this year. But Megan is all smiles when she is on the field, so that's all we care about.



Megan has the ball AND all of the girls aren't in one big clump of kids...not bad! It has to be said, all of the girls on all of the teams in this league, are really good! It is fun to watch their games.  Not saying all of them will stick with soccer or even continue in sports, but it does make me smile seeing so many girls wanting to play.

 

So a few months again, after lots of harassment from well, pretty much everyone, I caved and got an iPhone. So what if my old phone was over 3 years old, held together with tape and still had a true keyboard...it worked. But it was time, just for the ease of having an awesome camera so I didn't have to remember to bring our real camera, was worth the upgrade! But now, how the heck do I use this thing!?! I mean yes, I know most of the basic functions, how to add apps etc. but where does it tell me the proper position to hold the camera when I take pictures and videos!?! Oh, wait...it doesn't! So yep, I have tons and tons of short videos of my kids doing cute things...all of them filmed sideways. Oops!



 

Above: Joey's reaction to his new swing. We thought he was getting too big for the baby swing. Yes, I was sad to see it go, but he is Mr. Independent so his doesn't mind the new swing at all.

 

Below: Megan's soccer games are at a field that is surrounded by playgrounds! Joey is a daredevil and loves to find new ways to use playground equipment. No, it doesn't make us nervous, bumps and bruises = having fun!

We're back....

So is a 2 year break long enough!?!

For a few months, I have been thinking about the long lost family blog. I am pretty sure the word "blog" has a new meaning than what it did in 2007, when I originally started this. But I don't really care about that. I had fun sharing fun family things in our blog and I am telling myself that family and friends enjoyed reading it (typos and all) but it wasn't until a visit from my Aunt Jan, who lives out of state mentioning that she misses following our family "adventures" that I decided I REALLY needed to start posting stories again. I originally started the family blog for just that reason...so our family could keep up with how fast the kids grow. But then I felt like I was posting the same stories over and over, but this time about Joey verses Megan, so I stopped.  I mean, posting pictures on Facebook was easy.  Sharing a few funny sentences about how funny/silly/weird/awesome my kids are worked just fine. Or did it?

Don't get me wrong, it is obvious that I love Facebook, and I will continue to love it. But I never completely shared the whole story behind the cute picture. Or I didn't post a picture because I didn't want to bother people with another picture of my kids. So here I am, back on my computer, promising to share the whole story, the collage of pictures and the everyday life of us.

I have no idea what I will write about, or when I will write things, but I will share stories without feeling like I am going to annoy someone (not saying that ever happened, but it IS easy to over share things on Facebook) Since the last post was back in Dec 2011, I will have a few random "throwbacks" to stories that happened from then until now. But the main focus will be on our everyday life.  So here is to cute kids, memories in the making and all that happens in between...enjoy!

Because this is what happens when we try to take a family picture :)