7 Years Old!

Now that we have a seven-year-old living here things are totally different....

Seven-year-olds can hold the whole world in their hands!

They own their own cameras!

They pick out AWESOME double brownie explosion Culvers ice cream cakes!

Seven-year-olds are amazing!

First Day of School 2012

Everybody started school this week. Things were a bit rocky. On the positive side, everybody likes their teachers. They love riding the bus. They come home full of excitement and enthusiasm. On the negative side, Wyatt went to school 1 day this week and has been home sick with a fever ever since. Shane is still a little clingy and cries when he gets dropped off. Jonah and Sam got in trouble for standing and walking around on the bus and I still hardly had any time to myself this week!

It can only get better right?

The Ledges

 We visited the Fossil Ledges on Drummond Island today. It was the first time that any of us had visited the ledges, but it definitely will not be the last! The rocks, full of fossils, were amazing and beautiful and we could barely make ourselves go home. All I can say is wow!

Teddy Bear Club v. 2.0

When I was a kid we went to Drummond Island every summer. We always made friends with any kids that came and stayed at the resort next door. One summer we met two sisters... Doris and Heidi. They were great and we all became inseparable. We decided to form a club and named it the Teddy Bear Club. The Teddy Bear Club needed a headquarters, so we stole some wood from the neighbor next door, went out into the woods, and built a fort. It was pretty sweet! Especially since it was built by 4 girls!

This week we are up on Drummond Island and I decided to take the boys out into the woods to see if our old fort was still standing. It was still there...in rough shape, but I could still picture what it looked like when we were kids. We found an old slingshot that Grandpa made for us, a marker, a toolbox with some toilet paper, an old cooking pot, and a no trespassing sign. The kids were fascinated with my old fort and wanted to fix it back up so that they could use it. But there were broken boards everywhere, rusty nails on the ground, and one of the trees from the original fort was dead.

So we decided to build a new fort. We decided that, for the sake of history, we should build it close enough to the original fort that you can see the old one from the new one. In the picture below you can see the old fort in the background to the right.

We spent $30 on wood this time instead of stealing our materials. We also built it up in a tree this time and our design was a little more sophisticated than our first one. It was a lot of fun to build and the kids are super excited. I am hoping that they make some great memories in their new fort and look back on them fondly

thirty years from now....just like I do!

Nature's Bounty

We have been busy canning tomatoes. 

I taught the boys how to remove the seeds from tomatoes and that has helped speed up the process a lot.

 It also means that when I am done canning I don't have to go to another room in the house and clean up a huge mess that they created while I cleaned tomatoes! Win...win! 

Shane likes to make zucchini bread with me...even though he can't eat it because of the milk and eggs.

I did our last picking of beans and froze them. We ended up with 30 pint bags! It will be so nice to have fresh beans from our garden in the middle of next winter

 Our corn is growing and we are looking forward to eating it fresh from the garden. In the meantime it provides a nice background for pictures of  the boys!

Picking Away

Our garden has really taken off and become quite a sight to behold. We have never had a garden do so well before! Our gardens with Fred were good, but this garden is amazing! We did not fence it in and have only had one issue with a rogue rabbit that ate some soybean plants. He was relocated and things have been great on the pest front ever since. We also have had very little infestation with beetles and bugs like we did at Fred's place. We have had to spray things 2 times so far, but it worked overnight and things improved quickly. Our first tomatoes that came ripe had some sort of rot on the bottom of them, but we added calcium to the soil and everything has been fine ever since. 

When John and I sat down and planned our garden out in March we planned some things really well, and others...not so much. We picked out our crops and decided what should go where. Then we figured out the row spacing and based that on the width of the rototiller that we planned to buy. We figured that we could keep the weeds in check using a rototiller between rows if we planted accordingly. It worked out well and we have been able to keep the weeds down using the rototiller with only a little hand weeding here and there.We scouted out the best prices on seeds and plants and planted everything right around Mother's Day. Almost a month later the plants looked only ok. They were not dying, but they were not thriving either. 

Then we went out and got a soil testing kit. It turned out that our soil pH was way off and our soil macronutrients were all low. Nitrogen was so low that it didnt ever register on the test! We added everything that we needed to add to get the soil nice and healthy for growing and things improved. However, it would have been soooo much easier if we had the foresight to check the soil conditions BEFORE planting! DUH! Lesson learned!

We have been picking stuff daily from the garden. We have picked so many beans that we are begging people to take them now! We have come up with lots of new recipes using our veggies too! We learned that you can grill green beans on tin foil with a little olive oil and garlic.I also have a great recipe for chocolate zucchini bread that the kids think is to die for! We have made fresh salsa using our own cilantro and jalapeno peppers 3 times so far this summer and it is amazing! Tonight I made basil pesto to go with the tomatoes that we picked for dinner, but the kids ate all of the tomatoes before I got any so I put it on tortilla chips. I am going to try and make some yellow squash baked chips tomorrow and see how those taste! Our cucumbers are pickling types so they are small and the kids usually eat those before we can use them in anything fancy. We have some soybeans that are growing and we are looking forward to the edamame, but soybeans take 100 days to mature so it will still be a while. 

We also have sweet corn growing. We planted it late, but it will be fun to eat it right after picking! Wyatt, who has never been a corn eater, has learned to like fresh corn on the cob since we moved to Wisconsin! 

I also bought 12 strawberry plants on sale for 50 cents each at the end of June and they all have flowers on them right now, so we may have a late season berry crop this summer! Our rhubarb plants (all 10 of them) look good so far. The shock of transplanting most of them from Michigan didn't appear to affect them long term so we are thrilled! 

We have close to 40 tomato plants and they all look healthy, so the kids and I went out last week and stocked up on canning jars and lids that were on sale! We are planning on canning stewed tomatoes and Grandma wants some salsa. I also have a great recipe for tomato jam that I used to make for Fred back in grad school! Roll up your sleeves kids...canning 101 is about to begin!

True U-per

Shane is loving his third year on DI!

Drummond Island 2012

We have been on Drummond Island for the last week. We are loving the warm weather and the unseasonably warm water in our bay. We have been swimming, tubing, skiing, fishing, biking, four wheeling, frog and turtle hunting, rock hunting, and enjoying all of the sights and adventures that are part of Drummond Island in July.

Fishing

John and the boys have figured out the walleyes. They have been fishing almost every weekend and haven't been skunked yet! We have been eating fish at least once a week lately! Yummy!

Froging

Frog catching has been going extremely well! The kids are rarely without a frog in a cage somewhere. John takes them to a pond on the other side of the subdivision on the weekends. They are gone for about 20 minutes and then they come home with tons of "high jumpers". Last weekend the frogs all got out of their bucket in the back of the pickup truck and there were frogs hopping everywhere! It would have made a great video!

Birding

Summer school has been going well. The kids have made lots of new friends and they are enjoying being at school together every day. They are all in different classrooms but they go out for recess at the same time so they have been hooking up on the playground every day. It is cute to hear them plan out where they are going to meet as I am driving them to school every day. "If you get there first save me a swing ok?" "If there are not enough swings we can do spider swing ok?" 

The kids do not have school on Fridays so I drove them to Two Rivers last Friday and we spent most of the day on the beach on Lake Michigan. There were only 2 other people at the beach so it was very relaxing! I actually read 100 pages of a book sitting on the beach in the sun! The last time that happened was in high school!

We are still in the nap phase-out process. Its good some days and horrible others. But after lunch Shane takes a nap and I do homework with the boys. Then the boys can play outside until Shane wakes up and then we all do something together. Then John gets home and we eat dinner while everybody whines because they are SOOOO TIRED and we send them to bed by 7pm!

Last week after homework the boys went outside and caught a bird in their butterfly net! I was shocked! They couldn't understand why they are allowed to catch butterflies but not birds. Hmmmmm... The birds in this neighborhood need to step up their reaction time clearly! Maybe I shouldn't ignore them when they tell me that they are going to catch a chipmunk! 

I have been spending all of my free time going to war with the birds in my yard. They like to sit on top of the swing set and poop on the kids swings! It drives me crazy! I stained the whole thing and it was almost like it made the problem worse. So I went out and bought an owl and mounted him on the birds favorite perch on top of the swing set. So far it is working on the bird poop and I am hoping that it will serve as an added bonus to animals thinking about checking out our garden as well. We have not needed to fence in the garden yet and have already been enjoying lettuce and radishes this year.

We started our new summer schedule this week. Wyatt, Jonah and Sam are enrolled in summer school this year. They go to school from 8am until 11am Monday through Thursday. Then we all come home and eat lunch together. Shane takes a nap and I do homework with the other boys and then the kids go outside and play. We are also phasing out naps for Jonah and Sam so that they will be ready for full day kindergarten in the fall.

It is only Tuesday and the school thing is going great, but the nap thing....not so much! There are tired crazy boys everywhere that I look! I am re-thinking the nap thing and am going to try every-other-day naps for a while and then total nap withdraw later.

I am enjoying the massive reduction in driving that the summer schedule requires! It is amazing how much driving that I did last year! My day was so fragmented before! It is nice to do stuff in the afternoons that doesn't require me to drop everything and drive away at exactly 2:45 pm to pick Wyatt up from school!

We used our free afternoon today to get all of our Father's Day shopping done and only knocked over 1 display in the process! That is a huge improvement over last year! Things sure are starting to look up!

Confessions from the Tooth Fairy

People are losing teeth around here left and right. I can't keep track of who is missing which teeth and who has how many loose ones and how many "really loose ones". The tooth fairy can barely keep up and stop in to deliver her money. She has forgotten about the drop off quite a few times....once two nights in a row. That caused a lot of tears!

You might think that the tooth fairy would be running out of money. If you were paying attention, though, you might notice that the tooth fairy brings everybody the same thing... 2-1976 silver half dollar coins. She actually brings everybody the EXACT SAME thing....the same 2 coins recycled over and over again.

It turns out that after 2 days or so the novelty of the tooth fairy money wears off and people leave it laying around. The tooth fairy gets nervous when money is left down where a wandering three year old can get it and eat it, so she flies in, picks it up, and takes it back to her money stockpile.

The stockpile consists of 2- 1976 silver half dollar coins....that's it! I know it's shocking! She's so thrifty isn't she?

I wonder what the tooth fairy is going to do if 2 people lose teeth on the same night?!?!?

The Garden 2012

One of the best things about moving out of our house in pittsburgh was getting to say goodbye to my so called garden. That garden was such a nightmare.... built into a hill, crappy soil, and peppered with poison ivy! I don't miss it one bit! 

John and I got hit with the gardening bug pretty hard when we were in graduate school at Michigan state. We lived next door to farmer Fred and we had acres and acs of land to plant. We grew everything.... Lettuce, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, melons, carrots, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, kolrabi, onions, leeks, beans, peas, squash, peppers, kale, sunflowers, and pumpkins. We learned about planting beans in a hill, laying tomatoes in the hole, using a string to make straight rows. We learned how to can veggies and make wilted lettuce. We learned how to dust for beetles and how to drag a field. We spent 5 years perfecting our craft. Then we graduated and got jobs and had kids and have not had a "real" garden ever since. 

This year we are going to make Fred proud! We have 2 gardens already in the works. One garden is a plot next to the shed where we planted rhubarb. We bought ourselves a rototiller, figured out where the electric lines were in the back yard and got to work. So far we have 5 rhubarb plants in the ground and things are looking good. The kids are still excited to water the plants every day. Score! The other garden is the vegetable garden which is 25x45 feet. It is huge and we are looking forward to planting it in a few weeks. The vegetable garden is close to the house and I am planning on spending a lot of time in there this summer. Our goal is to plant the rows wider than the rototiller path so that we can till the rows and keep the weeds down until the plant grow big enough. We have tons of seed packets and need to sit down and figure out what is going to go where. The kids can't wait to plant the big garden. Today Wyatt, Jonah, and Sam planted popcorn kernels in there and are hoping to grow popcorn sometime soon. They have a lot to learn, but we are looking forward to teaching them everything that we learned from Fred.