May The Force Be With You....

Today is Memorial Day. First I want to say a "thank you" to all of the brave men and women who have served us and are still serving us. You all are Amazing!


I thought I'd give you all a glimpse of what we do in our spare time here. This is something that occurs on a daily basis. Most of the time it happens more than once a day. In fact it's in motion right this very moment. You have to be ready at any given minute to join in on the fun. This activity, and little boy, does not care if you are in the middle of a poopy diaper change, moping the floor, or trying to write a blog post. When there's a battle to be fought you must drop what you are doing and fight!

First you need to set up the "Dark Side". A few of the key Characters needed are Darth Vader, Darth Sidious ( aka Senator Palpatine), and Darth Maul ( as seen below).

You also need bounty hunters. I'm not sure who the first 2 are but Bobba Fett is on the end.

Darth Sidious & Darth Vader ( K's Favorite sith's)

Next you need to set up your "good side". Which usually consists of Jedi knights Yoda, Obi-Wan, Luke Skywalker, and a few droids. A few of the favorites around here are Anakin Skywalker ( Anakin with a pony tail) Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ben Kenobi.

All there is left to do now is to let the battle begin. You pick a guy from the Dark side, and then a guy from the good side. Then comes the tough decision of deciding which guy is stronger. At the end of the battle, whoever has the most guys standing wins! Then we do it all over again!

Growing roots......

Since that's the name of this blog I figure a little talk about "growing" would be appropriate. Over the past couple of years I have been doing a lot of work on me. Trying to really get to know my self and be the person that I want to be. Not the person everyone else wants me to be. But just like in gardening if you are trying to grow as a person, family, or friend you need to take care of yourself and your crops. It takes a lot of hard work. Tilling the soil, watering, pruning, and weeding. First you need to pick a good environment for your garden. A spot where it can get a lot of sun. Next comes the soil. You need to surround your plants with good, healthy, nutritious loamy soil. Then comes the watering. Your plants can't grow with out those 3 key ingredients. Once you're garden has started to grow then comes the hard stuff. Do you let the weeds take over and settle for a smaller crop? Or do you pick through the weeds and have a happy healthy garden? Do you let those cute, bouncy, and sneaky little bunnies eat your greens? Or do you find a way to happily coexist while keeping your greens for yourself? There are always going to be "weeds" and "bunnies"in life . There is no way to avoid them but you do have a choice in how you deal with them. Do you let them control your garden? Bringing it down with them. Or do you take control and make your garden what you want?

For a while now I have been growing my garden. It wasn't until the past couple of weeks that I opened my eyes and saw what was going on in there. I have been letting the "weeds" and "bunnies" run the show. Letting them dictate how things are going to go. That is a huge problem when you are trying to grow. Now that I have realized what is going on I have to make some changes. Fortunately for me, T and I are both the type of people who deal with change easily. Once we realize there is a problem we HAVE to fix it. It's just our nature.

I thought I had been picking the weeds but now I realize I haven't. They have absolutely no place or right to be in my garden reeking havoc. We will have extra "weed patrol's" on duty from here on out. ;) .The bunnies on the other hand. I love the bunnies. My kids love the bunnies. The bunnies make me and my kids happy. (Except when they are nibbling on my lettuce) I enjoy watching the bunnies hopping around with there babies, Eating the grass in my yard and chasing each other. They don't know that by nibbling on my plants they are causing upset. They are just doing what they know. The last thing I want to do is hurt the bunnies but it's time they hopped their cute little cotton tails out of my garden and back into the yard. I guess the best way to live happily with them is to put up a little fence. That way we can still enjoy each other without the loss of their home here or my lettuce.

Tending to the garden isn't always going to be fun or easy. I do know that if I take good care of it we will have a happier, healthier, more fruit full crop when its time to harvest. That my friends, I think is worth the hard work!

How does your garden grow?

I've never been much of the gardening type but I've always thought it looked like fun. The whole idea just really intimidated me. I know NOTHING about growing things and NOTHING about keeping them alive. I never wanted to put the time into it and then watch everything die. So instead I have avoided the whole thing. Not planting anything in my yard that required any work other than maybe the occasional water. Oh and nothing that flowered. I didn't want the embarrassment if my flowering plant didn't flower. I have been happy with my blah bland yards up until this year. Once spring hit I found my self craving color. I started admiring all the pretty flowering trees and the cute yellow and orange tulips. That's when I realized that I'm bored with my boring yard. I needed to do something about it!

I went out and bought a few flowering plants. Just a couple to start with. I didn't want to get in over my head. Two of my favorites, Hydrangea's and Lavender. I am pleased to say that they are still alive and thriving. My Hydrangeas are popping up with new blooms all the time. I love it!

These are the rhodies that were here before we moved in. They didn't bloom last year. I'm not sure why but they didn't . I'm happy to see them coming out right now!

After I got a little color color going on I started thinking about a vegetable garden. It's something I've always wanted to do, but like I said before, was intimidated by. With the encouragement of a few family members. I decided to go ahead and dive into the world of vegetable gardening. T bought and built the raised bed. Then went out and got the soil. I took the kids and picked out the seeds. Like with the flowers I wanted to start small. We planted a row of romaine lettuce. Then waited. 7 days later we had action. To my surprise the seeds actually grew into little teeny tiny lettuce starts! Since then the kids and I have planted our bed with Onions, Zuchini, Bell Peppers, Snap Peas, Green Beans, and more lettuce. I get so excited to go out to the garden every day and see the new growth. Its incredibly rewarding! Nothing like I thought it would be but better. Its fun for K and M too. They got to plant their own rows and like checking on the progress. I cant wait untill we can actually eat what we've grown!

"Peppers after enjoying a bath"

"Onions making their debut"

Loving the Sun...

What an amazing week this has been so far! Nothing but nice sunny weather. It's actually supposed to get up to 80 degrees today and tomorrow! We started off the week with a great Mother's day. I woke up to cards from the kids and dad. Then made my way over to my Seesters house for coffee and breakfast with her and Mom.

I don't remember the last time the 3 of us were able to just sit, and talk without the distraction of kids or husbands. It was the PERFECT way to spend the morning. I hope we can make time to do it more often.

We rounded off the day with a trip to Costco ( one of my most favorite places in the world!) to get a few things for the yard. We snagged a few pics of the kids and I on the way out the door. K and L weren't in much of a picture taking mood. M took the job seriously and we managed to get a couple of really cute pics of her.

"M and Mom"

"M, K, and Mom"

The rest of the week has been shaping up to be a pretty good. Happy. Sunny. Low Stress. My kinda week. T is on his way home from the Beach. All inspections passed which is great! Swim school in a couple of hours. Then tomorrow morning K has his first play date with his friend from preschool! He has been looking forward to this for a very long time! I hope everyone else's week goes as smoothly as ours!

Cinco de Mayo.

Today is Cinco De Mayo. We will be celebrating by making a large batch of chocolate chip cookies. Not because they have anything to do with Cinco De Mayo. I just want some! I had really high hopes of eating a good homemade chocolate cake this week. Since that didn't work out as planned I will have to make do with cookies.

We will also be making a trip to find a plate holder/hanger. Yesterday K came home from preschool with a Plate that he made me for Mothers Day. It is really cute. At least Dad and I think so. That is one of the things that I love about his preschool. They Celebrate EVERYTHING, and he brings home some sort of crafty project almost every day. They also have the little ones help make things like, banana bread, butter, and pies during Thanksgiving. Oh ya, and the Teachers are great too! I think he is in the best preschool out there! I will post a picture of the plate later. I just realized T has my camera at the beach. I hope you all have a good Cinco De Mayo!




Update!! Picture of my Mother's day Plate: