Garden Update

Check out how our garden is growing! We have over 70 tomatoes, beautiful marigolds, zinnias, and a ton of patty pan squash. We thought we were planting zucchini but this clearly is not zucchini. The lettuce is done but we have some vine spinach, garlic chives, and rosemary to plant now. I think we will pull up the squash soon. Even though it is flourishing I am disappointed since I thought I was planting zucchini which is my favorite. Our friends have taken several of the flowers and made Flor de Calabaza soup and quesadillas with them. So there is some good in the mistake. And I will be able to plant a fall garden in August. I will be sure to plant zucchini then.

Another interesting thing about our garden...the kids planted their jack-o-lantern pumpkins seeds in the fall in a hole that Bonnie dug in the yard. The vines are growing wonderfully and we have lots of "male" blossoms but no "female" blossoms. There were several female blossoms and even a tiny pumpkin about a month ago but it only lasted about 1 week. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to encourage female blossom growth?

Yes, our tomato plants are taller than the kids. They are almost taller than me.

Words

My kids make up words. Two in particular have made it into our daily vocabulary. They are "Vertatic" and "Pomerated".

Take a guess. What do you think they mean?

Annie started using the word vertatic about 4 years ago to mean sticky. Such as, "That lollypop was yummy. Now my fingers are vertatic."

Emerson started using pomerated about 6 months ago to mean hurting. Like,"Mommy, I fell down and my arm is pomerated."

Possibly when Webster's publishes their newest edition vertatic and pomerated will have entries.

Silly Emerson

One thing about Emerson is that he likes to laugh and he likes to make people laugh. Here he is being super silly while getting ready for his shower.

Annie's tooth!

May 7th, 2008

Annie lost her first tooth! It has been loose for about 6 weeks and it finally broke free while she was eating her breakfast. The Tooth Fairy left her 2 crisp one dollar bills and she swiftly shared one with her little bro. Our girl is growing so fast and we are so proud of her!

Capital Area Food Bank

When we were planning Annie's birthday party we discussed the idea of having people bring food to donate to hungry children and families. Annie loved the idea (it involved families) and she and I brain stormed and came up with the idea that instead of people spending money on a gift for her they spend the money and bring food for hungry families instead.

Don't think we deprived our kids of gifts... We also had a book exchange where we asked people to bring a new or used wrapped book. Each child got to bring home a book and Annie (and Emerson on his B-Day) got several great books.

Today we took the over-flowing laundry basket worth of non-perishable food donations that the kids collected on their birthdays to the Capital Area Food Bank. They were so excited to donate the food and it was so sweet to hear Annie explain to Emerson how they were giving the food to people who didn't have enough to eat.

A special Thank You is due to all of you awesome people who came to Annie's birthday party and Emerson's birthday party with food donations.

I am so proud of my kids. Today they experienced the pure joy of giving to others. My wish is that they will continue to seek this kind of joy for the rest of their lives.

Camping

We spent two nights camping at Bastrop State Park among the Loblolly Pines. The camp grounds are lovely. The loblolly pines are so beautiful and tall. Since we went during the week there were very few people there. We had no neighbors so the kids had lots of room to roam. And roam they did. They kept themselves busy most of the time. They loved the forest and Mike and I loved watching them play in the forest.
We spent our time hiking, exploring, geocaching, building fairy houses, collecting rocks, pine cones, identifying animal tracks and birds, and just simply relaxing.

Here is a video of Emerson eating a s'more.