Reason #1....

My garden

One of my most favorite things about living in the country is that I have room to grow the foods we love the most! I love all of the fresh veggies that we have in the summer months. This year we planted red bell peppers (the girls like them better than green and I can't blame them!). Inadvertantly, I think I've finally figured out how to grow big, thick, firm green bell peppers like the kind you buy in the store, not those wimpy, small home-grown looking kind. You plant red bell pepper plants and because the peppers never actually turn red, no matter how long you leave them on the vine, you pick them green! Genius! Sorry girls. :-) We also thought we would out-smart our eggplant by planting only one. How many eggplants could one measly plant produce? Around 5 per day, that's how many! The question has become, how much eggplant can two measly people (the only veggie I have found that the girls won't touch!) possibly eat? We have eggplant sandwiches (a real fave!), crusty eggplant (more commonly called eggplant parm.), pasta with grilled eggplant, skewered eggplant with chicken and veggies....I need ideas people!! Finally, we have tomatoes. Oh man, do we have tomatoes! We planted a little later than we should have and we're just getting into the thick of tomato production. We have cherry tomatoes (Lauren's favorite thing to pick....and eat), Romas, and Beefsteak. When it comes to the tomatoes, I say we plant maybe one or two plants....however, the farmer in my husband breaks out the rototiller, pulls rows, sets up a trellis to hold up the plants as they grow. Thus, we have 6 tomato plants and about 150 tomatoes to pick every day. OK, that may be a bit of an exaggeration.

Yesterday's bounty!

We had eggplant sandwiches for dinner last night....again! :-)

Back to school....

This has been a week of adjustments for us girls with school starting. Emma began second grade, Lauren started 2 day preschool, and I am trying to adjust to being childless. It's not as exciting as it may sound!



Emma is my little social butterfly. School is her absolute favorite place to be and the more work she has, the more she likes it. She was totally thrilled to have a homework sheet on Monday....she's been waiting 2 years to have homework and she couldn't be more excited. She's very weird! Occasionally, I will mention that maybe we could home school. You would think I told her Disneyland burned down and we sold Trigger (her horse) for the amount of crying and pleading that ensues! She really knows how to make me feel good! :-)

Lauren has been looking forward to preschool for the last 2 years. She really misses her sister during the day and wants to be "big" and go too. Emma gave her the rundown on what to expect (in her typical, bossy older sister way). Lauren informed me that she would not be sleeping at nap time and was happy to announce when I picked her up that "the blond lady told me that I didn't have to sleep, just lay on the cot and be quiet." (Good luck to you, blond lady!) She had a great day and it helped immensely that her best friend from church, Jonah, was there with her. She also informed us that Jonah would have to go to preschool with her because if he wasn't there, he would miss her too much. Oye!

As for me, I think I'll be fine. Yesterday was hard, but I know it will get easier (or at least that's what I'm telling myself!). I had coffee with some girlfriends, met my hubby for lunch and then went to Target and WinCo....alone. I did not enjoy it. I kept seeing things and thinking of what Lauren would say about them (she always has something to say about everything) and it made me miss her even more. So, I raced home, dropped off my groceries and went to pick her up 10 minutes early. She was annoyed. *sigh*

Here we go....

OK, I'm ready to join the ranks of some of my closest, dearest friends and start my own blog. I don't really have any knowledge of the computer.....or my digital camera.....or how to combine the two. This should be interesting! So bear with me when my pictures are blurry (and they always are!) or I can't figure out how to put them in the blog (and I never can!).....this whole thing may very well turn into a disaster (you don't want to know how long it took me to get the italic key to work properly just now!). *sigh* So, why am I doing this? Because I have lots to say about our happy, blessed little life out here in the country and this old house that we're trying to make new again (or rather, keep from falling down around us!). Here goes nothing.....