just the beginning...

Here is our garden!  Some of you have been asking to see what it looks like.  Well, as you can see, it is still very small.  Or short.  A lot of the plants are just starting to sprout.  Also, some of the veggies haven't been planted as of today still.  We did make it to the Master Gardener's plant starters thingy today.  A place where you can get starts for super cheap.  We got 14 plants for $15.  That was excellent!  Do you want to know what we are growing?  Of course you do!  We are growing:

sugar snap peas
radishes
turnips
broccoli
red onions
green onions
spinach
lettuce (3 kinds)
kohlrabi
tomatoes - roma
tomatoes - cherry
cucumbers
patty pan squash
yellow summer squash
zucchini
cabbage
carrots
peppers (3 kinds)
green beans
strawberries
apples
plums
sunflowers
nasturtiums
marigolds

I think that's everything.

sugar snap peas, radishes, turnips, spinach, red onions, green onions and a pepper plant

lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, vine zucchini and a pepper plant

kohlrabi, yellow squash, cucumber, green beans and I'm not looking at the key

same as two above

red onions, turnips and tomatoes

our garden plots!

extra lettuce and spinach

same as the one that I couldn't remember all of

Oh, and I should mention we have two little snake friends in the garden area.  I hope they like snails, which we have a lot of! (the picture of the four boxes is the first four boxes I took pictures of and I'm standing next to the small square box that looks half empty as I took the picture, if that gives you any clue as to what's going on, also you can see the last picture in that grouping outside of the fence to the upper left.

pi...

Happy Pi Day!

So, what else should you eat on pi day (3.14, March 14, get it?) but pie? 

And it was my first ever attempt at making pie crust.  I think I did pretty good.  And the filling was the peach pie filling I had made last summer while taking a class.  It was wonderful, except it made a mess in my oven.

teaching preschool...

I was torn between what to teach on a certain day of preschool.  I could have taught a number of different things, but I chose to teach about Dr. Seuss.  The kids loved it!  Here is what Turtle did.

gingerbread houses...

The school the kids go to doesn't do normal holiday parties.  However, they do make gingerbread houses for fun.  The entire month of December parents are encouraged to send in bags of candy to be able to decorate these houses.  When I went to help out in Sunshine's class I wanted to brush my teeth or throw up.  I couldn't figure out which one I wanted to do more, so I just decided to grin and bear it and help the kids out.  They had so much fun designing their own houses and grabbed candy to decorate it with. 

I eventually made it to Buddy's class, where they were just starting their own houses.  But I had to go take the other kids home so I wasn't able to take more pictures.

Here are their finished houses.  No awards were given out in Sunshine's class, but Buddy's class had awards and Buddy was given the "Ugly in a pretty way" award (he was hoping to get the cavity award).

The worst part of this whole process was that the kids each came home with a bag full of the extra candy.  Yuck.

pears, pears, pears and more pears...

What do you do with 80 pounds of pears?

Well, first you let them ripen until they are not green any more.

Then you eat a few - but only a few - plain because too much of a good thing isn't really a good thing anymore.

Then you can some pints.  16 to be exact.

Then you dry some that have been doused with cinnamon.  Those were good.

Next you can 14 quarts and make sure that one of the jars spills out during the canning process so that you're not sure which jar it was because they all look normal and they are all sealed properly.  Not cool.

Next you sit there with half a box of pears and you're not sure what to do next.

three cheers for the red, white and blue...

We love traditions around here. And even though Mom is now sick (I finally caught what the kids had) and Sunshine is just getting over her sicknesses, we still had to have traditions.
Don't you just love the timer buttons on cameras? They come in handy every once in awhile.

leis...

Finally!

A couple of months ago JJ went to Hawaii and sent the kids some fun stuff from the island. She neglected to send out one package before she went home. So thanks to Aunt Ne'Chelle, the kids finally got their leis. Thankfully they were made out of candy and couldn't spoil easily. They loved them and I can tell you that chocolate-filled marshmallows are really yummy.