Hi There....
My name is Kristi. Welcome to my blog. If you are new here, then let me say welcome and thanks for being here. If you are a seasoned reader, then let me say, thanks for still being here through this very busy season of my life where I'm not blogging very much at all. I won't promise that I'll do better, because...well...I may not.
It has been one of those seasons of life where it seems like everything and nothing is happening at the same time. You know what I mean? I'm crazy busy, but nothing too news worthy to blog about...and even if there were things to blog about, I don't have the time because of the aforementioned busy-ness. So this will be another one of those lovely catch up posts that we all know and love. It's the easiest way!
Three weeks ago today, we welcomed a new family member into our house. My 18 year old cousin Lea. She's here for the summer from Kansas. She's found a job as a lifeguard at Mt Hood community college and we have all fallen in love with her. The kids look for her every morning and talk about her when she's not in sight. We are assimilating her into our culture and family by showing her movies she's never seen such as "Sleepless in Seattle" and "The Three Amigos". We are also watching the Peasant Princess series that I blogged about a few months ago as the best marriage sermon I'd ever seen. One of these days she's going to make us watch a John Wayne movie...still not sure about that.
Two weekends ago I got to take our "annual" beach trip with a group of friends. We found the house that we will be staying in every year from here on out and we had a total blast! It's always so fun to get a break from our every day responsibility to go away and stay up late and eat junk food and talk and talk and talk. We need to get together again soon girls! BBQ? My house? Maybe in a couple weeks when it gets warm enough to put up our big pool?
Canning season has started around my house the past few weeks. Sort of. I've made a batch of plum jam, 3 or 4 batches of strawberry jam, canned some tomatoes and have a half flat of raspberries from my mom's house that I will be turning to jam probably some time today. Maybe getting free raspberries from my mom all summer will make up for paying full price for all my strawberries. Although I have figured out that even paying full price for the strawberries, I'm still saving money making my own jam. But free is even better.
My garden is finally in! I got a very late start this year, due in large part to getting ready for Lea to come and getting the house ready for her. But a couple weekends ago, Josh cleared out the garden area for me, shoveled some chicken poop out of the coop and tilled up the garden for me. What a guy! I've planted lots of peas (they're our favorite) beans, broccoli, sweet onions, parsley, cucumber, lettuce, watermelon (although I've never had success with watermelon before, I keep really wanting to grow it) and tomatoes. I decided to forgo the corn this year as I barely got any last year because of the lateness of the crop and how much room it takes up in the garden. I'm already seeing little tiny pokes of peas come up and I'm so excited! I love growing a garden!
Another big project that I'm continuing this year is our yard. Although I'm pretty sure that that project continues and continues each and every year. Or at least it should. A lot of you have been in our yard before, but for those of you who haven't, I'll tell you about it. When we first bought our house almost 2 years ago the former owners were older and she had put in raised beds in the center area of the yard. Which obviously wouldn't work for us having 5 kids and needing places for them to run. We took out all the overgrown raised beds which left us with horribly uneven yard area. Knowing how expensive putting in new grass is, we just kinda left it, because we couldn't afford to do anything to it. In addition to that, there were no flower beds except for a couple in the back that were horribly overgrown with her mint plant. So last year I put in some flower beds with a few flowers and basically tried to make it look like someone cared. This year in the past few weeks, I've put in more flowers, Josh dug me a pond, I've landscaped all around my pond with large (heavy) rocks and lots of established plants that I've been able to get for free out of my sister's yard. We still have a little ways to go with the pond...I'd like to get a pump and a little fountain of some sort so we have a water sound and some pond plants. Also we're going to get some tadpoles to put in there so we can have some frogs. And as time goes on, I'll probably put in more plants. But for now, I'm loving it. I've also started leveling some of the dips in the yard and planting some more grass in the bare spots. The yard won't be perfect, but hopefully at least no one will break an ankle walking through our yard now.
I'm sure I could blog more, but this is already a book! Thanks for reading!
It has been one of those seasons of life where it seems like everything and nothing is happening at the same time. You know what I mean? I'm crazy busy, but nothing too news worthy to blog about...and even if there were things to blog about, I don't have the time because of the aforementioned busy-ness. So this will be another one of those lovely catch up posts that we all know and love. It's the easiest way!
Three weeks ago today, we welcomed a new family member into our house. My 18 year old cousin Lea. She's here for the summer from Kansas. She's found a job as a lifeguard at Mt Hood community college and we have all fallen in love with her. The kids look for her every morning and talk about her when she's not in sight. We are assimilating her into our culture and family by showing her movies she's never seen such as "Sleepless in Seattle" and "The Three Amigos". We are also watching the Peasant Princess series that I blogged about a few months ago as the best marriage sermon I'd ever seen. One of these days she's going to make us watch a John Wayne movie...still not sure about that.
Two weekends ago I got to take our "annual" beach trip with a group of friends. We found the house that we will be staying in every year from here on out and we had a total blast! It's always so fun to get a break from our every day responsibility to go away and stay up late and eat junk food and talk and talk and talk. We need to get together again soon girls! BBQ? My house? Maybe in a couple weeks when it gets warm enough to put up our big pool?
Canning season has started around my house the past few weeks. Sort of. I've made a batch of plum jam, 3 or 4 batches of strawberry jam, canned some tomatoes and have a half flat of raspberries from my mom's house that I will be turning to jam probably some time today. Maybe getting free raspberries from my mom all summer will make up for paying full price for all my strawberries. Although I have figured out that even paying full price for the strawberries, I'm still saving money making my own jam. But free is even better.
My garden is finally in! I got a very late start this year, due in large part to getting ready for Lea to come and getting the house ready for her. But a couple weekends ago, Josh cleared out the garden area for me, shoveled some chicken poop out of the coop and tilled up the garden for me. What a guy! I've planted lots of peas (they're our favorite) beans, broccoli, sweet onions, parsley, cucumber, lettuce, watermelon (although I've never had success with watermelon before, I keep really wanting to grow it) and tomatoes. I decided to forgo the corn this year as I barely got any last year because of the lateness of the crop and how much room it takes up in the garden. I'm already seeing little tiny pokes of peas come up and I'm so excited! I love growing a garden!
Another big project that I'm continuing this year is our yard. Although I'm pretty sure that that project continues and continues each and every year. Or at least it should. A lot of you have been in our yard before, but for those of you who haven't, I'll tell you about it. When we first bought our house almost 2 years ago the former owners were older and she had put in raised beds in the center area of the yard. Which obviously wouldn't work for us having 5 kids and needing places for them to run. We took out all the overgrown raised beds which left us with horribly uneven yard area. Knowing how expensive putting in new grass is, we just kinda left it, because we couldn't afford to do anything to it. In addition to that, there were no flower beds except for a couple in the back that were horribly overgrown with her mint plant. So last year I put in some flower beds with a few flowers and basically tried to make it look like someone cared. This year in the past few weeks, I've put in more flowers, Josh dug me a pond, I've landscaped all around my pond with large (heavy) rocks and lots of established plants that I've been able to get for free out of my sister's yard. We still have a little ways to go with the pond...I'd like to get a pump and a little fountain of some sort so we have a water sound and some pond plants. Also we're going to get some tadpoles to put in there so we can have some frogs. And as time goes on, I'll probably put in more plants. But for now, I'm loving it. I've also started leveling some of the dips in the yard and planting some more grass in the bare spots. The yard won't be perfect, but hopefully at least no one will break an ankle walking through our yard now.
I'm sure I could blog more, but this is already a book! Thanks for reading!
posted by Kristi @ 8:23 AM
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