February 7, 2008

Happy Birthday Michael

Here is the newest edition to our family. She is Michael's birthday present. Her name is Star. Star is a Golden Retriever. Michael loves her. She is a good puppy!

Michael also got the now offical traditional birthday present; money for a fishing license. Not that we ever go fishing, but it gets us into the local wildlife refuge for free. That is one of the kids favorite Sunday activities. We love to watch all the migrating birds.

It has been busier then normal around here. Aimee started out sick last Friday and it has just been running through the kids. They sleep for days and are just miserable. I feel so bad for them. It has made me realize how much I depend on them. Taylor has been well with me and we have decided it is a lot of work to have to do everyone's jobs. It is hard for me because I can't hand off Isaac to a sick child and they are not up to playing with Joshua. So Taylor and I are holding down the fort. Taylor deserves a couple of days off once everyone is better.

Taylor and I continued to work on the fence today. This project is taking forever! Grandpa came and gave us all the pointers we needed. We did a pretty good job. We got two sections done. We are doing a wire style fence. I am hoping to put up some rails eventually and paint it white, but I will just be happy when the wire is all up the gates are on and it is an official closed in structure. I don't think I am asking too much.

My seed orders arrived a couple of weeks ago. The grow light is all set up and the tomatoes and peppers are up and growing.

I got some fun varieties this year. The one I am looking most forward to is the False Alarm pepper from Burpee's. It is a Jalapano pepper with no heat. I am hoping it will be a great addition to my salsa. I also started two varieties of tomatos that are for storage. I hope they work out. I refuse to buy a tomato from the store. If I could have my own longer that would make me very happy.

I keep thinking that our garden in big enough, but it never is and I am such a sucker for the plant catologs. This year I put in an aparagus bed, planted 2 new peaches, 2 pears, 2 apples and Michael bought himself 2 more cherry trees for his birthday. I am still waiting for the 3 grapes and 75 strawberries. I am glad they have not arrived yet. I am not ready for them. Hopefully the nice weather will hold and the fence will get done. Then I can move on to getting ready for this years garden.

Hope everyone is doing better at avoiding the cold and flu then we are.