Greeting from Texas!

We were home for about 5 days and took back off for a road trip to TX.  This time Matthew did not throw up, yea!  We've been here for about 2 weeks and have had a lot of fun.  The boys have had fun boxing and bowling on the Wii.

 As well as mastering MarioKart.

 They really get into it.

 Here is Matthew's bedroom.  He wanted everyone to see it.  *photo by Matthew

 The second weekend we were here, they had lifeguard competitions. 

 Find Phil in this photo.  It's like "Where's Waldo."  I almost walked up to the wrong guy when we got there!

 We've been bowling for real.

 I'm sad to say that Matthew skunked me not once, but twice!  This was our first game.  Last night, he beat me by 10.  I was too ashamed to take a photo of that.

 We've canoodled with Isabelle.  We love her so much we bought her, her very own water fountain.

 Since our lawn is dead, we've tried watering it, which Matthew has loved playing in.

 All the old toys being available again, has been very fun for him.

 What a wild mustang he has!

 We've also been furniture shopping.  Here is what we are probably going to buy.  The boys seem to like it.  They "fell" asleep in it.  Phil fell in love with a massive entertainment center that's $2,500.  I believe that he'll be wanting that for awhile.

Today Matthew got to go to work with Phil.  Here they are walking out the door.  Matthew didn't get to swim because the chemicals were not right, but they watched an awesome movie, according to Matthew.

Last night Matthew really wanted to play MarioKart.  We said that we couldn't because his Dad had broke the disc in half, because he got so mad at the game, the night before.  Matthew said, "Did you really?"  "Yup" we said.  He got up, marched over to the Wii and pushed the eject button.  He crossed his arms like a parent and faintly tapped his foot.  When the disc came out whole, he turned around, looked at us sternly and said, "Does this look broken to you?"  That was it.  We died laughing.

In other news, we decided for me to keep my job with the school.  Matthew and I will be headed back home again in a few days to prepare for the 1st day of school, Aug 16th.  Our baby is growing up.  I may cry.  We've already done the back to school shopping here.  I wanted to take a photo, Phil vetoed it.  I suppose it's silly, but I wanted a visual record of it.

State Capitol

Thursday I had to go to the capital city to get paperwork Phil needed ASAP. So I sprung Matthew, and drove on up. When we were done there was time on the meter, so I said, "Let's walk over to the statehouse." Matthew calls it "the round house." He's been intrigued for awhile now. On the walk up we saw a Lincoln memorial and Matthew got excited because he still remembered facts he'd learned President's Day week, "That guy got shot!"

Matthew on the statehouse steps. He looked so small up there!

As it turns out I looked pretty small too! *photo by Matthew

Inside, I'd forgotten how gracious the interior is. The old time grand and formal.

One of the stain glass windows. I love how patriotic they are. Matthew and I felt our adventure was well worth the trip.

kinderGARDEN Thursday: season wrap-up

Well, it's been an long, interesting, journey this summer. We had small plans for a container garden in zone 8.

We'd even read up on it!

Life threw us a loop and we ended up in zone 5, right at the beginning of planting season. We changed gears again and planted a garden, in the ground. We started with heavy construction...

and ended up with a great garden space.

At first, we struggled to get seeds to sprout, probably because it was a cool spring.

Then right after we ordered more seeds, some of the seeds sprouted! Some of the garden was a month behind because of that. The garden further suffered, because as soon as it warmed up, it went straight into intense summer heat and drought.

Matthew and I struggled to keep the garden watered, but we managed to have some fun with it.

The beginning and end of the summer, found my Dad hospitalized with a very serious blood infection and gallbladder that should have come out 2 years before. That caused us to lose focus, as we had bigger things to do. Then, at the end, when most of the garden had burned up, I was blessed to get a full time job and we didn't have time to baby it along. I don't think the winter crop ever came up!

But we kept at it as we had time. Our first real problem with pests came with the radishes having aphids overrun them. We burned the leaves and plants totally infected and let the good bugs take over.

Next rabbits ate ALL the green beans for themselves. Nothing detered them, we tried it all, except human hair.

Then when my squash plants started to bloom, they became a magnet for squash bugs. Matthew and I spent a week picking them off by hand and drowning them, but the damage was done. We only got a baby pumpkin out of the deal!

Matthew did another photo tour of the garden this summer. My favorite photo was the coneflower closeup.

Although we had the joy of planting, we didn't reap many yummy rewards. We ended up with about 30 cherry tomatoes,

sunflowers,

marigolds and nasturisums,

10 strawberries,

some herbs, 15 peppers,

15 purple green beans and lots of rat tailed radishes,

as well as 3 Chinese red noodle beans.

All I can say is, I'm glad we didn't have to survive on what we planted, because it would be a very long hungry winter this year! It probably would have gone a little better if we hadn't gone into a severe drought. Thanks so much Kim, for once again hosting the kinderGARDENERS! I doubt Matthew and I would have made it as far as we did this year without it. Here's looking forward to a better growing season next year. :)

*edited to mention that as Matthew looked at this post with me, he turned to me and asked, "Can we go plant something?" Clearly planting seeds is his FAVORITE part!

kinderGARDEN Thursday: week 11

It has been truly hot and miserable around here. Matthew hasn't had any interest in the garden, except to add more dirt that he's dug out of the dog wallow.

Which has really made our participation a sham in this contest, but that's how it goes with high temps and 4 year olds.

I believe all the radish infestation is aphids, not that I've ever had them before. But it was truly gross. Many plants (10 at least) have said adiou and been burned, along with single leaves. I think we have the situation under control. Some squash plants have more light and I have seen good bugs like ladybug larve and ladybugs and assassin bugs tooling around, so things seem to be going along alright, for now.

The new variety of green bean is blooming prettily. The 1 plant of the old variety has given us some green beans. We might have enough to have a couple beans each now.

Boy, the garden really looks small with me in it. *photo by Matthew

Here he is doing the only other thing he likes to do in the garden right now, get wet.



We have yard long noodle beans growing. I should measure their growth, cause it's fast too.

Here's our macro shot. I can't wait for the 20+ tomatoes to mature.

We are getting sunflower heads growing. I'd say the sunflowers are around 6'5" tall. But that's a guess at this point.

Although aphids seem to love these plants, I love them too for their beauty and the fact that every time I find a squash bug, they are camping out on the radishes. Different plants have different bloom colors, white to dark purple.

I'm in love with the noodle beans blooms too.

I'm officially throwing up my hands with the strawberry seeds. I've gotten them all to sprout and grow and then try to burn up in the sun and heat and now I have a tree frog wallow in the pot. Obviously this isn't my year for strawberries!

To see what other families are doing in the garden go here.
To see our post from last week, that we didn't get linked in time, go here. It talks about the beginning of the aphid saga.