It's been a little longer than I realized since my last post!  We have been busy though! 

We are all so excited to be able to get outside.  One of my projects is my vegetable garden.  I am very excited about this new project.  I still have not yet decided on my garden layout yet.  I have been talking to people about the square foot garden, raised gardens, and then traditional gardens - but there are all sorts of different garden layouts. So making up my mind as to what I want to do it something that I need to hurry up and do.  Here are pictures of some of my vegetable seed packets and John and Nathan planting the seeds for me in egg cartons.  I already have several that have germinated.  It has been fun having Nathan to help me very day water the seeds, take them outside on sunny days to get some sun, and to check to see if we have any new seeds growing.  This garden project will not only be good for me, but for Nathan as well.

Well, gardening has not been the only thing that we have been doing.  We have been able to make it out to several different parks.  Here is Elizabeth climbing the stairs to fun!

Our first trip to the park Nathan noticed several other people bringing a picnic lunch and he and Elizabeth thought that was so cool.  So, now I am the prepared mom... I bring a picnic lunch when we go to the park.  I am so glad that the kids like to picnic, it's so much better than having to stop somewhere on the way home or get home and then try to fix lunch while I have hungry kids hanging on me. 

This morning we took our first trip of the season to Blue Bird Gap Farm!  This local park is so much fun!  There are turkeys, ducks, goats, horses, cows, deer, peacocks, rabbits, and others I am sure I am forgetting right now...  The kids love looking at all the animals, and then there is also a playground and a picnic area - and the best part... It's all free!  So we can go as often as we like!  Yea! 

 

Here are Nathan and Elizabeth looking at the ducks.  As much as Nathan knocks his sister over and hurts her at home, he was so protective of her here.  He would not let her go to close to the fences.  He was so nervious that she was going to stick her fingers thought the fence and get them pecked at.  It was really sweet. 

The picture below is of Elizabeth quacking at the ducks!  If I had been fast enough with the camera I would have loved to get a video of that!

Okay, so I told you we have been busy!  This past weekend the weather was so wonderful!  Mimi and Grandad had at their house a Power Wheels Jeep that had been given to them by some very kind neighbors.  Well, we brought the Jeep home for Nathan and Elizabeth to have at home - it was a hit!  Yesterday Nathan even graduated to the faster speed (there are two speeds - just barely above a crawl, and normal walking speed - he is getting brave and trying the faster of the two out now!)  I just loved this picture of Nathan driving his little sister around.  She was having so much fun!  There is even a working radio in it and they insist on always having the dial tuned to K-LOVE!  I am so happy for a good christian radio station!

Now, these last two pictures are just of my cute little girl - talking on my cell phone.  It's already started - she loves cell phones!

 

First trip to the playground this year!

This past Monday was a beautiful spring day - finally!  To celebrate the beautiful day I decided to check out the playground at the new York County Sports Complex.  All of you mommies here in the York County area - if you have not checked it out yet I definately recommend it.  I have pictures below of the two sets of playground equipment.  As I was getting everything in the car to go Nathan decided to take pictures, so here is one of Lizzy in her car seat.  She finally hit the 20 pound mark so that she can face forward in her car seat!  Yea!

Here are the two sets of playground equipment.  They are side by side in a fenced in area.  One is technically for the smaller kids and one for kids over 5 years old.  As you can see in the following pictures, my kids enjoyed both sets!  When we got there we were the only ones there, but I think about 6 other families came while we were there.  They have two benches next to the larger playset and also a covered picnic table.  If I had been smart I would have brought a picnic lunch... maybe next time I will be a little more prepared...

  

Here is Nathan starting out on the little playset.

And before I know it, Elizabeth is climbing up on the big playset!  She looks especially tiny on this big playset, but she was having so much fun!  This little girl shows no fear at all!  If Nathan can do it so can she is the attitude!

So, now at the top of the playground there are three big slides.  As you can see here, she is so tiny up there!   So she has a choice, go back down the way that she came, or down one of the slides... At this point I decided that I needed to stay on the ground to catch her just in case she decided to go down. So, here she goes!  My little fearless dare-devil!  Makes Mommy proud!  She was so happy!

Nathan of course loved to go up the slide.  Nathan was so glad to get to go outside and play.  He was such a great big brother.  He played hard, but he also took the time to take care of Elizabeth and help her when she got scared.  He would help her at the top of the slides by giving her the little extra push - man she would fly down when he would push her!He just had such a great time playing.

This slide was more her size!

(I am not really sure how this picture got so out of order, but oh well...)

I am so excited for more warm days and more trips to the playground!

The hope of a vegetable garden

What a week this has been!  But here as we start a new week there is hope of warmer weather and more time outside!  I am so looking forward to spending time outside with the kids, and I have hopes of growing my own garden for the first time. 

Growing up my family always had a large garden and at times I loved it.  For example, when it was harvest time... fresh stawberries covered in sugar, snapping green beans on the front porch, dad running the plow through the potatoes and my brother Eric and I digging through the freshly turned up dirt to find all the unearthed potatoes.  Those are some great memories...  Then there were times that I hated the family garden, like when we were sent out to weed the garden.  I have memories of having no earthly idea if what I was weeding was actually weed or vegetable, but at the time I just wanted to get the job done so that I could go get on to whatever else I wanted to do!  Well, here I am now, 20 years (or so) later and I am excited about the idea of growing, harvesting, and then... eating vegetables out of my own garden!  I'll keep you posted as to how this all goes...

But as for pictures from this week, I actually only have Elizabeth pictures to share this week, but I think you will like them!  She is such a sweet little girl!  Here I caught Elizabeth in the kitchen cabinets.  She had her milk on the shelf and when I tried to move it to the fridge she got very upset with me and insisted that I put it back for her.  She also found some little sauce bowls and had them lined up next to her milk and was having a lot of fun pretending with them. 

Elizabeth loves purses and all sorts of bags.  Here she had her little bag and was getting ready to go "bye-bye" (for pretend).  She gets her bag and shoes and coat on and starts telling me "bye-bye" and waving.  She also gets very upset when she realizes that just because she thinks we are going bye-bye does not mean that it is really going to happen.  Those are the times that I get to see the little girl temper tantums.  Oh, I know I have lots of those to look forward to.  Sweety, if you only knew how much that is not going to work on me.  I really don't play that game!  She's find that out in time I guess. 

We also have a new additon to our house during the week.  I have started watching a little baby boy named Micah.  Nathan and Elizabeth love this little boy and want so much to help with bottles and diaper changes.  We are working on getting a new routine down now that we have another little boy in the mix, but we will get there and I am so excited to see baby Micah growing up with my kids!  We are going to have so much fun this summer!

Ready for Spring!

Well, we finally had a weekend without snow around here!  Seems funny to say here in Seaford, VA!  Nathan said after our second "winter snowstorm" -  "Mommy, why does it have to snow every day?"  I just had to laugh.  It doesn't usually snow this much around here.  Even the snow lover in me has decided that enough is enough with the snow! Bring on the Spring weather!  Anyway, so, last weekend John was finally able to get outside and get started on our new shed.  Thanks to several family members at Christmas time we were able to purchase a shed which will be very wonderful to have for all the kids toys, lawn equipment, and hopefully - my gardening equipment as well!  Nathan was very happy to take the camera outside and take pictures of Daddy working on the shed.  Elizabeth was quite the little helper as well.  She loved handing Daddy some of his tools.  It was so good for the kids to be able to get outside!

This past week John's sister's little boy Ethan spent three days with us!  Nathan and Elizabeth loved having cousin Ethan over to play with!  Here is a picture of the three of them watching cartoons in the morning before breakfast. Nathan and Elizabeth were so sweet with Ethan.  Nathan very often would give Ethan one of his Thomas the Tank Engine trains to play with - that's saying a lot for a boy Nathan's age who loves his trains VERY much.  Elizabeth pretty much tried to maul her cousin with kisses.  She was very proud of herself for helping to take care of him.  Both kids loved helping to feed Ethan his bottles and change his diapers.  Both kids also wanted to help feed him his cereal as well, but... well... I was not convinced that them shoving a spoon into Ethan's mouth was such a great idea, so I took care of that part all by myself!

Thursday evening Ethan even got to spend some time with Uncle John too!  As you can see the boys got to play trains much to Nathan's delight.

Here is a picture of Nathan using the laptop!  It just made me laugh.  He is just doing with he sees us doing every day - and you know I am sure that he is going to know so much more about compters than I do soon!  My family is such a blessing.  I love all of them, immediate and extended family, so much!  Thank you God for all the bessings that you have given! 

Photos by Nathan

Ever since watching an episode of "Special Agent Oso" on Playhouse Disney where Oso learned to take pictures Nathan has become quite the photographer! I am so glad for digital cameras! I can't imagine using up all this film on Nathan practicing his photographing skills...Here are some of Nathan's recent pictures:

Our stove

Thia is a picture of Mommy cooking. Nathan LOVES to help cook! I have to say that although it slows things down a lot and I am never quite sure that the measurments are exactly correct, I am very glad he likes to cook and I am definately going to encourage his love of cooking.

This one is of Elizabeth. Nathan does not always get all of his subject in the picture... he said "Aww, Mommy, I cut her head off." We will keep working on this :)

Our dog Sunny

Twiggy

Nathan's sippy cup

I also thought I would include some pictures of the kids playing. There is nothing to little kids like an empty box! I tried to get rid of the box once already, but due to the tears when Nathan found his box missing, the box came back for a new round of joy.

That's all for now folks!

A good place to start

Well it's official... once I post this I will officially be a blogger! I love to keep up with my family and friends that already have blogs. I love to hear the stories of what is going on, and I love to see all the pictures! So, here I am am, making my own blog so that my family and friends can see all the latest pictures (and videos hopefully) and hear all the crazy kid stories without me having to send pictures and videos in emails which takes so much time and I know is a pain to have to open up all the pictures and videos one at a time. So here it goes!

I am so excited that I can give Elizabeth piggy tails! I do her hair this way almost every day now. She is just way too cute!

Here is Nathan. Daddy was actually taking pictures of him making faces for different emotions(happy, sad, mad, etc.) . I am not sure which emotion this was suposed to be - I just think it's cute!

Well I guess that's enough for a first post! Later!