good deals....

Today I went to a yard sale with some friends. It was okay, but not stellar. In fact, I was rather disappointed in the lack of stuff I found considering the size of the sale.

On the way home however, we saw a sign.. HUGE YARD SALE..10 families, so we decided to stop, and boy did we hit the jackpot. It looked like a daycare center going out of business, except that it was just 10 families getting rid of all of their kid stuff. The whole front yard was filled with strollers, swings, infant toys, step 2 and little tikes toys... 4 tents of clothes, books, games and more..

I came away with the following....








PLUS a baby gate and numerous clothes for winter and spring..

all for a grand total of $50... not too shabby....

I think my favorite find was the sled.. it's PERFECT for this winter...
and the wagon... what a steal!

garden fun!

Here's our beautiful garden....Let me take you on a partial tour...


These are our tomatoes... we have grapes and romas. 16 romas, 4 grapes... we ate 4 grapes the other day, they were deeeeee--lightful!



Our swiss chard... apparantley it's award winning (according to our 4H friends) in fact we are going to put some in the fair next week via our 4H-ers.. if we win we got money... MONEY.. did you know you can get money from the fair? so they are going to enter it and if we win then we can put it in Levi's bank account. how fantastic is that? we have 5 more plants like that.




Next up.. Zuchinni.. YUM-O! It's slow to start this year, but it's coming, we had some last night in a baked ziti... along with yellow squash... we've made zuchinni brownies as well...



And lastly our peppers... I love a good pepper. We will chop and freeze these bad boys and fresh pepper and onion all winter long...



Our bounty from our work that night.... it's mostly swiss chard.. seriously we have so much! If you live in our area and want some.. let us know!



And because he's cute.... Levi chilling in his exersaucer while we worked..


We have lots more veggies as well.. brocolli, cabbage, onions, squash, yellow peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, cantalope.... there is something rewarding about seeing the land you work on produce food that our family can eat. we love it! we really want our kids to understand that food doesn't come from the store. that people work hard for food, that it's a blessing.. we also love that we control what goes on our food... no pesticides, no ick-o stuff.. just good ol' rain and sun... there is seriously nothing like it...

baby food 101

baby food quandries...

1) when i puree the food especially veggies it is still grainy... why? am i not cooking it long enough

2) we've tried peaches, pears, applesauce, banana
peas, green beans, squash, sweet potato, carrots
what else should i try?

3) i've tried making prunes once, as well as cherries both turned out really grainy like the veggies.. is it because of the skin on the fruit, should i peel stuff?

4) he is eating rice, oatmeal and barley cereals... how long do i feed him cereal for... when can i start other stuff like this?

5) we gave him some of those gerber puff things.. he really really likes them.

sitting

He's getting so grown up!

We shot this out at the garden last night... speaking of which we enjoyed our first tomatoes.. some small grape ones.. boy were they delightful!

we have a sitter

yesterday we put Levi down on the grass... and he sat there playing with the blades of grass like he's always done it or something.... to which we of course cheered, "yeah Levi"... and he looked at us, like..
Mom, I've been doing this forever...what's the big deal?

silly kid.

tiny feet...great big lake

 

 

life

why is it that when life is crazy and worth blogging about you don't have the time to do it? i suppose that's the crutch of this whole thing.

we have been CRAZY busy lately.

Levi is getting so big. He'll be 6 months next week. He is growing, and squealing, and laughing all the time. He has figured out that there is more to life than laying around and is desperately trying to figure out how to crawl. He is eating like a pro. He LOVES orange vegetables, pretty much hates the green ones, and is kind of EH about fruit... I've been making the baby food and having fun with it. There are so many more options and we can try different things. We even gave him some cherry the other day.

The garden is in full swing. Mike brought home swiss chard, cabbage, broccoli, zucchini and yellow squash tonight... YUM-O!

Last week I taught a piano camp every day from 8-3. It was fun, but tiring. We left Saturday morning and headed to North to go camping with Mike's family for a couple of days. We had a really nice time, though we froze at night. It was mid-40's at night. We ended up pulling Levi into bed between us at night to keep him warm. Levi stuck his toes in Lake Michigan for the first time.

We came home yesterday, and today I spent unpacking etc. I'm also preparing to play for a funeral tomorrow. It's for the director I play for all the time. His father passed away suddenly on Friday. Did I also mention that I'm playing for his daughter's wedding on Saturday? Yeah.

Friday night Mike and I are headed to G.R. to the rehearsal. This is a sans kid event, so my parents have graciously agreed to watch Levi for us overnight. This will be our first overnight excursion without him, and I have to say we are looking forward to it. The wedding is Saturday, then we'll race back home and Mike is slated to lead worship on Sunday at church.

After that, it's on to the following weekend which is filled with family pictures and my sister's birthday... hooray!