Summer Pics

The mall had a special Lego display for a couple weeks in July.  They have replicas - made out of Legos - of various landmarks in the USA.  The US Capital Building was the largest.  All the models were built to scale and the Liberty Bell was actually the same size as the real one.  Pretty cool.

The kids have been taking swimming lessons at the Meridian Community pool the last couple weeks.  Last Friday we stayed after "Pirate Safety Day" for the public swimming so that Claire could go off the diving boards and slides.  Cole and Charlie were stayed to play, too.

Bryce and I had the Woodbridge Pool all to ourselves for a while last Sunday!

The coneflower are blooming!

Flowers in November

The dahlias and nasturtiums just keep blooming and they are so pretty!

Flowers

We had lots of pretty flowers in our yard this year.  Four o'clocks, dahlias, and nastursium.

June Flowers

Sprinkler Fun

Claire and Elle had fun playing in the sprinkler last weekend (after some pool time).  Bryce was napping.

Side note... the holly hocks are blooming.

Roly-Polies & Strawberries

We have a serious roly-poly infestation in our garden.  It's pretty creepy actually.  If you just watch the soil for a little bit you realize it seems like it's moving, crawling and then you realize there are tons of pill bugs crawling around.  Claire and Bryce helped remove some of the critters last weekend.  Bryce got really into it after Claire showed him the ropes of roly-poly collection.

 This is a happy smile... I think?

Lots of rolies!

Then he discovered the strawberries... yummy!

Spring Garden

My favorite... the peonies are in bloom.  They are already starting to fade now.  I wish they lasted longer or would bloom again.

This is one of the plants that came from Grandpa Charlie's garden in Tekoa.

Our vegetable garden is growing... well, everything except the green beans.  I don't know why.  The carrots and peas, whose seeds were planted at the same time are doing good.  I even replanted and still nothing.  I finally bought a new pack (different brand) of seeds to see if we have better luck.  Also a tomato plant (Roma) has been added.

Strawberries!  

I think this one is called Coral Bells.

Lavender (from Tekoa) and more peonies.

This is one of the penstemon I bought at Edwards Greenhouse last year.  I love the blue color!

The other penstemon... it's so pretty, too.  I'm not sure if these will re-bloom or not.  I hope so!

Sowing Seeds

We planted carrots, green beans, and peas in our garden.  Claire and Bryce were in charge of planting the seeds.  I made the little holes and they put the seeds in and then the kids watered everything.  We also planted some dahlia tubers.  We already have a few things growing in the garden, leftovers from last year... thyme, parsley, oregano, rosemary, and sage (the last two barely survived but I think are going to make it).  It's been a couple weeks since we planted (I think) and the pea shoots have popped through the soil.

Random Leftovers

A few other pictures I just never got around to posting...
Carlo got all fixed up a few weeks ago... he was supposed to wear his cone of shame for 1-2 weeks!  As if!  He did have to wear it for a little less than a week because he couldn't be trusted to leave his healing parts alone.  Of course he didn't like the cone... the kids were helpful to try and distract him with extra playing.

Rock!  After I don't even know how many years of saying we needed to do it we finally had a giant delivery of rock (4 cubic yards!) delivered a couple weekends ago.  This is the full pile.  The second it was in the driveway the kids were on it of course.  We worked hard and got over half of it moved to it's appropriate locations.  Chemo put a hold on finishing the rest... now that is over and I'm starting to feel better we can get back to work.

Now we only have this much left to move... quite a bit but I need to get something in place so that it won't all just go into the the grass by the garden bed.  It looks so much better where we've got it in place now and when it rained the other day I didn't cringe knowing how much dirt and mud was splattering on that side of the house.  Thank you again to everyone who helped us haul and spread the rock around!!!