Gardening: Second Year

"Mommy, spray me! I'm growing." and "I want to water the 'matos." B-Bee is becoming quite the big boy helper - when he wants to be. This is part of my garden late this July. You can see the rhubarb was going crazy, tomatoes were growing tall, and peppers were starting to get going. I've found peppers to be rather slow growing until they get big - the habeneros are just not blooming, hope it doesn't get too cold for them just yet. Now a few of the tomatoes are taller than I am, nearing 6 feet. Don't remember if the super tall ones are the Mr. Stripeys or Big Johnsons - just looked, both are really tall but the Mr. Stripeys are the tallest.

One of the changes we made when redoing our deck was to put stairs on the garden side of the deck. LOVE, LOVE being able to just step right into my garden. Nellie likes it too, because it's easy to follow me everywhere I go.

When they're not busy pooping in the garden, here are the household sungods. At least we're finally keeping them out of the boxes.

We are nearing the end of the harvest already this year. I tried to get all my plants started earlier so that we wouldn't be plucking green tomatoes off before a hard frost in November, like we had to do last year. The Roma tomatoes are almost done and the bigger tomatoes are ripe. We've made lots and lots of salsa. The other night I blanched a batch to freeze until I have enough to make a huge batch of marinara to can. Sweet Banana peppers went crazy alongside the jalepenos. What does one do with so many jalepenos? I'm hoping the Habeneros produce at least a few peppers before it gets cold. We didn't have quite as much zucchini this year, plus I know what to do with the ones we do have this year. There are 4 watermelons that I'm wondering when to pick. How do you tell when a watermelon is ripe? Cucumbers didn't do so great this year - Daddy-O nipped one of my 2 plants with weed kill. Lesson learned there. The broccoli keeps growing more heads, so we'll probably have broccoli once a week until they die off. Herbs did okay, but I was slow getting them in the garden. Next year will be better, but all in all, it was a good garden this year. Year #2 was a success. :D

Sunny Nellie Dress.... A Bit Too Big

What can I say? B-Bee loves Mommy's creations, especially the fun & fluffy ones! He wouldn't let me try this one on Nellie to take pictures, which is just as well since it's a 3T size. Definitely had fun running around the house with it and wouldn't let me have it back.

While B-Bee was having fun twirling running around in the tutu, I took a minute to try the new hat on Nellie. This was my first attempt at sewing a hat and am rather pleased with the results. Love the yellow & orange fabric, so bright & summery.

The secret to keeping her hands off of the hat and the hat on her head.... FOOD. It worked, until....

...until B-Bee came back and I took the tutu away. As you can see, I sewed the seams too small and everything ended up a size (or two) bigger than intended. I meant to make it a 12 month size. Hopefully it will fit Nellie NEXT summer.

The rest of the sundress outfit. I didn't even have an inkling of realization that I was sewing it all too big until I finally figured out the bloomers - the last piece I sewed. Anyways, I'm pretty proud of the hat. Sundress & bloomers are pretty cute too.

Bought material to make a dress for my cousin's wedding as well, sparkly butterflies. But I never got around to it in time. Maybe it will be a spring project after I'm done with winter craft fairs. Back in tutu mode now, gearing up for my first show, November 5th. Oma "Duckie" bought Nellie a nice black & white dress that she ended up wearing for the wedding. Later she changed into her birthday tutu for the reception.

Bumper Floats & Friends

Even more than swimming, our favorite summer activity has to be having friends over to hang out and grill! (Besides the fact that it forces us to clean house.) We love to hang out on our deck and let the kids run in the yard. This year we added a bounce castle to the fun and redid the deck.

Our newly favorite pool game: Bumper Floats! Auntie Zaza supervises as Nellie & B-Bee chase each other in the pool, the whole while giggling like crazy, all of us.

A couple of my favorite cuties joined us for supper....another Big Brother and Little Sister that love the spinny chairs.



Bounce, Splash, Busy!

B-Bee started back at school today. Does that mean the summer's over? It can't be. Maybe just a little more tame; we still have our Friday Fundays!

We hosted a "Splash & Bounce" playdate for one of our mommy groups in July! It was so much fun, that I didn't even have a chance to have the camera out until the very end. Tried to get all 4 boys (that were left at this point) to sit on the stairs with us, but the more we tried the more they moved. Note: friend not pictured is the one that stripped down to his undies with B-Bee after swimming. I wanted to host another "Splash & Bounce" this month.... but where did August go again? It will have to wait for September. Crossing fingers the hot weather holds out that long and that I figure out some way to mend the hole in the bounce castle. Naughty lawnmower.

Sat down with the calendar this morning to schedule playdates and such. I'm feeling stingy with our Fridays and picky with the rest of the week. With that said, our days still fill up fast. Promises of coffee here and playgrounds there....and I can't forget the morning workouts. Thanks, Jaq for the text to get me back in gym bright & early tomorrow. Was thinking about a Red Rocks workout, but the hike time was changed.

Swimming & Baseball, Done.

Picked up a hat to adorn with a beautiful flower. In my opinion, this is a yellow peonie - what else would be so huge? - but it could just as easily be a fully open rose. Either way, it and it's vintage pink sister are my favorites. Both are available as hair clips or on headbands. I'm not sewing my own hats yet, but can pick another one up if wanted. Anyways, was so excited about this hat that I took pictures of Nellie wearing it until she started getting into trouble. So I took pictures for about a minute. I may have been especially lucky that day and gotten 2 minutes of trouble-free Nellie.

Yes, I know swimming has been mentioned a time or two here. B-Bee's 2-week session finally came to an end, just as he was beginning to like swim lessons. The instructors brought cookies for the kids' last lesson and they got to take their animals (rubber duckies) with all the stickers home. He will have to do this level again, but he's more comfortable in the water now - will attempt a backfloat with assistance, will go underwater, and now hangs on the side of the pool....and we know he can get in and out by himself. It was a good experience for him and he got a few more lessons at summer camp later on in the month.

The T-Ball session came to a thankful end. Daddy-O enjoyed taking B-Bee, but it just wasn't his thing. It seemed to bring out all his "spectrum tendancies". We would like to put him in something this fall, but are having trouble deciding what: gymnastics, soccer, ice skating, or more swimming lessons? B-Bee's most consistent inconsistent answer has been "skating". He likes to rollerskate - but rollerskating lessons are at the same time preschool is.

Is there such thing as a "puzzle team"? Like the chess team, which I was on for 1 year. It was a middleschool "boy thing"; I can barely play chess. He's loves puzzles and is pretty good at them too. He even helped me put Nellie's birthday present together. I told him it was a puzzle.

Know we will be busy with preschool this fall and I don't want to over-schedule my kids. Now that he's old enough I would like him to be able to try one thing at a time. Perhaps find an activity that he really likes and can be passionate about. Opinions? Ideas?

Pictures to Cob

We started our week out with Nellie's 1 Year photoshoot. Our friend, Greg does the kids' pictures every year and it's great to see how his work has progressed over the years. Every year he worries that they don't have enough work scheduled, but by the time it comes to schedule a photoshoot with him..... Let's just say that he's as busy as we are - maybe even busier, if that's possible.

We met at my alma mater, University of Colorado Denver for pictures. This is also where I met Greg's wife, Meka. Ah.... Organic Chemistry II, the class for those that REALLY like memorization of rules and puzzles (sometimes referred to the weed-out pre-med course, well O-Chem I). Anyways, we went to campus for pictures. I made Nellie a pink, purple, & white glitter tutu to wear and found a matching onesie and we can't forget the headbands! I just hope my serious one (Nellie) and one who can't focus (B-Bee) let Greg get a few good shots.

Gotta love the baby tutu butt! She's getting markedly better at walking everyday. Here We were getting pictures of her walking with Daddy. This must be when we were trying to occupy B-Bee by letting him snap pictures - since you can see me in the background getting her to go that way.

For family pictures we did a 4th of July theme. Thank you Old Navy! This is my favorite tutu so far! We hit up Kohl's for the rest of her outfit (minus headband, courtesy of yours truly) and found a rock guitar red & blue shirt for B-Bee. Daddy-O & I wore Old Navy shirts. At the end of the the photoshoot we went inside to get some pics playing on the blocks inside. We were pleasantly surprised to find these pretty white curved benches, tables and rocking chairs! I'm expecting we'll have some great shots here!

Busy morning....got home changed B-Bee into his swim trunks and we were off to his first swim lesson. We actually got there early, so I had a chance to sit on the edge with him for awhile and acclimatize to the pool by dangling our feet. He did great! Much better than I had anticipated.



Baby butt! (sans tutu)



He spent much of the time getting out of the pool. This is one of the moments he wasn't obviously nervous. They were playing Red Light, Green Light. Him and the little girl don't like to be in the water. In all fairness, it's 3'6" deep and he's only 41" tall.

To finish a great summer day, we had B-Bee's favorite: cheeseburgers (sans french fries) and corn on the cob. Nellie got to try corn for the first time and is definitely a fan.

Garage Sale 2011

Why is it that when you bring stuff out to the garage sale, the toys that they've had no interest in suddenly become the best toys ever? We participated in the community garage sale last weekend, which was EXHAUSTING. Something about being outside all day? Thankfully, Daddy-O a vacation day on Friday to watch the kids. Then my sister came over Saturday to help out. We did fairly well for not having any big ticket items. Everything was priced to sell. We had a lot of clothes and most of them were priced 25 cents to $1. Think we'll probably do a one day sale in September since we have a lot of cold weather clothes. It's hard to buy a big sweatshirt or coat when it's 90+ degrees out.

The dogs chilled / baked outside with us for most of the day. I couldn't believe how well behaved they were, specifically how they stayed in our yard. Eventually they just found a spot to nap, Woody under the table in the garage and Charlie in the shady grass. Look at that big smile! ...as you can also see, he's getting old and gray.

Zanna made a big sign for my Ellie Grace products and we had a table out for it. Didn't sell many, but there were a lot of people interested. Had I had tutus premade - instead of just Nellie's out as samples - I definitely would have sold a few. Next time, right? I just have to find the time to build a tutu inventory. Am working on that. Btw, I've also added clips to my product line. So now there are headbands, clips, leg warmers and tutus.

The kids were fairly happy to hang outside as well. Nellie kept wanting to go crawling around the garage floor and I learned that she has an ability to go from sparkling clean to absolutely filthy in 0.4 seconds. Yeah, that onesie got bleached.

B-Bee had T-ball in the afternoon and again he was tired before he even got there. Daddy-O bought him a soda for lunch to pep him up and he made it through. I know, bad parenting. There must be another T-baller that lives in the neighborhood, because shortly after he got home there was one of his buddies shopping at our sale. We joked that he must have followed B-Bee home. Daddy's been taking him to T-ball every Saturday, it's good daddy time. I guess he's starting to do better and can run the bases like a champ, especially 3rd to home (which was a struggle the first day, this was a struggle the first day because he's so literal and ran to the exit when told to run home). He does like to take a detour path, via the pitcher's mound to first.

Nanas To Silverware

What's for breakfast, Mommy? Or ratherly *more**more**more eat* signs and "Bah-bah, bah-bah". Nellie's has realized that (for awhile now) that her words mean things and get responses. She's now begun to generalize. So "bah-bah" and *more eat* means "hungry", "food", "bottle", "boobies" or sometimes even "phone" or "toy". This is the eating a banana look.

"Shopping" for more breakfast while she models new headbands. Hmmmm... oatmeal? onions? noodles? crackers? What would make a mess? What would work best to tease the dogs?



Near Perfect Day.

Between the 3 mommies at our playdate today, we had a total of 11 kids! What fun! What chaos! ...no, really it wasn't too bad as lond as we weren't in pedestrial transit from one part of the park to another. Here are about half of the kids waiting for the train to go and come back. Kudos to you if you recognize where we are! You've found an awesome place to spend a summer day.

Who's the ring leader of trouble? Pick a side. The Thomas fanatic in the middle goes with the flow. For most of the train ride, they were "choo-choo" - ing.

 We're serious about some watermelon; it's quickly beome a favorite - a messy favorite.

Wading & playing in the creek.

Watching the train go by one last time before we head home for naps. B-Bee & Nellie fell asleep so hard on the way home that they did the car-to-bed transfer. Ahhhh....

During this blissful nap - until B-Bee woke up crying because he wanted Annie's chocolate bunnies - I got some plants put in the garden, the pool set up and filled, and a few flowers (for headbands) pinned together. So after nap, while waiting for Daddy to get home, we played in the pool. It was a little too cold for Nellie and she freaked out whenever I put her in. So she was content to watch from the side, eating chocolate bunnies and feeding the dogs. At one point I put each of the dogs in for a short swim. Neither one would come back over after that. *sigh* Landlubber dogs.

A near perfect day.