Let the farming begin!

For several years Nicole and I have been talking about expanding our farming operation, so for Mother's Day this year Nicole got her first set of raised garden beds. We modeled them off of Ralph and Janet's beds that have provided us with many yummy treats in the past.

Stage 1 - Assembly


Ralph and I spent last Sunday constructing the boxes. The raw materials (and all good projects start with a 30 pack of beer... no we did not drink all of them).

Ralph, John and our team of helpers.

Here's Athena inspecting the placement of the garden boxes. We played around with several locations, but this is the one that got the most sun and is protected from the wind.

Athena and I ended up taking 3 trips to the local garden center/nursery in town. Our 1st trip was for a load of oak mulch that we used to make the bottom layer. Underneath the mulch we put some old news paper to help kill the grass. We then got 2 loads of gardening soil (1 yard total) and some peat moss to fill in the boxes.

Once the boxes were prepped we moved on to:

Stage 2 - Planting

While Nicole put the finishing touches on the trestle, Alton made sure the remaining boxes were plowed, tilled and ready to go.

In the first box Nicole and Athena planted beans and sugar snap peas. In the second box they planted carrots and radishes.

The final step was a good healthy dose of water and then we had 2 fully planted garden boxes. We are waiting a couple more weeks to plant some of the more temperature sensitive produce, but stay tuned for more updates.

The happy farming family!

Awwwww:)

Ena and Alton have been doing this on the way to school/daycare in the morning lately. Seriously. It's as if they read a manual on how to melt mamma's heart. I thought to throw the camera in my purse today so I could turn around to take a picture when we stopped at the stop sign.

Daycare drop off is going better and better for Alton. I'm beginning to notice a pattern of when he does and does not cry at drop off. If they are just setting out food for breakfast and he can eat right away as a distraction right after I give him his goodbye kiss he doesn't cry. He also doesn't cry when I am able to hand him off to one certain teacher. He actually reaches for her when I go to hand him over to her. She happens to be a young, drop dead gorgeous blonde. He's such a guy already! He likes the food and the pretty ladies:)

It stopped raining for a few minutes:)

We've had a break in the cold rainy crud weather we've been having. We were able to finally get outside for a bit. John snapped this cute picture while we were doing the egg hunt at my parents house last Sunday.

We also went up north to visit Grandpa Jim and Grandma Julie for a day:) There's always plenty of new animals around there for the kids to check out!

John and Athena had fun driving around in grandma's ATV thingy:) Crazy drivers on the loose!

Alton was interested in giving this guy a pet. Not sure if it's a sheep? Goat? I was just trying to get good pictures of Alton's first trip to grandma and grandpa's farm:) These guys are a new addition to the ranch since the last time I've been there. I"ll have to ask next time we go back:) Alton loved the sweet guard dogs that live with all the alpaca's:)

One of the alpaca's had a crush on John. Hopefully we'll have some more nice days in the forcast for the upcoming weeks! Can't wait to get outside more with the kids:)

Bunny lunch:)

The weather is being un-cooperative outside & we're not gettting any bright, springy weather for our nice long weekend. So we had to make a bright springy lunch inside instead:) The kids loved it and ate it up!

Ena's bunny lunch is 2 pb&J sandwhiches cut out with a bunny cookie cutter, topped with chocolate chip eyes and a grape tomato nose. They are peeking out from some celery grass and being shined upon by an assorted heirloom tomato sun:)
Alton got spring flowers made up of blueberries cut in half surrounded by string cheese pieces cut into half circles for petals.

Daycare

Going back to work this week went great:) I am excited to be back, though day care drop-offs are rough for Alton. He cries bloody murder each morning when I drop him off. After 10 years of teaching pre-school and kindergarten I've had many opportunities to be the adult on the recieving end of a parent dropping off a child who is having a hard time with transition, so I know that the child is always fine 10 minutes later! It doesn't make it any easier to see him crying and upset every morning, but at least I know it's short lived and his day goes fine and he has fun once the transition of being dropped off is done. When I show up to pick him up at the end of the day, he's always happily playing and his daily note always says he's eats and naps like a champ during the day. His teachers are so sweet and that helps me to feel comfortable dropping him off too. I've read in a few attachement books about ways to make the daycare transition easier & one idea is to bring a treat along to give the child at pickup each day. This helps to establish a routine and enforce the mommy-always-returns happy feelings. So, he's been having a yummy cookie to eat on the way home each day. I'm pretty sure he's picking up on this routine after only one week because yesterday after I had him strapped into his carseat he was looking at me with an excited look of anticipation for me to hand him his treat:)

Check out these cute bunny ears he made at school:)

Look at this big strong bunny crawling with his belly off the ground now! No more army crawling for this big boy:)

Easter eggs and fancy drinks:)

Last night we planned a movie and popcorn night. Seemed like a nice cozy thing to do on a cold rainy cruddy night. Ena wanted a 'fun' drink to go along with her popcorn, so I came up with this.

It's just peach mango juice & ice in a tumbler with cherries on a fun skewer and a cut in half straw. I think it would have also been fun to have some frozen cubes of a some type of bright red juice in with the mango juice too. I'll have to plan ahead for that next time:)

Today while Alton was napping, Ena and mommy had a fun time coloring Easter eggs. I let her do most of it and out of the one dozen eggs we colored, there were only 2 casualties, so we ended up with 10 pretty colored eggs. I figure that's not bad for her first time doing it:) We had fun doing it and the colors are so bright and pretty! I haven't dumped out the dye cups yet because I may pick up another dozen eggs and let her do some more tomorrow.

Picture time!

I took both of the kids in to get their pictures taken yesterday. I thought I did a pretty good job of finding and picking out coordinating 'springy' outfits for them. Alton is in khaki cargo pants and a green and peach plaid shirt. Athena wore a super cute peach flowered spring dress. When we showed up at the portrait studio however the photographer looked at us and commented that we would limited in how many background choices we would have because of the "loud" shirt that I had put Alton in. Heh. Anywho, after we got past that little comment she was really very nice and did a good job considering she was dealing with the squirmiest 12 month old known to man and a big sister who finds it to be physically impossible to not do a painful looking fake smile the second she gets in front of a professional camera:) The pictures turned out OK. Not great, but OK. I snapped a few pictures of them in their cute outfits after we got home.