who likes cake?

grant and i are very excited to make this cute caterpillar cake - thank you grandma! we got this in a fun easter package yesterday, complete with pan and decorating kit.

i also really like these ducks and blue birds from willams-sonoma.
i love easter and spring for so many reasons.

camelope

every week grant has a new favorite food - this week it's "camelope."

here's a few pictures of fun things we've been doing lately.

jason and grant eating popcorn with chopsticks

(hey, i don't ask questions, i just take the pictures)

grant's face after eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

walking the neighbor's dog, wishing his mom

would finally break down and buy him his own

sword fighting

being entertained for hours by a water bottle

"driving" at chuck-e-cheese - his new favorite place to go

because they have "french fries and soda drinks"

riding what he thinks is grandma's pony

enjoying a huge corn dog with cousin katie-jo at the rodeo

and doing what little boys think is fun with play-kitchens

organic?

so...i always thought i liked organic things. but now i'm not so sure.

the last organic salad i ate had a bug on it, just inches from my mouth. (i guess i should be grateful i didn't find half a bug.)

and yesterday, as i picked up a bag of organic mulch from our garage, i had a near death experience when a four-inch cockroach crawled out of the bag and up my arm. did you read that carefully? CRAWLED. UP. MY. ARM.

now it's lost in the garage (because those stupid things can run like 90 mph) and if it finds its way into our house, i'm moving.

summer garden

one of the things i LOVE about houston is the fact that you can grow things year round here. a few weekends ago we overhauled our gardens in preparation for another crop. we moved some plants, added some compost, over turned the dirt, and planted some seeds. before we did, we harvested our carrots. here's what they looked like before harvesting - they were beautiful! it was so hard to pick them. (we never thinned them, hence we had a TON of carrots growing in a small space.)

we got 3 or 4 cookie sheets full of carrots. did you know these are super hard to get clean? carrots have lots of little grooves.  

here's jason and grant getting our small bed ready for pepper and tomato plants. we plan to buy plants in a week or so. i read an article that the last frost days for houston can be up to the middle of march, so i decided to wait before purchasing anything. also, we haven't covered this bed yet and i've already seen a bird or two.

here jason putting grubs he finds in this little paper cup thing and grant thinks it's fun to see them squirm and wiggle. i must say - jason does 99% of the hard labor in our gardening projects, and it's much appreciated!





here's what's already growing in our large bed - these are another crop of carrots - 3 rows.

on the right side is 2 rows of sugar snap peas, one row of regular peas, a row of green beans, and two rows of herbs. we still have space and i want to try corn.

still around - we transplanted the 3 blueberry plants we got 2 years ago and they have flowers and buds on them! very exciting! (i know...we need to mulch. and weed. ignore the ugly clay soil and focus on the beautiful flowers barely hanging on.)

these are garlic chives my dad sent me from california that also got transplanted - they do awesome in houston with no upkeep, so we decided to put other stuff in the garden beds and move them to regular soil. i currently have 14 plants in our backyard (jason is not so thrilled i keep separating them and transplanting them but they are so pretty and easy to grow). if anyone wants some, let me know! they are super hearty, make pretty landscape plants, keep the bugs away, and it's great to have year round chives to add to any recipe.

here's a newcomer - we were given a cara cara navel orange tree as a present a few months ago. now we just need to find a spot to plant it...

2 things i'm thinking about today

#1 - i am counting down the hours until i can see this face.



and #2 - this is one of my favorite quotes in the entire world. it's changed my life.

"God expects you to have enough faith and determination and enough trust in Him to keep moving, keep living, keep rejoicing. In fact, He expects you not simply to face the future (that sounds pretty grim and stoic); He expects you to embrace and shape the future--to love it and rejoice in it and delight in your opportunities. God is anxiously waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as He always has. But He can't if you don't pray, and He can't if you don't dream. In short, He can't if you don't believe."
— Jeffrey R. Holland