Heading South

When Dad got off work Sunday morning, we finished loading up, and headed South. It's been over 2 years since we took a trip, so this was both Elizabeth's and Rebekah's first family vacation! Our destination: the beach!

Along the way we got some courthouse photos for my courthouse book. Some I've probably taken before, but we went ahead & took another as we drove past, just in case. Milam County Courthouse in Cameron:


While Rebekah ate, Dad rang the bell and took David & Elizabeth on a walk and I took photos out the window.


The Burleson County Courthouse was a drive-by in Caldwell:

We drove past the ruins at Independence, I sang Up With the Purple, and then stopped at the Antique Rose Emporium. Alan & I had pooled our birthday monies to buy plants for the house, so I picked out an Old Blush and a fragrant rose called Maggie. It smells like Rose Milk. Alan picked up a River Sage.


Traveling on... Washington County Courthouse in Brenham:

and the Austin County Courthouse in Bellville:

We finally arrived at Kalaya's house in time for supper. She'd been filling the pool the last few days & the kids were all eager to go for a swim. Her girls got cold & got out before I could get the camera unloaded. My kids didn't want to get out! And it was cold!

And the babies slept. They're 5 weeks apart.

Oh wait, Rebekah's eyes are open! She enjoyed being out of the car anyway! And she also travelled very well, too!

I found a message in my garden...

A large part of my "garden area" is still uncultivated, and covered with Bermuda grass. Yesterday, I discovered that someone had left a message in my garden. Was it aliens? Nope, it was my husband and his infamous Round-Up sprayer:

Wasn't that SWEET?!?!? Seriously, it was a sign of affection & it touched my heart! (and my grass)

more in love every day

First Tomato

Ha! First Tomato: Voyage to the Bunny Planet by Rosemary Wells was one of the books on our first preschool reading list. A rather strange book about a little bunny harvesting the first ripe tomato for his mother. He really wanted to eat it for himself, but she made tomato soup out of it.

And without further ado... MY first tomatoes - yes, TOMATOES!!!

Clusters of Yellow Pear

More Yellow Pear

The one I'm pointing to (below) was actually the very first one.
It's a Roma.

This is the first pepper

and the second one

and Dad is already requesting they be bacon wrapped.

Just for kicks, here's a couple of onions.

Can I say nanny-nanny-boo-boo for the first tomato?

feeding babies & Mother's Day

7:15 p.m. - I just sat down to feed Rebekah. Computer stuff is one thing I can do while breastfeeding... just slower typing one handed. Anyway, Elizabeth came in & sat down beside me. She piled her blanket into her lap and laid her stuffed dog on it. Then she said, "Mama feeding Baby Bekah. I feeding dog," and she pulled the little puppy to her chest.

I think I just got the best Mother's Day gift. My little girl wants to be like me! : ) snif, snif...

I got other gifts today, too! Since Dad has to work tomorrow, he took me out to lunch today at one of my favorite places - Rosa's Tortillia Factory. Another gift came from MawMaw - she kept David & Elizabeth while we went out! When she offered she said, "unless you want to take them with you for Mother's Day." I quickly responded, "Nah... I have lunch with them every day!" : )

We also went to James Avery to get Rebekah's charm for my charm bracelet. They were so packed (my number was 25 & they were now serving 93)! I didn't want to spend all day waiting, so we'll just get it another day. I'm sure I would have had to leave my bracelet for soldiering after waiting to be helped, so we'd have to have gone back anyway.

And we also did something we hadn't done in a while... a plant heist. No, it was nothing illegal. More like an intervention... or a rescue! We collected some beautiful native plants like this:

Purple Skullcap

Prairie Verbena

and saved them from being scraped away to build this:

Large cookie cutter houses
too close to each other
with imported landscaping, if any

Ah... just like old times... almost. Can you find Dad in the last photo above?

Then I got more presents at home: Rebekah went to sleep without hours of crying and David happily cleaned up his Lego's and went to bed! Peaceful bedtime; a gift indeed!

Our New Kids

We have adopted 3 kids to help with the lawn mowing. You can see they've got their job cut out for them!

The black one & white one are the smallest & are still pretty scared. Hopefully they'll feel more at home once we get them tied better than this! It took all of about 30 seconds for them to get the rope all tangled around themselves.

This one seems to have a little more sense. She's the biggest one & has been contently grazing since we got home. Good job, girl!

No names yet, but I'm sure they're coming...

Friday's Coffee & Garden Update is back on!

I've missed coffee & my garden log for a few weeks.
Wanna know why?

It seems like someone is constantly needing something. Diapers, juice, cheerios, breastfeeding every 2 hours during the day, a nose wiped, conflict resolved, more diapers, lunch, books read, accidents cleaned up, laundry washed, shoes on, shoes off, diapers changed, more feeding, oops I forgot to feed the big kid supper, crying and crying and crying... Did I mention diapers? OK, so I guess you get the drift...

Yes, I took a picture of it.

I don't really even have time to be doing this now, but I really want to do a garden log entry, because I'm behind on that, too. I need to for my own records if nothing else. So here I sit doing it anyway. I'm just not going to be able to show you all the pictures that I'd like to.

Here's the garden view as I can see it from my rocking chair... where I spend most of my time, it seems, nursing the baby:

You can't see everything in the photo, but the more I work out there, the more it begins to look like a real garden. It's very exciting! And yes, I do get about 5 minutes at a time during the day to go out & work. Then I take David & Elizabeth with me out to the garden every evening that we can get Rebekah to sleep early. That doesn't happen every night, though.

Just a few of the highlights... The potatoes are growing so fast I can hardly keep up with covering them! The cage on the right (the red seed potatoes) is growing much faster than the other (organic potatoes from the store).

The raised bed in the foreground still has onions trying to make something of themselves, 2 tomatillo plants (replaced after the freeze), and pepper plants. I lost all of my jalapeno plants in the great raccoon raids of 2009, so I had to replace them also. Still hoping my pepper seedlings that I have left will kick into gear and become plants large enough to produce. They're incredibly slow growing and still measure just a few inches tall.

The raised bed in the background has tomato plants that seem to be doing well... after I had to replace all but one of them. My lovely heirlooms - all but one froze. They've been replaced by Roma, Sweet 100 Cherry, Celebrity, Yellow Pear. I still have 2 tomato plants in the "nursery" recovering from the raccoon attack.

I'm trying a cattle panel support system for the tomatoes, as described in last month's Texas Gardener magazine. I love that magazine. I've also got an arch made out of cattle panels coming off the other side of raised bed 2 and hope these Lazy Housewife pole beans will fill it in! Another first time to plant for me - pole beans.

David and Elizabeth already enjoy playing under the arch. I think they'll enjoy it even more as the vines fill in.

Not pictured, we also have Butternut and Spaghetti Squash sprouting, burpless cucumbers and sunflowers. The horseradish has really taken off since the little sprout I showed a few weeks ago

and the Rainbow Swiss chard looks ready to me. I love the beautiful colors.

I have been enjoying salads and sandwiches with fresh lettuce for about 2 weeks now. Hopefully I'll have enough to take a small bunch of lettuce to the Mother's Day cookout at Grana's. I wonder how the chard would be on hamburgers?

Not much blooming now... that will be resolved in future years. I need blooming plants around me. Last week the petunias looked pretty good.

This week, my one remaining rose is blooming.

I planted some zinnia seeds that a neighbor shared with us & they've started sprouting, so we'll have some blooms later in the summer at least.

She's 1 Month Old

Tiny Talk Tuesday

Yes, I love this picture. We don't visit the fire station as much here as where we used to live (because he doesn't have a home station and it's just too far up there), so whenever we go I try to remember my camera. This was Rebekah's first fire station visit, and David & Elizabeth both enjoyed themselves.


On the bus at church, a stranger commented to David about Rebekah: Do you have a new baby sister?
David: Yes.
Stranger: Cool.
David: She's not cool, she's gorgeous!

While eating breakfast: Bees make the honey and they put it on these Multi-Grain Cheerios.

While playing: I'm gonna stop having fun to go to the potty!

Another fashion statement by Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, singing her own little song: Tabi and Tort and Fluffy and David and David and Dad! OOOOOOOOHHHHH.... Jingle bells, jingle bells...

Entertaining herself in the car: 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12! YEAH!!! I DID IT!!! SAY YEAH, MAMA!!! (yes, she skips 5 and yes, she was at maximum volume!)

While "playing" with Rebekah on the rug: Two eyes! Blue!
Mom: That's right, she's got blue eyes. What color are your eyes?
Elizabeth, pointing to one eye, then the other: Pink! Purple!
Mom, gasping: You have pink & purple eyes? Wow! What color are Mom's eyes?
Elizabeth: Yellow!

See more Tiny Talk at Mary's.

Bright Eyes