Friday, May 1, 2009

Garden Update!!

Our little garden is growing!! We have been working hard weeding and watering, and tending every day! Momo was helping me pull weeds Thursday afternoon.

Kristen was checking out the corn!




Here are our beans! We started these from seeds.

Our peas were from seeds as well!

Our little corn stalks!



Momo hiding in the tree!! The perfect place for a Momo Monkey!


While I was out weeding this afternoon, I spotted our first little baby squash!! Upon looking closer, I found several more on all the plants! It won't be long until we are eating our fresh veggies and we can't wait!!


A Relaxing Night!

Thursday night after all the bread baking and jam making, I was given a new hairdo by Momo!! She insisted on taking pictures of the me for the blog...so here I am!! Thanks Alison, we love the bows!!

This is my head under the bows!




Momo also took a funny self picture!! Gotta love the freckles and blue,blue eyes!

Randy had been working outside all day and was tired too. He was soaking his foot ( the one with a torn tendon) in Epsom salt.....I guess it was very relaxing! He was sound asleep!

A few minutes later, Ian and Maggie crashed together too! Momo was snoring on the other end of the couch with her head in my lap so you just see her feet!

A nice relaxing end to a busy day!

STRAWBERRIES! STRAWBERRIES!!



We decided to go to a strawberry farm Wednesday morning. The one we had planned to go to was out of berries so we went to the Bamboo Farms in Savannah. We had a great time! Heather went with us too. The kids wanted to look at the big fish in the pond before we started picking.



Fish and turtles!!







We were all excited when this little baby turtle swam up! It looks bigger in this picture but.....





in this one you can tell how tiny it really was!








Ian's favorite thing is strawberries so he was very excited to see the huge patch!



















































We picked for about 45 minutes and ended up with about 25 POUNDS of berries!!!








Some of the berries after we got home and started washing them!! YUMMY!




We froze 3 gallon size Ziploc bags full! Thursday morning, we started working on strawberry jam! Kristen made us a great strawberry banana smoothie for lunch!



The first batch of jam!



A bowl full of fresh strawberries, strawberry smoothies and homemade strawberry jam!!








The second batch of jam in the pot!

We ended up with 24 8 oz jars of jam!! It is so good! I also made 3 loaves of bread Thursday too! That evening, Stephanie and her kiddos came over to hang out. That was nice since things have been so hectic around here, we haven't seen each other as much as normal. We grilled burgers and just chatted.


Roses, Saying Good Bye and a Family Day!

Remember a few posts back I posted pictures of the buds on my rose bush? Well, here are some of the blooms!!! There were 4 HUGE blooms that were so pretty!








Thursday, we just hung out with Alison and her family while they packed up and prepared to leave Friday morning. I couldn't help but snap this picture of Jadziah and Momo....kinda look like their mamas, huh?

Alison, Eric, Noah, Declan, Jadziah and Taejan left Friday morning. We had so much fun with them and really enjoyed the week. It was really neat to finally meet in person after talking for all these years!! As soon as they left, we began to get ready for more company!! My sister, brother in law and two nieces arrived Friday night for the weekend!! Saturday, Johnny, Erin and Jacey joined us for a cook out. I didn't take many pictures but I did have to sneak a few of Jacey!! Momo and Jacey!



Here is my niece, Miss Nicole, also known as Coco!! Isn't she just a doll?

Erin and Johnny needed to run an errand so they let us babysit Jacey for a little bit. Kristen was thrilled!!

I just love this picture of John John, Jacey, Ian and Kristen. It is so sweet, Ian was rubbing Jacey's little head and softly saying " sweet Jacey, sweet Jacey". I think this captures the sweetness of the moment....





My newest hobby is baking bread using my new bread machine and my whole wheat flour which I am milling myself!! I bought a bucket of whole wheat kernels and am using my friend's mill to mill the wheat into flour. I have had a lot of fun experimenting with different recipes and the bread is so yummy!! This is the first wheat loaf I made this past Monday night!! Kristen and I stayed up late waiting for it to come out of the machine so we could try it out!!


Kristen says "MMMMMMMMMMMM"!!!!


We have also gotten back into our school lessons this week and we went to coop on Monday. We only have one more coop day for this year and about 3 weeks of school lessons left until we take a summer break!