Sunday, June 10, 2012

Fruit Trees and Veggies Oh My!!

When we bought this house right before Christmas last year, we knew it had pecan trees, scuppernong vines, and a kumquat tree. To our surprise, about 3 months ago, we realized we not only had those wonderful trees, but we also had 2 pear trees, several tall and very large blueberry bushes, and a peach tree! Lets just say we feel like we hit the jack pot!! I honestly have been overwhelmed with the amount of blueberries we have and have realized it's really hard keeping them picked! Trust me, pictures don't do the blueberry bushes justice! You would not believe how many there are! One Sunday night, my mom and dad plus John and I were all picking for about an hour or so and we still didn't get all the ripe ones picked! The bushes are so tall you have to have a ladder to get to the top! Our pear trees are not in the best of shape, but they are still bearing some pears this year. Sadly, the peach tree didn't bear any fruit this year. Not sure what happened, it looks like it tried and then just stopped. We were told that is once would bear tons of peaches, so maybe we can figure out the problem and help it along next year. After all it did flower this year and I saw lots of bees pollinating it!

At the beginning of May this year, we decided to plant a small garden in this flower bed that was already empty except for one tree. It was the perfect place since we didn't have to tear any of our yard up and it gets lots of sun! This is our second garden ever planted. Our first one we planted was when we lived in Tallahassee. It was a little bigger than this one, but we had to till up part of our back yard. Our tomato plants in Tallahassee were planted in pots instead of the ground and they didn't do so well, so I am hoping this years plants will do much better! Here is the link to the blog from our first garden we had in Tallahassee! http://www.kirkpatrickfamilylife.blogspot.com/2009/04/well-its-been-while-since-i-have.html and the other is http://www.kirkpatrickfamilylife.blogspot.com/2009/03/veggies-and-fruit-are-on-way.html

So after John tilled up the bed, we mixed in some cow manure and then started planting! We planted 5 tomato plants (4 different varieties, since the store was out of the one we really wanted), 6 squash plants (3 were store bought and 3 were seeds from John's nanny), Green Bell pepper plants, and some Okra that is a Kirkpatrick special seed from his Nanny. We have gotten a few squash already and have lots of green tomatoes on our tomato plants! The Okra was planted a little later due to having to soak the seeds, so they are smaller than everything else. It's been so fun to watch everything grow! Mallory has really enjoyed helping me water the plants every afternoon. Here are some pictures of all the fruits and veggies!

This is our Bell Pepper Plants. (note the lovely grass and weeds growing in our garden! This is all due to john being a tight wad and not letting me get any of the black tarp stuff or mulch! HA I told him he needed to get out there and pull it all up, but as you can see it still hasn't been done!)

Blueberries!
More Blueberries!

Mallory checking out our blueberry bushes!

Our first Squash!!

The Kirkpatrick Okra plants!

Pear Tree

More Pears! Yummy!

Squash plants!

Tomato plants

Tomatoes!! Yea!!

Our Kumquat Tree back in the winter when it was full of kumquats!

Kumquats!! Can't wait to get some more towards the end of this year!


Saturday, June 9, 2012

A fun bridal shower for my sister-n-law!

Here are some picture of Krista's shower I helped give her back at the beginning of May 2012. It was lots of fun! The pictures didn't turn out great, cause I was still trying to figure out my new camera and the lighting was off due to the sun coming in their really large window. Maybe one day I will figure out how to use my really nice camera better!





















Birthday's, Bridal Showers, 7 years, is just a little bit of what's been going on!

Well its been over a month and it's been so busy lately that I have failed to update. I seem to have gotten in this habit of making catchup post that end up really long... maybe one day I will slow down and update more often!

Over the past month, we had Mother's Day, I turned 31, I helped give a bridal shower to my Sister-n-law, celebrated our 7th Anniversary, helped give my sister a surprise 30th birthday party, ended my first Awana year as the Cubbie Director, and Spent a week at the beach! Wow, that was a really long sentence!

The month of May always seems so busy to me since my sister and I both have May birthdays, John and I got married in May and there is always Mother's Day. This year for my birthday, my mom took me out to lunch at Crescent City and it was really yummy! She also gave me this really awesome purse she got me while they were in Italy. John and Mallory got me some sweet cards, a new camera, a gown, a new hose for the garden, and several other things! All in all it was a great birthday!

Mother's Day came next I think and we decided to have the family over to our house Sunday night for dinner. My Dad cooked Salmon and we also had baked potatoes.  The kids played in the kiddy pool my mom bought and we enjoyed a fun time together. My grandparents, my parents, and my sister's family all came. I also made my first Key Lime pie! It turned out really yummy!








Next up was a surprise party for my wonderful sister Katy! She turned the big 30 this year and her husband Craig wanted to give her a surprise party. Since I figured it would have been really expensive to rent a restaurant, we offered our house and told him we could grill hamburgers. Somehow we managed to keep it a surprise from her and she was totally surprised! My friend Carmen made her a really cute cake for me that was choclate, which is my sister's favorite!
The week of this party, my sister calls me and asks me if I can come down Thursday and keep her kids so she can work. Normally, she has a babysitter whose house they go to, or my mom would keep them, but both of them were out of town, so I was next in line! Now, I will tell you this really stressed me out thinking about all I had left to do in order to get this house ready for her partys . I mean at this point I had not even bought food, or her gift yet! However, I couldn't tell my sister no! So, Thursday morning Mallory and I loaded up the car and headed 1 hour south to Lucedale, Ms for a fun day with Ethan and Caroline! I will tell you I had lots of fun with all three of our kiddos, but was not prepared for how chaotic and crazy tired I would be at the end of the day! At one point I was so proud that I had all three of them taking naps at the same time for 30 minutes! At this point I propped my feet up on the couch and didnt' move! Just to give you the ages: Mallory and Ethan are both 2 and 1/2 and are 10 weeks apart, so they are almost like having twins! Caroline was 9 months old at this point, so that puts her about 22 months apart from Ethan. My sister suggested I let them go swimming in the kiddy pool in the afternoon, so I took her advice and after it taking me 25 minutes to get Ethan and Mallory ready with sun screen and all, we headed outside to the pool. Not to my surprise, Ethan just runs and lunges in, however Mallory saw all the grass and pine straw in the pool and didn't even want to get in! Lets just say after finally coaching her in the pool we were not out there 15 minutes and she was ready to go back inside! Thankfully, Caroline was content this whole time sitting in the stroller chewing on her toys! Sadly I spent more time getting them ready than we were even outside in the pool! HA! Oh well, Ethan had a blast anyway!I definitely earned a new respect for parents with twins and kids that are really close together!

Our first swim of the year at Grandmothers! She was a little nervous!



Ethan trying to pull her in the pool!


Surprise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



 Up next in the month of May, was Awana awards night. I said a few words and then gave out a few awards I came up with, and had the kids come up to recite their awana Bible verse , sing our song, and do our cheer for their parents! They kids did a great job and were so cute! This was my first year to teach Awana and our first year to have Awana at our church Hardy Street Baptist. I started out with around 5 kids and ended up with around 8 to 9. It was so much fun and I learned so much! Each one of those Cubbies made a huge impact in my life! It was such a joy to hear each one of them recite scripture and watch them blossom through out our year! I tried to add some fun each week with crafts, bible stories, cheers and a cubby song I made up! My wonderful husband also helped me do a cubbie puppet skit each week for the kids. It was so much fun and I am going to miss the kids that are going to move up to sparks next year! I thank God for giving me the wonderful opportunity to impact these little kids lives each Wednesday night. Truthfully, they impacted my life even more!

Also, this month I helped give my sister-n-law, Krista, a bridal shower in Cordova, Al where John's family lives. It was so much fun to decorate for. We had a really good turnout, but there was just way to much food left over! Krista got some really nice gifts and I am looking forward to the wedding coming up on June 30th! I will try to post some pictures of the shower. It was great to see all of John's family again and they enjoyed seeing Mallory more than anyone else!

Lastly, we headed for the beach! However, since this post is already really long, I am going to save that trip for another post! So you will just have to wait and see!

Anyway, this is a recap of our busy family and what's been going on! Ready for it to slow down a little bit! Enjoy the pictures! Oh and I forgot to even mention, somehow in the middle of all of this we found time to plant a small garden! I am loving watching it grow and was have already gotten a few squash so far!