When my parents came to visit they bought miss L a couple of new books. One was Go, Dog, Go! and the other was The Tooth Book. Miss L has really enjoyed both of them since they came to our house and has been reading them even after we leave for the night. I love this photo of her completely racked out reading her book.
I love spring. In fact, I love most of the seasons, but I love living in a place where the seasons are all unique and present. This is a tree behind our house that actually no longer has blooms, but a week ago when I took this photo it was in full glory. Gorgeous tree with a gorgeous girl.
We celebrated Easter a little differently this year. Last year our precious Ben died the Monday before Easter and we had his service on Good Friday, so Easter itself got sort of washed up in all of that going on. This year was much different. For the first time I knew that miss L would enjoy receiving a basket on Easter morning with goodies inside and so I spent a bit of time collecting things for her and mister W and on Easter eve we filled them up.
Mister W has been really into balls lately and I knew that would be a big hit for him.
Miss L was just plain excited to see a basket full of stuff for her.
I think everyone was happy to see chocolate bunnies.
Miss L had her first taste of Pez.
...and then it was time for me to go. I played at two of the services at our church that morning and I had to get to church early. Brad got the kids dressed and took a couple of photos in our beautiful Easter gear.
Lately, miss L is into pretending lots of things. Mister W is just mostly into miss L, so he will go along with most any game she wants to play. He doesn't always do the best job of listening, but he does well enough to keep her interested in having him play. I have to say that I feel so very blessed that they are best of friends. I hope it always stays that way. On this day they were driving "cars" around.
When we moved in to our house we inherited a large garden in the backyard. The mulched bed was much bigger than we needed and required much more maintenance than we were willing to invest. So last fall we pulled the mulch out (along with what seemed like 1000 bulbs) and seeded the yard with grass. You might also remember that we cut down our peach tree, which we loved, but was diseased. We've slowly been getting the yard back in decent order and it is going to be even better than it was before. There is plenty of room to play and run in the grass and there are even some random bulbs left in the grass that we'll find as they come up. Brad started the vegetable garden a few months ago and it continues to do well but now we're tackling the other beds in the yard. Today it was the bed closest to the door. Brad has already designated a place that miss L can dig and call her own and she's planted a flower there, but the rest of it was looking pretty shabby. After a bit of research we decided to plant a butterfly garden in the remaining bit of dirt on that side of the yard. This morning we headed to the garden center to get supplies and came home to get to work.
The kids also got new shoes today. Miss L is helping mister W get his back on. His are easy to get on and off with one velcro closure. I had forgotten that easy off means toddler-constantly-taking-his-shoes-off but it all came rushing back to me when I watched him do it today. :o)
Here is Brad's vegetable bed. It's really not my thing, so I'm not 100% sure what's in there, but I do like eating it! There's definitely garlic in the front corner with onions, peas and carrots in there too. The marigolds are good pest protection and the butterflies will like them too!
Here are the flowers we purchased for the butterfly garden.
Here is the very sad before photo. The bed is overgrown with weeds and full of just junk. The first step was cleaning it alllllllll out.
Okay, this is ridiculous, but I am really excited about these shoes! She can wear them to the playground, with dresses and to the swimming pool!
I did put my gloves on, but to be honest, I really didn't do too much except watch the kids. :o)
Miss L needed some soil for her bed.
Mister W decided to try the new pots we'd purchased.
Brad got to do all the hard work today, taking things out of the bed. This was some rosemary. I have to admit it smelled so good having been disturbed.
Miss L worked diligently filling up her bucket with soil.
...and then dumped it over her flower in her garden.
After the cleanup was complete, mister W sat right down on the soil in front of Brad. He was dirty from head to foot by that point.
Here are all of the flowers laid out where they were supposed to go. We planted cosmos, zinnias, bee balm, butterfly weed, snapdragons, hollyhock, verbena and a couple of other things I think. They are all supposed to be butterfly attractors offering places for them to feed, reproduce and host plants for caterpillars. It seems kind of funny to buy plants for a caterpillar to eat, but I do hope we get a couple!
We brought the water table outside for the first time. The kids love that table, and they loved that all of the rules were suspended outside. They could go crazy!
James is becoming more and more an outside cat in his old age. He kept us company.
The final product looks pretty great! It looks full now, but it will fill out even more as the season progresses.
Here are some great shots of the vegetable garden too. Here are the peas.
...and the garlic.
...and the carrots.
See you next week!
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