Wordless Wednesday

Kneipp Family Victory Garden - Update, July, 2009

My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view. ~H. Fred Ale

I am pleased to note that we are quickly approaching the harvest portion of our gardening chores. However, there were a few missteps in planning the garden that have lead to some unanticipated results.

First of all, I forgot to plant any zucchini. Flat out forgot. And we love zucchini bread so much around here - now we are going to have to get ours from the produce market. Lame.

Second of all, I didn't give a lot of thought to how aggressive the cucumbers that we planted were going to be! They have started snaking their way up the sweet pea stakes and have all but eaten one of my green pepper plants. Not good...I still have one green pepper plant that is holding on for dear life and has 3-4 little peppers budded out. If the cucumber will keep it's distance a little bit, we may be eating stuffed peppers from our own garden yet!!

Thirdly, I gave thought to the fact that we needed to plant corn in rows, so that they could cross-pollinate, but I did not spend a lot of time in thinking about the fact that the growth of their neighbors, our tomato plants, would block almost all of their sunlight. Oops. We may or may not get any corn cobs out of the deal...but definitely learned a lesson or two on that one.

Finally, we have a ton of tomatoes on all 3 kinds of plants, Brandywine, Cherry & Roma...however, just 2 little individualist cherry tomatoes are showing any signs of ripening. I do hope that it's not a repeat of last year when we had to eat fried green tomatoes just to feel like we hadn't failed miserably.

So, there you have it. I would think we're at the mid-way point for the Garden of 2009. Once again, I have learned a lot of great lessons, the greatest one being: I have no flipping clue what I am doing in the garden and if I EVER hope to feed this family of 5 with home-grown produce, I better get some books and read up over the off-season. There's always room for improvement, right?

Tanner in the Kiddie Pool - Finally!!

Wordless Wednesday

Tanner's Walking!!

Anniversary Pics!

A good friend of ours, Dale Chumbley, agreed to take some anniversary pics for us this year. Unfortunately, we had no way of knowing that the day we chose to meet and get it done would be the hottest day of the year so far. It was closer to (if not over) 100 degrees that day. And further "planning genius" led to us meeting at 2pm.

I still think I got a touch of heat stroke after walking around taking pics for an hour or so. Poor Mitch, who wasn't "loving" taking pictures anyway, and was trying "not to sweat", but he wasn't very successful.

Even though it wasn't the best of circumstances, we had a fun time and managed to get some good pictures out of the deal. Here are just a few of the shots that we got - we are looking forward to many more years of anniversaries, but the next time we take pictures, I think there will have to be an understanding that it won't be in the middle of a heat wave. :-)

Once in awhile, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale.

Author Unknown

4th of July and 7th Anniversary!!

We did it! We made it through another year of marital bliss...or at least that's how I would classify it!! We did some of our usual traditions - pictures at the park, breakfast at my parents, BBQ at our place.

Our photo shoot was not on of the better ones we have had. Tanner was tired and crabby and really hardly smiled at all for any of the posed pictures, and in fact, screamed his head off for most of them. It is what it is and the kids had a blast making funny faces and then playing on the play structure when we were done. All in all, we had a good time and that's what's important, right?

There were also some "firsts" for the holiday. I grilled for the first time in my life! We had Poblano-Avacado Salsa Shrimp Tacos - YUMMY! I realized at one point that we were basically having a "Cinco de Mayo" meal for the 4th, but oh well - it was good!

My parents headed home before the fireworks and we got our blanket all spread out on the front lawn and watched the fireworks in our neighborhood for almost 2 hours. The kids were every excited in the beginning, but I think we were both pretty shocked when Tucker fell asleep in my lap and Lexi followed soon after. It was very sweet.

All in all, it was a good anniversary and I think we'll go ahead and shoot for 8!! I think we have a pretty darn good thing going here...

No Title Necessary

My Bucket List

It was bound to happen sooner or later. I had one too many epiphanies and need to put "pen to paper", so to speak, and create my bucket list! It's a rough list for now, but hopefully I can add to it as time goes on - and delete from it as well!

1) Visit Alaska, both in the summer & the winter
2) Learn how to operate the grill - I have never done this before and feel like it may be the "final frontier" of my cooking skills.
3) Learn how to use Adobe Photoshop properly

4) Actually do something with the thousands of digital photo files that I have

5) Read "Don Quixote" in it's entirety

6) Visit Washington D.C.

7) Make my own soap

8) Learn how to sew

9) Live on some acreage that would lend itself to raising some small farm animals

10) Drive across America on the classic "Family Road Trip" (picture National Lampoon's "Vacation")

I challenge you to think about your own list - and get to livin'!! Who knows...maybe I'll get to cross one of mine off before the end of the weekend...you never know! :-)

Tanner Rocking Out on Thomas the Train!

Thomas the Train

We had our annual trip to see Thomas the Train in Hood River, Oregon this past weekend. We have been going for the last 3 years and it has been so much fun! We usually try to get tickets for the first train out at 9am, which makes for an early day, but we also usually beat the heat and the crowds that way! This year was no exception and the kids had no problem being ready to get picked up at 7am! Mitch and I might have struggled a little bit more with that. :-)

Here's Tucker in all of his Thomas gear (including Thomas underpants!) waiting to get picked up:


The other thing I always forget about is that to the kids, the bus ride from the parking lot to the train station is just as big of an event as the train ride itself! Since I am a paranoid mom and don't let them ride the bus to school, the novelty hasn't worn off one bit!

Here's Lexi enjoying her bus ride:

And once we're on the train, they can hardly contain themselves! It's a quick ride - 15 minutes out and then a turnaround to come back, but it's right by the river and so pretty! They pretty much have their heads at the window the entire time!

Here's my three little engineers!


Tanner was with us last year, but he was so little I don't even think he realized he was on a train. This year he was very excited and danced along to the music and LOVED the ride!

And finally, we had our picture taken with the big man himself, Thomas!! Peep, peep!! (And miracle of miracles...EVERYONE was looking at the camera!!)

Until next year!! :-)