Ballminton

Attack of the Armenian cucumbers

Make them stop!

These looked like a great idea when I saw them on someone elses's blog last year, but they have TAKEN OVER my garden world. About every other day I look underneath the vines and find a zeppelin. They are like normal cucumbers and look like flowers when you slice them because of the ridges. They are much less watery than normal cucumbers, and milder...I've read they're a melon relative, which makes sense. Too bad most of them are potentially mulch.

Milestone alert

Painting her own nails. Will brushing her own hair be next? Let's hope so.

tie dye shirts

Last week was Parker's birthday and birthday party. For favors, I thought it would be fun to make each girl a tie dye t-shirt. I did most of the 'tying' and Parker helped with the dying and washing.

Ready to help.
"Is it my turn yet? When's it gonna be my turn? Can I help with something?"

Dye application. Parker was mainly in charge of yellow.

Bagging up the shirts to sit outdoors for a spell.

The best part: final rinse and unbinding. They all turned out great!

Final product after drying. If you squint, you can see the spiral better.

Kitchen remodel - Demo Day

The kitchen remodel offically started today. They came and took out all the existing everything, and tomorrow they'll remove the decorative beams and some other stuff. We spent all weekend packing up everything and setting up temporary space in the dining room. So for 3-6 weeks we'll be using this as the kitchen, dining and pantry:


Turns out that packing up and moving stuff from one room to another is just as exhausting as moving it across town. I was happy to not be 7 months pregnant this time at least.

The view from here

My view on the way back from the pool.   She was very proud today to ride her big bike...prior to this she had been riding a tiny bike. Her feet barely touch the ground on this one, so starts and stops are a little dicey.

The view from here

I'm hoping to catch up with at least some pictures over the next few days. We've had a busy busy busy couple weeks. The last week of school is INSANE with school stuff, followed by the build up to Parker's birthday and birthday party. Oh and any minute now the major remodel will begin and I have a CAD job to be done somewhere in my free time. Should be an interesting summer!
Parker is loving the pool, luckily, since its already awfully baking hot here and it's not even July. I can somewhat read a magazine by poolside this year...Parker mainly bobs around in the shallow end and chatters endlessly so she's easy to keep track of.

patio planter

It turned out really pretty this year. The Mandevilla is going crazy and will hopefully have blooms all along the top of the trellis. I also added a scented begonia this year (the light green) and it adds a pretty texture.

Fashion pics

This is another thing I should probably try to stay ahead of....Parker's fashion choice of the day. In all of these, she's not just grabbing stuff out of her dark closet and putting them on....she's putting a lot of though into each piece.

Out to dinner outfit: striped shirt, plaid skirt, tie-dye leggings, and suede boots (in 90 deg weather). Luckily we went to a family restaurant at 5:30 on a weekend, so we weren't the only on there with an oddly dressed kid.

School outfit: favorite jeans, floral skirt, and striped tank top. I was too late to get the argyle sweater in the picture too.

Another dinner out outfit: This wouldn't be so strange except that it was hot outside. The scarf is new and she's really loving it. If there's such thing as a lightweight summer boot, I need to find out what it is. Do they make flip flop boots? That would be ideal.

First harvest

Here is the first garden harvest. a zucchini, a squash and a radish. We picked them after swim lessons this evening, hence the wet hair and swimsuit coverup. They probably could have gone another day, but I'm trying to stay ahead of the production.

Busy busy weeks lately. It is for kids and parents and teachers this time of year. We had an event at the school last night until 8, another thing tomorrow at 8am and swimming lessons after school for the next week and a half. So if you don't hear much from us until June 5th, you'll know why.

Bike ride before dinner

Swiss chard

Too pretty to eat.

Face painting at the race

Race result: she ran the whole 1k...12 min pace.

Parker first race

Shopping with the cat

Today at school was "Dress like your favorite character from a book" day. Parker was totally thrilled to be able to wear a tale and ears to school for the whole day. She LOVES wearing this tale for some reason. It gives her a little extra pep in her step and a little extra attitude. She was Boris from Mama Cat Has Three Kittens. After school we had to do a little shopping and even though she came home first, she chose to keep the costume on....although she switched out her shoes for boots.

Quick pic

The costume is cute...but the non-stop meowing is getting old.

Pic for Paula

Here's my prototype. Are you SURE your shirts are 100% cotton? All I can find at HobbyLobby is 50/50.

Fashion quick pic

Parker's outfit choice today:  her soccer uniform from when she was 3, and suede boots.

Garden grows

"a caterpillar! Another caterpillar! They must like blackberries!"

I don't have much time for writing, but I want to get this picture posted quickly before it changes again. My squash and zucchini plants seem to double in size every day. I love the beginning of spring when everything in the garden grows and grows.....before heat or bugs or multi-day rains happen.

I have 4 tomato plants, swiss chard, asparagus, blackberries, eggplant, radishes, 2 varieties of squash, a zucchini, a jalapeno and 3 each of experimental varieties of beans and cucumbers. Way more than we can consume, but I be shocked if it all makes it. I also have about 1,000 serrano plants that reseeded themselves from last year. i'm hoping the beans and cukes like growing up the bamboo teepees, but if not I just enjoy seeing them out there.

And in other neighborhood news, we got this email yesterday:

FYI----a full-grown bobcat was in our backyard Thursday morning from 7AM until
crows scared him off.

I expect that sort of thing in this area, but not from 3 doors down!

Quick pic

9 is enough

About a week ago, Parker decided that instead of dragging around 1 or 2 stuffed animals, she'd pick 9 of her favorites to carry with her to bed and back. It was quite a production, getting all nine arranged in her arms without dropping anyone...so I found her a bag to help her situation. I really though she'd get over it in a couple days, but no, a week later she was still hauling these guys up and down the stairs every morning and evening. The roll call was really impressive. She'd wake up in the morning and realize that someone was missing....and sure enough, Bunny was stretched out on the couch, enjoying some alone time. I chose the hard road of not helping her with her packing and hauling, no matter what the degree of drama she produced (Bob may have been more of an enabler). I kept thinking that Octomom's mom had this similar situation at one point and wimped out and helped. Well, I'm happy to report that this morning, since she wasn't going to get any of my assistance, she'd culled the herd to a reasonable manageable 5 favorites. Maybe in a week we'll be back down to two.

Homework before gymnastics

mobile blogging

Yay! I've figure out how to send pictures and short blog posts from my phone! Now I don't have to drag my camera around everywhere and maybe I can keep you guys a little more up to date on stuff we're doing. Maybe I won't get any more snarky comments about my blogging slowness. And no Emily, even though Parker can read and write now, she does not have her own blog. As far as I know. :-)

Testing photo

Parker doing cartwheels at the arts festival.

Testing phone

Testing phone

testing email

testing 123
hello world

quick catchup

Nothing new to report really. We are still keeping very busy it seems. Parker is spending more time upside down than right side up. Her cartwheels have gotten very good also, I'll try to get some pics of those up soon.

New kitchen planning is moving right along. I've mapped out where everything will go in the new cabinets. We're still finalizing quotes and materials, etc and will probably start for real in a month or so. That will hopefully give me time to brush up on my crockpot skills.

Egg dying - quick pics

Just some quick egg dying pictures. I'm way behind on blogging, we had a very busy week....the dreaded kitchen remodel is set to begin soon, so we're doing lot of shopping and picking out and measuring and researching and calculating and comparing and making spreadsheets and mock ups.
In addition to that, Parker had a grumpy week, followed by a sleepy weekend. I checked today and she's grown 1/8th of an inch. Tall, not around of course.

Good Friday totally snuck up on me. No school that day...Parker had a friend over for egg dying. It's such a big build-up and lengthy setup, but the actual egg dying is very short lived.



Final product.

Snow Pictures

Before I do anything else, let me TIME/DATE STAMP this blog entry.
3/21/10 9:40 PM
Nothing like putting away your tank tops for a day and dragging all your snow gear back out. The snow we got back in February was very fun, but from what I could tell from the lack of people out playing in it, everyone is over snow and ready for spring.

Here's Parker, showing the snow depth:

Bob wins the Parent of the Day award for sledding and snowman building:

Spring Snow

Last night when we went to bed, there were some nice little snow flakes falling. I expected to wake up with just a dusting. Instead, I see this when I look out the window. Notice how the snow is all piled up on the SIDE of the tree trunk because of the wind. I'll give you one guess what Parker wants to do.