The rest of April...

The human pyramid, from top to bottom: Caleb, Dalon, Christopher and Andrew. We were doing an activity during preschool and they decided we needed another game.



We went to In 'n' Out Burger a couple of weeks ago on our way home from the zoo and they gave Christopher a hat. He immediately proclaimed it to be his baking hat and pulled it out the next day when he was cooking some Play Doh pizza for me.

This child loves to cook creatively. On this day he asked me for a few paper plates and some forks because he needed to set the table for his "Peanut Butter Mud Pie Brownies" treat with Mr. Nobody (the pretend friend we have at preschool) and Sweetums (Muppet Show anyone?). I should have clued in to the potential project when he kept asking me to refill the water can that he uses outside when he plays in the dirt...

It's ALIIVVVVVE! My garden that is. I was so excited to see the growth that I had to take more pictures. Here is my first tomato:

And a big ol' green Anaheim pepper right there in the center of the plant! Beautiful.

Easter at home

Since Christopher got an Easter basket full of candy at Great Grandma Nell's house on Saturday before Easter, we decided to have the Easter bunny bring an Easter "backpack" with other stuff in it to our house on Sunday morning. Since we have 8:30 church, though, we didn't quite get to it before leaving for church. On the way home from church Christopher said "I wish the Easter bunny was coming to our house too..." My reminder that I hadn't set up his Easter stuff that morning. So I told him that the Easter bunny had come and had hidden something for him in a place where Christopher likes to hide sometimes. So he started searching...

Ah hah! The Easter bunny left a clue: an Easter chick in the closet. And right behind it....

The Easter Backpack! How did the Easter bunny know he needed a new backpack? What's inside? A book, a couple of Hot Wheels cars, a Fraggle Rock video (good times), and one tiny candy thing - a pez-type dispenser that is shaped like a Wii remote. Hard to see in the picture, but it's there somewhere. Kind of a basic package, but he was happy with it!

Family, family

My parents came to visit us last weekend and we took them up to Usery Pass for a really nice walk. Christopher was quite excited to show the huge rock on the Merkle Trail to his grandma & grandpa that he doesn't get to see as often.

This weekend we had the family Easter egg hunt out at Grandma Nell's house. Grandma enjoys putting various artificial animals and flowers in her yard. This week she had a couple of ducks and, for some reason still unknown to us, an alligator. So Uncle Matt and cousin Aaron decided to create a little scene of their own.

Matt's mom & grandma threw me a bone by getting two things for the kids that weren't candy: hula hoops and bubble wands. This picture doesn't look like much, but it actually manages to capture the scene on the front lawn as the kids were running around throwing, rolling, bouncing, and doing all sorts of other activities with the hula hoops.

They also bought a dozen eggs for each child (!!!) to color. Christopher enjoyed this part. His version of it would best be called "speed dyeing." He dipped each egg in a color just long enough to cover the egg in the liquid and then out it came, making room for the next one. He favored the blue a lot because it is the fastest color to take hold and is immediately darker than the others.

Comment and question

The marigolds are going in today to try to help keep buggy critters away from my plants, but does anyone have any suggestions on how to keep the grasshoppers from lunching on my lettuce plants?

The garden - one month later

I don't know if you can tell, but the plants have actually grown in a month and nothing has died! What you see snaking all around the plants is my soaker hose. It's a great way to slowly water the garden, but the smallest hose was 50 feet and not incredibly flexible, so it became an abstract art project to wrap it around all the plants without crushing any of them.

My tomato plant, starting to flower. Yippee.

East to west view: 2 rows swiss chard, 1 row lettuce, 1 row bell peppers, then cilantro, onions, tomato and anaheim peppers.

Flagstaff

It's been a while because of Matt's work schedule, but we were finally able to get away for some really good family time up in Flagstaff. Here are Matt & Christopher walking the edge of the wall at the park.

Christopher and Matt on the play structure. It's not that I don't try to be a part of this, but Christopher had really been missing his daddy since he'd been at work so much, so I was okay with being relegated to the role of photographer.

Our sweet boy at the bottom of the slide.

A father and son bonding moment - shooting cans with the BB gun.

More March pictures - Phoenix Children's Museum

Christopher and Caleb had a very fun day at the Phoenix Children's Museum over spring break. It was pretty crowded and crazy, but they still had a great time. Here they are on a motorcycle that was obviously stationary but they could work the clutch and pretend to put gasoline in it.

We went outside for a picnic lunch. There were already old quilts laid out on the grass and it was a very pleasant picnic. At first the moms couldn't figure out what these concrete pipe things were for, but the boys figured something out.

One of their absolute favorite rooms at the museum was the grocery store. There were little shopping carts, a produce stand, a bin with dried peas in it that you could scoop onto a scale, a little room behind them here where you could put your groceries back and the kids could then restock the shelves, and the checkout stands where they could pass the groceries in front of a little laser light that would beep. They didn't want to leave. This picture was of both of them at the checkout stand, but Caleb's favorite thing ended up being the bulk bin with the scales and Christopher found his true calling in life as a stock boy putting the groceries back.

Another thing they had outside by the picnic area was this window stand where they could spray water on the different windows and then use little squeegies to clean the windows.

There was also a bike lane where they had different types of tricycles for the kids to ride through a pretend car wash and around plastic cones and curbing.

March - The zoo and my garden

Christopher and Caleb at the zoo. In the course of about 10 minutes, while we stopped for a snack, they both managed to fall down and skin something. Luckily, Caleb had brought his "first aid kit" with colorful bandages in it, and they had to stop and pose for an "owie picture."

Trying to see over the wall at the prairie dog enclosure.

Somewhere along our path they had each picked up a stick and it was quite the process for them to figure out what to do with their sticks while we were trying to get them to pose for a picture by the frog. They kept trying to put them down the backs of their shirts. Didn't look comfy to me, but it's hard to convince the boys of that.

A highlight of the month: MY GARDEN! Matt built the garden box for me - their is mortar between them there bricks, that thing is sturdy and not going anywhere - and I headed to the nursery for some plants. The lovely bin in the background is my compost barrel. From front to back we have red swiss chard, green bell peppers, cilantro, green onion, anaheim peppers and tomatoes.

Just a view from the other side. Tomato plant in the foreground. Still small, but it gets better as time goes on. I'll post those pictures too at another time. I'm just excited that I got it in! Basically a salsa garden, with the exception of the swiss chard, which is just yummy when you saute it in some olive oil with some minced garlic. Mmmmm.....

February - Slow picture month

This well-shaded picture is from one of the days that preschool was at our house. I took the picture because I thought it was so funny and cute that when the four boys are playing baseball, they have worked out their own system: one hits, one fields the balls, and the other two sit on the grass like a couple of old men and watch. They pulled the chairs out and set the whole thing up by themselves.

I inherited an amaryllis plant from Matt's mom after Christmas. It had been sent to her as a gift but it was a planter with the bulbs in it that you had to water and maintain to start the flowers growing - and that is really not her thing. She doesn't have living plants in her house. I managed to get them to grow and the flowers were so beautiful that I wanted to share.