Things To Come...

I really enjoy spring time. After fall, spring is my favorite season! Partly because we might have a few days of pleasant weather before the inevitable 4 month long heat wave called summer here in central Texas, and partly because of the promise of things to come!!

We have a garden so spring just screams new life to me, and sinse we live in Texas we have been able to enjoy the fruits of our labor through winter here.

See thIs worn out broccoli!

We didnt even collect the last of it florets and it will give us more I am sure.

The spinach the girls have been enjoying, in fact, for lunch today!

Now on to the promise of things to come!

Here we have beautiful blossoms that will be growing into peaches! We are very excited because there are lots of blooms!!

Arent they so pretty and delicate looking!

This is my Valentines day present:

Lemon trees! I drink lemon water all day long. I lurve it!

And I love the smell of lemons...breathing in, breathing out...imagining the smell...mmm.

Thirst is overcomming me!!

These little buds are the beggining of lemons....YAY!

Now we finally have some strawberries growing. This has been a two year process of getting one or two random little bitty strawberries that we always have to cut in half ( we must share you know!)...ugh. But these are looking promising!We also have blue berry and black berry planted. We will see how they do! We planted some grapes along the fence so I am really excited to see how that goes!

The veggies are just in the beggininnig phases but here is some corn we planted, We just planted a little and then we will plant more later so it will last us longer!Here is our surprise! We put the pumpkins we carved for halloween out to watch them decompose.

It was very intersting to our girls. We put them in the empty planter we hadn't used last summer. Well guess what we have growing!!??

Pumpkin! What a neat lesson for the girls to learn: that ultimatEly death leads to life!

Hmmm... all of creation does point to heaven doesn't it!?

So as we prepare for the commemoration of our Saviors death and then resurection, all I have to do is look outside to be reminded of the promise of things to come!

Haircuts and Harvest

Well I have been wanting to cut Annelise's hair for a while...she looks so cute with a bob! But she wanted to grow it long 'like mommy's' and how can I argue with that!!!

Well lucky for me she got gum in her hair and being as hairbrusshing is the torture of choice in our household, she was begging me to cut it out...so I said we will have to make it all match!!!! And we did. The tragic part to this story is that Olivia wanted hers cut too. If I were the one weilding the scissors I would have just trimmed it. But sinse I am unable to cut hair in a straight line, Kevin is the master haircutter, and he did exactly as Olivia wished. Of course she looks adorable but she was the one that let me do her hair! Waah! I wanted to cry but I'm already over it!

We harvested all the lima beans and the girls helped us empty the pods. We laughed at our "abundant" harvest, especially sinse you can buy a bag for .55 cents. But the girls had a ball!

Our Lovely Yard

We have a lovely yard, all thanks to Kevin. Hes worked so hard on it I wanted to show off on his behalf!! We bought this house with a yard that is just about 1/3 acre. It was a rental property for years and years before us, so needless to say, the yard was in sad shape.
Now doesn't that look lovely!! Our street is wonderfully covered in trees...except our yard! Now we do have a couple but there were stumps all over. WHY?!! WHY!?! So we have planted a couple so we match the rest of the street...in ten years!
Here is the front flower bed, I can't tell you what all of it is, but that it's growing beautifully, and Olivia and Oliver the cat enjoy it too!
This is the bed next to the front porch... the flowers are much bushier now.
On the other side of the yard are our two big trees, and oak and a magnolia, and here are my girls enjoying the magnolia:
Annelise is jumping trying to touch those pretty leaves, while Daddy put Olivia in the branches and she settled right in. She did not want down!!
Well this is our lovely front yard. I'll add another post about our delish garden in the back yard next.
Aren't I blessed!!

Our New Pets

Well, they're actually not that new. We bought them in the springtime with the hopes of getting eggs in the fall...can you guess what they are?!! Yep, chickens!

This was their first home in our home...yes as one neighbor said "Oh my goodness, you have livestock in your living room!" We started with 5 cute little chicks....

This is their first time outside in a little chicken wire pen. I couldn't tell who was more excited, the chicks or the girls!! And I have to tell you, those dresses I made from fabric that cost me 50 cents at a garage sale! So effectively these dresses cost a quarter a piece! Not really cause elastic and ribbon and thread... but still! And I love them!

This is what I call the awkward teen stage, no longer cute at all!! Not yellow and fluffy but not yet all white feathers...they looked awkward! You can see the beginnings of what turned out to be the rooster.

So I just have to brag on Kevin. He made a little home for our chicks on the side of our house. The only money we had to spend was to build the fence, which we wanted to do anyway. He used a shed that came from a neighbor for free, and old screen windows to make the doors that open and close. It may not sound or look like a big deal, but he worked so hard and my brain would have never come up with how to put that all together.. now I can think of ways to make it pretty!....but then so can he! He planted a floering vine on one side that will over grow the shed, it'll be real cute soon enough!

So we gave the Rooster which we had named Larry to some friends that actually live in the country as we assumed our suburban neighbors would not appreciate his morning wake up call. Kevin and Annelise were the saddest to see him go, and well the Hens of course! Then we lost one to some unknown assassin. We thought it might be our kitty Oliver who lives outside because he received a mysterious gaping wound to his chin about the same time. But I like to think he was attacking the assassin, defending the poor little chicky. Besides how can a cat that lazies on the porch as the chickens peck all around him turn into their enemy? Ah well, some mysteries will never be solved! So here they are now. Aren't they so pretty. Lucy, Lulu, and Lexi. Annelise picked the names so take no offence if you know a human counterpart that would rather not share a name with fowl!!
And here is a close up of our pretty little chickie! I know, we are weirdos! My friend Sarah says she wants to watch chicken run with us, she swears it'll be even more funny!