Garden Progress: Expanding the Beds

According to our original garden plan, there were to be corner beds around the perimeter of the garden.  We decided that it was finally time to add 2 of them and hubby started on them this weekend.  

 We are going to use those posts in the bed to build a right angle trellis.  Then I can transplant the black raspberries over here. They are getting a little too aggressive to be so close to the house.

 I am surprised to see that the melons are growing well, despite the relatively cool and rainy temperatures this year.

The tomatoes are doing well too, although the cherokee purple seeds that I saved from last season seem to have mixed with one of the smaller varieties.

I planted borage in with the tomatoes to keep the bugs away and am pleased to have their beautiful blossoms mixed in with my plants.

Three years ago, I planted these "daisies" in front of the deck. I thought that they would be a low accent plant in front of the rose bushes. Instead they turned into bushes themselves.  The roses were struggling to survive and I decided that it was finally time to replant them somewhere else.  I dug up a new bed around the clothesline pole and planted the roses with some echinacea.   It is not the ideal spot, but it will do for now.

The roses are so frail that it is hard to believe that there are 4 bushes in this bed. I used special soil and mulched them with chicken fodder. Hopefully, they will do better now.

Family Schooling Summary

It has been a busy Summer, but we try to fit school work in every day. Lately, we have been practicing penmanship.  Upper and lowercase letters as well as numbers. Big sister A knows them all, but she is learning to make them the right sizes and proportions.

I also wanted to make sure that Big Sister A had all her sight words down from the Kindergarten curriculum before we move on to 1st grade materials. We have been practicing with this deck of cards that I made.  This perfect little bound pack comes from Bare Books.

She has been practicing her numbers up to 1000 (by 100s), and counting by 5s, 10s, and 25s (for money).  We have also been having some fun using these math puzzles to practice adding and subtracting.

We have been spending whole days outside enjoying the beautiful weather. 

The kiddos want to eat outside every chance they can get.  Here are some pics of their new favorite set-up:

Sew Special: Another Gnomey Hat

My buddy from Utah is in town this week with her son Z.  She wanted to learn to knit the gnomey hat pattern too, so we made a couple more hats.  Here is the one I made for her son: 

The Antics of Baby S

Baby S loves to try on other peoples shoes... or fins. Here we are getting ready to go to the pool this week:

 Big Sis A was sooo excited to go to the pool and show daddy how she learned to swim underwater at her swimming class. It was amazing to see how it just clicked for her one day. Now she is comfortable holding her breath and trying to swim underwater from one wall of the pool to the other. She even brings her goggles in the bathtub.

 Big brother and sister helped baby S into their favorite kind of reading nook -- the laundry basket nest.

And baby S is now happily playing dress-up with the big kids. He was so excited to be a fireman and look at himself in the mirror. Big Sis is of course the ring leader in all these games.

Holiday Fun

Both Aunt S and Aunt H had babies in the last 2 weeks so my mom has been in town. We have had a wonderful time visiting, eating, and shopping. Grandpa J helped me fix my clothesline and figure out my phone battery problem. On the 4th of July, everyone went to watch the fireworks across from the fairgrounds. Here is brother M in his traditional firework watching pose. 

Since we had lots of family in town, hubby and I took advantage of the free babysitting and had a getaway weekend at National Harbor.

The hotel is beautiful and has a fantastic pool. (I chose it based on the pool).  Here we are on the boardwalk the first evening just before our yummy seafood dinner.

 Here is the night time view from outside our 18th floor room.

Some daytime views:

I swam 2 miles and read a novel cover to cover undisturbed. It was very relaxing.  We went to see a movie and had tasty treats from the local shops.

Sew Special: Curtains and Hats

I did not get to do much sewing while on vacation, but some new pieces of fabric did find their way home with me.  One piece was just enough to make some new curtains for Aunt E's house.  Hopefully, the mail carrier will be dropping them off on her front porch very soon. I love how they turned out.  The fabric is a large print and it was just a smidge more than 3 yards, so it required some careful calculating to get all three matched up. When the light is coming through them they remind me of stained glass windows.
Here they are untied:

 Tied up:

 And without with light behind them:

Yay! And yesterday I spent some time helping Aunt Sunshine learn how to knit.  We started with my favorite Gnomey Baby Hat pattern. 

Here is what a few hours Sunday evening left us with:

My demo one is finished because the yarn was super bulky, but I think Aunt Sunshine's is going to be even cuter with the scandinavian-style yarn.

Nauvoo: Day 7

We packed in a lot of activities during our last day in Nauvoo.
We rode a wagon replicated to the size that the pioneers would have had, only about 3 feet wide. It was pulled by a team of oxen.

The pioneers used oxen instead of horses to pull their wagons for a number of reasons. They were much less expensive to purchase. They walked more slowly, at the same pace as a family walking along side their wagon would go. They could eat and digest a much broader diet than horses, since they are ruminants. And, the Indians were not interested in stealing oxen, just horses.

 We went to Brigham Young's home.

The home of Lucy Mack Smith:

Heber C. Kimball's house:

Wilford Woodruff's Home:

The kids had fun learning about the various kitchen items that pioneer's used: spiders, strange looking toasters, and the like.

Elder Grandpa was working at the Browning Gun and Blacksmith home and store that day. He told us all about how this famous gun making family got started.

Elder Grandpa also showed us how guns were made back then.

The Stoddard Tinshop and Home:

I really enjoyed visiting the Tinsmith's shop and General Store. We learned all the different things that the pioneers used tin for, from stove pipes to bread pans. And we saw a demonstration of how the tinsmith might have shaped his wares.

We learned how the postal system worked in the mid-1800s and how expensive it was to send a one page letter, a quarter to half the average day's wage.  People wrote lines of text horizontally and then crisscrossed them vertically to get the most text possible on each side. It was very hard for us to read!

 John Taylor's home is between the Post Office and Printing Offices

At the printing office we learned about how upper and lower case letters got their names (organization of printers boxes).

The kids got to see (and experience first hand) how type was set, inked, and then pressed to make each page.

At the Riser Boot and Shoe shop we learned how the shoe maker measured each person's size, made the 2 layers of the sole, and sewed or pegged the leather pieces together.

Our very own Sunset on the Mississippi:

Saturday morning we took some family pictures before we left: