Getting the gardens ready

So last Thursday, my boss asks me how I plan to spend my three-day weekend.  I enthusiastically tell her "with poop"!    What?!  Yep, we planned to work in the gardens.  They had been rota-tilled, but no plants in yet.   Our land-lord, wonderful man, volunteered to bring us a truck full of manure and hay for our gardens.  Yes, please.
Here are our little men helping to spread out our new "soil."  They were very excited to be involved :-)  We then topped the hay-mixture with the dirt from our compost bins and covered all with fabric for a bit of "settling-time".  Brian hopes to hit the bins with the rototiller once more before we add the plants.

And boy are the plants ready!
We have something like 80 tomato plants started and another 50-odd pepper plants.  A good amount of leeks, a handful of pumpkins, and a mess of herbs all growing in little cups in our front-porch.
Soon...soon...all of them will be in their new garden box homes.

My Jude is Four!

 Jude...
Our little JuJu is four years old!
Happy Birthday, Jude!

We celebrated a little on Sunday, his true birthday, but we'll have a party with the family next Sunday.  We had a few presents for him to open, much to his delight.

I made him a little bag out of jeans and fun fabric.  It's just the right size to hold monster and some cars.  There was also a "birthday" Thomas the Tank engine, complete with a cake that plays the theme song from the show.  This was a big hit, and Jude immediately wanted to carry the little engine around in his bag.  

We also gave him a set of roller skates, along with pads, so that he could practice skating outdoors this summer.  (Tamlin will be getting as set too as a "graduation" gift for finishing Kindergarten.)  Jude thought these were pretty cool, and I can't wait to see him skating around the paved parks and safety towns.  I also had picked up a kiddy folding camp chair for him, since he is too big for his current toddler Tweety-bird chair.  He loved this too, especially because this new one has a drink holder.

The rest of the day had its ups and downs for Jude.  He is still very dramatic and passionate about life.  He got upset that Sunday School was done for the summer at church, but then he was happy to pick out his own flower to plant in the garden.  He was upset that we only had small treats and has to wait for cake at the party, but was happy with his cool new number 4 shirt.  He was also pretty happy to help Dad around the yard and to play at our friends' house for dinner.

Oh, Jude...
I love you so, my little man.
I love your sweet little smile and all of your amazing snuggles.
I love when you climb into my arms when you come running for a hug.
I love your dramatics over every bump and scrap that requires a band-aid, whether it needs it or not.
I love it when you tell us all that you love us too.

Being Crafty

 .
 We all were in a crafty mood this Saturday.  Jude's birthday was coming up, so I made him a "Number 4" shirt.  He wanted it decorated with dinosaurs, hungry dinosaurs.  I decided to go with a bit of freezer paper stenciling and bleach. Here's the shirt in progress.  Tamlin didn't want to be left out, so he asked for a shirt to that was especially made by Momma.  We decided together to make him a shirt with the phrase "future 1st grader".  I also did this one with stencils, but used bleach for the background and white paint for the lettering, to keep it crisp.  He loved it and plans to where it frequently through the summer.  He is so excited to be graduating from Kindergarten. 

The boys decided to do a bit of painting to.  They started with painting some Thomas the Tank engine papers.  Here's Tam's artwork; he had started with painting neatly in the lines, but this quickly degraded to telling a story about black raindrops and red clouds.  Jude's art consisted of green, lots of green, mostly for Percy, who is green, but branching out to just about everything on the paper being some shade of green. 

Brian also wanted in on the painting action.  He got out some of his little figurines to paint.  Now that he has his glasses, he can see the details again and is able to paint the fine things.

 When the boys tired of painting pictures, they moved on to their wooden model kits.  Jude worked on his jet airplane and Tamlin worked on his race car.  Tamlin very carefully painted his car with stripes.  Jude worked on painting spots all over his plane.  These kits were Christmas gifts and were great hits as creative outlets.  Each boy really enjoyed making their "own" toys.

 I finished the craftiness splurge with a bit of sewing.  I whipped up a little jean bag for Jude for his birthday.  It's a mirror to the one I made Tamlin when he was about 3.  Now each boy has their own little bag for treasures and cars.  I then dug through my stash of fabric trying to get inspired for some project, particularly some type of dresses for my nieces.  Ah, a bit of vintage purple paisley fabric and a wonderfully simple little pinafore pattern yields a cute reversible jumper for little Elizabeth.  If it fits well, I have may whip up another one or two for the summer.  I think it will look adorable with a cute little cloth diaper bum peeking out from underneath. 

A good day...

Today we accomplished much.

Brian got both the lawn mower and the rototiller tuned up and running well.  He mowed the lawn and I started turning over the soil/leaves in the garden beds.  The original soil is still high in clay, but we had quite of bit of left-over soil from the potato barrels and leaf litter to turn in.  We also have two barrels of compost to add and our land-lord wants to bring us straw/manure too. 

The boys helped "water" the new lawn seed and had fun with the garden hose.  We even put it on their little slide so that they had a waterslide.  I then had to chance them around the yard trying to spray them with water as they ran squealing out of reach of the spray.

Everyone relaxing on the swing and enjoying the sunshine and breeze. We swang for a bit and the boys sang me songs about rock-a-bye baby, on the waterfall (interesting renditions created on the fly).

Tam, Jude, and I cleaned out the inside of the car.  Tam helped with the vacuum and Jude helped wipe everything down. Quickly, Tamlin grew tired of vacuuming and joined Jude with the wet cloths.  Both boys had a grand time crawling all over the car wiping all the surfaces.  It made me smile that they wanted to just help and be with me...and they actually were helping.  I am pleased I can see the floormats of the cars again.  I am sure it will stay that way only until the kiddos start bringing toy back into the cars for rides.  We then went to the local quarter car wash to clean the outside.  Both boys had a chance operating the spray hose with moderate success.

We celebrated our busy day with cones from the Dairy Dock and hot showers.

Left to do...
Turn in topsoil/compost/hay into the gardens and let them rest for a couple of weeks.
Plant the plants.
Get ready for a soon-to-be four year old's birthday.
Get ready for summer camping.
And oh so many more things, but they can wait for another day.

I had the day off...

So Brian, Jude, and I went to a few mom sales and then the ZOO!
This was a nice day to spend with out JuJu while Tamlin was at school.  The Cleveland zoo is so large, that we tend to focus on only seeing one or two sections of it during any single visit.  Today Jude wanted to see the lions, the bears, and the penguins, and ride a train (of course).

The lions were the first stop and they were lounging out in great poses.

We then hiked on back to the Northern Trek animals.  Here the grizzly bears were out to be seen. Jude was vaguely impressed...but had way more fun jumping over the cracks in the pathways (the cracks are traps).

The main attraction was the penguins...a temporary exhibit for this summer.  The penguins were cute little guys.  One even humored us by jumping into their swim tank and having a languid swim around while we watched.  They were pretty fun and oh so cute :-)

Our next stops were for Jude...a trip up to the huge carosel for a short ride.  Jude rode a penguin!  Then a stop in the kids natural play area.  We had a grand time laying bamboo and pipes to get a water stream to flow around the rocks.   There were also stick huts to explore and tunnels to crawl through, even if they were a bit of low clearance for me and Brian.

As always, we needed to ride the tram...which I think is Jude's favorite part of the entire zoo experience.

We stopped to see the elephants and the meerkats before we left.  Both creatures obliged us by posing for some great photos. 

After about two hours, Jude was done and we headed home.  I love that we have a pass so that we can come back again and again and see different parts of this huge zoo.

Guess who's got glasses

I like them.
I think he looks a bit modern Buddy-Holly-ish.

Brian has always had better than average vision, so when he started having problems reading, I knew something was up. Yep.  He's just a little bit far-sighted and now rocks the bifocals.