Garden Update

I just realized today that while I had posted pictures of the garden when we first planted it, I had not ever taken any pictures to show what it looks like these days.  

View of the garden from the patio.

Black eyed peas.  The plan is store dried black eyed peas for future use. This involves leaving them on the vine until the pods dry out completely, and then removing the dried peas from the pods.

One view of our monster tomatoes.

Two of our six green peppers.  Behind the green peppers are our jalapeno bushes.

Eggplant, not doing so great.  But, we have eaten one eggplant and another one is growing.

Green beans. Something is eating these, besides us, and we are working on figuring out what.

Leaf Lettuce.  Best recipe ever: Heavy cream + sugar + white vinegar, mixed together and tossed with lettuce greens. DELICIOUS!

Zucchini.  It has been a struggle to keep these alive thanks to Squash Vine Borers and other pests.

Here we have my tomato arch.  I strung a string above the tomatoes so that the longer branches have something to rest on other than the ground.  Some of these tomato bush branches are eight feet long, and still going strong.

Butternut Squash, it makes great soup, among other things. These three are sitting in their slings so that they don't break the vines.

This first trellis is our cucumbers, looking a bit wilty because I took this picture at two in the afternoon.

Three more tomato bushes.  We have TONS of tomatoes, which is good as the children LOVE them, especially Evelyn.

One of my lovely cucumbers.  These will probably be made into pickles.

That is the current status of our garden.  It is a constant battle against pests and tomatoes that want to take over the world, but we are deeming this year learning experience.  Hopefully, in the future, we will know more what to do and how to get more food and fewer vines. 

The First Six Months

 I decided to find photographs of Sebastian and Evelyn at the same ages, to show how much they look alike. 

In the Hospital

Evelyn in the NICU

Sebastian, wearing a hat since it was December

My two little glow babies

                                

 Just Home from the Hospital

 One Month Old

Two Months

 

 

Three Months

 Four Months 

(Sorry that this photo is on its side.  For some reason the program keeps flipping over when it loads it.)

 Five Months

 Six Months

(Again, notice how she is happy with the messy face and he is not.)

Brother vs. Sister

Sebastian is a very tidy eater.  When he was younger he very rarely got messy. To this day, whenever he gets a drop of food on himself, he freaks out and grabs a napkin.  Here are some pictures of him as a baby, the messiest he ever got, and not happy about it. 

Evelyn on the other hand, is completely different.  Evelyn loves to ONLY get messy.  She refuses to let me feed her her food and she hates to be cleaned up.  Here is a picture of what Evelyn regularly looks like after a meal, and she is happy that way.

One of these days I will post pictures of these two at the same ages in order to show more just how much they look alike.

Our Climber

 Evelyn has recently decided to be a bit more daring.  This is quite the change from her older brother, who would never crawl on top of anything higher than a book.

However, she soon decided that merely crawling on top of the dishwasher was not enough.

Our own little imp.

And yet, she looks so innocent.

 

Hillsdale

We recently visited Hillsdale for the first time since our graduation, (seven years ago, ahhh!). Other than being sick, it was a wonderful trip where we had the opportunity to see, and spend time with, many spectacular and dear people. We stayed with our dear friends, and Sebastian's godparents, Matt and Amy, and their three children where we enjoyed many games of Settler's of Catan, Amy's wonderful cooking, and their lovely companionship. One of the days we went to lake Bawbees where the children played in the water.  This happens to be one of the few days where I remembered to take pictures.  Here are a few photos of our trip.

Ready to enter Lake Bawbees

Our sweet goddaugther, Cate

Dominic

Evelyn enjoyed it to, though she kept wanting to eat the sand.

I love the pigtails.

Matt  and Patrick.

Storytime

Beautiful Amy

Dead Brain Cells

I have a word document on my computer where I keep ideas for blog entries.  Needless to say, it is a rather small list.  There are lots of ideas, but not much more than that.  I come up with ideas about things to write on, and am then incapable of writing more than a couple of sentences upon the subject.  Really? I am THAT dumb?  I use to be a pretty bright individual, or at least I thought so, perhaps it was just delusions of grandeur.  But these days…these days I’m not even bright enough to describe my own stupidity.  I tend to make excuses “I have two kids, I gave half of my brain to each of them so now I am working at a quarter of my former strength.”  or  “I just gave birth, my hormones are out of wack and I just feel spacy.”  or  “I’m too tired to think very clearly.”  While some, or all of these things may be slightly true, there is one main reason behind my brain drain.  Use it or Lose it.  Let’s just say, I have definitely lost it.

Evelyn, Warrior Princess