Of berries, bikes, bad weather and brides....in no particular order.

I'm starting with weather first because I'm sick of it. I don't know why it's so hard this year for the weather people to tell us if or when we are having severe storms. They're either popping up out of nowhere, or they tell us they're coming and they don't. My personal favorite is that of last Friday and early this morning, where they say things are weakening or just not coming near us at all, and yet I'm awoken by some thunder and lightning only to discover there's a tornado warning nearby. Poor southern Ohio will have been under a tornado watch for about 20 hours straight by the end of the day if the current watch stays in effect. Luckily the weather was able to cooperate for Memorial Day weekend. It was quite lovely and we had a nice cookout at my mom and step-dad's that Sunday.

At any rate, this rain of late is doing wonders for my plants. The strawberries are a little experiment I was trying with Xander, but then I discovered my neighbor Dena gardens and she offered to start some seeds for me. I'm doing all containers this year until I see if I'm successful, as I don't want to rip up my yard to find I'm not good at growing things. I'm horrible with houseplants so I wasn't expecting much from these. The strawberries are looking great though, and it was fun to watch Xander learn how to plant them, then put them in the sun, and he even helped me water them. I discovered, however, that 12 strawberry plants isn't going to put a dent in my kids' consumption of the fruit. Xander is very proud of the strawberries so I took a picture of them yesterday. The other little plants you see are the ones from Dena that I need to re-pot. They're tomatoes, cucumber and green pepper. One of each, just to see how they do.



Xander also just got his first big boy bike. Jason had told him he could use some birthday money to buy it so they went last week and picked it out. Just so happens that it matches the helmet he got last summer at the Safety Fair. Xander loves his bike and is quite good at it, just got on and took off. He's already riding it around the block and we've been leaving the cars in the driveway so he can ride in the garage on days that it rains.



Nomey has a helmet, too, and insists on wearing it even if she's not riding her tricycle. They even wore helmets to help me wash the car on Sunday.



Other than that we've not been doing much. The kids and I have gone on a few playdates with our MOPS (Mother's of Pre-schoolers) group and I went out for Mexican and dancing with some friends last Saturday night. Something about having two kids and turning 30 has reduced my ability to decide what makes for good "going out" clothes, so I let Jason choose my attire on Saturday. He was quite pleased with the end result and even took my picture. He attempted to go fishing with Xander and his dad last Sunday but that didn't go so well.





Our next big adventure is a garage sale at my mom's next weekend. She already sold some of our baby stuff to a girl at her work, but I have tons of clothes and other things here that I hope to get rid of as well. So please pray for me that it doesn't rain next Saturday, so I will not have spent hours pricing all these things for naught.

Also, Jason's cousin is getting married this weekend, so congratulations Nellie!!! All of you family members making the trip to Punta Cana we hope you have a fabulous time.

What a week!

So it's been busy and interesting around here lately. Did you all know that Time Warner makes service calls on Sundays? Who knew? We've been having trouble with our modem, I think mostly because it's ancient, but they couldn't just bring us a new one without coming to test it first. They still claimed it was fine but we ended up with a new one anyway. Jason must have given the guy one of his looks.

Lucky us, last Sunday wasn't our only day of waiting around for a service call. On Wednesday our refrigerator decided to break. It had been making a weird noise, but we chalked it up to it being the ice maker. Afterall, a refrigerator less than three years old couldn't have anything wrong with it, right? Joke's on us. It happened of course when I was out having dinner and shopping with my mom for her birthday (Happy Birthday, Mom!!!). We had to wait four days for a service call and when the tech called to say he was on his way he asked some questions and determined that it was the compressor, which of course he couldn't just show up and fix. So today was day seven of living out of our coolers and a mini fridge. Luckily we have a freezer in the garage so we were able to salvage all the frozen food that was in the house. Aside from buying ice every other day I'm actually getting used to the cooler system. Drinks in one, condiments in one, produce in one and leftovers in the fourth. I'm kind of feeling like a waitress....I ask who wants what to drink, I disappear behind the door (into the garage), I pour drinks and then I come back. The new compressor came yesterday and was installed today. Now, 10 hours later, it is 76 degrees in the refrigerator and -6 in the freezer. Supposed to be 38 and 0 respectively. We called but we can't get a service call scheduled until tomorrow because we had an appointment today and it shows up as pending until the next day. Oh the joy.

On the upside, Jason won this month's poker game with the guys from work. Gotta love an extra $80. I also got a new cabinet for the toy room. It's my happiness. Xander's occupational therapist suggested picking up toys so he can't dump them out all the time when he's angry. Obviously they don't all fit in there, but most of the loose ones do. And so does the Play-Doh. So now if we want a new toy we have to pick up what's already out. It's pretty sad that I find this pretty exciting. I even took pictures.



The kids had a fun week also, as it was sunny and warm most days, so we spent some time outside. They were really excited about the new bubble machine Jordis got for her birthday (thanks, Megan!) It puts out a TON of bubbles and was a huge hit.



Jordis also got a new tricycle this week. She's still not quite able to ride it properly, but she loves it just the same and wants to ride it all the time. She calls it "my own bike." We've started calling her Nomey (the "y" is so that it doesn't read like gnome). Anyway, she wants to do everything herself now. EVERYTHING. If you get too close to her or try to help her, she screams, "No, Me!" So that's her new nickname. Here's Nomey on her new bike.



Let's see, what else? Xander and I have some strawberry plants we're trying to grow in containers on the deck and they started to flower this week. So he's excited about that. He's taken to talking to Jesus, which is quite cute, so he thanked him for the flowers. Then at the park Friday he asked him to make the wind stop because it was blowing our napkins around. I told him maybe he should talk more politely and not scream at him if he wanted him to stop the wind, and he replied that he had to yell at him because he's way up in the sky and might not hear him from down here. Made logical sense and I'm all about logic, so I told him maybe he was right.

On Saturday we had our neighbors Dena and Dustin over for a cookout. Between the two of us we were able to come up with some food spur of the moment, which impressed me since I had to get creative without a fridge. We had hamburgers in the freezer and I was able to make deviled eggs, escalloped apples and peanut butter cookies. Dena had hamburger buns, hot dogs, hot dog buns and she made pasta salad. Then she tried to tell us she didn't know how to play poker, but she ended up taking all of our chips, so I'll have to think about whether or not to invite them back. Dena is teaching me how to grow vegetables though, so I suppose I can keep her around at least through the summer. (Ha, ha, just kidding, Dena!)

Sunday was Xander's very first fishing trip. Jason was up during the day this weekend so he and his dad took Xander out to see how he did. My mom and step-dad got him a Cars tackle box for his birthday and he's been dutifully organizing it with his rubber bait or whatever you call that stuff. I don't fish, so I don't know. It's not that I don't like fishing, just only been twice in my life. Anyway, he had a great time even though he kept pulling his line out of the water and thinking his minnows were fish that he caught. He lost his SpongeBob stopper, too, but PawPaw bought him a Happy Meal for lunch so I think he's okay.






I guess that's about it from here. Sorry to put over a week in one post. Hopefully I can keep up more frequently in shorter spurts. You know, when I'm not digging around in my various coolers looking for food.