Summer starts slow and wet.

Lazy rainy days and no school has the kids looking for things to do.  I'm ready to take them to the pool or just spend some sunny days around the house!  We always have that first week of no school to be the week of changes, sleeping in, late starts to our day and late nights.  It's an adjustment for all of us but we did fine!  Because of the rains, I didn't walk at the park so I slept in too!  I found this puzzle at a thrift store the other week and Ashlyn and I devoured it on one of the rainy days.  We also started our summer reads with Huckleberry Fin!  Ashlyn baked some cookies to pass the clouds away!

 

Both Ashlyn and Austin need some kind of jobs this summer.  Sure they will help me here at home and I do hope to have their help with the laundry and house chores but they need more!  I need to get creative with our time this summer!  Drawing and coloring is something fun to do while I read aloud to them!

Spending our days here at home are a dream come true for me!  I dreamed of having children and spend days at home working in the garden and playing games and doing puzzles together and here I am!  Living out that dream and I want to treasure it!

The kale is ready in the garden and we had leftover sausage from the cabin, so I made Zuppa Tuscana soup for supper!  Yum yum!

And Lena gifted me a dahlia plant from Briar Rose Greenhouse the other week and it's blooming non stop!   After picking some berries and seeing the sun shining in the evening, the flowers looked so pretty!

I sure do love summer time and we are looking forward to days poolside and getting our first tan lines!  The smell of fresh meadow tea has arrived in the kitchen!  I'm looking forward to many ballgame nights and watching the Phillies on the back porch on warm summer nights!  I hope the vase in my kitchen remains full of summer blooms!  Mowing the green grass and even pulling the weeds are all a part of summer chores!  Summer is always full of late night and sleep in mornings!  We are extremely blessed!

Memorial Day Weekend!

 School is out and we drove off to our favorite cabin in the woods for Memorial Day Weekend!  It didn't suit everyone from my family to come this year but those that did come, we had fun!

Mike and I made supper over the campfire one night.  I love using some kind of reminder for us all to remember the holiday weekends on why we celebrate Memorial Day.  These plates help remind us to think and thank those who have fought hard for the freedoms we have today in our country!

Sausage and Brats were a hit from Costco!

Croquet Golf was a blast!  We always have so much fun with this game and honestly I'm not sure how we all stay safe during this game because balls get whacked hard and all in all directions!

All of our cooks were pretty amazing!  That Burger King hat helped for sure!

Having our grand baby up all weekend had us smiling and spoiling and loving him!  He's doing well and growing and we can't get enough of his sweetness!

Some wanted them dead, some wanted to watch the cute baby groundhogs under the shed.

Our weather was chilly and wet all weekend.  We were not fishing on the river this time because the water was rough and high.  The kids were grabbing jackets and boots for the four wheeler rides and time in the woods.  The wood stove was burning inside the cabin.  Crazy!  Monday was sunny and the nicest day.

Happy Memorial Day and thank you to all who have served and still serve our country today!

May garden.

Baby Gunnar is growing and we love it when he smiles for us!  He's just starting to respond when we talk to him!  He's just adorable at five weeks old!!!!!

 

I went to tell Mommy D happy birthday and she was a spit fire!  I just laughed!  When I told her happy birthday she said right back to me, "Yeah well you are a few days late."  True!!!!  I didn't make it to the home to say it on her birthday day and she was sure to let me know!  89 years old looks pretty good on her!  We had a really good visit this time and I treasure these days when she's funny and chatty!

It's so good to see the blue skies at the park once again.  We've been having so much rain in May and we are ready for the sunshine and warm tempts!

The lettuce is loving the rains and cooler weather!

There is so much green everywhere!  The rains are keeping everything hydrated and I sure hope in June and July when it normally is hot and dry, all these extra rains will keep things thriving!  In the garden right now we have lettuce, radishes, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, spaghetti squash, dill, dahlia and zinna seeds sprouting.  Strawberries, peaches, apples and raspberries are all small but growing!  I bought a fig tree this spring and have it in a white pot in the garden.  I'm excited to see how many figs grow for us to enjoy!  Herbs are in the box and lavender is just starting to green up and get blooms!  One thing I love about raised beds is that it takes only a few minutes to pull the weeds.  Most of my boxes are filled with enough of foods to cover most of the boxes and less room for weeds to grow!  This is my happy place!!!!

The succulents are ready for hot and dry!

I was going to rip out the strawberry plants and use this space for something better but they started to bloom, so I kept them.  They never bloom nice berries and I just feel like this space could be used better.  The meadow tea is finally being aggressive and Austin said that that would be one of his chores for the summer ... cut the tea!

Apples and peaches.

Adding fruit trees to our garden has been great!

Figs and wild poppies!

Cucumbers, tomatoes and for the first I have a dahlia bed.  They are thriving so far!

Honeysuckle and chives are dripping from the rain drops!

Cabbage is still one of the my favorite foods to watch grow!  They get huge leaves and it always reminds me of Peter Rabbits garden!  And we have carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and kale.

Peas are tasty but my least favorite to grow because I don't like putting up the pea wire.  And I grabbed some ranunculus bulbs this spring and they are blooming!  They are such a pretty flower!

Buttercrunch is ready to harvest!

The garden is thriving and it's wet and green and hopes that the sun will shine bright soon!

A Peony Garden.

 Lena and Zayla took my to this peony garden again!!!!  It is just stunning to have a local Amish family grow all these Peonys in a field they created on their property!  So many flowers blooming or about to bloom!

I bought three stems of my favorite color they have and it's the Coral Peony.  I brought them home and placed them in a vase with some dahlias that Lena bought for me and added some white peonies from the bridal shower that were still in bloom and the bouquet turned out gorgeous!!!!!  

The blooms are the biggest I've ever seen!!!!!

And with so many rain showers and wet windows day after day, this is amazing to have in my kitchen to brighten up our day!

Really just so stunning!

We browsed the fields of flowers and then grabbed lunch and stopped by Briar Rose Greenhouse.  Everything today was just beautiful!!!!!  Thank you Lena and Zayla for this birthday treat!!!!!

Last Day of School!

School is out!  Over!  For the entire summer!  Ashlyn came out of eighth grade to think high school from now on!  She had a WONDERFUL eighth grade missions trip and really loves to be on the volleyball team!  Summer looks fun to her and we tried/asked at so many local small businesses for a job for her this summer because her mom knows she needs a job to keep her hands busy but nothing turned up just yet!  I guess it will be her mom's job to keep her busy around the house.  Austin completed fourth grade and really had just a great year!  He loved his teacher and improved on reading and math ... two subjects that every kid should thrive in!  He can't wait to play fast pitch tennis with his cousins in the back yard this summer and go to the pool and play in ball tournaments and hit one hundred balls a day!  Keeping these busy will be a challenge, I know that but we are going to have a fun time together!  Thank you so much teachers for giving our children a wonderful education and such a great school term!

 The last day of school had a theme of "a place you like to vacation or Hawaii".  

One last time to ride the bus to school in the morning for this school term.

We have a huge list of teachers to thanks and appreciate each year.  Ashlyn finished up middle school and has numerous teachers with all her classes so I told her to just pick a few that we could bless.  Mrs. Lankford is one of her favorite and just by looking at her smile you can see why!  She's fun and Ashlyn really loved her classes!  Thank you!

Austin also has more than one teacher and we blessed his three main teachers with flower planters and then handed out homemade lemonade jars to all the rest!  I hope everyone feels appreciated!!!!  Mrs. Stoltzfus and Mrs. McCarter and Mrs. Kane really had a positive impact on Austin this year!  Thank you!

We celebrated the completed school term with bubba teas!

"I'm excited to hang out with Gunnar!"  Too cute!

Honor Roll .... great job!

Ashlyn was so giddy when Mike took her out to eat and buy a phone.  It's what we did for our two oldest after finishing up eighth grade and it's what Ashlyn could not wait for!!!!!  We have lots of talks about phones and now with her own, it brings responsibility!  

Cheers to summer vacation and no school days!