A Day In The Garden

BEGINNING
Last Fall I covered the ground area between the plants in the backyard with bags and bags of bark/mulch (before I realized this sort of thing would be bad for my back situation). Anyhow, it looked AMAZING. I would sit on the bench in the yard and feel content, happy, and listen to the birds chirp. During Winter tons of weeds grew up and took over the beautiful landscaping I had done. The other day our gardener wacked all the weeds down (and a few of my plants) and this is what was left. Ugh!

MIDDLE
Last time I didn't put anything down to "block" the weeds, so this time I decided to get serious and lay down a barrier. The directions said to pull all the weeds out first. I figured wacking them was enough and just put the stuff down. I wonder if this is going to be a problem down the line? Is this like life too? Can't we just cover up the weeds...isn't that enough? I've got 2 layers this time! Double protection. If you can't see the weeds, are the weeds still there?

BREAK
The kids helped me a lot, but still needed time in the fire truck. Here they are running to the next fire.

END
Then I trucked in the ground cover again. This time I asked for lots of help from the nice guys who work at Home Depot. They loaded it up in the cart and then into the car. Once home I used the wheel barrow and brought down just 2 bags at a time, so I wouldn't hurt my back. Here's the finished project. Whew! Looks good again. I'm tired, but excited to enjoy our garden tomorrow. Another day I'll add a few flowers here and there to fill it in, but for
now I'm off to a co-op council meeting feeling content at a good days work.

Madeleine

I came across a box of my old baby/little girl clothes today and gave a couple of jackets to Madeleine to try on. I love the color yellow and here she is in my yellow jackets. She's really sprouted and doesn't fit into anything lately, so this was a good find.

She's such a big girl now. She is all grown up at the park these days and has fun finding new friends. Yesterday she and two other girls hooked up and marched around as a train, then they rode the slide together on top of each others' laps and then they made sand castles. When we left she was SO sad because she wanted to play with her "new friends a little longer". We all remember mom calling us in for dinner and now it's my turn.

At home she likes to make tea parties for "the girls", teach her baby letters with her Leap Frog set (but she answers for her baby), ride her scooter, and request "cuddles mommy" with arms extended and THE sweetest look on her face.

Below, she is pictured building with LEGO's that she got this weekend, on a play date trip to lunch and the LEGO store. Both kids had tons of fun picking out their own pieces and filling their tubs from the wall-o-lego.

The kids are always doing projects at the counter in the kitchen. We seem to have a lot of photos with the same dining room background.

The next picture I call "Buckeroo". My cousin, Steve, uses this nickname for his son Clayton. The kids noticed that he does this and started using the same nickname for him. It's cute to hear them call their cousin "Buckeroo". The other day Madeleine was riding around on her favorite little 3-wheeler Radio Flyer (she's outgrowing this too but still gravitates to it over other options) with some frog glasses and a cow girl hat she found in the garage. In this moment, I thought she looked like a "Buckeroo". I think it's the hat.

Can't go without one story about Matthew. After we looked at and tried on a few of my antique baby/kid clothes Matthew came to me and said he liked my hair and wanted to save some to show his kids someday. I was wondering if he wanted me to clip some off, but he informed me that this wasn't necessary since he already found my brush and pulled some pieces off to save. I was shocked and touched all at the same time.

Happy Valentine's Day

These are pieces of art that the kids did at school this week. It didn't come out in the picture, but they are titled "The Hands That Touch My Heart". I was touched by this project because it reminded me of how kids touch our hearts in even the smallest things that they do.

Today Matthew and Madeleine helped me to decorate cupcakes for their school. Matthew took two aside "for Mommy and Daddy" and decorated them especially for us. After he was done he explained that all the sprinkles, etc on mine were "rivers of love". Definitely touched my heart with that one. To the right are the ones for us, with mine in the front. I think the one in the back for Marc is unfinished in this picture, because I remember a lot more decorations on the finished piece.


Madeline spent a lot of time with her decorations too. She was very deliberate with every piece she put on each cupcake. She spent about 45 minutes beautifying a plate of 8 cupcakes and was immersed in her artwork the entire time.

When I decorate cupcakes, I tend to do the same general decoration on each one. But, for the kids, each cupcake was a new canvas. Every cupcake was very unique and very beautiful. The kids really seemed to enjoy themselves and put a lot of love into each one.

Madeleine and I met Matthew at school after lunch and brought the treats. It was a sea of red with all the Valentine themed shirts everyone wore. Even the adults had red/pink shirts. We went to a birthday party later in the day and I felt like one of those people that leaves the conference with their name tag still on the shirt. We were the "red" family. All the other kids/families likely celebrated at school too, but somehow many (not all) of them managed to change.

The kids got lots of Valentine cards in the little bags they created earlier in the week. Lots of them had candy attached to them. I had told Matthew that the letter from school said that candy was "not encouraged" and he finally agreed to give his friends a sticker puzzle Valentine. So, although he was thrilled with all his candy, he told his teacher, in a very sweet way, that next year the "letters on the note might need to be bigger".....the "not encouraged" part.

So it seems they can touch our hearts and make us laugh too!

Birthdays!

We started out January with my birthday. Apparently I was determined and serious about getting my wish. That's a lot of air in those cheeks. The truth is it was one of those trick candles and I didn't want to be had.

Then it was Marc's turn. Seems like he got a bit more help from the kids, so not as much air in his cheeks.

On to cousin Gianna's birthday with a Candy Land theme. No air in the cheeks. Guess we missed the moment.

We are finishing up the month with Madeleine's birthday. The froggy birthday she's been asking for going on 6 mos now. I told her to make a wish as she started in on the blowing. She probably wished she could eat the whole cake herself!

So, January was full of birthdays. And things are not slowing down. Dad celebrates his on February 1st.

Happy Birthday, Dad!!!

We had a lot of good cake this month. Too bad we don't get to try the next one. Unless we get an overnight from Hawaii.