I made some chocolate pudding for dessert tonight. Evidently, Carter is a HUGE fan of chocolate pudding!!
He went so far as to lick the remnants out of the bowl :)
Is that the face of pure happiness or what!!!
We are currently under water restrictions here due to the severe lack of rain over the last year. As such, we are allowed to water our yards once a week...our day is Monday. Well, it rained on Monday so I didn't water the yard. I decided that that entitled me to a comp day that I decided to take today so that the kiddos could play in the sprinkler :)
Again, it's very hard for a poor guy to play in the water when his dog is attacking it!
She loves to pose for the camera :)
We switched sprinklers so there was more water for everyone to play in while Titan attacked it.
I'm telling you, we have the strangest dog!
Well our "garden" seems to be coming along pretty well. I have to say that I am impressed with how it has done since we have had so little rain around here. To top it off, I guess this has been one of the hottest Mays that they have ever had here in Texas.
Here is one of my little helpers watering one of the plants in our backyard. He loves to fill up the watering can and water all of the big plants in the yard.
Here is the lone tomatoe on the topsy turvy plant...yes I know the leaves look like they are dying...oh and I really don't think this tomato is ever going to ripen :(
The unknown plant....any gardeners out there have an idea of what it is???
Some green bean plants that got a late start...
Our other tomato plant...we have alot of tomatoes on it, so keep your fingers crossed that they come out ok.
One of the bell pepper plants....it's hard to tell because my camera sucks, but there are a ton of pepper buds on the plant.
Adam's beloved jalapeno plant :) There are about 10 peppers growing on it right now.
More jalapenos....
Here is our biggest surprise! This is the cantelope plant that we were sure would probably die....this is actually only half of it because my wonderful son tore the other half out of the dirt. I can't believe how big this is getting. There are about 5 buds showing up so far on it.
My green beans are doing awesome! The only problem right now is the aphids that I am working to get rid of.
The bug spray that claimed that it was good for ALL garden vegetables seems to have killed my poor pea plants :( I am a little upset about that too because they were doing so good! Oh well....we'll plant more this fall.....
NOTHING! Really, I am being serious :) The last few weeks have been pretty low key around here for us. We are trying to finally finish up the unpacking and sorting. We got the master bedroom done last weekend which just leaves the office for this weekend :) Otherwise, no grand adventures to share with you all...... At some point soon I would like to venture up to the Children's Museum here in town to let the kids play for a day. The problem with doing alot, is that we are very quickly approaching the time of year where you don't go outside during the day...IT'S TOO HOT OUT!
I will try to post an update on our garden in the next day or so, for those of you who care :)
A friend of mine, and old neighbor from "Almost Canada" as she terms it :) posted a blog entry about how people decide on their childrens names. I think that is such an interesting thing to ask people because everyone has their own story. Here is the story behind our names....
Adam and I spent forever trying to decide on Kayla's name. I wanted Emma Marie and he wanted Anna Kathleen (thankfully we didn't decide on either because she doesn't really look like and Emma or an Anna). So I took a list of 100 names and had each of us circle our favorites.....we agreed on only 3 names! As it just so happened Kayla fit the best with our last name. Her middle name was easy...Marie. Marie was Adam's Great Grandma's name, and to be honest one of the few female names in both of our families that we wanted to give a little girl nowadays (think things like Hildegard and Exie).
Carter was much easier to name. The night before my ultrasound we were reading thru a baby name book and I happened to read the name Carter outloud and Adam said "yep that's it...if it's a boy that's his name!" The next day we found out that we would have a Carter in our family. The funny part is that recently I found a place that stated the meaning of the name Carter is "little troublemaker"... HOW TRUE THAT IS! Carter's middle name is Frederick, which to be honest is not very common nowadays but is also a family name. My Adam was named after the first Adam in his family who came over from Germany. That Adam had a son named Frederick (who is my Adam's Great Great Grandfather) and so we thought it would be fitting to give our son a name after one of the other Adam's children.
So there you have the reasoning behind our childrens names. My question to you all is, why did you name your children what you did? Feel free to comment :)
So by no means do I claim to be even remotely handy when it comes to fixing things. I have been rather upset that my Kitchenaid Mixer seemed to have gotten broken during our recent move. For some reason the top part that holds the motor, mixing blade etc seemed to droop down instead of sitting parallel to the countertop. This caused the mixing blade to bang the bottom of the bowl as it mixed, which in turn caused the mixer to rattle violently and make a horrible noise. I am sure you can picture this in your mind :)
Well tonight I needed to use my mixer for several things, so I decided to try to fix it. I began by pushing out a metal pin that seems to hold that whole top piece in to the base. For some reason, as I got it about 1/4 of the way out the top magically began to sit like it was supposed to and now it works fine. So I guess for the time being, the fix is to keep this pin partially pushed out.....go figure!
As we were walking to get the mail today, K decided to give me an explanation of what happens when you die. I am not really sure where the topic came from, but here is her explanation.....
"Mommy, when you die the breath of your brain comes out of your ears and then you are dead"
So there you go....deep thoughts according to Miss K.
Yesterday I took the kids to see Monsters vs Aliens. Now my kids think that they are super heros who are here to help people. They walk around the house asking me if I have things to do for them to help out. The spent 10 minutes banging on pots and pans to get rid of any ghosts that might be in the house :)
As you all will recall, we already have a dog named Titan.....
And I am sure that you all remember the stray that lives in our front yard, which the kids have named Pilchard (from Bob the Builder). Oh and I have now learned that he has always been a stray and the old owners feed him, which is why he hangs out here all the time! Anyone in San Antonio want a really sweet cat??? I would love to find him a home since I am allergic and we can't take him in.
Well we now have even more "pets" living in our yard.....of course my kids have named them all!
If you look closely between the pipe and the wall you will see the lizard. Kayla has named him Lenny the Lizard. Lenny has taken up residence in Kayla's play house, but when the kids are outside he hides behind a pipe.
While we were outside we noticed another lizard on the neighbors house...he has now been named Lenny's Big Brother....She named him that because he is bigger than Lenny.
So slowly but surely, my yard is turning into Animal Planet...whats next??? Hopefully no snakes!!!!!!
Well the garden is coming along really well so I thought I would give you a photo update!
These are some strawberries that started sprouting from an old pot that our neighbor gave us. Hopefully they keep doing good.
Adam's jalapeno plant is doing AWESOME! I think he has like 8 or 9 peppers growing on it already.
Here is the 1 tomato that is ready to be picked...there are about 15 more on this plant in various sizes.
Our green beans are doing great too! I can't believe that the rubbermaid tubs actually work!
Even the peas are doing good...although we did have a few casualties in the right hand tub...
Our strawberry plant out front is doing good too. The kids have each been able to eat a strawberry off of it and we have about 4 more that are about ready to pick.
More strawberries
These are our bell pepper plants...they are slow growing but still doing really good!
You can see some pepper buds starting to show so that is a good sign.
I am really excited that everything is growing so well....I just wish we could have a bigger garden!
Ok, in case you hadn't heard, I have developed an obsession with homemade bread. For starters it is WAY cheaper than buying it in the store, and there is something to be said for eating fresh from the oven bread with dinner! In the last few weeks I have come upon a few new bread recipes that are amazing! So I thought that I would share the links to them with you all!
I use my bread machine just to make the dough, and then I bake them in the oven.
The first recipe is for Artisan Bread (perfect for soups, pastas etc). The recipe makes enough for 4 loaves. You can either make1 loaf and refrigerate the dough for up to a week (it gets better and better each day) or you can separate it into 4 loaves and freeze the dough, then thaw it in the fridge when you are ready to make it.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx
(Thanks Heather for the link!)
The second recipe is for homemade Hamburger Buns. Adam says that they are the best buns he has ever had, and will not let me buy buns anymore! They are good with burgers, hot turkey sandwiches, lunchmeat, bbq etc etc etc. They are super easy to make as well!
http://www.recipezaar.com/Homemade-Hamburger-Buns-Bread-Machine-80413
So enjoy the recipes and let me know how they work out for you!
We are planning a trip to Walt Disney World for this coming December (thank you Disney for giving free tickets to Military personnel!!). I would be lying to you if I said that the kids are not excited :) They have a special coin jar already where they are saving all of the loose change they find for their trip. One of the most exciting things for Kayla is that she gets to meet the Disney Princesses! She already has a Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty dress. She decided to beg her Aunt Jackie for a Belle one for her birthday, but Jackie couldn't find one anywhere.....so she went with Snow White isntead. Well Kayla got her Snow White dress from Aunt Jackie, Uncle Adam and Andrew today....what do you think? Do you think she likes it???
Look out Disney World....Princess Kayla is headed your way!
Adam started his first mid-shift today (2-10pm) which means that dinner time at night is just the kiddos and I. I spent the whole day doing stuff around the house, so I decided that dinner was going to be leftovers. Last night we had bow-tie pasta with chicken and broccoli. It was delicious and as such I didn't complain that I was going to be eating it again :)
As we were sitting down for dinner Carter started stomping his feet and banging on the table. He then proceeded to yell at me "NO NO NO!! I not eat turkey! I not old enough to eat turkey!" Well too bad for him that #1 we were not having turkey and #2 I am not currently aware of any law setting a minimum age for turkey consumption.
So if any of you are aware of this law that Carter is referencing please let me know....that way I don't force my child to do something illegal again :)
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