in case you were wondering

since he is missing his hat i will tell you that is indiana jones there running through our yard in his unders.
and yes that is his whip.
and yes we do have to remind him constantly to stay a safe distance from any living thing when he is wielding it.
and yes it does get taken away from him often if he gets out of hand.
and yes, he can whip it. its frightening really. but impressive at the same time.

more new neighbors

now we have new neighbors on the other side of the house. we have really had to restrain ourselves from pestering these sweet things. with the owls we were at a forced distance. they were on the other side of our fence and well, they were up really high.

these little babes are just above my head on our front porch. for a couple days i peeked at them every 30-60 minutes. it started because mama was never at the nest anymore and i was worried (those baby birds looked so hungry). then i realized she was busting her bird butt getting these hungry babies food and nourishment. then i had all this sympathy for the mama bird. so busy and never having down time. her little ones always squawking for food. i can relate to that. keep it up mama bird!

in other avian news, our owls are gone. we haven't seen them in the nest for some time. matt says the crows were hounding the nest days ago, but even before then i hadn't seen the babe in a while. it's been at least a week. i am so sad about this. i thought they would be with us longer than they were, but read that the young fledge the nest around 45 days old. i guess it was time for that baby owl to leave its nest. they will be missed.

thanks to beauty that moves for sharing this link. heather is also a contributor over at simple green frugal co-op. lots of good things being shared over there, check it out!

spring break?

i had meant to post something entirely different today, but i just didn't get the chance.
bea had an unexpected visit to the doctor to confirm what we suspected. croup. she's doing fine except for the barking cough in the evenings, poor girl.

on the up side we are taking a slightly impromptu vacation to florida.
when matt had his last trip to the bahamas, i mentioned i'd love to have a week off. so, my MIL suggested i head their way. she could watch the little ones and i could go stay at the condo. sequestered. and alone. i thought that sounded like a pretty good plan (except the sequestered and alone part. i opted to stay at the house with everyone. i'd miss my babes too much. BUT, i will take a rain check on that when they are older!). this is just the first week that worked for all of us.
matt has a lot of work to do for some up coming shows. he has one this month in south carolina and a big one towards the end of summer out in colorado. i figured this would be a win win for both of us. i can get a mini-break and he can get a lot of work done with the 3 of us out of his way. that's the plan anyway.

so, i'm signing off for about a week. hoping to get some knitting and some swimming done and that's about it. maybe get a little sandy too. and sleep. sleep would be nice.

see you again next week!

hope the sun is shining on you today!

my gift

we've been experiencing some crazy weather here. i have a feeling many of you have been too.
last week was wet and rainy. yesterday was blustery and it snowed (well, more like flurried since none of it stuck - but it tried. it really, really tried!)! then, today was sunny and it warmed up perfectly by the afternoon. it was one of those days that when it finally did heat up later in the day, it was warmer outside than it was in my house. i had to open the back door to let the warm in. i didn't want to open it too much though because we under a cloud of yellow green pollen and i would rather skip dusting that off everything in my house. that's the worst part of spring in the south. i want to open the windows and the doors wide, but then we are all gagging on the pollen dust we are constantly inhaling. yech!

today was a great day for gently pushing henry out the back door (so happy we have a big fenced in yard) and letting him explore, while i got some baking and kitchen cleaning done. but, i ended up not getting much cleaned up because i was enjoying watching him play - unnoticed for the most part. i pointed out a pile of rocks and said he should look for some lizards. he spent a good half hour overturning rocks and looking at bugs (unfortunately when he came to get me to take a look i realized they were termites. YIKES!). no lizards were found though. i guess the rocks weren't warm enough today.
i watched him talking to himself and exploring parts of our yard, which at this time of year is it's own wilderness. he likes to go down his slide and get up running and race to the opposite of the yard. he will call out to me to watch how fast he is. and he is fast in that little boy style of running with his arms still hanging by his side (and head always watching his feet-he must like to see how fast he is too). i watch him through the window over the sink. he runs to the dogwood tree and plays with the blooms. i see his mouth moving and wish i knew what he saying. he gets distracted by last years clothesline still lying in the leaves (the tree it was attached to had to be cut this past fall). i get distracted by the dishes.


then, while i am at the sink, he comes running up behind me, humming a tune. i turn and he hands me a single dogwood bloom. i say, "for me? thank you. did you know these are one of my favorites?". i get no response. he turns, humming and runs back out the door.
and i was left with a sweet gift and motivation for taking my camera out and shooting something beautiful today. two gifts in one. thank you, sweet boy.

the drama king

henry has been into re-enacting scenes from movies lately. primarily scenes from spy kids and indiana jones (take your pick).

the spy kids scene starts with henry 'carpet swimming' as i call it. he does the breaststroke across the room, then sits on his knees and removes his imaginary scuba goggles. next he digs in his pocket and unwraps his short-circuiting gum while saying "i don't trust wrappers", then chews it and spits it at you. you being the thumb thumb robot or whatever they are. then you must pretend to short circuit and fall to the floor. very amusing the first few times you witness this. now, well . . we just won't go there.

over the weekend it was the scene from indiana jones and the last crusade where river phoenix (playing a young indy) cuts his chin with a whip. henry goes around making whipping sounds and then puts his hand to his chin and says "ouch". i had to ask him to explain this to me the first time i saw this. now, for three days in a row he has marked his face with a red marker to symbolize his wound. (i think he looks more like the joker). i am so grateful for washable markers, by the way.

he has also taken to flying super-hero style. arms straight out in front of him, slightly hunched, and running full speed with sound effects. and the other day his batman figure was having a conversation with a pirate. the pirate told batman that his cape was "cool". oh boy.

i feel like i'm getting a glimpse of what matt must have been like as a boy : )

in the dirt

this is the year we are going to try to grow more than a few tomatoes and peppers.
we are very hopeful about our garden this year. being so new to this, i am trying to be realistic and not get too hopeful. but if this year goes well i have BIG plans for next year.


we are going with the square foot gardening method. we are too busy and too lazy to attempt growing anything but weeds in the clay soil we have here. so, hopefully having raised beds will help in this department. we had a hard time picking out what we would grow. we tried to keep it simple and plant what we thought we could grow well. i hear people say grow only what you will eat and the trouble with that is that we would eat everything. we let henry choose some things to grow - he chose pumpkins, peas, and apparently threw in some seed packs of cactus and foxgloves while we were at the plant nursery (i discovered this today when i was writing down everything we were going to plant).
we are also hoping to produce a variety of greens, tomatoes, radishes, beets, strawberries, carrots, cucumbers, a few herbs and i think that is it so far. more than enough for us novices i think.


the other day the prepping of the soil was done and tonight is the night we plant most of it.
some things i think need to wait a couple weeks.


we'd love any advice or good stories from your gardening experiences.
what are you growing this year?

for the love of home

henry often tells us that he loves his house. this make me so happy to hear. it is usually the closer after saying he loves mommy, daddy, bea, and fason (mason). we also have a nightly bedtime routine where we 'crack an egg' on his head (don't ask). one for each of us, including mason and often the house. he considers our home to be family and i suppose in some ways it is, seeing as so much of our life happens in it.

over the weekend we were rearranging some things in the house a bit. (still trying to merge an entire room into the rest of the house). our solution, for the time being, was to move the tv out of the living room and into our bedroom. that allowed us to get a desk and the computer out of said room.

during this move, henry was helping matt run the cable through the wall in our bedroom. when matt pulled the dresser from the wall he exposed one hole where the cable needed to run into the wall and above that, another hole where the cable would come out directly behind the tv (which sits up pretty high). at the sight of these holes in the wall henry became very concerned. he wanted to know why those holes were there "in my home" and told matt, "no hurt my home!". he wanted to know why there where holes in the walls of his house and was getting a little upset by it. of course, matt explained why they were there and then henry was okay.

i'm just glad he didn't witness the tree that had fallen on our house several years ago. i can't imagine the devastation if he had seen that huge hole in our roof!

***and on a completely unrelated note, please go check this out. so much fun!***