Ahhhh, summer.

Tomorrow is the first day of summer!  Yay!  So, I figured I'd share some things that we've done over the past couple of weeks (as well as some cute outfits).

We took a group field trip to a small local farm and look at the sweet little farm girl that I found there!  The girls had a great time.  They picked and ate blueberries, fed sheep and horses, milked goats and fed the babies.  Zion gathered eggs and diligently (and carefully) carried them in the little basket for the rest of the trip.  She was excited to bring these eggs home and have them for dinner.

Summer has provided us with much more time to spend with our friends.  There's nothing better than sweet friends, sprinklers, Popsicles and backyard picnics!

Then there's this.  This girl is the sweetest little human being.  And this frilly, sheer floral top (Guess - $.99 at Goodwill) is one that she LOVES!  Look at that face...

Ashni is discovering her love of accessories.  This fedora gets worn a lot.  She looks so grown up when she accessorizes.

My girls are plagued (ha) with long legs and super thin waists and my husband is plagued with his disdain for them showing too much skin.  This makes buying shorts difficult.  Bijou, on the other hand, is just the right size for her shorts to fit in the waist, but not be too short.  Yay!

pink shoes - Keds ($2.99 at Goodwill)

shorts - not sure of the brand ($1.49 at Goodwill)

tank top - Land's End (free, hand me down)

Total outfit - approx $4.50

Our annual Father's Day spread.  Every year on Father's Day, I make my husband a spinach, portobello and Gruyere quiche.  It only happens once a year and it is a huge hit every time.  This year, we also had roasted potatoes, cherries with fresh whipped cream (thanks Jena) and the girls squeezed two dozen oranges for juice

School, of course, continues over the summer.  Bijou has been working on adding two digit numbers with carrying and Zion is still working on her letter sounds.  She really wants to learn to read.

It's always fun to find pictures like this on my phone.  This is what happens when kids sneak and use your phone while you are getting dressed.  (Notice the stockpile of Girl Scout cookies in the background.)

The playground is a good (free) way to kill time between afternoon activities.  We spent a little time there this afternoon.  I love this lucha libre shirt (Boo Homes - $1.49 at Goodwill) that Bijou is wearing.  LOVE IT!

Zion at the monkey bars

desert boots - Crew Cuts ($2.99 at Goodwill)

trousers - Old Navy ($.99 at Goodwill)

popsicle tank - Gap ($.99 at Goodwill)

Total outfit - approx $5

This is what big sisters are for - to wear little sisters like hats! 

pink sneakers - Vans (previously featured)

shorts - Judith March ($2.49 at Goodwill)

t-shirt - Cherokee (free hand me down)

Total outfit (without shoes) - approx $2.50

We leave in two weeks to take Ashni to fence in the Summer National Championship in Ohio.  Jena leaves for France two days after.  We will go to St. Louis at the end of July to pick up my mother for a visit.  There will be field trips and play days and workshops to fill up all the rest of our long summer days. I'm looking forward to having a great and productive summer!

The girls' garden

The girls are in full gardening mode now.  This year they planted cucumbers, lettuce, green beans, tomatoes, banana peppers and I transplanted some mint from our herb garden at school.  So far, all of the plants look pretty strong and healthy, so hopefully they will get a good harvest this year.  Keep you fingers crossed.

(this box just has cucumbers and lettuce)

Spring has sprung?

The weather is warming up here.  Today, it was a sweat producing 85 degrees.  That type of weather calls us all out to the garden (barefoot of course).  I am on spring break this week, so the girls and I have been catching up on some school, some chores and preparing our garden for spring.  This year we are planing green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce and spinach.  Hopefully we will be able to grow enough to make at least a couple of meals. 

These boxes will hold spinach, lettuce and mint.

You can't see it, but Zion is holding a stick that Ashni painted last summer.  It has been in our backyard all winter.

 Ashni making rows in the small boxes (despite the fact that I said they didn't need rows).

Did I mention that Zion was wearing pants with a bunny tail?

Bijou's muddy toes (well, muddy toe).

That is hysterical laughter on Bijou's face.  I swear.

I was quite impressed with Jena's strength.  Zion is little, but she weighs a TON.

Backyard Camping

So, my girls were having some petty little issues with their neighborhood friends yesterday. You know, "so and so is being mean and won't let us play with them" kind of stuff. So after a brief "kids can be mean" talk, I decided that they needed something to do here at home. I decided to pitch the habitually neglected tent in the backyard and let them have their very first solo backyard camp out. Their rules were very simple:
1. Do not, under any circumstances, leave our backyard.
2. No one, under any circumstance, is allowed in the backyard with you.
3. No running in and out of the house all night.
4. Please turn off the flashlights before you go to sleep.
5. If you get scared or nervous for ANY reason, come back in the house!
They gathered their sleeping bag, pillow, blankets, books and water bottle and headed out before sunset. By the time the sun went down it looked like they were throwing a rave in the tent. To my surprise, they were asleep by 10 o'clock or so. We considered bringing them in before we went to bed (the hubby's a little more cautious than I am), but we left a light on for them and they were really only 20 or 30 feet from our bedroom window, so we just let them stay. We were awakened at 6:45 this morning by Ashni letting us know that the hubby accidentally locked the backdoor and she couldn't get in the house. They had a great time and I'm sure backyard camping will be requested again and again and again....and again.

Where in the world...

Guess what happens when you put six kids together in a backyard garden in Massachusetts with free reign on the ripe vegetables. Go ahead, guess. I'll wait.....
Well, when if it's my four kids and our friends' two kids, they make a.....wait for it.....SALAD! Yep, our kids gathered cucumbers, green tomatoes, fresh basil and carrots from the garden, raisins, pickles (yeah pickles) and salad dressing from the fridge and made a big vinegary salad. Then they all sat around a table in the backyard (barefoot and in a slight drizzle) and ate it voraciously with forks, hands and chopsticks.

On a side note. Today is my husband's 34th birthday. Happy Birthday, hun. Someday we will have money on your birthday and we'll do something awesome. I guess being in Massachusetts instead of Mississippi could be considered awesome. I guess we'll just have to see what the day brings.

UPDATE: SO we spent the morning at the river with the kids. It was SO hot and river was so nice. This was one of the highlights of our trip. I'd go back there every day.

A quick update...

Okay, so my computer is in need of a new motherboard and thanks to a techie friend, I can get it up and running for a fraction of what the computer place was going to charge me. Now I just need to order a new motherboard. So tonight I am borrowing my cousins laptop to do a little update.
I mentioned before that the girls and I made puppets from gourds. Everyone was a bit snippy that day and I felt like a little project would soothe the savage beasts. I really made this up as we went along, but they turned out pretty good. The large part of the gourd is the puppets head and we hot glued fabric to the smaller part to make the body.

Also, I haven't had the confidence to tackle the fabric playhouse I'd planned to make for the big girls, so I made them a tepee (or tipi or teepee, maybe?). Some one hacked down a TON of bamboo and left it at the curb (and everyone knows that I am a sucker for usable goods left at the curb) so of course I loaded up the back of my mini van. I used the sheets that I bought back in the winter for the fabric playhouse and let the kids go to town decorating it with sharpies. The tepee was really simple to put together and I love looking out of my kitchen window and seeing in the far corner of the backyard. Bijou, Zion and I sat out in it this morning with Popsicles and library books (generally not a good combo, but no books were harmed). It was great until a HUGE daddy long legs ran Bijou off. Eh well...

On a side note, I got some comments from a couple of new people and I wanted to say thanks for stopping by. I always love comments, but typing responses on the Wii....ugh!

Mini Farmers

I finally got around to making boxes for the kids to put their plant in. I've had scrap wood laying around the garage forever, so I just took it to Home Depot and got the pieces cut down evenly. A few weeks ago I came across a very cool little project to make garden markers from old spoons. Of course I can't remember what blog it was from, but they had great letters to stamp into the metal. i don't have those, but I do have a sort of metal punching tool. I bought some old spoons (and a couple of butter knives) at a garage sale on Saturday for a quarter. I wrote the names of the plants on each spoon and used the punch to go over the letters (making a dotted line of sorts). So now the girls have their very own little plot of land to take care of. Jena feels like the plants are her babies, so if no one else takes care of them, Jena will.

This picture is really just to show off Ashni's fabulous outfit. She has her own style!

Parsley, basil and rosemary.

Zion is in charge of picking all of the flowers from the plants when no one is looking.