Gardens

This weekend we did lots of gardening!

I planted red begonias around the boxwood hedge, white petunias under the crabapple tree, and red begonias under the birch tree.

Red begonias and dusty millers along the planting area at the front window

Girls' garden.  Katie planted LOTS of flower seeds this weekend!  She claims to have labeled everything and followed the directions.  We'll see what comes up!!

Our veggie garden.  The close side has garlic, spinach, and lettuce up.  I also planted beets, wax beans, shallots, and potatoes.  The far side has cukes, tomatoes, peppers, basil, rosemary, and parsley.  (I also snuck in some sunflowers...shhh!  Don't tell Chris!  He hates that they get so big!)

I put fancy plants in my pots this year, since impatiens are a no-go due to downy mildew.  The front porch pots have Kong coleus, 2 dragon-wing begonias, a New Guinea impatiens, and some cool viney plants.

We did a huge cleanup of the Sarah garden - weeding, edging, composting, etc.  I didn't get the annuals in due to rain, but it's all ready for them!  The girls brought up all of the rocks from the back yard and put them into place to line the path.  Doesn't it look great?  But I can just hear them, 10-20 years from now..."Do you remember when Mom & Dad made us carry hundreds of rocks up that big hill?  It took all day!  I dropped one on my toe and it hurt sooo bad!"

I have 5 pots on the deck, with random flowers like these.  We'll see how they turn out!  I usually just do boring (but easy) impatiens in them.

One of our yummy dinners this weekend - smoked salmon and edamame!  It was delicious!

Little stargazer with her new telescope.  We have had fun looking at far-away objects with it, but haven't had any luck with stars, because it's been cloudy the past few nights.  We hope we get a clear night sometime soon!

Megan's closest arrow

Katie's closest arrows

Komen Race for the Cure

Here are Chris' pictures of our 5K last weekend:

Girls hugging the tiger outside of Comerica Park.

Before!

Katie finishing her first 5K!

Megan and Katie ran the 5K in 35 minutes!

After!

Girls in the Belle Isle Conservatory

Megan pretending to lick a cactus

Little archers

Yesterday, we surprised the girls and took them to Bass Pro Shops to pick out a bow and arrows! They were soooo excited! We got to try out the bow in the archery range right in the store.









Then we got a few bales of straw so we could set up a target in our back yard. The girls got the hang of the compound bow pretty quickly, and spent most of the afternoon with it.



We've done lots of yard work this weekend, and lots of biking, too. Today, we went to the Memorial Day Heritage Festival in downtown Rochester. Tomorrow, we hope to make it to the parade downtown. It's been a cool, but sunny weekend. We wish we could be swimming, but we're happy to be biking, gardening, and shooting bows!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Update! Finally!

I'm so behind in blogging!  Sorry!  I just downloaded lots of pics off my iPhone, and here they are!  It's kind of a random snapshot of what we've been up to lately, but it will have to do til I can find time to organize pictures from two iPhones and a camera!

The girls have a turtle friend in our neighborhood retention pond.  They named him "Turdy."  Lovely.  One time Katie almost caught him!  He seems really tame.

One of our walks to DQ...as soon as it was warm enough, we started our walks!  New this year - no stroller at all!  Jessica can walk the 4 miles all by herself now!  Our community garden plots are only a few blocks away from DQ, so we will be making lots of trips to water and harvest this summer!

Also new this year - all three girls can ride their own bike throughout our neighborhood!  This is a huge breakthrough!  We just got Megan a new bike with gears on Friday (actually, we got Katie a new bike, and Megan got this white one).  So now Megan can ride this bike on our long rides to the cider mill (8-12 miles round trip depending on where we start).  Jessi will still be on the tagalong behind me for long rides, b/c that would be too much pedaling for her tiny legs.

Our crabapple was glorious this year, if a week later than usual.

Jessica made this beautiful artwork for me for Mother's Day.  We moms were treated to a really nice classroom visit.

Jessica with a ball python!  This was after one of our homeschool nature classes.  Jessi knows all about wildflower ID now...counting petals, determining alternate or opposite leaves, toothed vs lobed leaves, etc!  She tagged along on another one of Katie's class this past week, about ecosystems, and got placed in the 1st and 2nd grade group.  She said she knew most of the answers - she knew we breathe oxygen, and that it comes from plants.  On the nature walk, she knew most of the wildflowers thanks to this class.  And in the pond, she knew all about the frog lifecycle, thanks to our back yard!  What a smarty pants!

Katie with the python.  She also learned a ton about wildflower ID, and was so interested that I got her the ID book and a 10x lens to examine flowers.  She loves it!  In the ecosystem class this week, she said she knew nearly every single answer in the class part AND the nature walk part.  It was great for her to "see" ecosystems in action, and to put her book knowledge in action.

Katie is taking an art class at a local art center.  In this one, a photocopy of a famous work of art is torn in half, and the students have to learn how to mix colors to get the right shades.  I think she did great!

Beau helped Katie with her science chapter one day, while G&G C were at Holy Family with Meg and Jess for Grandparents' Day.

We got Mom C. these pretty fuschias for her front porch.  Hopefully they attract lots of hummingbirds!  We have hummingbirds now, does anyone else??

Last weekend, Megan's team was VERY short of players due to First Communion at the big church in our city.  So we suited up Jessica as a substitute.  And she played - and played GREAT!  She was a good little defender, and even played forward for a few minutes.  She was fearless, going after the ball no matter who had it.  It was the cutest thing I've ever seen!

Go, Jessi, go!

Here's Katie's newest painting project - a still life (in the background).  This is the start, she will touch it up quite a bit this week.  They usually spend 2-3 weeks on a project.

On Friday, Meg had a half day, so I took the girls to the zoo in the afternoon.  It was our first zoo trip of the year!  Here they are in the aviary.

And squeezing each other on the turtle by the reptile house.

On Saturday, we all did the Komen Race for the Cure 5K in downtown Detroit.  Chris ran with Meg & Katie, and they finished in around 35 minutes!  Not bad for their first 5K, and being only 8 and 11!  I walked with Jessica, and we didn't keep track of the time.  :)  Jessi borrowed my headphones, and jammed to Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe for most of the walk.  She occasionally sang some Taylor Swift, too, but her best singing and dance moves were to CMM!

After the walk, we did our usual routine after the race: we picked up some shrimp dinners and wing dinners from Happy's (a Detroit dive), and we picnicked on Belle Isle.  Much of the island was closed off for Grand Prix preparations, but we made it to the aquarium and conservatory.  Then we had to race home for TWO soccer games!  What were we thinking?  Poor Katie & Megan were soooo tired, but Katie played almost the whole game on defense, and Megan scored four goals in her game!

Today it was super hot - 86!!  So we broke out the sprinkler for the first time of the year, before two more soccer games this afternoon.  Megan got 2 goals in her game, and Jessi got 7 goals in hers.  We are all pooped after a long, hot weekend in the sun, but boy do we love this weather!

I will try to get Megan's First Communion pictures posted soon.  Justin took a ton of great pictures for us, and we can't wait to show them off!