Silly Charlotte!

It is almost 8pm, and I can hear Charlotte Grace in the baby monitor. She is barking at the neighbor dog!

About once a day, I wonder if Charlotte can hear. Ignoring me is a common practice of hers. Then, I'll faintly hear a dog barking from blocks away. I know that Charlotte's ears are just fine when I hear her chime in excitedly and say her little word for 'dog'!

Our First Family Garden

This summer we decided to try out Square Foot Gardening. I highly recommend it! I planned the planting and researched all of the details. Mark and I did the work (remember, I'm the girl in this relationship, so I shopped and did 'pink' level grunt work). Then, Ava and I spent the summer tending to the garden. We did almost no weeding at all, which we loved. Ava and I munched on fresh things most mornings throughout the summer. We had our final harvest last week, and I decided that it was time to document this garden...and share a cute video of Ava eating a tomato...she only likes yellow ones.

This is an early shot of the garden. The sugar snap peas, the spinach and the lettuce were doing great. The green beans were consistently eaten by something (I think I'm buying a BB gun...or Patrick, may I have one of yours?). The onions weren't very impressive, but next year I'm going to do them the way my Uncle Jack does. He just sort of sets them on top of the dirt. He is a blind, master gardener. He has the most amazing garden each year...with about 15 different sorts of tomatoes. AND, even blind, he can tell where the best blackberries are in the woods on his property!

This picture is to demonstrate the success of our tomato plants and the herbs. If stretched up - and I am not quite tall enough to do it - the tomato plants are at least seven feet tall! Sean said that I watered them too much. They didn't always ripen as quickly as we thought they should. Who knows!?! They're sure to be a little neglected next year!

This was our final harvest (except the herbs, which I'll handle this week). Everything ended up in a plastic buggy with Baby Brother. I don't know if I've mentioned Baby Brother before, but it is very important that you know that Baby Brother is a girl. I am waiting until after our ultrasound to handle this one. We are definitely have a 'baby brother'. It is yet to be determined whether our 'baby brother' will be male or female!

Here's Ava eating a tomato from our garden. She actually claims to only like yellow tomatoes. The only other yellow tomatoes she has had were sweet, ripe ones from my grandmother's cherry tomato plant. This one is a 'not quite ripe' one from our garden. I can't imagine that it was any good, especially to someone her age. At this point in our garden, the tomatoes are really tart!

U Promise?

Is anyone signed up for U Promise? Care to share the scoop?

The Only Possible Remedy

This morning as Ava was coming downstairs, she hurt herself somehow on the gate at the top of the stairs. After wailing for a minute, she walked down the stairs, informing me in a very matter-of-fact way, that the only way she was going to feel better was if she licked an ice cream cone!

While we were on vacation...

While the mommy and daddy were on vacation last week, the darling girls played and played and played...with their grandmother! And the shirt that Charlotte is wearing was my dress when I was a tiny girl.