Tiny Town

This past weekend we drove up into the mountains (20 minutes) to this cute little place called Tiny Town.  It's basically a park with miniature buildings, a playground, and a train you can ride around on.  The kids loved it and the mountain air was a relief from the 90 degree temps at home.  It was fun to see all the details they put into the different houses.  One had a square dance going on with barbies dressed up in western wear, another had a saloon complete with Barbie can can dancers!  I'm sure we'll be back someday.

Owen checking out the first building

Boston Vacay

This past week I took the kids to Boston to visit my sister.  Yes, I went alone on the plane with 3 kids, it wasn't meant to be that way, Jarom couldn't come at the last minute because of work.  My sister has two girls and lives in Rockport, MA which is a beautiful little town on the ocean.  We rented a house about a 5 minute walk from the beach.  My sister lives about a mile from there.  The weather was great all week until the 90 degree heat wave came with all the humidity.  But it made for great boating and beach weather.  The kids had a blast playing on the beach, in the backyard, and with all the new toys at my sister's house.  It's nice to know family in fun areas to visit.  Maybe next time we'll go visit my other sister in NYC, um, maybe without kids, that's always more fun ;)
For some reason I can't post the rest of the pictures so here is a link to some photos my mom took:
Shutterfly album

They didn't want their Aunt Megan to leave

The beauty queen waving to her fans

Class of 2024!

Ella was more excited than Riley, she loves her big sister

Wow, class of 2024, that's crazy.  My oldest baby, Riley, graduated from kindergarten last night.  Yes I shed a tear, it's just the beginning of what will fly by until she graduates high school.  Grandma & Grandpa Eberhard came with us to watch her little performance.  They sang about 6 songs and then there was a video presentation with pictures and videos of their year in kindergarten.  There was one background song in the video called "Let Them Be Little"

                                              **Warning...you will bawl your eyes out.**

We are so proud of our sweet girl, her kindergarten teacher is retiring this year and couldn't say enough good things about Riley.  She said she's bright, kind-hearted, and that she's going to go really far in life.  That we are sure of.  We love you.

Green Thumb

Before we moved here my experience with gardening was very minimal.  I would buy some annuals that looked ok together and plant them in some hanging baskets.  Now that the sun is out all the time I wanted to spend a lot of time outside enjoying the best part of the house.  The front yard was a mess, branches on the trees had never been pruned, random bricks were lying around the outside of the house, I could go on and on.  So I asked a friend to come by who happens to work in landscape design to give me some advice on what to do.  I spent about 3 weeks trimming trees, cleaning up the back, buying perennials and annuals, digging, planting, mulching, and laying down edging stones.  There was a lot of time spent watching youtube videos on how to garden!   It was a lot of work but I've really enjoyed every minute spent outside making it look ten times better.   It's really been a lot of fun and I hope to keep working on the yard year after year.  Here are some before and after pictures of the front garden bed.

Before

After! 

The only thing between the grass and the garden were some rocks

I started by cutting in an edge to define the garden

I added edging stone, new mulch, and about ten new plants

I bought that terra cotta pot to replace a plastic green one

My patriotic arrangement

Owen pointing out the flowers

A lot of the plants and shrubs I bought will grow tall enough to eventually cover the lattice

Up to no good

I've been a slacker lately with the blog, it's not that we're not doing anything, I just keep forgetting to take pictures.  The past two weeks I've been outside in the yard cutting down branches from all the trees in our yard, digging out old plants, and planting new ones.  I never got into our yard in WA partly because I was so discouraged at how out of control weeds were up there.  It's nice to have a yard I really love and now I get to decorate.  I'll take some pictures soon when I get all the flowers in.  I just have a few pictures of the kids just hanging out.  And busy Owen getting into everything, I swear any quiet minute is him getting into something he shouldn't.  He's just so cute though, it's hard to ever be upset with him.

This looks like a spotlight but it's just our skylight, I think this may be foreshadowing for her future 

Got a little glider on the front porch

Spring has sprung

So I'm a little behind on posts...so we'll skip to Easter!  It was a beautiful sunny day today, the girls had three Easter Egg hunts over the weekend.  One was a friend's birthday at a park, the other was at Jarom's parents house, and the last one was this morning at our house.  It was a busy but fun weekend.  I made a quiche this morning, and we had one of Jarom's friends over for brunch.  She just moved here from WA to work for Jarom at his new building.  Since this is our first spring here at the house it's fun to see what blossoms out in the yard.  We have some amazing trees that cover our deck out back, I could be out there all day just lounging.

A baby no more

My little boy, Owen, turned one yesterday!  It's been a crazy year and it seemed to have flown by way too fast.  We took Owen to a little children's museum up in Lafayette to celebrate.  His favorite thing there was a piano, he just lit up when he heard the noise he could make.  His least favorite thing was the sandbox, he started crying as soon as his little feet hit the sand.  Then we went back to Jarom's parents house where we had cake and presents.  These videos are hysterical since this isn't the usual Owen we know.  He looked at us like we were crazy people.  Riley wrapped one of his gifts and wrote such a sweet note to him (pic below).  He is such a joy in our lives and I hope he'll always be a mama's boy :)