Alex's Birthday

For Alex's birthday we drove to Chapel Hill, dropped the boys off with my mom, Aunt Susu, and Ruby and continued down the road to see Duran Duran live in concert at an amphitheater in Cary. Duran Duran was really a lot of fun to watch and this was one of my more favorite concerts.

The opening act was a young band from Leeds, England called "Your Vegas". Actually quite good. Every time a song would finish and the mildly attentive, yet milling, crowd would clap politely I would think, "What if that were Ricky? I'd have to follow him all over the world and make sure to sit in the front row every time and clap really loudly!" After they finished playing, they sat at a booth and shook hands and gave autographs. They were very, very polite boys so I guess it would be OK if it were Ricky... right? I would just have to go on tour with him. I'm sure he wouldn't mind.

Renovations (Are We Done Yet??)

We have been in the midst of renovations at our house for several months. What started with bad linoleum in the kitchen soon turned into replacing all the downstairs flooring with hardwood, replacing all the upstairs carpeting with new carpeting, finishing the third floor, getting a new island, new countertops, and new kitchen appliances. And we had the screened porch built. Still on our list and being scheduled now is having the driveway extended around the side of the house and graded flat so that cars have a flat place to land when they pull up to the house.

I'm ready to collect my before and after pictures.
Let's start with the den.
BEFORE:
















And AFTER:
















Here's the kitchen BEFORE:

And I'm not ready to post the after.... still working on the backsplash and the island counter. Sigh.

I'll have to update this post as I have more to add!

Ricky's Birthday Weekend

Ricky's birthday was Friday, complete with a Nemo cake. If you ask him how his birthday went, he'll tell you, "Nemo cake!" And if you ask him how old he is, he'll say, "Six." He thinks he's six, anyway. That's for sure.




Nemo's tail was a great source of extra icing without having to deal with the boring old cake.

















Grandfather came into town to help celebrate with Ricky and to help Alex set up the swingset in our backyard woods. Super, super cool. Robbie and Ricky supervised the entire time. Poor Gaga was sick and couldn't make the trip. She's on the mend now and we'll see her Wednesday.


The first step for the project was making a clearing in the woods that would house the swingset. Mostly skinny trees in the undergrowth and a few stumps. One was particularly cool, something I wouldn't have expected in our backyard. A cedar! The portion of the stump above ground had turned a mossy green. Once dug out, the cedar really became prominent. Almost purplish red and smelling soooo good.












Then construction began. Here are the guys taking a well-earned break. I'm pretty sure Alex is somewhere nearby chopping out a stump. There were five kids playing on the swingset today after school, but I'll have to wait to post a picture of the whole thing once Alex finishes up the details.

Gardening Topics

This morning I participated in a Charlotte Heifer presentation on the topic of Sustainable Gardening. My part was bees and worms, bringing in our empty hive and an observation hive with live bees in it and all of the acoutrements. For the worms, I recreated an elementary school science project by placing different layers of earth in an aquarium, adding earthworms from my own garden, and keeping it covered in the garage for a month. After that much time, you can see the progress that the worms are making mixing the different layers of earth together. I used sand, composted manure and topsoil, and dirt from my garden in six layers. Kinda got heavy so next time I will cheat and put styrofoam blocks in the center and fill the dirt around the sides of the aquarium. Other topics included composting, making your backyard into a certified wildlife habitat, container gardening, and making newspaper pots to start seed in.
The boys and I also got our seedlings in the ground. I picked up some small plants from Dearness Gardens on the way home from picking up our lawnmower. The tomatoes I chose were Heirloom Green Zebra, Supersonic, 100 Sweet, and Grape. Also got a few cukes, some Carolina Sweet Bell Peppers, and some hot peppers for Alex. I saw a bunny in our front yard this morning despite Stripe being on the loose out there so I wonder if the baby plants will make it without being nibbled to death.
Also our blueberry bush has exploded in berries. One of the benefits of not being a good pruner is that your shrubs get tall and lanky. For me, this means the birds are too heavy to land on the blueberry branches and therefore can't eat much fruit.

Summer Begins

It has been a great start to the summer. Robbie comes home from Kindergarten with so much energy and is just ready to play. Of course Ricky can't wait for him to come home.
We recently received some of porch furniture. Happily it arrived in several very large boxes. Here's a video of Robbie and Ricky taking advantage of their new toy. Ignore the junk you see at the tree line. That's a product of the porch construction and a free swingset that Grandfather is going to help erect next weekend.

The shouting that you hear in the video is from a knock-knock joke... Knock knock. Who's there? Luke. Luke who? Luke out below! That's not what the boys are saying, though. That's Ricky's version of the punchline. "Be out beyoh!"

The porch has been the best! Alex and I will read the paper out there in the mornings. We leave the door open to the den and let the breeze blow in and cool things down before the day gets too hot. Fabulous.

A bunch of other women and I have started tennis lessons at the neighborhood courts. Yesterday was our first go and I didn't do too badly. With 11 people signed up, I feel like there will be plenty of people willing to practice with me who are at my same beginner level.

What else is summery so far? I haven't seemed to be able to get any plants in the ground. I'm way behind on my tomatoes for sure, if I'll have some at all. Seems like I should get on that.