High Society...

The Artist!

More Weekend Updates

I had a few posts I'd hoped to get up during the week, and alas we've passed through another weekend and here it is Monday again. Well, I guess there's always this week.

Piper had a fun weekend. On Saturday, she went to McRea's 1st birthday party and had such fun. She especially enjoyed playing with Sallie and Whitney's homemade strawberry cupcakes. I asked her what was the most fun part of the party and she told me, "I play laugh and scream with Sallie".

Sunday, she went to a birthday party for one of her friends from school, Meg, at Bounce Around. She'd never been to this place before, but she walked right in the door, kicked off her shoes, and took off running! It took her a little bit to build up the courage to go down the big inflatable slide, but once she found her courage and did it once, she found it hard to stop!

This morning when she woke up, she told us she wanted to go to a party and eat cake. I think she was hoping for three days in a row...can't blame her. All this talk about birthday party's has led her to start asking quite frequently, "My happy birthday coming up?"

Weekend Updates

Saturday, I went to set the little guy on his tummy for some tummy-time and he rolled over so fast onto his back and just had the biggest smile on his face. We couldn't believe it. Of course we tried several more times, but after his big accomplishment, he just laid on his tummy with his head on the floor. I guess that big burst of energy wore the little guy out.

Piper has become a huge fan of chapstick. It has become our morning ritual. She waits for me to finish blow-drying my hair, and then she gets it out and applies a healthy amount onto her lips, cheeks and chin and then tries to lick what she can reach with her tongue (I think it's some sort of fruit flavored).

We have grass!! All this rain we've been getting I guess is doing the trick, but we have a faint hue of green across most of the areas we planted in the front and some lesser signs in the back. Yeah!!!!

Progress on the homefront-Continued...

This past weekend we planted the grass in the front and back of the house. Fortunately the weather was beautiful, as it ended up taking up most of the afternoon Saturday and Sunday to get finished. And we're getting lots of rain this week, so hopefully we will start to see some little green patches poking out of the ground really soon.

Next on the list:

• Researching ground covers to plant on one side of the house where there is a slope that lends itself to lots of erosion. Open to suggestions if anyone has any.
• On the other side of the house we are going to build a small retaining wall to finish it off a bit and to provide a flat landing off the deck stairs. Then we'll plant grass over there too.
• Do some landscaping around the front of the house, shrubs, flowers, etc.
• Build a small structure to house some of our outdoor supplies and a cover for the tractor. Not sure what that's going to be just yet.
• Plant our garden. We've tilled up the spot we are going to use and prepared the ground. Hope to start planting in the next week or so.
  

Hopefully we'll have some updates of pictures with all our outdoor projects flourishing in the very near future.

Progress on the homefront!

Spring project abound at our house right now! Glad warmer weather is on its way. We've started a few of the projects at the top of our list to work towards being more self-sustaining and making the best use of the land we have.

First on the list was planting fruit trees. We did this about a month ago. In total we planted 10, 2 each of peach, plum, pear, cherry and apple. So far so good, and we even have a few blooms on the peach trees. The trees are about 1-2 years old, so in about 3-4 years they should be up to their peak production and hopefully we will have lots of fresh fruit. Piper loved helping us plant them and made sure she brought her wheelbarrel and shovel for the work.

Boone just enjoyed a nice day outside.

Piper also enjoys helping us water them, and Osten even helped last time he was here to visit.

Next we stocked the pond. We got three kind of fish, 300 bluegill/shellcracker, 100 channel catfish and 5 sterile grass carp. Right now we have to feed them each day (its kind of like having a huge fish tank, only it's outside). Piper also like to help with this and you usually don't have to ask twice if she wants to go with you to feed them. If these do well, we should be adding some additional fish in the summer and then if all goes well will be able to start fishing by this time next year.

Rice cereal...yummmmmm.