Miss Me???

I wish I could say that I was off on some great adventure, but that would only be true if our back yard was the great adventure.

I've been busy working on the landscaping around our house. We've had 10 cubic yards of rock delivered to our house (a LOT of rock) and I've been placing it around the house. And where the rock is now there was currently grass, so I've been pulling out the sod. It was NOT easy, but is now done! I was so worn out that I, of course, caught a cold. I'm on the mend, but it's raining outside, so I can't be in my garden.

You should see the muscles I've gained from all the hard work. Some of the muscles still hurt, but are getting better.

We also got the gutters put up around the house. The fence is also in and is so nice! Romeo has really benefited from the fence. He's able to just "roam" around the yard and play with his toys.

Once the grass dries up a bit I have my garden to do next. Unfortunately that also requires pulling a lot of sod up. Did you know how popular sod is? I put an ad out for free sod and it was claimed 10 times over very quickly. I even have someone who will be taking what I pull out of the garden spot.

The kids are doing well. Ella is having fun in soccer. The season is about half over or so. Sam has been having so much fun playing outside! He loves going to the park and going down the slides. He is quite the daredevil! He goes down the big slides that Ella wouldn't even go down. Now that Ella has seen him go down she does go down now too! :)

We still haven't decided about a deck this year or next, but Zan put stairs in so we can at least utilize the deck door and access the back yard which has been so nice!

I picked up a great cookbook at a garage sale yesterday. The garage sale actually ended up being at the house of a member of the church group I'm in too! Anyways this book is based on Mennonite recipes and using the earths resources more wisely. I've really enjoyed reading the book and looking through the recipes. I can even smell the bread that I made this afternoon right now too! :)

It makes me that much more excited to get my garden growing and the prospects of all the canning I'll be doing in the fall!

I haven't even picked up my camera in the last couple weeks, so I don't have any pictures to show you either. Sorry! I'll have some pictures of my garden once that gets done here soon!

Ella's First Soccer Game

Ella had her first soccer game tonight. Man did she have fun!! Nana came to watch too. It's always fun watching kids play a game that they're really not that good at. By the end of the game they were figuring it out very well and doing a good job. They don't keep score, but by my score they probably lost, but not by much.

Here are some photos from the game. After the game one of the coaches told me Ella was laughing and giggling the whole game and by looking at the photos she is smiling in all of them.

I think she likes this game...

Easter and the Week Following

Happy Easter! (What do you mean I'm late???)

We had a lovely Easter. Very laid back and not too much going on. The kids had a lot of fun finding their baskets and their eggs.









The day before we were at Elisabeth's 6th birthday party. Both kids had a great time. The weather was so nice we were able to go outside and play too!

Ella had her first soccer practice on Wednesday. She has her first game on Tuesday. The kids are so cute, it's going to be fun watching them play. I'll bring my camera, don't worry.

Yesterday we went for a 3-hour bike ride. Our first of the year. It was the first time I'd ridden my new bike outside and I absolutely LOVE it!! It's so comfortable! My neck doesn't get stiff and my butt doesn't go numb. I even rode around our neighborhood tonight just by myself because it was fun!

I think we rode about 25 miles. Found a Dairy Queen at the end (half-way) and had some ice cream. Then we rode back. My legs were very sore last night!! But they were pretty much all better by today.

We've been busy getting final details of some of the landscaping around the house. We've come to a few conclusions so we're going to get started on some of the edging and rocking around the house. Hopefully the fence will be in within the next two weeks. I'm excited to get my garden going! My seedlings all started sprouting this last week too!

There was a grass fire on the edge of town tonight. I heard a bunch of sirens and looked out the window. It took me a while to find where the smoke was coming from. Didn't look like much. About 15-30 minutes later it was very large!





They said on the news that there were 12 fire departments tending to the grass fire. It burned about 85 acres. Didn't burn any buildings and no one was hurt. They had it out within a couple hours. (That's Target in the left of the bottom picture.)

I know that I've been totally ignoring my other blog lately too. Sorry, I just haven't felt like getting it taken care of and I know that's no excuse, but too bad it's my blog. :)

I think I'll get back on it here soon. I've just been so busy doing fun and some not so fun things that I seem to forget about it.

Sunny Play Day

As I mentioned in my previous post we had a great day playing outside on Wednesday. We also had a great time playing outside yesterday too! Today, well not so much.

Ella has the day off of school today. Sam was very excited to go to church this morning and was a little upset when I told him we weren't going to church today but that we had errands to run.

I called a company that makes window well covers for our egress pits. We want something covering them so the kids and dog won't get hurt. We also want something where they could (although not encouraged) walk on top and the covers would hold up. Well I found a company that will custom make for the size you need and they hold up to 400lb and are clear so the light comes through. They are perfect for us! However they are around $400 each!! Yikes, so many things to do on a new house and still haven't won the lottery! :)

Here are some pictures I took from Wednesday playing outside.