Healing and yard work

Chloe is feeling better today. She spent more time coughing yesterday than she did the day she was diagnosed. She did well at taekwondo, but spent most of the ride home coughing. I think sparring was a bit much for her, but she has settled down now.

John and I set up the raised garden bed last night. I didn't get a picture of it today (too many things happening today). We still need to get in all the screws and the dirt. lol  We have plants to put in the bed when it is ready, then I'll fill the pots with annuals.

I have to admit I've neglected some plants in the yard, namely the butterfly bush. I didn't realize, until late last year, you should cut them back every year. I talked to my Dad last weekend. I told him the butterfly bush had already beginning to leaf, but I still had not cut it back yet. He and I decided I should go ahead and cut it back even though it may not grow out this year. Well. I went out there a couple of days ago. I think the bush knew what I was thinking. At the base of the plant, there were quite a few brand new leaves growing. Awesome! I cut everything I could with my loppers, which was almost all of it. There were two branches I had to leave about six inches because I needed the bigger cutters, but didn't feel like walking to the garage. I'll fix the rest over the weekend.

A sick day??

Okay, we flub it a little. Chloe was suppose to go to rehearsal today. Instead, I called her in "sick" and we went to see my parents. We were originally going to go visit last weekend; however, Dad was still feeling bad from a shot he had the Monday before. I felt a little better today, so I think it was a good call.

Today was also the day my parents got to meet Hank, and our first long car ride with him. He did really well. He even licked my Dad twice, something my Dad usually doesn't let a dog do. I finally asked Dad what he thought. "Do you think I can make a dog out of him?" He shrugged his shoulders, but I think he believes there's a chance. LOL He was a good boy...most of the day. ;)

And of course, the first thing the girls had to do when we arrived home was to run to the backyard and swing for a few minutes. They are loving it and looking forward to spending some time swinging...before it snows. LOL

A Swing!

Yes, we are John is insane. Yes, when it was 27 degrees outside this morning, John and I were outside putting together a swing for the girls. Did it go smoothly? Yes and no. We bickered over the best way to start, so starting took awhile. But once we got going it went fairly well. We got the A-frames in the ground and the large beam on (not secured) before I had to go inside to get ready to take Chloe to rehearsal.

While Chloe and I were gone, I received a text with a picture of a completed swing. And a note from Jesse saying she had already tried out her swing. Chloe ran straight to the backyard when we got home to get a few minutes of swinging before dark.

John told me during dinner that he swung too and tomorrow, or Monday, I need to swing too. At least we will no longer have to be on the look out for a nearby playground with a swing.

So much

There always seems to be so much going on with our lives. John bought some items to build the girls a swing. They love swings, but then so do I. He still needs to buy the wood, but I'm not sure when. He was originally talking about building it this weekend, but after seeing the weather he may adjust his timeframe. Then last night, Chloe had rehearsal. Jesse helped watch a friend's baby, so she and I could talk.

Today was busy! I think I finally sat down about 3:20 (except for driving). We went to the commissary, the doctor's office (two different ones for flu shots), the dump, and Target. Of course, tonight was also taekwondo night.

Chloe had a surprise today. Chloe checked the mail today (Mon/Tues are her days) and found a package for herself. She was very surprised. She was even more surprised to see it was from her cousin Lawson. Inside the package she found two, fuzzy PEZ dispensers that she really liked. I have to say I think it made her day. :)

Cleaning day!

Today, I asked John to run a couple of errands. I then told the girls Dad hadn't had breakfast yet, so they went with him knowing he'd eat out. All that just meant that I had the house to myself so I could clean. I didn't get everything I wanted done, but I achieved a good bit. I even cooked another chicken and did three loads of laundry. Woohoo!

We've been discussing building a deck out by the pool area. We spent a good bit of time this morning discussing the subject. I think what we discovered is we have different ideas of what it should look like. I imagine we'll spend more time talking about it and looking at design ideas before we start anything.

John did get two shelves up in the dining room for my plants. It was an idea we came up with a few weeks ago, but hadn't implemented yet. I love them. Now, I need to repot a few plants (then I'll take a picture).

I know I need to post a picture of Hank. I have only taken one of him, while he was sleep on Chloe's blanket. I haven't really taken many photos lately. Shocking! I know.

Did I tell you I broke my toe at taekwondo Thursday night? I don't think I did, but Wendy mentioned it here. Anyway. Jesse kept insisting I didn't break it. Today, I showed my tow to all three of them. It was so pretty! All purple, lilac and black.  Now, she may believe me. LOL

I'd count today as a good day. I need a few more just like it. :)

Let the flowers bloom...please

I am very happy to report my hostas are coming back out, along with my hydrangea. They are on the side of the house I am rarely on, so I've been a little afraid of looking to see how it was going over there. I was more worried about weeds. There are a few, but not to many.

Three of my azaleas are back. One was on the wrong side of my hydrangea tree last year and just didn't get enough water. I didn't realize it until it was too late. :(  But the hydrangea tree is all green again too.

I had another idea this afternoon. (Not sure where they are all coming from lately, but I'm not going to complain.) We were going out to dinner tonight and I looked at the flower bed at the outside corner of our fence and thought it would make a great bed for azaleas. I told John what I was thinking and to my amazement he quickly agreed. Yeah! So, while we were out tonight we bought two more azaleas. I am going to move the one beside the hydrangea tree and that will give us five for the bed. Not enough, but a start.

I am very sad to report my irises did not come back this year. My Dad and I were talking about them the other day, and today, and we just have no idea why they did not come back up this year. I'll have to figure something else out for that bed. :(

Some of the girls plants from last year actually survived. I'm not sure how many, I have not been out there yet, but they tell me some are popping back up. I am taking over the girls gardens. Well, not fully. But I'm going to help them redesign them.

John is taking over my vegetable garden. I'm not sure what, if anything, he is going to do with my strawberries and blueberry bush but we'll see. I am excited to see what he is planning. We have discussed it a bit, like he is taking over, but not really what he plans on doing. I'm sure it will be great whatever he does.

School's out!

We are finally, officially, out of school for the year. Really we are considered year-round homeschoolers, because we take so many breaks during the year. The girls are very excited to be out for the next three weeks, especially since John is on vacation this week. Perfect timing!

The big news is we have a pool. No not inground or even above ground, in a way. It is one that as it fills with water the pool rises. No it is not fancy but when we get it ready we'll all be cooler. :) So no more debating to get one or not. It is here and simply needs a place to live, until autumn. The girls are beyond excited.

The house is reorganized...again. The excpetion are the girls rooms; I am leaving them fully in charge now. I cannot bare to help them clean their room one more time. They are almost ten and eight. I've been "teaching" them how to clean for that many years and I'm done. They know if I cannot walk through their rooms I will get loud, so hopefully they will keep it a little cleaner.

I still have a few things (i.e. master closet) I want to work on during our break. I also have more planning to do before we start back on the 19th; and I have to send in our paperwork for the year we just finished. The majority has been done on both I just need to finish everything.

For my Dad (and anyone else who wants to read it)

I took a tour of the yard yesterday. I know I should do that everyday to water our plants but I do not. (The girls do a lot of the watering.) What I found out was I need to weed! John has been telling me this for weeks now, but honestly I have been thinking of so many other things I just wanted to put it off.

I did weed one of the smaller beds in the garden the other week. Yesterday, I pulled a lot out of the hosta bed, but there is still so much more in that bed. I will get to the weeding again tomorrow morning, but I thought I'd share some of the pictures I took.

Not the best picture (with the weeds) but you can see how much the hostas have grown.


My hydrangea seems to like its new home AND some magic happened. (keep reading)


I really didn't think the butterfly bush was going to make it a few weeks ago. But wow, it looks great now!


The apple tree is a blooming! There are several leaves beginning to pop out all over!


This is one, of my two, hibiscus that have been attacked by caterpillars. Poor baby!


How this hibicus survived the attack, I don't know but it sure is lovely.


Here is my hydrangea from last year. See the difference?

It is pink!!!! I just moved it from one locale to another (no, I didn't check the soil at either place). But the tag did say it was blue. lol I was talking to my friend Masayo on FB and she had the same problem. She wanted blue (which was on the tag), but got pink. I can't believe I didn't remember it was pink last year!

Well, that is the tour for now. I will be posting a before (again) and after picture of the backyard very soon. The difference between last year and this year is staggering.

"Stuck in Tree"

is Jesse's new name. Yesterday afternoon John got his miniature helicopter out to fly in the backyard. A little relaxing time for John. After a few minutes he let Jesse try. Now, some of you may not know our backyard has no trees until you get to the "back" of the backyard. But there is one tree all the way next to the fence on the side of the empty house. Of course Jesse puts the helicopter right into the tree. Not the bottom or middle but three feet down from the very top, out of range (somehow) from the remote and so stuck it won't budge, no matter what we throw at it or how hard we shake the tree.

I hope we can find a way to get it down today; a big storm is suppose to hit tonight then it will be toast, mechanically speaking. :( Poor John and poor Jesse, she feels awful about it.

Some pics of what I've been up to

Remember to always dress for the weather when working outside. :) It was 34 degrees when I started, and yes that is me. This is half of the lillies I planted, the bed continues around to the steps of the deck.

This is the hydrangea tree thing. No, I still don't know its name, but I love how it looks here.

I've never seen a plant grow through a leaf before. I thought it was interesting.

Note: Jesse and Chloe took all of these pictures. I think they did a great job!!

70 and need more!!!

We really thought we would finish the mulching in the backyard yesterday. John took the day off thinking one more load of forty bags would do it. We had already done thirty over the weekend. We were so close! But alas we still need more bags for the backyard. I am not even going to start with what is left in the front yard. Now, John has a nice large space for his corn, so hopefully he'll get that going very soon.

The girls' flower gardens look nice and every morning they go out to water their plants (and mine, thankfully). I still need to start our garden. I may wind up at Lowe's to buy a few plants (tomatoes) rather than start some from seed. We'll see how things go. I still have one hibiscus to plant. Luckily they are staying moist (not wet) in the bags my Dad sent them in, so I'm not worried about it for another couple of days.

The girls also want to plant a few flower seed too. Again, hopefully one day this week. Our week, school field trip wise, is very slow this week. Thankfully!!! I do love our trips out, but when it all comes at once I feel like I can't breath sometimes. Today, we are doing a bit of school, laundry, general cleaning and preparing to teach tonight (MM won't be there).

TKD is going well. However, I really wish MM would give me a chance to teach on my own. He asked Brady to come help and Alex asked if he could come too, so MM said yes. {eye roll} I found out last Thursday that on Tuesday, Brady was teaching my white belt form incorrectly. If I were teaching them, with the aid of my two wonderful blue jackets, I would not have to worry about what they are learning. Tonight, I'm going to have to make sure they are teaching correctly. That just means one of my blue jackets with each of the black jackets (not including me). I hope that made sense. :)

Anyway, no sense dwelling.

There are many things going on here in our Morgan household, some new and some the same, but it all seems very exciting with the world blooming. Have I ever told you spring is my favorite season? It is! I love we finally begin to break out of our cocoons, homes, and get back out into the world with its vibrant colors bursting out everywhere. Ahh. I do love spring.

Everything is sore!

We started the day with a plan...then within fifteen minutes the plan changed. Always. :)

John worked on getting all the edgers in the backyard the way HE wanted them. I worked on moving the large mound of dirt (was suppose to be support for above ground pool before we had nine cats) around the yard to make a more level area.

It sounds simple, but we were out there working on these two projects for at least ten hours. We are both exhausted! And the storm that came through last night waking all of us didn't help us recover all that well from yeterday's work.

I did get a few pictures taken though.

Climbing...her favorite thing.

I wonder what she has.

Jesse's garden.

Chloe found another snail shell in the yard.

Whew, I'm tired (you have to do the southern drawl on tired)

I don't think we stopped for very long today. We started the day at Lowe's, of course. We needed mulch for the front yard and some plant food. Chloe got her six-pack of marigolds (Jesse took the first six-pack) and one orange french marigold.

So, what was accomplished today:

second hibiscus planted
hydrangea moved to new location
mulched half of new hydrangea area (11 bags) - ran out of mulch
mulch on the up hill side of the house (in the front yard)
girls' hummingbird feeders out and filled
most of Chloe's plants planted (Jesse is finished, until early April)
all plants fed/watered
weed block/mulch in backyard (15 bags)
all weeds and kitchen scraps (able to) put into compost bin
two trips to Lowe's (one tonight to prepare for in the morning)

A think we accomplished quite a good bit of work today. The yard is looking great. Just need to finish up all the mulch and get the garden prepared for this year.

Also, we believe Morgan was in a pageant tonight (the text message was a bit vague). We hope she did great and are hoping to hear about the outcome.

Not as much as before

I was in the backyard tonight, unloading mulch from the van. I stood up on the hill looking down across the lawn and realized as much as we have left to do it is still much less than where we were last year at this time. Last year we had no yard. Okay, a front yard, but it ended where the house started.

Remember this?

Today, I am happy to report, we saw our brother-in-law, who had back surgery a few weeks ago, and he looks great! And we were very happy to see him doing well.

We actually did get out to do some yard work this afternoon. The girls have all of their plants in the ground. I have one hibiscus planted. (I had forgotten why planting anything in our yard is so difficult...roots! Tree roots between one-to-two inches in diameter everywhere!) John has his boards up at the base of the deck, to keep mulch in the garden. And we finally put the composter together and have started using it, though I need to do some reading up on the subject.

I unloaded fifteen bags of mulch for the backyard and we need a few more for the front yard. We also need about twenty-to-thirty more pavers for the front yard. I need to move my hydrangea (it does not like its current home). I have more leaves that need to meet my yard vac. There are weeds and a paver that need attention in the verbena bed. Grass needs to be removed from around my Japanese cherry and pavers placed around it, to prevent the grass from growing there again. Just a lot of small projects that add up to a lot more work.

Happy, happy, joy, joy!!!

My Valentine's present came in yesterday from John. I was not expecting it. He gave me a Nikon Coolpix P100! It is a new camera. He started talking about cameras last week and I found this one on Target's website. When I did a bit of research on the Nikon website, I told John about it. He started telling me all these things that were on a camera he found, but mine sounded better. And it was half the cost. No, it is not a SLR but as long as it takes pictures faster than mine other one, I do not care. I still love it!

I took it with me last night to TKD and took some cool shots! I read through the manual but I'm going to read through it again.

Math is on hold in the Morgan household for awhile. I found out yesterday Chloe has been skipping almost all of her long division for some time now. We have done so many problems together. And when she finishes I ask if she did it all or had questions. "No." I should have known better. While she is great with some math, if she is intimidated she does not like to try. Not a good trait for anything.

All this means is we will be working really hard on everything else until I get math checked so we can go over it all together. Science and history will be our main focus. We are not "behind" in these subjects, but they could always do a bit more work there.

Some interesting news. I have not decided how I feel about it and I didn't tell John last night (he'll read it here). :) MM told me last night he is priming me to take over. A year ago it was suppose to be someone else. I think he has changed his mind. I am not totally convinced he was completely serious, but maybe he was. A lot is changing, quickly, there and I am just trying to keep my head above water at times. The forms I learned for my black jacket have slipped from my memory, well, four of them have. Five of them are still good. I still need to learn the stances, which is something I do more from memory than think about. But when I'm watching students I cannot recall where their feet are suppose to be. I have to work on that, like so many other things in my life.

I admit I am tired and overwhelmed. My Dad told me last week I am "pulling my blanket too tight." He's right. The thing is I don't see what can be dropped at this time. I am looking forward to June when all homeschool activities stop for the summer. July we'll have off from TKD. My brain can rest a bit, along with my body. Just a few more months of craziness, then if I'm lucky, I can recharge. Part of that will be working outside.

I stained part of the fence this weekend. John was not feeling well (and still is not himself), so I did some staining for him. I had forgot how relaxing it is; just you and a roller. I need to add more outdoor stuff to my agenda. I know it sounds crazy to add anything. However, last year made me realize how much I love doing work in the yard. Okay, I don't like pulling weeds, but who does? I need to start our garden. I need to talk to my Dad. I have much to learn and spring is quickly approaching.

So many things to talk about

I will start with the fact John has not been well. He has had a low-grade fever and stomach rumblings that are worrisome. I am hoping he will be his old self again tomorrow, but we'll have to wait and see. He may have to break down and go to the doctor, not that the "doctors" at Ft. Jackson will do anything for him.

We finally had the pictures printed from the play last week. The girls made their scrapbooks yesterday. Yep, the whole book. They loved doing it, but said it was a lot of work. I did not intend for them to do the whole book in one day, but they did. We didn't follow any rules (I don't think there are any for scrapbooking). I told them the books were theirs, to do with them what they pleased. They did. :)

This is Chloe's favorite page. This is Nicole, the Stage Manager.

This is Jesse's favorite page. My camera is not so great and neither am I, it says "That's my bad side."

Here is the front of the photo album I made. Inside the cover are scrapbooking stickers of theatre props. I was going to put that picture on here too, but every time I try to upload that picture somewhere it turns sideways. And here I cannot turn it back. :(

I was reading a new friend's blog tonight and she listed some things she wanted to do with her children this spring/summer. I thought it was a great idea to list things to help remember, so I'm going to steal her idea. However, my list is going to be very short. I really want, in the next few weeks, to start working on the bike trail I've promised the girls. John is still skepictal and does not believe there is enough room. He may be right; however, I have to try. I have to admit it is one of those things that popped in my head when we moved in and has stayed there. And we all know very few things stay in my head. I hope I can get some of the clearing done before it gets too hot. That will be about April. :)

It's October?

Wow, I guess it is. A few of our neighbors have decorated for Halloween. We have too! John put out his Halloween village, with a new addition this year. He now has a haunted house. I have to admit it seems pretty complete. I will try to take a picture one night with all the lights on.

A friend of ours recently sent us a box of clothes to go through. Of course, Chloe was elated with the Tink pjs and t-shirt. Jesse found many things she loved too. More laundry, but I don't mind since they are SO happy with their new treasures.

We are getting back to yardwork again. My enthusiasm is still lacking, but I am looking forward to having it all complete. My first focus is going to be the garage. I find it funny (strange) that it is John's garage but I'm the one mostly cleaning it. John has misplaced a garage remote and personally I'd like for him to leave mine alone. I sometimes find myself in my car ready to leave but unable to open the garage door. So the opener must be found soon.

I imagine this weekend will be filled with chores. John really wants to hit the fence again and work on the area surrounding the grass in the back yard. We still need to get rid of the weeds and put down mulch. I would like to get my bird feeders back up but I'm not sure how I feel about the cats trying to eat what I'm trying to feed. Still need to think about that one.

John's birthday is fast approaching and I have to say I have no clue what to do for him. I know he wants to go out to dinner but other than that I'm not sure. I have a couple of things in mind, but the girls and I are still trying to decide what direction to go in.

Okay. Okay. Stop bugging me!

So it is, the new yard. No, it is not finished. No, I'm not working on it while it is 100 degrees outside. I am not totally insane! I am looking forward to seeing it all done. But for now here is a glimpse of where we were and where we are. Enjoy!

A fence! A fence!

I was shocked, at 7:30 this morning, when I looked out the classroom window and saw the fence people driving up. Yep, they came back on Sunday! About two hours later, they were finished installing the fence, gates and all the caps on the 4x4s. We now have a completed fence! I will post pics soon.

Almost a fence

The fence company is awesome. Yesterday, they installed all the 4x4s and all the 2x4s.

They arrived this morning, with a Lowe's truck full of pickets, about eight o'clock. There were three working for awhile, then there were two. The two worked until about 3:30. The pickets start at the corner of the garage and go all the way around to the other side of the house. There is a tree near that corner of the house, and that is where they stopped. They are due back on Monday to finish the pickets and install the gates. I cannot wait to see it complete. We were hoping they would finish the installing the pickets since they were so close, but it started drizzling rain and thundering. I can understand stopping under those conditions. But still a bit bummed.