oh baby!

september 11th... not necessarily a day that stands out as "happy" for the average american.  but as of 2012, it's a good day for me.  september 11th 2012 is the day i welcomed my sweet daughter jellybean to the world.  7lb and 14oz of precious girliness packed into 20.5 inches.

Blog Resurrection...

after almost a year, i'm going to try to get back to my blog.  a lot has gone on over the last year and it's not getting covered today. 

i didn't get a chance to start my container vegetable garden this year as i've been too busy and preoccupied with this thing called "life" to have the time.

the small one just graduated from preschool - it was an adorable ceremony and my parents both made it to help celebrate. 

going to try to get 2012 beach badges today if i can find someone that has some.  time for the big 4th of july beach day!

that's all!

Strawberry Harvest Festival

so in the spirit of getting the kid out of the house for something a little more out of the ordinary, we decided to take him to a local-ish farm that i found online.  we weren't sure what he'd think of it but it turns out he had a GREAT time!

the corn castle (really a shed with corn kernels inside instead of sand) was ok and the bounce house was a hit (surprise, surprise!) so we did ok for the first couple of activities for the day. 

took some encouragement for pid to warm up to the very friendly farm animals. it actually took encouragement, the purchase of a bag of food for the animals and a few minutes of dad feeding them for pid to try it. he befriended a little white goat and fed it most of the veggies we bought. lucky goat.


after the animal feeding, we took a break for lunch and to rest a little before heading out to the strawberry patch to pick the berries. the hayride there was uneventful but once we got there, pid was very concerned that we would miss the hayride back. eventually he got into picking berries though. 


and boy did we get berries:

they were sweet and juicy and i made some fun things with them:  strawberry jam, strawberry curd, and strawberry shortcake. we also at lots and lots of fresh berries. a definite outing to keep on the list! fortunately they have various pick-your-own items through to pumpkins in the fall.

mmm... salad!!!

tonight's dinner features a salad with lettuce and tomatoes from my very own little garden. both are delicious and made even more so with the addition of some buffalo chicken bites! i'm so happy that my garden experiement has some successes in addition to the several not-quite-successes! can't wait until next year to try again!

From train of thought

Deeper Waters...

we finally got pid out into water that was a bit deeper this past weekend. he truly loves the lake but is pretty committed to the shallowest waters. as luck would have it, there was a friendly young boy from the neighborhood that owned this little floatie car deal in the picture below. he must've noticed pid eyeing it as he came and told my husband that they could use it. still stuck in the shallow end but loving the car, we eventually convinced him to venture deeper into the water and he had a blast! yay! i'm very much loving the decision to live near the lake. it's a great little bonus in nice weather!

First tomato, the reprise

It finally ripened!

Harvest!

wow!! i didn't get out to harvest yesterday due to heavy rain and thunderstorms so i went out this morning and lo and behold - cucumbers! they grew a lot in the last two days - good thing i didn't forget about them! i saw some more little ones, too. hoping those will grow well now that these aren't sapping energy! will update later on the taste of these two.

UPDATE - the boy approved of the cucumbers once sliced, however i felt they were a little bitter... not overly so, they were definitely edible! a link i found on causes of bitterness in cucumbers (http://www.hort.purdue.edu/ext/bittercukes.html) suggests that i might have better results if i water them more evenly and mulch them. might give that a go...