Garden Support

Last weekend Gabe was busy building.
First he put in some support for our raspberry bushes.Then he built this tepee type thing for the peas to grow up.Sure wish we could get a little more sun. All the rain and hail we had yesterday sure wasn't what the garden needed.

Two of my favorite...

pictures from this week.
Levi's grandma's get a two-for-one today.

Here's Levi being silly while reading books on Monday. He usually only sucks his fingers when he's going to sleep. So when I saw him doing it while reading books, I asked him if he was sleepy. This is him pretending to go to sleep in his chair. Oh, and the snake. It makes a perfect scarf.
We went to Enzo and Finn's 2nd birthday party on Saturday evening. This big blue balloon was one of the things Levi got to bring home with him from the party. It's so big he calls it a ball, not a balloon. And apparently it's fun to sit and bounce on. Gabe and I were both pretty sure Levi was going to pop it doing this but it's still around the house somewhere.
We don't really have any big plans for the holiday weekend. Becky's going to come over and put Levi to bed for us tonight. Gabe and I are going out to dinner and a movie. We're having a few friends over on Monday for a little BBQ. Oh, and we decided to start the dinning room floor project this morning. I'll post before and after pictures when it's finished.

Longest home improvement project EVER!

OK...I'm embarrassed to admit that Gabe and I started giving my work out room a face lift in JANUARY! It's now May, and we put the finishing touches on the room this weekend. I guess it's easy to start a project and never get around to finishing it when it's not a room you cook in.
So here's the chronicle of our 5 month home gym creation.

In January this is what we started with:Where do I begin describing the things I hated about this room?
1. Oh, I have to start with the floor. Lovely leopard print vinyl tile anyone? We have some in our laundry room too. That's another project altogether. Which at this rate we will never get around to.
2. The two colors. I'm all for bright colors in my home. I have an orange dinning room after all, but these colors just don't do it for me one bit!
3. The electrical outlets...yes...they painted over them. Something that slowed down our project when we couldn't just replace the covers. Gabe had to put brand new plugs on as well.
4. Something you can't see in this picture. The horrible job they did painting. Want to see the ceiling for yourself?January-
So that's what we started with.
Gabe started the face lift by painting the ceiling.I painted the walls the color of my choice. My favorite color. Might not be the best choice for a small room but I enjoy it.

February-
A few weeks after painting was done, we made our decision about flooring. We decided the easiest thing to do was to just cover that "lovely" tile. So, we got some rubber gym tiles and Gabe installed them in no time.I know what you're thinking...we were thinking the same thing..."There's not much left to do now". It was 100% usable and we just sorta forgot about it.

April-
I decided I need a mirror in the room. After all, what's a gym without a mirror in which to stare at my growing muscles! So we took the huge mirror off the wall in our downstairs bathroom. No big deal, we're planning on re-doing that bathroom next month anyway. (Not sure how long that project will take to complete given the time frame on this one. I'll let you know when it gets started.) Anyway, we had some trouble figuring out what we wanted to do to frame the mirror and hang it. This little thing is what held us up for months:And here's the finished room:Oh, I forgot to mention the TV. It was my Valentine's day gift from my dear husband. Romantic huh? I tease!
Working out is about one of my least favorite things. But knowing I get to spend 30 minutes in a space I enjoy, makes it a little bit more tolerable. OK...a lot more tolerable.

Wish us luck as we rip out carpet in our dinning room and lay hard wood this summer. We've had the flooring in our downstairs closet for almost a year now. We'll probably need luck on our bathroom project too. Just those two projects this summer. Oh, I forgot...we have to paint the house. But I think we'll hire someone to do that. Good idea huh? We'd probably still be painting it in December!

BIG Bubbles

Levi loves bubbles. He loves to pop them. He loves to blow them. He likes to eat them. Yes, he'll put his face on the ground and pop them with his mouth. And he'll also stick the wand in his mouth when he's blowing them. He must be watched very closely when bubbles are out!
So when I saw this big bubble wand in the dollar bin at Target this morning, I knew we had to get it.
And it is a lot of fun!I love this shot Gabe took this morning. It's so cool that you can see the bubble popping in the middle. What a dramatic splash!

Our Garden

Since my friend Nickie was asking about our garden in a comment last month. I thought I should try a blog series on our family garden. From start to finish. Or in other words, from planting to preserving.
We have three raised beds in our front yard because we don't have much of a back yard. And the house faces south, so the front yard has the most hours of sun each day. I'm not the sort of gardener who starts things from seed indoors. Mostly because I'm lazy but also because we don't really have a good place to put them. None of our windows really get enough sunlight. So, we buy veggie starts for the most part. This year our garden has herbs, lettuce, spinach, green bush beans, and four tomato plants (heirloom, yellow, cherry and roma). We decided to put zucchini in a pot this year to see how that works. They take up so much room in the garden, we hope that putting them in a separate container will help save some space. We also planted sweet peas, snap peas, and carrots from seed.
Here's my helper digging and getting ready to plant some pea seeds a few weeks ago.And here he is helping me plant the seeds too.My goal is to keep updating the garden's progress but maybe also add some recipes we try. Three years ago we ate, canned or preserved everything that we harvested from our garden. The second piece of my goal is to also share that part of the process. So, stay tuned. We already have peas sprouting!

Oregon Trail Rally

Just to keep everything on the blog even, I wanted to get on here and show how I like, or would like to play.  This weekend is the Oregon Trail Rally, an event I have codriven in, volunteered at and spectated over the years.  This year I got to play spectator.  Above is the car owned by Dan Brown and Doug Heredos, here, Dan is driving through one of the stages held at Portland International Raceway.  This will be the second season for the guys in the new car.  Sounds like Friday got a little eventful when they lost brakes on the third stage!  Hopefully they do well the rest of the weekend.

Below is a shot of Antoine L'Estage, last years Rally America champion.  As you can see, racing went well past dark, giving you a chance to see just how much these guys use their brakes.

Happy Mother's Day!

This is my kind of Mother's Day breakfast.
Gabe and Levi got donuts and coffee this morning. And flowers too.

I tried to sleep in, and was completely unsuccessful at doing so. Guess for the rest of my life, my body will just be conditioned to wake up at 6:30am. Even on the rare day I actually get a chance to sleep later.

The boys were also going to make me a nice dinner. But I took the car, which also happened to have Levi's car seat in it, to see a movie with my mom and sisters this afternoon. So, they were left stranded at home and couldn't go to the store to get any groceries. We ended up here for Mother's day dinner instead.

On this Mother's day, and every day, I am very grateful to have this wonderful child in my life! Stories before bed are definitely the highlight of my day!

Bike Repair Shop

I think what I'm loving most about playing with Levi right now is just watching what he comes up with. Everything is a toy. Everything can have an unusual purpose. Everything must be explored.
And I'm amazed at the things he does naturally.
For example, he loves this "bue" hammer. (He just started saying blue this week. And that's what it sounds like. He also started saying "poo" and "hoe" this week. Translations: poop and hole. Although thankfully he's not using the two words together.)And this is naturally what he does with it. I swear he's never seen his dad working on his car or bike. So how does the kid come up with the idea to use the hammer to "fix" the seat on his bike?And he couldn't take off riding his bike without the hammer. It had to go everywhere with him this morning. He tried to put it on the front of his bike but it wouldn't stay on while he rode. But he was thrilled when I suggested he ride with it in his pocket!It's crazy what this kid comes up with!

This is why...

I teach.

And boy did I need a reminder today!

It's Friday. It's spring. Only 20 days left.

When a couple kids make my day difficult, it's hard to remember the ones I enjoy spending my day with.

Gabe was told by his boss Wednesday afternoon, that he'd be spending the rest of the week in Canada. He gets home tomorrow afternoon.

Our district is cutting another 120 teaching positions this year...should find out next week if I still have a job next year.

Just feel like there are a lot of things out of my control right now and a lot that has me worried.

I needed this poem a girl in my second period class wrote and gave me today. I'm sure she wrote it because Tuesday was teacher appreciation day. She had no idea I really needed this reminder today.

A love for history

A passion for teaching

A heart for students

Memories you make

Thoughts you create

Dreams you inspire

Places we wish to go

Things we want to overcome

Actions we hope to do

Thanks to you

The day must end

The trimester is almost done

The year is close to the finish line

I will never forget

I will always remember you!

And I should probably also include the funny reasons why I teach. I don't get a lot of this mushy stuff often, but I do get a fair share of funny random stories and crazy statements.

Like the kid who walked into 5th period on Wednesday and announced that he was still hungry because "All I had for breakfast was a rice crispy treat and a piece of ham."

We have a beaver!

I'm a little late in finally getting around to posting this story.
We were notified several weeks ago by the neighbor behind us, that we have a family of beavers living in our creek. He took Gabe down to the creek and showed him the damage the beavers are causing and their "cute" little den. The neighbor says he's seen them, but we've only seen evidence of their existence. Here it is...I was sorta putting off this post, hoping that Gabe would be able to get a shot of the actual beaver(s), but he just hasn't had the time. Maybe I'll update if he finally gets around to it.

After doing a little research (thanks to our friend Carley for recommending this source) here's what Gabe did to solve our little problem...And so far it's worked. He covered about 6 trees (you can see one they started in on in the background of the photo) and we haven't found any more evidence that they've been after more trees on our property.
Here's to hoping they've moved on to better tasting trees somewhere else!
Oh, the joys of home ownership. I never really did expect we'd be forced to deal with beavers. We can cross that one off the list!