Our Garden and Easter

For my birthday this year, my wonderful husband surprised me with 4 pieces of wood. Not much you might think. But it was what those 4 pieces represented that was the exciting part! He was building me a garden!!!



We'd had a garden one time before in Phoenix which had moderate success. It turns out gardening in the desert takes more effort than we thought! Imagine that!

Since moving to Texas, I had toyed around with wanting to create one for a while and never got around to doing it. But with Matt's willingness to do all of the hard labor to frame it, till up the ground, and build a fence around it to keep out the critters, I was in!! It was a labor of love that we were able to do together. I helped paint the fence, got the soil and added plants and seeds, and we were off to see how it would grow.

 3/16/13

 Matt and his helpers tilling the ground

  
What a man!

 The plants and seeds are in! From bottom left corner up and then down the next row there are Red Peppers, Husky Cherry Red Tomatoes, Beefsteak Tomatoes, Cilantro, Parsley, Red Leaf Lettuce, Onions, Green Peppers, Jalapenos, Spinach, Cucumbers, Broccoli and Carrots.

 Putting up the painted fence posts and chicken wire. We have a lot of rabbits and thankfully this has successfully kept them out!

Cutest helper ever!

Our pretty Wisteria!

 

 4/12/13

5/27/13

 

 6/16/13

7/29/13

We've harvested many tomatoes which we've shared around as there were too many for us to eat! We've also gotten a number of green peppers, jalapenos, two good heads of lettuce, some baby spinach leaves and lots of cilantro and parsley. The broccoli fell victim to the rabbits as it started sprouting before we got the fence up. The cucumber plant never has produced any fruit and appears to have been damaged as a young plant so we think that is why it is struggling. The red pepper plant has finally started producing and we are letting the carrots grow for as long as possible to make them large but before they lose their flavor. We only had one onion take root from the seeds we planted. It should be ready soon!

It's been a learning experience and we look forward to starting our fall garden with the knowledge we've gained over the past few months with our spring garden. And now that the fence is already in, it should be a much easier process! It has been so fun and rewarding and I'm so thankful for my awesome birthday present!

Below is a pictures of the girls being sweet. Since they are next to each other in the birth order and are both girls, there is usually a lot of, shall we say, tough love between them :) But here is a shot of them being sweet!

 Gabriella reading to Melia

The kids were super excited to dye eggs as we prepared to celebrate Easter and our Risen Savior! It was fun to share in this tradition with our kiddos.

My sister Natalie invited us to attend an outdoor Easter party at her apartment complex. We had fun hunting eggs, getting faces painted, and having some yummy snacks. We love you Aunt Natty!

Our neighborhood also had an Easter party and egg hunt and we enjoyed getting to know some of our neighbors better! Here is Melia showing off her awesome butterfly backpack!

We are so thankful to our Savior Jesus Christ for dying on the cross to take the punishment for our sins. What a joyous celebration it was Easter Sunday rejoicing in his resurrection. We are eternally grateful!

My Family

We took advantage of a beautiful Sunday afternoon back in May and finally got some new family photos taken! I love my family more than anything else in this world and am so thankful I get to love on these babies every day! I'm also so thankful for the man who helps make my joy complete. I am so happy to share my life with you, Matt. I love you always!

Enjoy these beautiful faces.

 

 

Spring Break Road Trip

Over Spring Break we decided to take a road trip to visit Matt's brother Dan and his wife Stephanie in Indianapolis, IN. It was a big trip for us, but so much fun! We stayed a night in a hotel both ways to help break up the driving which the kids loved because they are big fans of hotels!

We were able to visit the Children's Museum which is something we love to do whenever we are in town. It is so amazing! We were also able to go up to visit Air1 - the radio station where Dan is an on-air personality! We even got to all sit in on a live session (except Melia)! The kids got to make sound recordings of themselves in the sound studio and we enjoyed meeting Dan's on air counterparts Eric and Mandy.

The kids had a blast playing spies with Uncle Dan - Oliver's dream come true! The had their headquarters in the basement and would sneak up to do secret missions - mostly playing tricks on me and Stephanie. The "big boys" had their fun too! We were also able to see the Junior High where Stephanie teaches, and multiple members of our family got a stomach bug - some on the road. Fun times!

We always enjoy spending time with family and this time was no exception. Dan and Stephanie were great hosts and gave us the best surprise when we walked in the door - they are expecting their first child this fall!!! YAAY!

We love y'all and are so thankful for our relaxing, fun, comfortable, cold, but happy time in Indiana!

 Visiting the Indianapolis Children's Museum - so awesome!!

 Indiana Jones memorabilia - mommy was in heaven!

 Melia playing "balance" - one of her favorite games right now!

Playing baseball in the freezing weather!

 

I love this action sequence. Brothers...

Dan and Stephanie's cute house:

It snowed on us our last day there. Gabby was SO happy - she had been asking to see snow all winter!

Fun times - Winter 2013

Here are a few updates from the past few months...

Gabriella had been anxiously awaiting the possibility that it might snow in Dallas. She loves snow (so does her mama)! Unfortunately, we missed the Christmas Day snow, much to our chagrin. It's hard to tell a 5 year old about the truly small chance that it might actually snow in Texas when all of the winter books, pictures, coloring sheets she sees have beautiful white snow. But happily enough, one morning we looked out to see some beautiful white flakes floating down. Both girls went out to play in it - Gabriella always lasts the longest :) We do own some gloves for the cold, but not the best ones for snow. So when she did come in, it was to cries of, "My hands are FREEZING!!" because of her handing, sculpting, and throwing the wet snow in her thin gloves. We quickly warmed her up by the fire and all was well with the world.

Look at the happy smile on Gabby's face!

This is a picture of so many things that are a part of my everyday life. I wanted to document it.

1) Gabby is always trying to hug/carry/baby Melia. Sometimes Melia allows it. Sometimes she pushes Gabby down and yells no. She's quite forceful that way and we don't see her ever having a problem standing up for herself as she gets older! I can usually tell what kind of response to expect from her depending on her mood. Gabriella either has not developed that type of intuition or just chooses to ignore it, because it causes quite a few fights each day. On this particular day at this particular time, Melia was sweetly enjoying having Gabby be her "mommy." Well her back is arched a little so maybe not "enjoying" it, but at least not taking Gabby down for once.
2) Melia has her Ellie the Elephant blanket which she lovingly calls "Lellee." She is still at an age where it accompanies her most of the day along with her blankie too.
3) Our kids love little Cutie oranges... and Melia recently learned to peel one on her own. My first child to learn it! Oliver asked recently and I showed him how to use his nails to get it started so now he knows how too. Gabriella learned as well but was not as motivated as she enjoys having people do things for her instead of doing them herself. Much the opposite of her extremely independent 2 year-old sister. However, at this point we were obviously still working on getting Melia to put her orange peels into the trash can (evidence: the huge pile of miniature orange peels in the upper right corner of the picture).
4) Oliver is playing iPad and wearing a Lego Star Wars shirt. That boy loves video games... so much so that he is the only one we really have to limit on his screen time. The girls have usually moved on to something else by the time the allotted screen time is over. But this boy loves his video games, especially his Lego Wii games!

We were so proud of Oliver for being one of 2 kids in the whole first grade to participate in the Science Fair. He worked on Sunday evenings over a period of two months to perform his experiment, write a report and prepare the board. It was a lot of work, but he didn't complain too much and was proud of the result. He titled his project, "Insulating Our Heat." He tested different fabrics to see which one did the best job at insulating glasses of hot water to determine what fabric would be the best to wear on our bodies outside on a cold day. If you look closely at his board, you can see a picture of the different fabrics wrapped around drinking glasses. We poured hot water in the glasses, measured the starting temperature, waited 15 minutes, and then measured the ending temperature. The warmest glass... the one wrapped in wool! He wrote all of the pages displayed on the board (even the graph), the entire report (not pictured), and cut out the letters for the word "HEAT." You'll notice in the picture that the 'E' escaped us and was hiding unbeknownst to us behind the "Materials" page. Good job big boy! He won a 2nd place trophy for his efforts. He LOVES collecting trophies so that was real validation for his efforts :)

A picture of Oliver with the other first grade participant and the one Kindergarten participant:

Thanks to mild winters in Texas, we enjoyed some beautiful days outdoors:

And someone lost their two front teeth...

 

Daddy and Gabby went on their annual "Daddy Daughter Date" in February and it was a day that filled up this little girl like none other. Dressing pretty - check. One-on-one time with a parent - check. Lunch at (her favorite) La Madeleine - check. Going out to a play of Goodnight Moon - check. The result = priceless memories and her love tank overflowing. I love these two!