My Vegetable Garden (So Far!)

Last year I had my first garden. I pretty much just stuck some plants in the ground (although I did add a bit to the soil), and it was very haphazard. I didn't even make nice neat rows for everything. It was fun, though, and a good learning experience. I got some crooked neck squash and quite a few tomatoes. This year I have read up some more on vegetable gardening (although I have a ton left to learn) and decided to make raised vegetable beds. We have only gotten one done so far, and will probably just make another one as we have time and energy this summer. This is the back corner of our yard. When my Mom was visiting she and Thomas helped me clear out the area- it was mostly weeds, but also some grass creeping back that way. So, this is what I started with:

In the meantime, I planted some seeds in starter peat squares since it was time to plant. This year I planted cantelope (we just dried these seeds from a cantelope we had!), green peppers, cherry-sized tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, green beans and cucumbers. My tomatoes didn't come up for a while, but now have finally come up. We'll see if they end up surviving. I went to my mother-in-law's to pick up the children one day and I mentioned that my green peppers weren't growing, and next thing I knew we were downtown Bethune (SC) picking out some plants. I ended up getting a bunch of pepper plants (including a red and yellow one) and 2 strawberry plants and Nathaniel eyed a watermelon plant, so I said "Why not!" I may have gotten in over my head - we'll see!

We had a bunch of these bricks that lined the lawn area and separated it from the natural (pine trees) areas in our back yard when we moved in. There was something about the backyard that I didn't really like, but couldn't really put my finger on for a while. I finally realized that I felt like our yard was too divided - that there were too many "sections" of the yard. So, I took the bricks off of one side, and I like it much better. I realized the bricks would be great for raised vegetable beds! This way the kids don't walk on the plants or soil, we put in some good soil for the plants, and it looks nicer. This one is 23 feet long!


So today I FINALLY got my plants into the vegetable bed. It is exciting to see it filled with plants and I can't wait to see how my garden does this year!

To Mommy from Hannah Beth

Hannah Beth came up to me one day and gave me this piece of paper and said that she was giving me some math problems. I was very impressed - Hannah Beth is in preschool and they have worked on writing numbers and counting, but have not done any math problems. I often do math problems orally with Hannah Beth to help her understand the concepts of addition and subtraction (for example, I'll ask her, "If you have 4 apples and I give you 3 more, how many do you have?") and she does quite well with that. She plays with my calculator and she knows how to add numbers together on it and press the equals sign, so that is the only way I can think of that she knew how to write them out!


This one may be hard to read...

... unless you read it from the bottom up! She gave this to me a couple of days ago and told me what it says - "Open it on Mother's Day"! I love how Hannah Beth sounds out and writes words. She can read simple words, and we've talked about one vowel and two vowel rules, sh, th, ch, and a few other things, but she still sounds things out really slowly. I think she could probably do a lot more with reading, but I haven't really pushed her (she still has a whole year of kindergarten ahead of her!). But when she is ready, I have a feeling that she'll really take off.

Charleston

A few weeks ago (hmmm - maybe more than a few now!) Thomas hosted some meetings and some folks came from all over the US. We offered for any who could to stay and enjoy seeing more of SC, and a few took us up on it. We stayed in Murrells Inlet (near Myrtle Beach) and spent a great day exploring Charleston. I LOVE Charleston, and never get tired of going. Thomas and I also got engaged there over 8 years ago, so it holds special memories of that time as well. The kids stayed with Grandma and Pop so it was a nice get away for me to hang out with adults for a few days!

Our First Lost Tooth

About 3 weeks ago, Hannah Beth told me that her tooth hurt a little. I felt it and it was slightly loose. She was pretty excited about that, but over the last few weeks I hadn't seen her playing with it or wiggling it. I kept wanting to wiggle it to see how loose it was, but she only let me do it ocassionally. Last night as I was getting dinner started, the kids were eating a snack (hmmm - maybe that is why they didn't eat much of anything for dinner...) and Hannah Beth and Nathaniel were playing with their goldfish crackers. Then Hannah Beth came over to me, a bit upset, and was saying something about being sorry because she was just playing but accidentally ate something she wasn't supposed to. I looked at her as she was talking and there was a little blood, and her tooth was gone! I finally figured out that her tooth must have just fallen out and she thought she had accidentally put something in her mouth that wasn't food. But then I couldn't find the tooth for a while so I wondered if she had swallowed it. Finally I found it on the floor (and then saved the dinner from burning).


We had talked about the tooth fairy after her tooth fell out, and Hannah Beth called a number of friends and relatives to tell them about her lost tooth. She was very excited! Then a little while later she asked me if the tooth fairy was real. I asked her what she thought, and she said she didn't know. I knew she was thinking about it, so I told her just to give me her best guess. She said that she didn't think it was real and that maybe the Mommies and Daddies came and took the tooth and threw it away and put money under her pillow. We talk about the Tooth Fairy, Santa Clause, etc. but I certainly don't push those things as very important. Hannah Beth has always wanted to know the truth and has asked me straight out about them, so I have always told her the truth (and she has been totally fine with it).

Our little girl is growing up! Another stage of life - a cute smile with missing teeth! :)

Another project for Thomas and Me

Can you guess what this stuff is and what project we were working on?

All of a sudden our water started heating up super hot - hotter and hotter until it flipped the breaker (or whatever it is called) on the water heater. So Thomas and I decided to try to learn how to fix a water heater! I was feeling quite overwhelmed and that maybe we were getting in over our heads this time, but we really did learn a lot and once we got into it, it wasn't quite as overwhelming. Things didn't go perfectly - it took about 3 or 4 days (not entire days, usually evenings) of work. Thankfully our water heater still heated the water fine, so we had hot water to use (we just had to be careful and keep the kids away from the faucets). We switched out one of the thermostats and still had the problem. We then changed both elements out. While getting started on that we thought we had the tank drained but found out we didn't - the hard way. Thankfully we didn't have too much on the ground and were able to quickly move a couple of boxes out of the way of the flood. We still aren't sure what we did wrong with that, but now we knew the tank was really empty! The other thermostat was showing that it was working so we eventually had to call someone to come look at it after all that work. He said that all our work looked good and he was stumped! He said he'd replace the other thermostat just in case, but he didn't think that was it, and then we'd need an electrician to come look at the wiring. At that time we discovered something weird with one of our electrical breakers going out to the pool pump, and fixed that issue, so we are not sure if that had anything to do with our water heater problem, but after that it was fixed! It made us feel good that all of our work was done right and we learned a lot in the process!

Tooling Around

For a while, my kids really got into using tools. They have play toys that they were using all over the house. Nathaniel started this kick (for a change - usually he follows whatever Hannah Beth is doing) and Hannah Beth joined in. Thomas and I were working on a few projects around the house, so maybe that inspired it.

I must confess.... there was a chair in our breakfast nook that was not very stable and needed some work. It was where I always sit, so it constantly bothered me. Thomas said he could fix it, but as we do with so many things, it kept getting put off. I didn't want to nag him.... so one day I just moved it to his spot. Amazingly, in just a few days he was fixing the chair! :) So the kids had to run and get their tools and help Daddy out!

So we wouldn't wind up with a bunch of dented walls and furniture I sent the kids to work outside as often as possible. It worked out well (except our neighbors may not have appreciated all the pounding on our fence)!

I'm back...

I know it has been forever since I've posted. I really do think about it a lot! I will try to get better about posting regularly. I like the idea of being able to go to this blog later and having an online journal of what has been going on in our lives. So, I have some pictures of things I've been meaning to blog about and will go ahead and highlight some of those things in a few posts to catch you up on where we've been and what we've been doing.