Mary, Mary Quite contrary

I am so surprised at how fast nature works. Our garden is growing by leaps and bounds and it is so nice that the kids enjoy it as much as we do.

The cucumber plants are doing really well. One in particular has grown much faster then the others and I think we will have to fence it in so it doesn't choke out the other cucmber plants or the totmato plant next to it.

I wanted Jack to be in the pictures so I could have a comparison to how big the plants have gotten since I last posted.

Jack was so excited that he spotted two tomatoes growing on this plant. You can see the big one on the top, but he also saw a smaller one on the inside which I didn't even see at first. I am a little surprised at how sturdy this little tomato plant is. The stalk is very rigid and it does not move even when you push it.

The sunflowers are growing by leaps and bounds. In another couple of weeks I am sure they will be taller than Jack. You can barely see the corn to the right of Jack, but these are the ones we grew from seeds and now they are huge. Andy even had to thin them out a little because all of them grew in and started getting large so quickly that there was hardly any room. I can't wait until we can actually start picking the vegetables and eating them. There is nothing quite like fresh corn or cucumbers or tomatoes.

Modifications to the playset

After a little persuasion, Andy did a little modification to the kids play set. It was open on the bottom where the sand box is and he was able to enclose it like a play house and put a hinged floor over the sand box so the kids can pull it up to play in the sand or leave it down to play in the house.


We used a closet door that was pre framed and cut it down to size to fit the height of the play set and then used the remaining pieces to make a window on the opposite side.

He put siding up on all sides except for the side with the table on it. The kids love having a place they can call their own and it gives them a little protection from the wind or cold when they want to play outside.
I am very impressed with how well it came out. Andy really did a good job.

Ravioli Face

Just some random pictures of what happens when you don't monitor Alex when he is eating anything mixed in with tomato sauce.

The Carlsbad Flower Fields

It was a little hard trying to come up with things to do while my mother in law was in town considering I had to work the majority of the time she was here, which is actually the whole reason she was here to begin with, but we managed to get out to the flower fields in Carlsbad. Neither of us had been there before and it seemed we came at just the right time as the fields were in full bloom. I have never seen that amount of flowers all in one place before.

It was pretty amazing. We took a tractor ride up and around the 40 to 50 acre lot of flowers and the kids really enjoyed that part. One of the employees at the field was nice enough to take a picture of us and I didn't even have to ask.


It was hard to get a picture because of the sheer size of the field, but this particular picture of the blue background with white spots is actually a floral rendition of the American flag. You can see the stripes in the background.

After the tractor ride we walked around to see the different attractions. There was a cute little Lego garden (pictured below) with little Lego flowers and a sweet pea maze for the kids to try to find their way through.

There was also a little playground for the kids and good for them, but unfortunate for me, there happened to be a couple of classes out for a field trip and so Jack and Alex got to play with them , but all I heard was mass chaos of thousands of kids and had a difficult time keeping track of my own. It was beautiful and the kids had fun so it was a success.

I would definitely suggest a visit if you are up that way, but try not to go when there are mobs of children... unless you like that kind of thing.

Doctor visit

I took the kids to the doctor today for their yearly checkup and they did very well. My mother in law is in town and with her assistance was able to wrangle both kids into the car and get them there in a timely manner. This is actually the longest time i have spent with them at the doctor and was afraid they would accuse me of child abuse to due to two freak accidents that had slightly mangled their normally beautiful faces.


Alex was first when he was trying to climb into a box and fell over and hit his nose and cheek on a scrap piece of wood while we were working on some modifications to their play set. Jack 's accident happened yesterday when he was out and about with Andy and his Mom in Old Town and for one second while Andy turned his head, Jack tried to climb forwards over the stroller using the shade as a balance. The shade collapsed and Jack tumbled forward hitting his chin and scraping his lip on the pavement and also running his front tooth into his lip causing a giant flow of blood. I only saw the after affects of his swollen chin that makes him look very cartoonish and his giant fat lip. Normally, his chin is more round and not quite so pointed.


So needless to say I was a little worried what the doctor would say, but since it takes forever to get an appointment I could not change it now. When the doctor saw both of their little bruised faces he just turned and said, "Is this normal?" Unfortunately, my answer was yes, because it seems that as soon as one hurt heals another one miraculously replaces it. Their poor little faces take the brunt of all their playing, clumsiness, and general inattention that leads to falling down, running into things, and dropping items onto themselves in such a way as to cause harm to themselves. Poor Alex has not developed a good sense of fear so he sometimes does the same destructive and hurtful things to himself over and over no matter how many times he is scolded or put into time out.

Back to the doctor visit, both were growing at a good rate and Jack passed his first eye and hearing tests with flying colors. He did everything the doctor asked him to do and was so good the entire time. Alex was a bit of a handful and we were referred to see a speech therapist to get an opinion on his lack of talking. He is a smart boy and understands everything I say to him, but refuses to speak words back to me. So we will see where that goes. They both had to get shots, Alex one and poor Jack had to get four. He certainly did not like the nurse after that and he kept crying to the nurse, "Please don't poke me again! Please!" It was the saddest thing in the world. As soon as he got the last shot and was covered in band-aids, he immediately asked if it was time to go.

As a treat for being so good we stopped at McDonald's and got some Happy Meals to go and took them to the park for a little picnic and some playing.

When sisters look too much alike

So I was putting in order all of the Scrap book pages I have finished for the year 2008 and Jack just happened to walk by and see a layout that I had done with the family photo that my sister had sent me in her Christmas card. This is that picture.


All I heard was Jack scream "Why are you holding that boy and not me?" and then he ran away crying. After a little coaxing and a better look at the photograph, Jack realized that the person holding the boy in the photograph was, in fact, not his Mommy, but his Aunt and calmed down enough to notice the tank in the picture. This was immediately followed by "Why wasn't I there?"

Update on our little Garden

So I have been trying a lot harder to get the plants in the new garden to grow, more so then I did last time when I let the weeds take over and then made a mistake by planting a yam, which overtook and choked out all the other plants. So the only destruction to this garden has been by a two year old who feels like it is necessary to run amok through the garden even though there is an entire yard to play in.

This is one of the surviving cucumber plants. Someone, I won't name names, but you know who you are, pulled two of the five out of the ground.
I am especially proud of the tomato plant partly because Andy doesn't like tomatoes and didn't want it to begin with and also because it is doing so well. It even has a little tomato growing already.
This corn was already grown when we planted it but has gotten much bigger. I would love to have fresh corn to eat right off the stalk.
These are corn too, but Andy grew them from seed so they are not quite as big as the others. They seem to be doing really well though. I think because they are in the part of the yard that gets constant sunlight.
Of course, these are the sunflowers growing in leaps and bounds. I think we may end up having to thin them out a bit so they grow bigger, but we'll see how they do.

I will be planting two more cucumber plants and hope they survive my two year old. Hopefully we will be able to get some vegetables soon. We did also plant some strawberries and onions. The strawberries aren't doing quite as well as I would like them to, but if they don't survive there is a giant strawberry field just down the road that we normally get our strawberries from, so we won't go without. The onions seem to be doing well, but it is hard to tell because the are under ground. The part above ground looks good.

This is the side of the house where we keep the garden. You can tell from the pictures that the ground is not very good for growing anything but weeds. It is filled with rocks and dry dirt with practically no nutrients in it. We put two bags of Miracle Grow soil in and mixed it up to give the plants a better chance. It is a very small garden as we save the majority of the yard for the kids to play. It is nice to have something green growing, especially when summer comes in full force and burns all the grass out and all we are left with is dirt.

We don't water the yard because it would need it everyday and it seems like such a waste when we are in such a water crisis. So we just let it die and the kids get to play in dirt for awhile until winter comes again and makes the grass grow. Sad that we are so backwards with the seasons. Things do better in the winter because there is rain and moisture and die in the spring and summer because it is so arid.