Our Spring Garden!

Our little "urban" garden plot - complete with Walgreen's and the truckstop in the landscape!

The squash bed: We're using intensive gardening techniques - planting in close quarters within raised beds, instead of in rows. The squash, in particular REALLY seem to like it!

One of the behemoth squash leaves dwarfing my hand. I've never seen anything quite like it!

A tangled mess of cucumber plants.

A close up of some of our tomatoes. Abby simply can't wait for them to be ready to eat!

Just Some New Pictures

I figured it had been ages since I put up any pics of the kids, so here are a few so you can see how they've grown!

This is a really nice fish Elijah caught completely by himself - no help from Daddy other than driving the boat!

Yep, even here at the home of the Royals, we will wear our Rangers fandom with pride!

My little slugger...

My princess all decked out in her Sunday best. She's looking so grown up!

Just another shot of my darling looking "pretty as a picture"

All I Want for Christmas is My 2 Front Teeth...

Not the best pic, but it does show off the one missing tooth with it's neighbor hanging on for dear life. He was like that for about 2 weeks.

Too cute! Hardest part is trying not to laugh when he's trying to be mad and serious while talking through that gap in his teeth!

Halloween

Elijah's supposed to be Robin Hood (yes, same costume as last year), but with Tinkerbell at his side he looks decidedly like Peter Pan.

And here's my little (as she says) "Tinki-bell".

I LOVE that picture...

The Shirt Dress

Hard to believe that this used to be a $4 man's shirt from goodwill and a $1.50 roll of lace from Walmart! It was sooooo easy & took hardly any time at all. I've got another one in the works, but no time to finish it right now.

A Proud Little Boy

Our Lugnuts came in second place in the t-ball deivision. Here's my little slugger showing off his trophy (and the well-earned dirt on his ball cap...LOL)

Homesteading Course

Here are the promised pictures from our course at Homestead Heritage. One of these days we'll have pictures like this from our OWN place.
This is "Rip the Wonder Dog" working some goats for the schoolkids that were there on a field trip.
Some REAL horsepower... OK so I doubt we'll be making any pictures like this one on our own place, but it's mighty impressive!

Rosebud, the Jersey milk cow

Me and Rosebud's less photogenic side... LOL But there's the proof... I milked a cow!

Now that's just pretty. Wow.

Another Prairie Girl Dress

Here's another dress using the King's Daughters pattern called "Melinda's Dress." It's just like the purple one below, but done slightly better. It's very cute on...

Pretty In Pink

If you go back and look closely, you may notice that this is the same pattern as last year's "Easter" dress. The fabric is actually quilt fabric that I got on clearance at my favorite LQS, which is closing its doors on April 12--that's a bummer, but I've been enjoying her closeout sales! ANYWAY... I was very pleased with the way this turned out. To make it big enough, like the others I've been making lately, I went with a size 4 (for my 2&1/2 yr old!!)--it's roomy, but certainly not oversized! And she models it beautifully, don't ya think? :-)

Abigail's New Dress

I recently realized that I hadn't made a new dress for Abigail since like last April... figured I needed to get on the stick, especially since she's starting to outgrow all those little dresses I made last year. I had bought a couple of patterns from The King's Daughters, but hadn't tried one yet. So I dug through the little girl dress fabric stash (yes, that's in addition to the quilt fabric stash...LOL) and pulled out some cute purple calico... and here we have it...
I made it a little big, actually size 4, so she can get lots of wear out of it. The dress represents several "first" for me... first invisible zipper (need A LOT of practice on that one), first Peter Pan collar (did pretty well on that) and first set-in/side-seam pockets (again did pretty well). All in all, it turned out very pretty & looks really nice on her. I've already pulled another fabric from the stash to make her another one... only thing I don't like is how grown-up she looks. :sniff:

Happy Birthday Elijah!

It was a "fishing" theme party (anyone who knows Elijah is NOT surprised by that choice...) So we had a fish-shaped pinata & played "Guess How Many Gummy Worms in the Bait Cup," "Catch the Goldfish" (using little grabbers to pluck floating plastic fish out of a tub of water), and of course "Pin the Fishhook on the Fish"... And had a fishing cake (made by the same friend who did the great Pablo cake for Abigail's party)
Camo treat bags complete with goldfish crackers & Swedish Fish...
Did I mention it was a really yummy cake? Here's little sister licking the icing off of her plate...

I did draw the line on the whole fish theme, however... there were NO "dead minnows" (a.k.a. anchovies) on the pizzas we ate for lunch. Yuck.

My Two Cuties

You know, someone's gonna think these two actually LIKE each other! Let's just say we frequently call them "Pete & Re-pete" LOL.

Wearing a couple of Daddy's hats...
Playing with Abby's "computer"
Just plain hamming it up.