Monday Morning Bullet Points

• We're home from a whirl-wind vacation, spending a few days with Daniel's brother and his wife.

• I am not convinced that a "dry pail" (for diapers) stinks less than a wet pail. I tried a dry pail last week with a loose lid on top. Whew-wee, the ammonia like odors that wafted out threatened to singe my nose-hairs! I used mostly cloth diapers while we were gone, chucking the dirty ones into a plastic grocery bag, that too is emanating terrible, nose-hair-singeing odors.

• I haven't gone out to look at my garden since we got home, but the squash and zucchini plants in the kitchen grew 5-6" while we were gone!

• Our cats have fleas. Our cats are all outside, but the fleas jump onto us and come inside. GRRR. I need to try and treat the kittens (and adults) again and hopefully the mama cat won't lick it off this time.

• More rain is on it's way! The sky is getting darker and it's very rumbly. I should probably get off here and grab a few more things from the car before the skies open up.

• The highchair fits in the dishwasher. It's in there because Susannah threw up in it three whole times yesterday. I don't know why, though.

• Typing one more bullet point meant it's raining now. On my garden =D Yay!!!
  

Tuesday Afternoon Blog Fodder

• In gardening this year I am rediscovering muscles I forgot I had. Many nights Tylenol or Ibuprofen is my BFF. Because if I don't take any I just lie awake aching and tossing and turning trying to get comfortable.

• I must be getting old. I don't like getting old. I like being about 21 or 2 or 3, instead of being 26. And a half. *crosses eyes and sticks out tongue* It's all in how old you FEEL, right? In that case, most nights I feel about 75.

• My garden is coming along quite nicely, though! I can't wait to do an update post later this week :)

• We got our tax refund. A very hefty one. We might need to have more kids.

• No, I'm not pregnant.
  

• I don't recommend having kids just for the sake of keeping more of your money. You should only have kids if you really WANT kids.

• I haven't gotten any further in my spring cleaning since I finished the kitchen. I thought about doing the bathroom this afternoon. Thought.

• The addition is coming along ve. ry. slow. ly. I'm not sure if Daniel's work is going to have a slow time this spring... it seems like it jumped from winter-busy to summer-busy. But busy is not a bad thing. Unless you want to work on the addition :)

• It all boils down to time and money, and you can't have both at the same time.

• I have lots of stuff I want to blog about but this'll have to do for now.
  

• I need to go get some meat outa the freezer for supper, and get started on that.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Susannah and I went to MOPS yesterday morning, and when we got home we hit the ground running. We hurried through lunch and then headed out to the garden to get some much needed work done.

Last week we were finally able to borrow the tractor and big tiller, and Daniel tilled the rest of the garden. I forgot to ask him to add a new stripe or two to the (far) end, so he'll do that before we return the tiller.


Yesterday my #1 goal was to get my broccoli and cauliflower plants in the ground. I started them from seeds - my first year starting everything - and we'll see how they do! I didn't realize I had twice as many cauliflower plants as broccoli - 14 cauliflowers and 8 broccoli. This is also my first year for growing either of these so we'll see how it goes.

My #2 goal was to get some greens in the ground. From left to right:
(2) rows of head lettuce
(2) rows of Romaine lettuce
and then the 3 close together rows are beets, spinach and beets.
I assume the beets and spinach will do ok like that :) They don't require as much space as the lettuces, so after I planted the 2 rows of beets I decided the spinach would fit perfectly right down the middle.

It took me two weeks of working on it here and there, but I finally got all the pea fence up. We use fence panels which are MUCH easier to handle than box-wire. It is a hefty investment up front because they are not cheap, but they should last all of my gardening lifetime and beyond. This year I doubled the amount of peas and we were blessed with the opportunity to buy more t-posts and panels very inexpensively from a farmer who wasn't using them anymore.
(A top item on my Christmas list this year is going to be a post driver!! My arm muscles and wrist got way more of a workout than I ever wanted, pounding those posts in with a sledgehammer!)

After I finished all the planting I had a little daylight left and decided to start pulling the weeds from the first row of peas. There was about a foot-wide strip on one side that hadn't been worked at all this year and I managed to get all the weeds pulled from that before it was time to quit. It looks so much better now!

I have pepper plants eager to get into the dirt, tomatoes are waiting for consistently warm temperatures, and I started some eggplant last week. I need to get squash and zucchini started, and I need to get beans planted very soon, too.

This is the biggest garden I've done in a while - I hope I can keep up with it and help it produce all that I want to get from it. Of course only God can make it grow and bear!

I am linking to Phoebe's Frugal Gardening 101 Series - 3 moms sharing their frugal gardening experience! Check it out!

Some Days...

As long as it isn't poisonous...

... or dangerous...
... whatever keeps her busy and happy is fine with me!!

(Somebody was doing some cleaning and donated their "leftovers" to me since they no longer need them. They haven't gotten further than the kitchen floor.)

This weekend I'm decorating a baby shower cake, and Daniel has been gone all day and will not be home for a while yet. Thus the "if she's happy, I'm happy I can work on the cake" status of things around here!

*Under normal circumstances I wouldn't let her play with such things :)

PS - I'm disappointed in the uploaded quality of these pictures. I'm not sure what the deal is, but I don't have time to play with it now.

It's Been A Long Week

This week has been full of ups and downs... and hopefully we're on the up side instead of the down side! Monday I woke up feeling fine but by mid afternoon I had a whopper of a sore throat. Strep has been going around here lately and I was hoping very much that wasn't what I had. I self-medicated with lots and lots of Pineapple Juice. On top of me feeling bad, Susannah had an ear infection and was feeling pretty cruddy herself. We were both miserable. Needless to say, we functioned on the bare minimum all the way around most of the time.

On Tuesday Susannah was fussy all.day.long, and even more so in the evening. Then right before her bed time she perked up and was wide awake and wanted to be UP. I put her to bed but she just would not go to sleep. After several attempts to get her to settle down and go to sleep, I went in and snuggled with her in the rocking chair. She didn't want to snuggle, she wanted to wiggle. Then I put her in the bed and sat in the chair. She wiggled around and managed to sit up by herself... and then with lots of effort and repeated tries, she pulled up all by herself! Her first time doing it all by herself :)


That meant that project "lower the mattress sometime soon" immediately became "do it tonight yet". By the time that was done and she actually laid down and went to sleep it was 11pm.

Friday Susannah finally resumed eating her normal amounts of food again - whew! I was afraid she was going to dry up and blow away, she was eating so little (or so it seemed). And she's also acting her normal self again which is nice.

Last night I went to bed VERY early and a long night's sleep did wonders. I wasn't tired today and got quite a bit done. I made 2 batches of bread, too. The second batch I experimented, trying to imitate some store-bought herb flavored bread and I think I nailed it on the first try! My MIL even said I had it right, and she's the one who buys the store-bought version :)

Tonight Susannah went to bed late (we had company stop by) and I need to get to bed very soon. I think we'll all be getting baths in the morning so I need to get to sleeping so I can get up early and get all of that done.

Ugh... and I just remembered I washed a load of laundry that needs to go in the dryer!

So, yeah... we're still alive over here! And hopefully I'll stay that way if I can keep from coughing my lungs out :)