{Playing Catch Up}

What a week! My family has been super busy lately - and not just busy going places and doing important things, but busy with everyday life. It's so beautiful outside so the girls have been spending a lot of time in the yard playing and splashing in their little pool. I've also been cleaning and organizing so that's taking up a lot of my time. I've finally taken the plunge and started going through the bins of baby clothes that have been in my attic for five + years. It's very hard for me to do this. Getting rid of my baby girls' clothes is a ridiculously emotional activity! I'm saving my favorite outfits for them, setting aside lots of clothes for my sister-in-law's baby girl who is due in September, marking other piles for yard sale, and loading a bin full of clothes that have stains so they can be made into a quilt. I guess this means I really am done having kids. *weep, sniff, sob*

So I've been meaning to blog every day for the past week and something always happens that makes it impossible. This is my "catch up" post!

First, here are three layouts that I've done recently. The first is for Dixon's first year album. He's growing so fast!

The next one is for the family's 2009 album. This picture was taken on Valentine's Day and I love it. I think it's one of my favorite family shots.

And the third layout is simply documenting a fun day in February. Yep, the girls were bike riding this Februry!

I have high hopes of scrapping some more today. I've got to keep plugging along!

This past Friday was First Fridays in downtown Chambersburg. Lots of the local businesses are open and have special sales and activites, plus there are street vendors, music on the square, and a kiddie area. The girls wanted to get their faces painted, and while we waited in line a magician approached them to do some tricks. I think he took a liking to Sasha because he kept coming back to her with more tricks even though there were LOTS of other kids around. The girls loved it!

The magician's wife was the face painter, and she did an incredible job! Most face painters just do simple cheek pictures: footballs, doggies, rainbows and the like. But not this lady! She did very detailed paintings, the kind you see at Disney World. Her paintings were intricate and she even added glitter paint and jewels! Sasha choose the princess "do" and Clara opted for the butterfly. They were freakin' gorgeous! I even let them sleep with the paint on, it was so pretty. It's hard to see the detail in pictures, but trust me when I tell you the girls were sparkling.

Saturday was ridiculously crazy. I took Dixon down to the Prime Outlets in Hagerstown because I realized that I never got the girls 4th of July outfits. Oops! I went to every children's store and found very little that fit the bill. Clara ended up with a simple red dress and I had to go to Target to find a blue one for Sasha. I'm glad the dresses aren't emblazoned with stars and stripes, though. This way they can wear them over and over and not look like flags.

While I was shopping, Cory took the girls to the farm in his "fast car". They visited with MeMe for a while and then went wild raspberry (or are they blackberries?) picking. When I bathed them afterwards I found a tick on Sasha's head! Ew! Cory got it out and all is well.

Then we all headed over to my mother and Jim's house for a picnic. We pigged out on steak, corn on the cob, awesome fresh fruit, veggie pizza, macaroni salad, rum cake, and cupcakes. Yum! Cory had to leave early to go Municipal Park and play in the Mercersburg Community Band prior to the fireworks. This has become our 4th of July tradition: eat, Cory takes off, and we meet him at the park.

The fireworks were beautiful as always! I was glad that the "show" was a bit shorter this year because the noise was a bit loud for little Dixon's ears. He didn't cry, but I had to keep my hands over his ears to protect them.

And now for an update on our garden. Cory was really bummed when we first planted everything because it didn't look like we would have much of a garden. We lost a lot of plants when we transplanted them and what survived didn't look so hot. But guess what? With a lot of tlc, our garden is now the Garden of Eden that Cory envisioned! In fact, it is overflowing with goodness!

We have so much growing and flourishing: corn, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, green peppers, jalapenos, carrots, broccolli, watermelon, pumpkins, and all sorts of herbs.

We know now that certain things need to be planted outside the fence. The pumpkins and watermelon are trying to take over the place! Actually, the pumpins weren't supposed to be there to begin with. They sprouted there because we had placed last year's pumpkins there and they self-seeded. Cory has been thinning them, but they are big and sprawling.

The dirt you see in the picture will soon be green as well. Cory has planted all sorts of things there and they are just starting to sprout. So trying to actually harvest all the produce is going to be tricky. There's nowhere to walk!

Speaking of harvesting, we plucked the first three veggies from the garden last week: two yellow squash and a zucchini. I made a delicious dinner with them: sausage and squash stir fry over pasta.


Yesterday afternoon Cory came in the house with three more zucchini and squash, so we made Paula Deen's zucchini squash cakes. They were sooooo good! We're anxious to try lots of new recipes with our home-grown goodies. Next up is squash hushpuppies!

I think that's it for now. The girls have a friend here and they are playing with Barbies upstairs while Dixon is sleeping, so I'm going to try to start a new layout. Gotta take advantage of the peace and quiet!