zucchini

In June Chad and Maggie picked the first zucchini from our spring garden. Here is Maggie cooking it in her microwave and holding it. Ultimately the entire thing went into summer soup.

third birthday party

We threw Maggie her third birthday party on Saturday and she had a blast. She is super proud to now be three! Eight of her friends came to help her celebrate, and along with their parents, my parents and a few others, the group totaled over 30 people. The kids started out painting birdhouses (the very light party theme focused on birds. If you watch Portlandia you get it and if not, click here to see why). Then they played in the sprinkler toys for a little while before sitting down for lunch. After eating we had cupcakes and then let the kids take a few whacks at a bird pinata we stuffed for them. We filled it with the usual crap: candy, bouncy balls, bubbles, mini skateboards, etc. and the kids enjoyed both trying to break it with the stick and gathering the loot from the ground after it was broken. Finally we opened her gifts before everyone set off for home.  It was a busy but fun party and we're pretty sure most everyone had a good time. We hope anyway!

Summer garden

In late spring we finally got around to planting our summer garden. I wasn't sure if it was going to be too late, but it turns out we were fine. Maggie helped Chad and they planted four varieties of tomato, Japanese cucumber, zucchini, basil, radishes (from a mom's group day) and watermelon (seedlings from our friends--thank you!).

sugar snap peas

This winter we grew sugar snap peas and man, they were prolific. We had more peas than we knew what to do with, but fortunately all three of us loved munching on them straight from the garden. Even Mags would go back there to see what she could reach and snack on. Definitely something we're going to plant again next winter.

puddles

Last week we had a few rare weekdays of rain. Maggie and I spent much of one day inside at the mall so getting wet wasn't an issue for us. However, I did promise her that after the rain stopped and we were at home, she could stand in our gutter and splash in the puddles. She was out there for 20 minutes, but seriously would have lasted for hours. Jumping in puddles, apparently, is pretty fun stuff.

new car

My parents bought Maggie (and Chad) a new yellow sports car. Radio-controlled, of course. Initially Maggie preferred chasing it but eventually decided driving it would be pretty fun too. I see lots of RC car days in our future. 

Easter 2012

We had a nice Easter weekend at my parents' house. It was a short overnight trip, but we got to spend time with my parents, GG and our cousin Bailey and we all enjoyed ourselves. My mom organized a little egg hunt for Maggie, GG gave her a fuzzy Easter bunny, Bailey taught Maggie how to play the slots, my dad played quite a bit with Maggie and read her Corduroy, her newest favorite book, and Chad showed how limber he is by riding Maggie's trike after she pooped out at the park.

carrots

Our winter carrots are done and here is the test group Chad pulled a bit ago. Much bigger than they have been in the past, I'm pretty proud of ourselves this time.

jewels

Last weekend we had a rainy day. After the rain stopped Chad and Maggie went to the backyard to spend a little time outside. Chad spotted these really beautiful raindrops in our smoke bush and fortunately pointed them out to me. The water beads look just like diamonds. Many many diamonds. Big and sparkly and beautiful.

bugs

Recently my mom bought Maggie a bug catcher. Maggie saw it in Michaels, had to have it, and, of course, who is my mom to say no to her? So off we went to find a bug to trap. It was harder than we thought it would be. The net worked well, we just couldn't find any bugs! So a few days later Chad and Maggie tried again. Maggie shouted, "here buggy buggy!" and eventually they caught an ant. Hooray! We gave the ant some fresh lettuce. As expected, unfortunately, the poor ant didn't last long. Needless to say we're going to hold off on pets for awhile.

Garden Update

So our winter (if that's what we're calling it this year) garden is doing well this month. The broccoli has started to flower, as have the snow peas. The peas, in fact, are even starting to sprout. The carrots are getting bigger, but I have no clue when they'll be ready so we'll wait a bit longer before we start pulling them. In another few days we'll taste our broccoli and snow peas. Yeah!

February art club

The kids this month came over to our house and made these initial paintings. I know it's not the most creative craft but they enjoyed it and the outcome was neat. We had 13 kids here and for the most part they were all well-behaved. We'll leave it at that!

Bird Feeders

A little over a week ago my parents took Maggie to the cabin for the night. One of the things they did with her was make peanut-butter-pine-cone-birdseed bird feeders. Apparently Maggie was more interested in eating the peanut butter than actually covering the pine cones (really though, can you blame her?). They brought the feeders back to our house and Maggie, Chad and I hung them together. She was more interested in doing that and now we can watch out our window for hungry little birds.

Walk in line

This past fall our neighbors put in a cement border in their front yard. Maggie thinks it's the BEST. She can walk the border over and over again when I let her. Creatively, she calls it walking in line. Maggie even got Chad to play it with her last weekend.  They had to be careful with their balance because the grass, according to Chad, was hot lava.

oranges

Last week, because our area has been freezing overnight, we picked the oranges that have been growing in our backyard. Maggie helped me. Our tiny trees produced 12 oranges this year, all full and round and bright and, well, slightly sour. Not sour enough to toss, but not sweet like the few we had last year. Darn! Fortunately I like fruit, even when it's slightly on the sour side, so these oranges will not go to waste.

Uhhhh...

On Sunday we worked on our garden. We thinned the plants so that the garden veggies would have plenty of room to grow. Maggie helped us by putting dirt in a bucket. Additionally, she pretended to eat some of the food that we are growing. Pretended so well, in fact, that she believed it herself and took a nice big bite of dirt. If only you could have seen her tongue before I was able to grab my camera. Yum.

Paper Jack-O-Lanterns

On Friday Maggie and I had our mom's group friends over for a little craft time. The children created collage pumpkins on paper and surprisingly really enjoyed themselves. Sometimes with toddlers crafts can be a little hit-or-miss when it comes to interest and enjoyment, but I chose well with this one, fortunately, and the children liked it. After the craft we headed to the backyard for the activity that is ALWAYS a hit: running wild and playing.

Grapes, our second summer

I thought we'd remove our grape vine after last year's buggy attempt (see here for a refresher) but before we got our lazy butts around too it, our vine started to grow. This year it really took off. We have leaves and vines all over and these past few weeks we started getting ripe grapes. I'm not sure why we didn't get bugs this year (still working totally organically) but the good news is that we didn't. And the grapes are delicious! Maggie's been scarfing them down and I'm happy to report that we have a few more large bunches soon to be ready. I'm glad our lazy butts didn't take the vine down last year because this year it was totally worth it.

Maggie's Rainbow Party

On Saturday Maggie's best friends came over for her second birthday celebration. It was a rainbow-themed party filled with water playing fun. We had a kiddie pool with toys and balls and a homemade car wash (kid wash?) for the kids to run through. They seemed to enjoy it. It was a fun party and I know Maggie had a blast. Thanks to everyone who came to help us celebrate our sweet girl's big day!

(A video or two will be uploaded soon.)

The following shots were taken from our photographer friend, Josh. Click here to visit his website.

Lettuce

Earlier this week we noticed that some of our lettuce was ready to be harvested. With Maggie's help (she put the leaves in the bowl after Chad clipped them) we were able to get a dinner's worth of romaine. Chad and I enjoyed it with our meal immediately after but Maggie didn't want to have anything to do with it. She kept asking for a mato (tomato) from the garden. Unfortunately none of those are ready yet.