Festival at the Park

On Saturday, while Charles and I were battling the wind in order to lay cardboard and newspaper down in the garden, the girls went down to the park with Grandma.  There was a festival for the Memorial Day weekend, and they got to do all sorts of fun things, such as:

Holding bunnies

Sitting in a helicopter

Riding ponies

Here's the view of the helicopter that Charles got as it flew over our house both going to and leaving the park:

See it to the left of the barn?

A Quick Visit

On Friday, my sister and her family visited for just a short time.  It always seems that their visits are too short, but this one was only two nights and one full day on their way up to Philadelphia.  I got to enjoy lunch with them on Friday at school, but the girls only really got to spend an afternoon and evening visiting with their little cousin.  Here are some photos of the visit:

On Grandpa's tractor

Reading/singing "The Wheels on the Bus"

Playing with the toy piggy bank

After saying goodbye on Saturday morning

Haircut at Home

Last weekend Sophie had the time of her life giving Charles a buzz with the clippers here at home.  They went out onto the patio, and she very carefully and diligently cut his very long hair.  Check it out:

And the finished product, to which Sophie said that she actually prefers Dad's hair a little longer:

Garden Beginnings 2013

I wasn't sure we were going to have much of a garden this year.  Charles and I have both been busy (well, to be honest, Charles has been busier... which is a good thing), and I just haven't really felt all that motivated to do the hard work necessary to get it up and running.  And then the thought of needing to weed ALL THE TIME... it's just exhausting even thinking about it.  Plus I know that my time will be limited this summer since I have a full-time summer gig running a summer program for the preschool down the road from our house.

Anyway, I did plant lettuce, spinach, and swiss chard a month or so ago.  Because I failed to water it, it's only just starting to emerge and definitely is not big enough for picking yet.  I'm thinking I missed the boat on the spinach, since by the time it actually gets bigger it will be too warm for it.

A couple of weeks ago, I weeded a couple of the other raised beds and planted watermelon in one and sugar pumpkins in the other.  Our fourth raised bed has perennials: mint and asparagus.  I decided to let the asparagus grow one more year before we start cutting it.  We planted it a few years ago, but we moved it when we moved into this house, so one more year to get established certainly won't hurt.

Yesterday, Charles worked to create walking paths through the big garden plot and then laid cardboard down (to keep out the weeds) and put garden compost that we bought in downtown Broadway down on top of the cardboard.  He got me two blueberry bushes for outside the kitchen windows for Mother's Day, and so he got those planted yesterday, as well as moving some sad looking rhododendrons that were where the blueberries are going.  At the end of the day he also still had energy to plant the tomato plants that we purchased from my colleague at school.

Today I did a little more to help out, by planting basil and cilantro in pots out on the patio, planting squash from seed in two rows of the big garden, and planting cucumber where it can grow in the shade of the corn.  Charles came out to help with planting three rows of silverqueen corn.  So, with all this, we now have everything in the garden except the pepper plants, which need to grow a little bigger before we put them in.

So, what we have so far is:
lettuce
spinach
swiss chard
basil
cilantro
sugar pumpkins
watermelon
tomatoes (cherry, roma, and three varieties of slicers: Blosser, Hertzler, and West Virginia)
squash (summer yellow and zucchini, plus winter varieties: acorn, butternut, delicata, and spaghetti)
corn
cucumber
green peppers (soon to come)

Tomorrow is Memorial Day and Charles wanted to grill out today, so he made a big meal of burgers, hot dogs, potato salad, chips, etc.  After dinner he made a fire, and this might have happened after his long weekend of work:

Super-sized marshmallow

Easy Cheese and Crackers

This has been the after dinner scene the last two evenings.  After eating supper AND treats the girls say they're still hungry, and they go for the Easy Cheese and crackers.

This frequently involves very elaborate creations and quite a lot of crumbs left in the aftermath.

Mmmm, cheesy!

The Sweet Dreams Fairy

It all started last Monday, when Sophie lost a tooth at dinner time.

When preparing to leave her tooth for the tooth fairy, she remembered a friend at school talking about a special spray a fairy brought her to help her sleep.  So, Sophie wrote a note to go next to her tooth fairy offerings.  It reads like this:

In the morning, she awoke to find a Sacajawea dollar from the tooth fairy and a note from the Sweet Dreams Fairy telling her that she was a great sleeper who didn't need any special sleeping sprays.

Since the fairy thought Sophie didn't need a magic spray, she brought her a Hershey's chocolate bar instead, which Sophie wanted to eat for breakfast but had to wait until after dinner to enjoy.  In gratitude, Sophie left the Sweet Dreams Fairy these notes in response:

So that day, both girls decided to write to the Sweet Dreams Fairy: Sophie to thank her for the chocolate (above), and Hannah to ask for some magic sleeping spray.  Here they are writing away before school:

Hannah left this note for the fairy that night, along with two pages of facts and information about herself:

The next morning she found the following response, along with a tiny (fairy-sized) purple spray bottle of sweet-smelling magic sleep spray.

That night she and Sophie both received one squirt of it in the face, since that is how Sophie's friend from school said her spray works.  Hannah wasn't so sure about that, so she wrote back to the Sweet Dreams Fairy to get the real 411.

Still not content (or perhaps just enjoying her correspondence with the fairy), Hannah wrote back again that night to inquire more specifically whether the spray was go go over her quilt or over her pillow.  Sadly, she did not receive a response to this inquiry.  Perhaps the Sweet Dreams Fairy had to attend to other boys and girls who are having trouble sleeping.

Also sadly, the magic sleep spray has not helped too much in helping Hannah sleep or keeping her in bed after bedtime.  Perhaps if she gets to be a good sleeper like her sister the fairy will bring her a chocolate bar too!

Carter Walking!

In my email box today I received this video from my sister:

Carter is almost 15 months old, and he finally started walking last night and again today.  With the wonders of technology, we get to experience it almost as if we were there... so exciting!

The girls were so excited that Sophie decided she would write her homework sentences about it, even going so far as to call Kelly to get more details.  Hannah created this drawing to announce the event:

Way to go, Carter!  We are so proud of you!