Happenings

It's been awhile since I have posted about what's going on at the top of the hill!  So here goes!

I am always looking for new lunch ideas and love seeing pictures of what others pack in their kids lunch boxes!  I decided the other day to take a picture of my girls lunch!  Now, they eat cold lunch most of the time since you never know what is in those hot lunches that the school serve, especially since we don't eat high fructose corn syrup and you know those lunches are filled with that crap.  My girls prefer lunch from home anyway. 

I do have to make a few changes for each of them.  Kk doesn't eat strawberries (the seeds get stuck in her teeth and bother her ortho appliance) and Nin doesn't like grapes.  Kk loves pb and j, Nin doesn't, that kind of thing.

KK has pb and j sandwich, strawberry yogurt, grapes, carrots and celery with pb. 

Nin gets a couple spoonfuls of cheese ball (which strangely, she is in love with!), crackers, celery and pb, strawberries/grapes (she left the grapes but ate the strawberries), carrots/cherry tomatoes and cottage cheese. 

Finally got the tree in the back yard cut down.  Ahem, 4 years later.... 

Yes, that would be my Nin out there helping cut down a tree in a skirt....

These portions of the stump are going to be used as seats in the girls new play garden.  I have wanted to cut down thise tree and make the back corner a play garden with seating, tall sunflowers for shade and let the girls grow what they want.  I also imagine a metal archway into the corner that they can use to grow a vine type plant, maybe some type of pea...  We are one step closer!!

 
I meant to start the broccoli, onions and cauliflower seeds but I got carried away and pretty much started everything....  Oops! 

4 o'clocks

Broccoli and cauliflower.  The little guys on the left hand side are tiny basil plants.  I may have over done it with the basil.  I have about 40 basil plants in 2 varieties....  But we love basil so I may plant about half of them!

Tulips already!  What a winter we have had.  Barely any snow, which is highly unusual, barely any rain and barely any cold.  So my tulips thought it was spring in February this year.....  The girls and I spent hours and hours planting about 60 new bulbs and digging up all the old ones to seperate and re plant.  We have about 8 or 10 different types planted in no order, just randomly dropped.  Hopefully it's pretty!  And all of our hard work doesn't get killed by a late snow fall! 

And look who woke up and thought it was spring!

Happenings

Lots of things to photograph lately!
Chocolate chip pancakes



Butter!!!! This was for a double batch of Paula Dean's sugar cookies.



That made this... 74 sugar cookies!





To balance out the sugar..



Diggy!





Fiesty Diggy

Happenings!

So many things are going on up here and I love when blogs feature picture posts, so I may just keep doing them! 

We had quite a few earth day projects between school and the local university.

Nin had to make a robot out of recycled materials.  She definately wanted a girl robot with big red lips.  So with an ice cream tub, some pop bottles, a piece of used yellow paper, and those little wiggly eyeballs (which weren't recycled) she came up with this.





Then the local university had an event in their art lab for kids to make bird houses out of orange juice jugs.  We just need to hang them up and put some food into the pop lids.



We have had various sightings of Diggy, the black squirrel who lives in the neighborhood. This may not be unusual to you, but all we have around these parts is plain old brown squirrels. The first time we saw Diggy, Nin yelled, "mom there is a skunk in the driveway!" I googled and found that there are indeed black squirrels, just not around here. So where he came from we have no idea, but we like having him around. He disappeared for a summer a couple years ago, but he has been making steady appearances the last 2 summers. He has quite the reputation in the neighborhood and everyone knows who he is!

BTW- we named him Diggy after Rev Run's son, but all the neighbors have different names for him.







Tulips



A tray of seedlings that desperately need to be planted outside. This weekend is my goal.



One pathetic carrot. Seriously, where are the rest?



Lots of basil! Yumm!



Lettuce



Lilac bushes. When we first moved in, I had no idea these were in the back fence line because it was summer and they were done blooming. The next spring though, these babies popped up and the smell was divine! The whole back fence line is planted with these in several different colors. Each of these bushes is about 7 or 8 foot tall and propably 5 foot across. I have no idea why they do so well back there, but when I open the windows in the spring and the wind carries their perfume into the house, it is nothing short of a miracle. They smell sooooo good!!