At Least Someone is Benefiting From My Labor....

So I am sure that everyone has been waiting with bated breath to hear how my garden is doing. As spring turns to summer the warmer weather has been great for my garden and I have started to see the fruits of my labor....sort of.

Before I went to Kansas we were just getting strawberries to turn in the garden. Perfect I thought, when the kids and I got back we could have a nice strawberry picking party. And indeed when I came back I saw a bounty of bright red strawberries in my garden. Upon closer inspection though I found a slight problem. I didn't get to them first. Apparently, we have a rabbit in our yard who has taken it upon himself to eat my strawberries. This fact was confirmed by our neighbor boy, who was out when I was lamenting over my garden and excitedly explained to me that he saw a bunny there just the other day. Instead of eating the entire strawberry he has been ever so kind to simply take one bite out of each berry leaving a good chunk of the berry behind so I know exactly how many strawberries I DON'T get. Thoughtful this bunny, don't you think?

I have looked on-line at humane/organic ways (ie ways not to poison us or the dogs) to get rid of them and here is what I found....

1) Spray cayenne pepper on the strawberries (doable but annoying since I have to spray it on after every time I water).

2) Drizzle dog/cat urine around the perimeter of the garden (yeah, I am thinking that following my dogs around with a cup trying to catch their pee is about as comic as it is infeasible).

3) Drizzle human urine around the perimeter (I thought this was the simplest idea but my husband showed little interest in whipping it out in the backyard and I don't trust my sons aim not to mention the fight that would ensue with Quinn wanting to do it too - sigh)

So for now it looks like I am going to have spicy strawberries though if I lose a lot more I may try some Merlot and a BB gun from my deck!!

But hey, I have lots of other plants, right? My tomatoes have started to come in, so all is not lost. Yesterday afternoon I spied several cherry tomatoes on the verge of being ready to pick and thought the kids would enjoy picking those almost as much as strawberries, since they love cherry tomatoes. But once again I was a day late and a dollar short. Though this time it wasn't the rascally rabbit that was the veggie thief but rather my faithful companion and best friend for the last decade - Guinness. I went out last night to bring him in and found him sitting in my garden happily picking the tomatoes off of my plants like he was at a salad bar.

So to recap -

Rabbit - 20 strawberries
Guinness - 5 cherry tomatoes
Me - countless hours of manual labor and two small slightly pathetic roma tomatoes.

Just call me Mr. MacGregor.

Like Father Like Son

Earlier this week Quinn had a little bug and so while I tended to her the 'men' decided to make dinner for us. I went into the kitchen to grab a glass of water for Quinn and look what I discovered....


My husband teaching Greyson how to handle a knife. For those of you who know my husband well (anyone remember the pig roast where he spent the afternoon at the ER?) this may scare the living daylights out of you, it did me. Thankfully though all fingers were intact by the time dinner was on the table. While Greyson has seemed to inherit Raif's looks and his love of hockey lets hope he hasn't inherited his knife skills!!

The Boy Does Have a Point

Yesterday afternoon we sat down to write thank you notes to Ms. Susie and Mr. Rodger for our day on the farm.

Me: All right, lets sit down and write a thank you note to Ms. Susie and Mr. Rodger for letting us spend the day on the farm.

Greyson: And to Smokey too??

Me: No Sweetie we just need to write it to Ms. Susie and Mr. Rodger we don't need to write a thank you note to Smokey (the horse).

Greyson: But Mommy I rode on Smokey, not Ms. Susie.....

PBR - There is a new Sheriff in Town

As I mentioned in our last post we spent the day out at our friends the LaBeth's farm while in Kansas. Rodger and Susie's son Dusty is a professional bull rider and as such has some of his training equipment out on the farm. At much cajoling, mostly on my part, Raif and I convinced the kids that they should try the mechanical bull. They both reluctantly agreed. I can't say that we have inspired any future bull riders (especially in Quinn based upon the look on her face) but at least they have done something that not many preschoolers have experienced!!

The Farm

THE highlight of our Kansas trip every year is our visit to the farm. Though my parents sold our family farm years ago, some dear friends of ours, the LaBeths, graciously allow us each year to invade and spend a day getting back to my roots.

And the highlight of the highlight is getting to ride Smokey.


But at the LaBeth's farm there is no free ride - after Smokey there are chores to be done....


Cleaning Augie, the last of my family's horses

Taking Snowball, the goat, out to pasture


Feeding the rest of the horses

All in all we couldn't have asked for a better end to our Kansas vacation. Thanks Rodger and Susie - as always for a wonderful day.

The Worst Salesman Ever

About two o'clock this afternoon there was a knock at my door. I opened to find the TruGreen Lawn dude (TGLD) standing at my door.

TGLD: Good afternoon my name is (yeah I can't remember). I was in your neighborhood servicing some of your other neighbors and wanted to know whether you would like to be put on our route.

Me: I am not interested but thank you.

TGLD: May I ask why you aren't interested?

Me: Well, my husband works on our lawn and I think he does a pretty good job by himself.

TGLD: (Turns and surveys our lawn). Why yes, your lawn looks in pretty good shape.

Awkward pause

Me: OK, well in that case thanks for stopping by.

Door shuts.

Happy Birthday Grandpa

While we go to Kansas every year, this year we went specifically in May to share Grandpa's birthday with him. The kids got to help ice his cupcakes and we all went out for a good KC steakhouse dinner. Happy Birthday Grandpa!!

Tractors, Tractors, Everywhere....

What would a visit to Kansas be without a lot of tractors.....

Big people on big tractors....


Little people on big tractors....


Little people on little tractors...


And best of all......big people on little tractors....

Being Kansas-fied

There's no place like home Dorothy.....

The essential piece to any cowboy's wardrobe - the bolo tie....


Mmmmm - KC BBQ ribs - the best BBQ bar none....

Rock Chalk JayHawk!!!

And what Kansas visit would be complete without doing the farm chores...


Feeding the farm animals


And milking the cow (or in this case the plastic practice cow)


Whew.....Kansas wears me out....

You know you are old when....

You know you are old when the pillars of your education get pulled asunder.

First it was Pluto being demoted from planet status and now "modern" science has taken aim at the dinosaurs. We took the kids to a Dinosaurs Uncovered exhibit today and much to my amazement I have now learned that dinosaurs had feathers and/or hair. WHAT!!!!!! When the hell did dinosaurs grow feathers?? My dinosaur education (admittedly most of it from the Jurassic Park movies) has been based on lizard looking dinosaurs with leathery skin, not bright plumes of feathers sticking out from atop a head of menacing teeth. What else am I going to learn when the kids start real school?? That the Earth is actually not round. That Pi is not actually 3.14.

Getting old sucks.

One Crazy Summer

So tomorrow is the official kick off of vacation-palooza in the Erim household - with trips to Kansas, Annapolis, Austin, the Bahamas, the Smoky Mountains, the lake with friends. Then add events like Quinn's recital, Greyson's birthday and preschool graduation and two separate weeks at art camp. Throw in a couple visits from the grandparents and friends and we literally have ONE free weekend between now and the 1st of August. Aghhh.

This summer is going to fly by so hold on everyone.....

Geography Lesson

Our friends Ayumi and Taylor are making a brief overnight stop to visit on their way from Santa Fe to DC. Ayumi is originally from Japan so this was a great time to take out the map and do a little geography lesson. After the kids correctly found Nashville on the map we looked at all the other places relating to Taylor and Ayumi's visit. Finally I pointed to Washington DC as their final destination.

"Now do you know what is special about Washington DC??"
"Oh, yes!!!" cried Greyson enthusiastically.

I was about to be impressed that my son knew our nation's capital.

"Mommy, that is where the Caps play!!"

Mom's Geography Lessons - 0
Raif's Hockey Lessons - 1

Child Labor (Part II)

Greyson was SO excited to help mow the lawn....wonder if he will be this enthusiastic about it when he is 16 and gets to do the whole thing by himself.

Child Labor (part I)

Every season has its quintessential symbol - the Christmas tree in winter, the jack-o-lantern in the fall, the blooming flower in the spring, and for me, in the summer, it is lemonade. And not just any lemonade mind you - I mean the real deal - homemade squeezed fresh lemons add the sugar type of lemonade. Even though I love lemonade I don't make it that often because the amount of work you put in far exceeds the sweet reward at the end, until now.

Now I have free labor who will happily squeeze my lemons for me


And whose only payment is to nibble on the leftover rind of the lemons (can't tell you why they like such sour things)

And I get a freshly squeezed pitcher of sweet heaven..... Now this is why you have kids!!

Happy Mother's Day

The sleepless nights
The sleepless mornings
The tantrums
The personal sacrifices
The mind numbing monotony of reading the same book 1,000 times in a row
The sibling bickering
The lack of the pre-kid social life
The fact you will never have your pre-baby figure back

All of these things gripes disappear and you realize that all of it is worth it when your son brings home the handmade mug from school that reads....

"My mommy helps me cook dinner.
I like it when she eats breakfast with us.
My mommy looks pretty when she gets dressed to to go the hockey game.
I like it when my mommy cooks dinner and hugs me.
I love my mommy."

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there (especially mine).

Bouncy Part 100

So I seem to be in a rut of videos of my children bouncing - hopefully this will be the last. Raif took this last week. He was sitting in the chair reading when this happened by and thought it was funny enough to share....

Van Gogh Kind of Day....

A warm, sunny afternoon day. Old packing carboard found in the back of the garage. Finger paints that Mom wants to get rid of. Two precocious children. A recipe for one big giant mess.

Spring Crafts

Springtime has such wonderful crafty things to make but the problem is that no one (including me) wants to stay inside to make them. My kids would much prefer being out among the flowers than making them out of pipe cleaners and tissue paper. But a couple of rainy and cold days over the last couple of weeks have given us at least a little time to use our creative side.


Birdhouses happily adorn our kitchen windows.


I got these little craft pots and butterflies at (where else) Michaels with the grand idea of having the kids fill them with different types of homemade flowers. After the pots were made and butterflies painted we spent a rainy afternoon making flowers. But then the kids decided it would be so much nicer to share their flowers than to put them in a silly old pot so off the flowers went to school to be shared with teachers and my pots and butterflies are pretty lonely. Oh well - their idea was probably better than mine anyway.

Seriously??

OK, either my husband is determined to have my kids in a Cirque show, be Romanian gymnasts or simply enjoys getting me upset (I personally think it is option #3).

Cooking dinner this weekend while the kids were in the bedroom with Daddy and look what I walk into when I announce dinner is on the table....

Anybody got an Ark??

6 1/2 inches of rain yesterday - more to come today (the news just said we got 10 inches and the worst for us hasn't hit yet). In some parts of Nashville they have gotten 15 inches in the past 48 hours. Yep - we are pretty much in a giant lake around here. The roads around our house are pretty much impassable. I-40 and I-24 are flooded as is a large part of downtown Nashville. Except for a couple of soggy patches in our basement we have been spared, luckily - for once I am thankful to live on a hill. The only major flooding we got was to my vegetable garden.

Here is Raif out in it yesterday trying to save my plants. He managed to make a trough and divert it around the garden so hopefully we managed to save most of the veggies.

Not the best picture as it was taken from inside the house but you can sort of see the river of water streaming out of the bottom of the garden.


The gutter at the front of the house. Most of the flowers were submerged at some point yesterday. A couple of my smaller flowers have been completely covered by mulch so I am going to have to try to dig them out if and when the rain ever stops.

The rains lifted and moved a lot of the mulch out of the gardens and onto our walk and front yard.

But at least the kids are having fun - watching the storm from the safety of the front porch.