Our Beautiful Girl!

Kaylee is getting so big lately! It seems like we can literally see her growing some days. We wake up and swear she has grown overnight. Mostly she is growing up, and she is going through pants like crazy!

She is learning a ton lately, she says new words and phrases, each more and more understandable. I can't wait until she can make all of her thoughts known. I am sure at some point I will regret ever writing that, but for now, I can't wait to hear what she has to say!

She is still 100% potty trained when she is bottomless, but has some confusion about what is expected of her when she is wearing pants and underwear. One of our biggest struggles lately is nap and night times. She is constantly taking her diaper off. Seriously, what is with children and stripping their clothes off? There is no way right now that she is ready for night time training, because she never wakes up dry. We started trying to keep her from stripping by putting her zip up pajamas on backwards. When that didn't work, we taped the diaper tabs closed. Then taped all the way around the diaper with masking tape. Then, after 4 days of doing two loads of sheet laundry a day, we went with duct tape. That's right, DUCT TAPE! So far, it has been working, but the masking tape worked for a while too.

This winter, so far, has been really mild, with almost no snow! That has made it easier to let Kaylee play outside, and that has made it easier for her to stay busy. She went with me to the park to play agility with Hobbs, and was overjoyed that there was grass. I can't wait until we have a lawn someday. Fingers are crossed for this summer!

I have pictures from today for this post, so I will add them later. Ugh, the pictures didn't turn out at all. The camera was on one of the manual focus modes....so very blurry unfocused pictures.

Procrastination

Ok, this post should have gone up around the 27th of last month....but I just barely got around to taking the pictures.

Robert and I had our families come over for a "yard work party". We have actually wanted to do this for months, but something would come up for one of us each weekend. But we finally got a lot of stuff done in the yard.

My parent's got here early and we got right to work pulling out tree stumps that have lined the back fence for over a month sense we chopped their limbs off. It probably helped because the roots had time to die and get brittle which made them easier to pull out. My mom and I (as much as I could) kept the piles of branches, sticks, and weeds off the lawn and over to the side of the house. That is where all the green trash has been piling up waiting to be hauled to the dump.

I felt so useless during all the cleanup! Basically all I could do was walk around with the little hand-held clippers clipping all the vines that were coming over our fence from the neighbors' fences. It was something that really needed to be done, but somehow I still felt useless.

The best part of the whole morning was when we finally cleaned out all the junk from behind the gazebo. There were stacks of moldy "firewood" tons of rocks, and years of leaves and stick from the trees that built up over time. I don't even have a before picture of it because you couldn't see behind it! I kept it blocked off with chairs so that the dogs couldn't get back there because I didn't know what sorts of things they might eat back there. Now I don't even have to think about it because it is just cement, dirt, and rocks!

Later in the morning Robert's parents came with their trailer and we started the trips to the dump. We took a short break for lunch after most of the stuff was cleared from the side of the house. It looked SO nice!

We fired up the grill and made hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch and then sat around in the shade talking and laughing while we ate. My parents left shortly after lunch, and then we all got back to work. The next project was the lava rock area. His parents decided that they wanted the rocks for back fill for their new house. I didn't care where the rocks went, I just wanted them gone. We sat for hours picking up rocks by hand (they don't shovel well) and putting them into 5 gallon buckets which were then poured into the back of their truck. Finally we had all of one section down to the dirt, and it looks wonderful! They had to leave after that, so there is still another section of rocks we have to pick up. But we got so much done, that I can't complain.

The transformation is AMAZING! These pictures just don't do it justice.

Before:

After:


Before:



After:



I don't really have good before pictures of what these looked like.


This is the area where you couldn't see into, let alone walk in.

The rocks are probably not going to stick around. We will be spreading them along the fence line, or giving them to Robert's parents.


This was just really cluttered and dirty and was another area I would block off from the dogs.

Before:


After:



Before:

After:




I don't have a before picture of the side of the house! AGH! Anyways, here is the after picture....

Most of this space was filled with tree branches, leaves, stumps, and dead weeds.

And for the amazing difference between before we moved in:

And After!


I am so happy we decided to take on the challenge of de-cluttering the yard! It looks so nice now, and looks so much bigger!

Yummy!

I have been meaning to post this for a while. My lovely raspberry plants have been so much fun to have! Here are the first fruits:


This was the actual first ripe berry to come off the plants!


And and few days ago, I had enough to eat with a couple scoops of ice cream!


It was SOO good, and brought back so many great memories from living in Shelly ID and eating raspberries and cream all summer.

Garden and Foot Updates

My foot is doing a little bit better the last few days. I never did go to the doctor, but was finally able to get out today and walk my boys, something I have not been able to do sense......last Friday, the 22nd! It was wonderful to get out and move! I didn't think I had missed the exercise that much, but I feel so much better now that I have been out for a walk. My foot is a bit sore after the hour walk, but I think it is on the mend....knock on wood...

As for the garden, It is pretty much the same as before, except that there are things growing! Both my raspberries and strawberries have little fruits growing already. I have not appreciated the bees that are pollinating them, but it is necessary for the yummy treats later on this summer. Here are the picture updates for the garden:


The whole thing....I couldn't really remember what it looked like before so here is the last picture



The tomatoes. The one on the left is not doing quite as well as the two on the right


The radishes, which are almost ready to harvest already!


The peas. I just propped them up a couple days ago, and they are already much happier!


The only things that are not doing so well, are the carrots....not much of a change from the last pictures:(

The most exciting thing in our garden is that the artichokes are growing!!!


I planted probably 6 seeds, and two came up in one row


and one came up in the other! I don't know if our growing season is long enough to get actual artichokes to eat from these plants, but we shall see!

The raspberries are starting to grow actual fruit....that didn't turn out very well in the pictures.

But there are little baby raspberries there!

The rest of the rasberry plants


And if you enlarge this picture, you can see there is a ripening strawberry almost exactly in the center. I wasn't aware they were turning red, but they are!

Growing!

I am really proud of my garden!! It has been doing wonderfully, and now I have my first veggies growing!


The whole thing

The raspberries all of these stalks should produce berries, which I am very excited about!

The veggie side

Strawberries that are still alive after being dug up, and re-planted in this corner.

My 3 tomato plants (who survived being violently hailed on)

My peas

My radishes

And my little itty-bitty carrots

I am very glad to have my first garden started, and hope that I can keep it alive and doing well!

More Yard Work

Robert has been home all day today because he was working overnight last night and is again tonight. All afternoon we were working on some major changes we want to have happen in our back yard.

There is a section of the yard that is covered in the little redish pieces of lava rock. It is right under a willow tree and the leaves are nearly impossible to rake up. Also, it just looks unkempt and needs to be changed. We are going to put grass in its place, but first we have to throw out all of the rocks, and add some more topsoil.

Another thing we have been planning from day one is to remove all the little juniper-like bushes that line the entire fence. I love having a wooden fence, and can't wait to be able to see it!

Those are the two things we worked on this afternoon. At first all I wanted done was dumping the soil from a bunch of flower pots into the garden. That turned into us starting in on both the projects! The lava rocks are going to take more effort than I had anticipated, but the small part we got completely clean looks great!

Before:

After:

We didn't finish the lava rock project by any streach of the imagination, but we made a dent. Hobbs, Patriot, and Turtle all hung out in the yard while we worked. We left the door open so they could go in and out, but only turtle took advantage of that option. While Robert worked, I carefully pruned out the old stalks of my raspberry plants. I haven't decided yet if I am going to pull up more of them, but that can wait a little longer. I have to figure out what I am going to plant in there first. My list so far is Peas, Tomatoes, Carrots, Onions, Corn (maybe), Broccoli. Oh, and radishes. There are also some strawberries growing in there, but they are not my favorite plant.

After an hour or so of working on the lava area, Robert started trimming and uprooting the bushes along the north fence of the yard. I was really suprised how easily some of the stumps came out of the ground! We are leaving two trees along the fence, for now, but they may turn out to have berries that are poisonous to dogs. If that is the case, they will come out as well!

There were two peach trees in the garden, but I didn't want them there for two reasons. 1) Peach pits are really poisonous to dogs. and 2) I wanted more room in my garden! So Robert trimmed them down to just little stumps in the garden. I think ripping out the stumps will disterb the raspberry plants too much and they have already had a lot of stress this year.

Before:

After:

Along the whole fence is a line of cement that creates the flower bed that the bushes were planted in. That will become an actual flower bed, and the ones in the middle of the yard and at the edge of the cement porch will be taken out and replaced with grass.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Tomorrow and Saturday will be another day of work on the yard, probably mostly the trees part. Hopefully we can get all the stumps out, and into a pile on the side of the house. Then we are going to get a trailer from Robert parents and take all the tree trash to the city/county dump.