Monday

I'd had all these plans for today but my friend, Teresa introduced me to My Town on Facebook and all those plans went out the window. Stupid Facebook games.

My big win, however, was that I finally got the kids' bathtub unclogged. It's so nice to see water finally swirl down the drain and actually disappear. Yay me. I think Wednesday is toilet day. I need to replace the innards of the toilet in the master bath. It's just worn out and just runs and runs. I finally had to turn the water to it off. It's just laziness that I haven't fixed it before now. If I could just figure out how to get the cover off the light in our bedroom, I could actually have real light in there. *sigh*

We started plotting out our summer and plugging in definite dates. Daniel's Webelos camp is in July and Jacob has Boy Scout camp for 10 days in June. He's so excited...I'm getting seriously upset. It makes me sad. He becomes an official Boy Scout later this month. Where has the time gone?

I ordered a few plants from Spring Hill Nursery the other night. Of course, they won't be delivered until it's time to plant them but I'm excited. I ordered a coneflower grab-bag for the back garden. I'm really excited for that garden. This is the 4th summer for that garden and things have spread out so nicely. The black-eyed susans are the best part of the whole thing. They cover the whole middle. I've never been able to get daisies to grow so they died off a few years ago. The coneflowers have done well and they do well with very little watering. I can't wait to see how my roses do this year. I always get compliments on them. I just hope my Russian sages come back. I accidentally hit them with some Roundup last year and they all but died.

I'm also excited for the strawberry plants I ordered. I can't seem to grow a vegetable to save my life so I thought I'd try some fruit. My tomato planters from last year will grow petunias or something this year. Why can't I grow veggies?!?

We finally got the date for Daniel's second opinion...in July. We're on the list to get in earlier, so hopefully we will.

Two more days until Spring Break. :)

Mid-week Post

Yesterday was the last MOPS meeting of the semester. It was sad because it was Hannah's last MOPS ever. Her teachers (the church has staff sitters that work daily) and I were sad but she was like, "see ya!" LOL! I'm considering a Bible Study over the summer so she'll probably get to see her teachers for a few more weeks anyway. For the last meeting, they set up a Spa Day. It was nice. They had people there to make us mochas and lattes, manicures and pedicures and facials. Of course, mochas are not on my diet but that didn't stop me from having two. I simply cannot turn down a peppermint mocha.


We also did the Secret Sister reveal and I found out that I was completely wrong about who my secret sister was. I thought it was Lori from my table and it turned out to be Maggie (like you know who Maggie or Lori are!) She gave me a Starbucks gift card and a great bag that you can put photos on the side of. It was funny because I was wondering why she was all over me as soon as I walked through the door, I mean, I have really just gotten to know her in the past month or so. The girl that I was secret sister for was very...ummm...unappreciative. "Thanks for all of the little things," she said to me. Uh, okay. Have a nice day.


My table has decided to get together, at least, on the Tuesdays that we would have had MOPS over the summer. We figure that we've already got that block of time empty so it's perfect for meeting. It'll be strange not sitting with them next year.


We've gotten most of the yard planted for the year. I'd like to mulch the beds but I don't know when I'll get to that. With all of the perennials that I planted last year, there wasn't a lot to plant. I did fill up the planters with annuals and put some around the front of the house. I need to get out and weed. It's hard to tell what's weeds and what's not since there are so many real plants coming up. I did mark where I'd planted perennials but they disappeared over the winter. I figure I'll wait another month or so to do the real heavy duty weeding unless it's clearly a weed.

Weekend Update

I had my Women's Retreat this past Friday and Saturday. It was hosted by the church that hosts my MOPS group. The theme was Loving Well by Beth Moore I had never been on a retreat before so I wasn't sure what to expect. What was kind of funny was that I was more concerned with the fact that I knew the food (and, wow was there food) there wouldn't be on my diet. LOL! (I managed to do pretty well, though. I only gained .4 pounds from Friday's weight and still managed to be down almost 6 pounds for the week!) All in all, it was fun, insightful and I've become better friends with some of the girls. I'd love to do another Beth Moore study. She's crazy funny.

I got home late Saturday night and got to hear about how the rest of the family's weekend went.

Mike took the kids to Topeka on Saturday for a Tae Kwon Do tournament. Long story short, they were good competitors. Hannah managed to pout her way into a trophy and the boys were skunked. They seemed to have a great time, though. They got together with some other families from our TKD school before, during and after the tournament which, I'm sure, was a good thing for Mike. Oh, and Mike took 2nd in form and 3rd in sparring. Not bad, I think.

Tomorrow, Hannah has her appointment with the audiologist. I talked with some girls at the retreat about it and I was surprised how many have had similar things happen. Luckily for them, it was easily fixed with ear tubes. Of course, my mind is going through every possible scenario for this. At this point, I just want to know what's going on, how bad it is and what we can do to fix it. Of course, it could turn out to be nothing. I should be happy that this appointment is happening so quickly after the first diagnosis. Otherwise, I would have driven myself completely insane.

We're supposed to get a freeze tonight. The kids and I brought all of the planters inside and covered up the marigolds I planted last week. I thought about covering some of the perennials and the zinnias (I can't believe my zinnias came back up!) but decided that if they've made it this far, they should be okay. I might pay for it...oh, for crying out loud...I need to go cover those up too.

I'll let ya'll know how Hannah does tomorrow. I need to go get some sheets out of the closet.

Rain, Rain Go Away...

It's raining...again. As of 10 minutes ago, we've had 1.5 inches today. It's so wet out here that many of the farmers are becoming concerned that they won't get planting done. I hope we get a break soon. The good news is that usually the rain comes with thunderstorms...which is really awesome.

Hannah's teacher, Mrs. M, asked if Ruby could come and visit her class this afternoon. I said that it was no problem. So, Ruby was demoted from first grader to preschooler. We have a little cage that we used to take her to Daniel's class and she's grown so much that she barely fits in it anymore. We knew that she had been growing but had no idea just how much. She didn't seem to mind all of the kids and was just as happy after coming home as she was before we left, so I guess that's a good thing.

Oriana's feeling better now. She's back to only occasionally needing to go out and back to hiding out under the kitchen table during meals. I didn't really miss that part. At least she's stopped pooping on the floor.

Hannah and I got a little planting done today. We cleaned up some of the beds and put in some double marigolds. I think they look really nice. What's shocking to me is that my zinnias from last year seem to have re-seeded themselves for this year. I have a ton of zinnias coming up. I'm going to have to go through and thin them out. I'm just so excited to have so many things coming up in the garden beds. I'm not going to have to plant much in the way of annuals at all. Still trying to figure out what to put in my hanging baskets this year. I wonder how impatiens would do in them. Hmmm. I've still got some time, though.

A Few Other Thoughts For A Thursday

I finally got around to getting rid of the 5-6' tall weeds that have been dead for a few weeks now. I just didn't know how I was going to do it (not having the motivation also didn't help). They came out a lot easier than I had anticipated. The freaky part was that there were about 20 grasshoppers living in the weeds. Nice. They were probably about 3 inches long and scared the heck out of me. They were more than confused as to why I was taking their home. There were also a couple of wolf spiders that were mad at me for disturbing the ground. I swear that one of them tried to stare me down. If it could have, I'm sure it's hands would have been on it's hips, yelling at me. They waited patiently for me to finish and then disappeared into the ground. LOL!

After the weeds, I decided to do something I've been wanting to do since we moved in. I got rid of two of the mini pine trees in the back yard. I hate those things. Luckily, they have really shallow root balls and came out with minimal effort. My neighbor, Kim, was in her backyard at the time and I asked her if she'd like the trees. She said, "heck no!" So, off they went into the brown landscaping bag. And I didn't even feel guilty about it. I have two more of those pine trees to remove and 4 small shrubs and I'll be happy. But I'm not doing that until fall.

Deb...you were right about the compost pile. I've been putting the clippings and dead headings in a pile and turning them a few times a week. Every day, it seems like there's more and more dirt and less actual garden waste in there. Too cool.

Pretty Pretty Flowers

I've been working really hard on the yard this year. It's not how I want it, but this is my first growing season here, so I've got time. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how it's been coming out. I've also learned what I like and what I don't in the yard. I just had to share some pictures (click photos to make them bigger). And, yes, I know I've got some weeding to do! LOL!

The backyard patch. This is where our monarch waystation will be. It looks better in person.

It's hard to see the flowers, but I've planted all annuals here. The ornamental grass came with the house.

This is my favorite part of the yard. In the spring, I got those rolly flower mats and this is what came up...zinnias, marigolds, black-eyed susans, just to name a few. It took almost two months for everything to bloom but it was worth the wait!

I let the kids pick out flowers to put in the empty bed by the driveway. The petunias (these are regular and not the wave) are going nuts! In the middle is a blushing bride hydrangea.

The hedge roses I planted along the side of the house. They're not fully mature yet but they are still pretty. Our newest addition...Hopper. We picked him up at the botanic gardens in Omaha. He happily guards a patch in the front yard.

Got Ragweed?

This Spring, I planted those rolly flower seed mats both in front and back of the house. The back didn't produce much but the front has really given me a lot of flowers. There were a lot of tall green plants that hadn't produced anything yet, but I thought that I'd just wait and see even though something told me that it wasn't a flower. Hmmmm. Out of the blue, I Googled weeds this morning and up popped my green stems under the heading "Common Ragweed." Knowing how much is out there, I grabbed some gloves, a big garden sack, popped a Claritin and put on some long sleeves. You know just how much was out there? Enough to actually fill one of those large paper garden bags almost to the top. There were several (6 to be exact) plants living close to the pool (I wonder if this is why Hannah's been having a lot of breathing issues). I think I heard each of my flowers say "thank you" with each of the plants I pulled (I probably pulled 30). Oh, just for future reference, you can see what it looks like here. My plants looked exactly like this, although not as wide and bushy.

Now, I only had the ragweed where I had planted the flower mats. My assumption is that there were ragweed seeds in the mats. So, if you have planted these mats, check for ragweed! Can you take Benadryl on top of Claritin? I think I need to go take another shower.

Jacob's Beans

Jacob's beans have finally begun producing. We didn't get a big harvest but it was enough for everyone to try some. Jacob's all about trying veggies if we grew them (otherwise forget it). There are more and more blossoms everyday on his plants and Daniel's so maybe we'll get a bunch more. Mike was highly impressed with Jacob. I just can't wait for the green peppers and tomatoes to get done!

Here's his first crop...

Weekend Gardening

It is so sad and dreary outside today. It is trying to rain but it just can't get it together to do it. Humidity is at 88% so it's not fun to be outside. I'm hoping we get some thunderstorms (there's a chance) today but I'm not counting on it. We had some storms roll through the other night (around 2am) with very little rain. The lightning was amazing. It was so constant that it looked like someone playing with a flashlight.

Friday and Saturday, I spent a lot of time weeding and tending to my gardens. My back rectangle looks awesome and the day after I weeded in there, it seems like the plants doubled in size. So cool.

I almost lost one of my tomato plants. I usually water them about twice a week unless they look like they need more. Thursday, they really looked like they needed water, so I watered away. I discovered the hard way that I forgot to pull the drain plug out of the bottom of the container when I planted them and Friday, I woke to very wilty tomatoes. I really wanted to cry. I pulled the drain plug out and it emptied for about an hour. Saturday, it still hadn't perked up but the main stems were still nice and green. I figured I couldn't hurt anything so I grabbed some shears and began cutting the heck out of it. I only left the stems that looked like they were getting blossoms or had the start of tomatoes. Sunday, I checked it and not only had the whole thing completely perked back up but there were tons of blossoms on it. Apparently, it liked being cut back.

Jacob's beans and my green peppers are also doing really well. I have one pepper that's about half done and several others that are coming out. Jacob's got a bunch of beans on his plants that are just going and going. I thought we'd lost one of his plants, too, because we had a big windstorm last week and it bent the main stalk to the point it cracked down by the dirt. Jacob was really upset about it. I told him that I would try to save it but couldn't guarantee anything. I packed more dirt up and around the area that cracked and secured the plant really well to the trellis. I figured if the plant was going to die, we'd know in a few days. Well, not only did it not die but it's putting out more and more blossoms and is doing better than it was before. I just wish I knew what kind of beans they are! LOL!

Here's my back garden. It doesn't look like much now but some of the stuff has yet to bloom.
Yellow roses I planted because I couldn't plant a redbud
Jacob's pink roses.
One of my tomato plants that's going nuts.

Guillermo got himself a baby bunny last week, as well as a robin. We found the bird carcass but I have no idea what happened to the bunny. The only reason I even know he got one is because I saw him running across the yard with it. So sad. I'm just shocked that at his age and with no front claws he's able to hunt so skillfully. I did have to laugh yesterday when I saw him running across the backyard while three sparrows were dive-bombing him. Apparently, they've had enough of Guillermo. LOL!

The "lion" sleeps!

Working In The Yard

Yesterday, the kids and I headed up to Wal Mart...the original purpose was to get drinks because we were completely out of juice. I had told Dad that I was leery to plant much more than what I already had because my weather guy said that we should expect one more freeze before the end of the month but I couldn't help myself. I got two rose plants (Jacob picked out a purply-pink one and I picked out a yellow one) and we got some assorted annuals. Hannah picked out some light purple wave petunias and Jacob picked out a New Guinea Impatien. Daniel picked out a big yellowish flower that I had as an inside plant in Virginia but we planted it outside. They had some really pretty orangish-peach begonias that I think I may plant in the back if they still have them when I go back there. I completely forgot about the side of the house and need to figure out what I'm going to do there. Of course, it's going to take a little while to clean it out but I may just plant more petunias there.

For Sue: I went out to get the paper this morning and the headline I saw through the plastic wrapper on the paper was Sofa For Life. I thought of Sophia. I know, I'm a dork. LOL!

It's A Good Day

Seriously! It is because Sanjaya was finally voted off American Idol. It's about time. I do have to say that it'll be sad to not have his hair in the competition, though. I was really worried because the bottom three had Blake in it. So not cool. My guess is that so many people were voting for Chris that they didn't vote for Blake. I did tell Mike that if Blake had been voted off instead of Sanjaya (or Lakisha for that matter) I was done with AI. As soon as they sent Blake back to safety, I told Mike that I was glad that I could continue enjoying the show.

We caught the end of another good show, Thank God You're Here, since we went to a good Mexican restaurant after Tae Kwon Do last night. This has become Mike's favorite show. During one of the warm up rounds, they had the contestants pretending to be chefs promoting their new restaurant, The Buddha Baby. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have been funny, but we used to call Daniel 'Buddha Baby' when he was an infant. We all had a really good laugh about that.

I got the rest of the backyard done yesterday and got a few things planted. Some hydrangeas, daisies, pink coneflowers and black-eyed susans. It looks so sparse right now and I have to resist the urge to plant much more in there because I know that once they are full size, they'll be huge and will fill up most of the area. The hydrangeas alone are 4-5 feet across and high and there are two of them in there. I can't wait until midsummer when everything should be blooming...that is if I don't manage to kill everything off.

Wednesday Already?

Wow. Where has the week gone?

It's been hard for everyone to get back into the routine. It shouldn't be that hard after a little better than a week. I mean, it's not like it was summer vacation but it has been difficult.

The boys got their report cards yesterday. No big shock that Jacob is doing well in Reading. We were a little surprised that he got 2's (they are on a 1-2-3 scale...1=A, 2=B/C, 3=D/F...confusing because it's the opposite for Daniel!) in science and math but got +'s in most of the other subcategories. Daniel is doing better. His strong suit is math and managed to get several 3's (remember their scale is backwards) in some of the math areas. We got a report from the Reading Specialist but I'm having trouble reading it. We have conferences with everyone next week.

The grass is beginning to grow! I know that I've been completely obsessing about it...what sane person goes out with a flashlight at 11pm to see if anything's coming up?!? LOL! Seriously, though. I did that. And it may have actually been closer to midnight. Anyhoo...I was out watering the other day when Amy from the cul-du-sac (as opposed to Amy across the street) came over to tell me how much better the yard looks this year. I looked at her, looked at the yard, looked back at her and said, "really?" She then told me that the previous owners had pretty much killed off every blade of grass last spring. She said that for most of the summer, it was all mud. I don't know if they tried reseeding last spring or fall but I'm thinking that they did a fairly good job if there was nothing here last year. It's just so cool to look out and finally see little blades of baby grass growing where there was nothing two weeks ago.

I've been trying to divert my attention from the grass by working on the little garden areas around the yard. I've gotten two completely done and one has a few pansies planted (Jacob begged to plant a few) I've still got a lot of work to do on the flower beds before I can plant anything. Good thing nothing's set to go into the ground for a while because I really think it's going to take about 2 weeks, if not longer, to get everything ready.

Here is a picture of the Dora cake I made for Hannah's birthday today.
I'm pretty proud of it. I'm always amazed at myself when I make these and they actually look like what they are supposed to! LOL!

Planting Seeds

Jacob needed something to fill his "guess jar" for school on Monday, and after a week of thinking, we decided on seed packets. Jacob asked if we could get some seeds to plant ourselves and I said yes. Jacob planted some moonflowers and foxgloves while I got "kid sized" sunflowers (they only get about 32" tall) and snapdragons for Daniel and Hannah to plant. They loved it. They were good at filling up the cups, putting a hole in, putting in the seeds and then covering them up. The only thing I did was water. I can't wait to see what pops up!

Random Post

The people who used to live here receive an insane amount of catalogs. Most of them are dumb and they go right into the trash. But, every now and then, a good one comes and I take the time to look through it. This was the case yesterday.

It was some sort of organic gardening catalog. It had a lot of cool things in it...even though most of it was stuff I would never have (not saying I wouldn't love to have it)...containers to grow tomatoes upside down, raised beds (would love to have these) and that sort of thing. But, they had a 4-5 page spread on composting. I had a friend or two in VA that had these and I always wanted one. I think the boys would love to watch stuff turn into soil. Does anyone out there compost? If so, how do you start?

Poor Hannah has a mild cold. At first, I thought that it might be her asthma acting up but after talking to her, she has a tickle in her throat and her nose is running. She was hacking away around midnight last night and I went in to check on her. I hadn't been there for too long when she began throwing up. Everywhere. After settling her down, I ran the bath. At midnight. I have to say that I think this is the first time I've ever had to give a child a bath like this in the middle of the night, but I just couldn't let her go back to sleep with it in her hair. I changed her bedding and put her back to bed. She must have just been exhausted because she didn't get out of bed this morning until after 10. She's in good spirits, so I'm hoping that this blows over soon.

I've enrolled the kids in various activities through the park district. The boys wanted to take a break from baseball and will be starting Tae Kwon Do at the beginning of April. Two days a week. The nice thing is that they are in the same class, so I don't have to ferry them to several different classes a week. That's nice. I hope that they learn something from it. Daniel's excited to learn "ninja." LOL! Mike thinks they will get bored and will hate it...I think they'll like it. We'll see.

Hannah starts gymnastics and ice skating (yes, I said ice skating) at the end of the month. Both are once a week. She's really excited about ice skating and told the boys that she'd teach them too. We'll see how she feels after the first few classes. Ordinarily, I only let them do one activity per season, but since the boys were doing theirs twice a week, I figured it would be okay for Hannah to do two.

Southern Illinois plays KU (Kansas) tonight in their Sweet 16 game. I really want SIU to kick KU's ass, mostly because I'm tired of hearing our NBC affiliate sports guy talk about how KU is going to be really up against a wall with UCLA (neither has won their game yet). And, this guy is an SIU alum!!! He keeps going on about how SIU is a mid-major and don't have a chance against Kansas (umm...hello...remember Bradley in the FIRST round last year?!? We knocked KU off easily!) I'm actually looking forward to watching the game since they are televising it locally. 6:10, baby. I really hope Southern kicks some Jayhawk ass!!!! GO SALUKIES!!!!!! (that's for you, honey!!!)

After going back and forth for the past week, ABC decided to run a new episode of Grey's tonight. My Favorite Mistake is on at 8pm Central. I'm curious to see what happens in the aftermath of George/Izzy.