Tales of a Fulltime Mom: Garden Time

Some of my clearest memories of childhood have to do with gardening. My mother (although ironically, for the last however many years it has been my dad who has planted a garden) would plant a garden each summer and we would help with the weeding, the eating, etc. My mom had her own rotor tiller to use each spring to break up the ground after it had been lying untouched over the winter. In fact, I have even more memories of that rotor tiller since she turned it into a little business whereby people would hire her to come and till their gardens. This was usually a day job and since we were home with my mom as home schoolers, we would always accompany her on these adventures. Ah yes, there were many time where my brothers and I would jump into said people's pools if they happened to not be home. We never did get caught. Anyway, the point is that I've been around gardens as a youngster and I've always wanted to have one when I "grew up." Living in a townhouse was obviously not conducive to this endeavor but now that we have our very own backyard, it's a go! The ideal planting time is in March so I thought we had missed it. We didn't want to put anything in until we saw the plans for our backyard. Now that we've seen them and know where it all should go, Duncan became inspired and started building it Thursday night and finished yesterday afternoon. Once he's on a mission, there is no stopping him! Allen has some extra plants from his garden that he is going to let us have so we won't be starting from scratch at least with some of it. We shall see how it all turns out.

I feel like this has been a short week since I just posted on here on Monday night! Tuesday was a quiet day around the house. Duncan got home at a reasonable hour so that I could attend our community HOA meeting taking place at a nearby church. In the eight years that we lived in our old house, I never once attended an HOA meeting. I decided that I should start off on the right foot here and attend. The president had been sending our notices that they had some issues to vote on and they desperately needed people to either attend in person or send in a proxy. To give you a little perspective on the attendance of these meetings, there are about 800 homes in our community, with approximately 640 of them occupied by owners (the others being rentals or un-occupied). I would say about 40 people showed up which is apparently not atypical. The HOA president (a retired colonial from the U.S. Air Force) shared a whole wealth of information about our community (like we are in an alligator habitat, yay!) and I decided that I really like knowing what is going on. Count me in as a regular attendee! One of the tidbits I brought home to share with Duncan is that there is a big patch of undeveloped land across from the entrance to our community that they are making plans to build on. One of the current ideas is to put in a Dollar store (among other things including apartments). We are obviously way less than thrilled with this plan so we may have to stage a mini protest at a city council meeting or something. At the very least they could put in a Starbucks for Duncan's sake. This is the one big negative for where we live...the closest Starbucks is a whole ten minutes away.

Wednesday I had my doctor's appointment. Ron and Elaine are out of town visiting their other grandchildren (what nerve!!) so I had the kids with me this time. They were really very good so I can't complain. I haven't done a great job of tracking me weight this time around but from what I can tell, it looks like I've gained about 15 pounds so far. I feel like I may be a little ahead of schedule since my total weight gain the last two times has been in the 33 to 34 pounds range and I am wrapping up week 23. I know I gain more at the end. I may have to cut down on some bad eating/drinking habits. Hmm. Everything was good with the baby - - at least, what we could tell from hearing the heartbeat since that is all that happened. The kids thought it was pretty neat.

Thursday we had a cleaning day where I finally tackled cleaning my kitchen floor. I'm too embarrassed to say how long it's been since it's been done. The girls were great helpers and dusted downstairs for me. Duncan came home that evening all enthused about the garden and needed to go to Lowe's to get supplies. He took just Aubree so that he could have some alone time with her and it went very well although at one point she said "When are we going back to the truck, Daddy?" so that was a sign to wrap things up. Allen generously came over to help Duncan get things rolling since he is now a garden building expert.

Helping Daddy at Lowe's

These will come in handy at campmeeting and Nova Scotia.

Friday we were back to yard sale-ing after a one week hiatus. Last Friday it had rained and we were getting ready for the church camp out anyway so it had kind of worked out. We found some clothes here and there but nothing big. I did have our travels take us back over to a consignment store in Casselberry so we could pick up some shoes. We had gone there on Wednesday after the doctor and I had found these white Keds for Aubree on clearance for $1.60. I guess to prevent theft, they only put one of the shoes on display and keep the other in the back. Well, as it turned out, they couldn't find the other one in the back which left me greatly disappointed since it was such a good deal. I left my number in case they found and of course, they called me about thirty minutes after I left when I was almost home. Figures! Before I moved, it would have been a less than five minute drive but now it's at least 30 minutes. But I was able to maneuver a stop over there during yard sales so it worked out.

Friday evening we had the pleasure of going to the Isidros for dinner along with the Ottatis. The Begherms would have joined us but Evan has been running a fever for the last several days. As you may know, Allen is quite a food connoisseur so it's always fun when he's up to making some new creations. He served us dinner al fresco which consisted of all these appetizers served on little white plates and bowls, etc. It was delightful! The only thing that would have made it better is if I wasn't interrupted every two minutes with "Mommy, I want that" or "Mommy, I don't want this." Trying to enjoy a meal with kids around is like trying not to gain weight when you stuff your face with blueberry bread pudding. Impossible! And yes, I had made the blueberry bread pudding using our blueberries we had picked. I intend to enjoy some leftovers of it as soon as I finish with this post.

"I'm swimming!!" he says.

Hmm. Which one of these is not like the others? I guess that could go several ways actually.

Five star dining.

This morning we were thrilled to have our old paster, Derek Morris, preaching at our church. It's been 28 months and some odd days (as he himself quoted with the actual month, days, and hours) since he left us and we were reminded how much we miss him. Not to say that we don't like our current pastor but Pastor Morris is just special.

Calleigh lost another tooth this week which brings her baby teeth lost total to three (but four total teeth). This one was a pain in the neck because it was "hanging by a thread" for several days. I put that in quotes because I think Calleigh was looking for a literal thread in her mouth but reported to me that she failed to find it. She would not let us touch it so it just stayed there all cock eyed for days. Finally, Tuesday morning she came into my room, earlier than usual to be up, and said her tooth was gone. It had come out during the night and she couldn't find it. She wanted to know if I had pulled it out while she was sleeping and I assured I hadn't. She had no luck finding the tooth, to which I told her "See, I told you that you would swallow it if you just leave it in your mouth like that" but then later in the morning we looked again and found it in the middle of the bed. I think Aubree had been lying on top of it. I sent Duncan a text saying the wayward tooth had been found and he texted me back, "Secret...I pulled it last night when I went to check on them." She had never asked Duncan if he had pulled it only if I had so no lie had been told!

This week has been a good week for coupons at the pharmacies and Publix. On Monday I was at CVS and bought three Mother's Day cards, three shaving creams, a high quality men's razor, two nail polishes, and some hair goop (Duncan's) for $7.26 (per my receipt, a savings of $48). You seriously can't help but get little chills when you score such good deals. But then, I also discovered a couple days ago that despite my savings I could be saving more. CVS emails me a coupon just about every Thursday for usually 20% off my entire purchase but it excludes sale items. Well, I never buy anything not on sale so I've written these coupons off as worthless. Come to find out, they are not worthless at all. Many times CVS will have a special deal where the item is not on sale but you get extra bucks when you purchase it. For example, there will be a special that if you buy $15 worth of cleaning supplies, you receive $5 in extra bucks that can be used on your next purchase (basically, it's like getting $5 of cash because you can use these bucks on anything in the store). It turns out that these items aren't considered to be on sale so I could have been using my 20% off coupon on purchasing those $15 worth of cleaning supplies (the $15 requirement is BEFORE coupons). Ahhh! I hate it when I realize I could have been saving way more money and I didn't know it. Well, now I do. And this week they sent me a 30% off coupon so I can't wait to get to CVS tomorrow. I know, that probably sounds pathetic.

As for Publix, I'm hooked on these Vitalicious chocolate muffins that I eat for breakfast. The only problem is that they are regularly priced at $4.49 for a box of four. And they're only muffin tops (insert Seinfeld reference here). I mean, that's just ridiculous! Now and then they will go on sale for buy one, get one free and I will stock up but even then, they are $2.25. Well, on Thursday they went 50% off but Publix also had a coupon out for $2 off when you buy two boxes of the muffins. Score! Only $1.25 a box. I bought like 16 of them and would have bought more but I didn't want to take them all. That would be just rude. The coupons expired on Friday so there were only two days where you could get the deal or I would be back trying to get more.

Alrighty, I must wrap up. Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I have the day to myself. Probably not the idea that someone had in mind when they created Mother's Day and I'm sure some day I'll be thankful to spend the day with my wayward kids but for now, all I want is to do is by myself doing what I want for the whole day. As such, I need to go plan out my day.

Have a great week!