mom knows best

ellen: mom?
me: yes?
ellen: can you remind me?
me: sure. about what?
ellen: i don’t know. you know me.

reading party (minus the books)

the library had a summer reading party today, complete with animals, games, pet rocks and…

free ice cream!!

self portrait tuesday

on sunday while i was uploading the gazillion pictures of cherry picking fun, dave and i had way too much with the alpaca sample and making fake mustaches. unfortunately for this picture, but fortunately for me, i have no stubble to hold it in place, so i had to scrunch up my lips to keep it still.

there’s about fifty more very similar to this one.

technology generation

ellen is such a technology generation kid. in her magazine we read tonight there were arrows in a maze, pointing the way to go. she kept calling them “clickies”. (you know like a mouse clicks on the computer)

little stud

sometimes i sing isaiah a little song that goes something like this:

“isaiah budd,
you’re such a stud”

sung to the tune of part of “down by the bay”

i think the last time i sang that to him was at least a week ago.

Today, ellen was calling Isaiah, trying to get him to come back into the kitchen.

“Stud! hey little stud. come here little stud. Stud! come back in here stud. Good job little stud.”

it’s summer (almost)

my plants are growing up. we’ve got cherries and berries galore. we saw baby alpaca’s this weekend. and now i’ve got some baby spiders on the way.

i’m not sure what to do with them. they’re right by the front door, and i’m not really thrilled with that location. i’d really like to hose off the whole front porch but i don’t want to just kill this poor spider mom.

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after a wonderfully, summery fathers day dinner of papa murphy’s, watermelon and cantaloupe we went outside for some cherry picking and major weed pulling.

ellen wanted to make sure you all saw the “nut”

the beautiful garden. dave says this is the sort of picture the grandkids will see and remember me by.

things are growing!!!

we have two cherry trees in our backyard. Last year we got nothing, but this year they’re everywhere!

here’s my zucchini popping up. you really must appreciate how amazing this is that I’m intentionally growing something and it’s working!

this little guy was not visible when i took the previous picture. two hours later there he was! i know this is ridiculous, but i’m really dreading the idea of thinning my crop. (for those of you non-gardeners, you’re supposed to plant a lot of seeds and then thin out what comes up so they’re spaced well and can grow properly.) I’m rather attached to my little plantlings and i’m really quite sad about the idea of picking some to throw away.

and the corn is growing too. well, one row is. the back row isn’t really working very well. oh well, lesson learned for next year.

alpaca

driving home from church today we saw a sign directing us to an alpaca gift shop. we thought that sounded like tons of fun, so we drove a bit farther than we expected to and eventually found the farm/gift shop attached to a house. we let ourselves in the shop and the farm and looked around to our hearts content. dave and ellen started calling the alpacas and they started coming in. this kinda thing always freaks me out a bit if there isn’t someone around who knows the animals and if they’re friendly. (dave thinks i’m hilariously ridiculous.) The owner lady saw us and she and her dog came out to give us the official tour. it was quite interesting and she fed the animals so we could see them up close. we learned an amazingly lot about alpacas. For instance, if we wanted one as a pet, we could have one for only $500-1500. But you should never buy just one, because they’re highly social, so we’d need two. $1000 bucks and we never have to mow the lawn again. that doesn’t sound so bad to me.

After the tour and information, I felt I should buy something, so I purchased two high quality skeins alpaca/merino wool to make a scarf or hat with. I was told that once i used alpaca, i’d never be satisfied with anything else.

starwberries.

today we went strawberry picking at a local farm. they weren’t as tasty as i was hoping, but ellen and isaiah didn’t seem to mind a bit. isaiah was a mess after a few minutes but did a great job getting strawberries in the box. and ellen had a wonderful time too. and we could be done whenever we wanted (who knew bending over to find tasty strawberries wouldn’t be the most comfortable thing to do for more than five minutes. poor strawberry pickers.) we got a nice two pounds for 1.70