Project Life - Week 21

Week 21 was a fun, busy week for us!  Jim and Drew made breakfast before church on Sunday morning.  They made one of their favorites - biscuits and chocolate gravy.  They made biscuits from a can and homemade chocolate gravy.

My parents came Tuesday evening from South Carolina.  We were excited to have them here for a week!  My sister has a cookie business, and her cookies are AMAZING!  She sent some with my parents for Drew to celebrate his kindergarten graduation.  He was so excited!

 She made some Lego Spiderman cookies and some Sonic the Hedgehog cookies.

 Drew a very happy boy!

 My parents got Maddie an American Girl Bitty Baby for her birthday, and they brought it for her when they came.  She was very interested in it before she even got it out of the box.

 She kept hugging her baby.

 She loved her!

 Drew's last day of kindergarten was Thursday.  He has gotten so big (and lost so many teeth) this year!  His kindergarten graduation was that evening.

We drove down to Ohio to see my grandma and my aunt and uncle on Friday.
My parents, my grandma, and my aunt and uncle.

 My parents, my grandma, and my children and me.  We ate lunch with my grandma at her nursing home.  It was good to see family!

 That evening when we got back home, we met up with Jim at a restaurant for dinner.  We had pizza and then walked over to a frozen custard shop for dessert.

 It was all delicious!

 Friday night was "Dude Night."  Jim and Drew stayed up late watching "Wipeout" and playing the Wii.  They spent the night in the living room.  This is how I found Drew the next morning!  He was pretty tired after his late night, but he loved it!

 We went to the Eastern Market in Detroit on Saturday morning.  We saw lots of pretty flowers, plants, and produce, and we ate lunch there.

 That afternoon, Jim and my dad built our raised garden bed.

Here's what I did for Project Life this week.
This is my main page for this week.  My pictures are all standard sizes except the Eastern Market photo collage.

 I also did an insert about Drew's graduation.

 Here is is with the insert flipped.

 This is the front of the insert,

 and this is the back.

I used some more of the Wellington Mini kit for my title and journaling cards, and I am linking up with The Mom Creative again this week.

Eastern Market

While my parents were here visiting, we spent a morning at the Eastern Market in Detroit.  Jim hadn't been there in years, and the rest of us had never been, so we were excited to experience the market!  We found it pretty easily and parked fairly close.  

As we walked toward the market, we heard some shouting and  drumming.  We happened to be there during a Monsanto March.  It didn't really disrupt anything, but we did see and hear it here and there throughout the morning. 

 We weren't really searching for anything in particular, except a catnip plant.  My parents' new cat loves catnip, and my dad had been having trouble finding a catnip plant for him.  We enjoyed wandering through the flowers.

 There were rows and rows of them!

 Drew wanted a balloon animal from the balloon lady.

 He ended up getting a blue "light saber."  We bought a few tomato plants for our raised bed and some avocados and mangoes from a produce stand.  We have discovered that Maddie is a big mango fan!  My dad found his catnip plant, so he was quite happy.  Our favorite find was some oatmeal sandwich cookies that some Mennonite women were selling.  They were SO good!

 We got sandwiches from a food truck for lunch.  The kids had grilled cheese, and the adults got gyros.

 The market went on and on, and in the couple of hours we were there, we saw only a little of it.

 Lots of people brought wagons and other wheeled carts to carry their purchases.

 As we headed back to our car, we saw a police man on horseback.

 Drew stopped to get a picture in an ear of corn.

We loved the Eastern Market and are looking forward to going back to explore it again soon!

Project Life - Weeks 19 and 20

I've gotten a little behind on Project Life in the past couple of weeks, so I am posting two weeks worth in an attempt to get caught up.  Week 19 was the week before Mother's Day.  The children and I happened to be wearing coordinating colors that Sunday morning for church, so we tried for a quick picture before church.  Maddie was not really in the mood for photos.

 We made s'mores on the grill one evening, and Drew and Maddie loved them!

 They were both covered in marshmallow!

 Jim's mom came over for dinner one evening that week for an early Mother's Day celebration.  Jim and Drew washed her car for her after dinner.

 Drew and Maddie love to play outside in the evening after dinner.  Drew really likes using sidewalk chalk, and our garage floor is covered in his drawings.

 We got out the stomp rockets, and Grandma Esther tried them out!

 Maddie likes her little pink car.

 Drew lost two teeth this week!  He lost the first one at school one morning.  He was eating a donut, and his tooth came out.  He said that he almost swallowed it!

 He lost another tooth on Saturday evening while we were eating pizza for dinner.  He didn't even notice that it had fallen out!  I happened to see that he had a big gap in his top teeth and asked if he had lost a tooth.  Jim checked, and, sure enough, he had lost it.  It was really lost because, this time, he did swallow it!

 He wrote this note to the tooth fairy:

(I lost a tooth.  I swallowed it.  Drew)
Here is what I did for Project Life for Week 19.

Week 20 started with Mother's Day.  Jim had to work that morning, but he and the children had some surprises waiting for me when I got up.  They had gone to Target and gotten me some new measuring cups and spoons and a card.  Drew had also made me a card and a flower pen at school.  I love his handwritten notes!

The kids and I stayed home from church that day because I had been having kidney pain all weekend.  It started on Friday evening and continued through the morning on Saturday.  I felt pretty good Saturday afternoon and evening, and I felt good on Sunday, but the kidney pain came back on Monday, along with some abdominal cramping.  I ended up going to the doctor Tuesday morning.  They suspected kidney stones, so they took some blood and urine samples.  They didn't find any sign of blood in my urine, but the doctor said that it was possible that I had already passed the kidney stone (if I had one).  She had me come back later in the week for an ultrasound of my kidneys, liver, gall bladder, and pelvis.  She said that if they didn't find anything, she would send me to my OBGYN to see if they saw anything that could have been causing the pain.  

The tech said that she could see no kidney stones, and she told me that if a stone is small and smooth enough, the pain isn't always too terrible.  She said that if I had had a kidney stone, I had already passed it, and she didn't see any other stones.  I have not had any more pain since that week, but I went ahead and scheduled an appointment with my OBGYN later this month just to be sure.

 My big Mother's Day gift arrived later in the week.  Jim got me a new knife set!  Our old set was a wedding gift, and after almost 10 years, we were ready for a fresh set.  I love the colors of these knives, and I am enjoying my sharp, new knives!

 Maddie sat for almost an hour one evening and played with Drew's Connect Four game.  She kept dropping the chips into the slots again and again.

 I was surprised to find Maddie with her shirt pulled over her head backwards one day!  She was very upset about it, and I am still not sure how and why she did it!

 She sleeps in some crazy positions in her crib,

 and one morning, she fell asleep on the floor, leaning against the side of the couch.  She had worn herself out!

 We went out for dinner at Mongolian Barbeque one evening.  Drew liked watching the guys cook our food.

 Drew lost two teeth again this week!  He lost the first one in the van on the way to swimming lessons.  He was drinking a juice pouch, and I guess he must have knocked it out with the straw.

 He lost the other tooth on a chocolate chip cookie.  He was eating it, and he mentioned that he had a chocolate chip that he couldn't chew.  Jim asked him if he had lost another tooth, and he had!  It was his fourth lost tooth in a two week period!  His little mouth looks so funny right now!

Here is what I did for Project Life for Week 20.

I am linking up again with The Mom Creative.
I am planning to post twice next week - another Project Life post and a post about something fun we did while my parents were here last week.  I hope you have a great weekend and that you check back here next week!

Raised Garden Bed

I am not an outdoorsy person, so gardening has never really appealed to me.  I don't like being out in the heat, and I don't enjoy being sweaty or dirty, so for all of my adult life, I've been content to buy my produce from the grocery store.

Jim recently saw a picture of a raised garden bed that a college friend posted on Facebook, and he asked me if I would ever want him to build me one.  I figured that if any kind of gardening was doable for me, a raised bed would probably be the way to go.  Last Saturday, while my parents were here, Jim and my dad built my raised bed!  They based it on these plans.  They used cedar fence pickets from Home Depot, so the materials were very affordable.

 Drew played outside while they worked.

 The garden box came together in about an hour or so, and we were very pleased with how it turned out.

 We waited until Memorial Day to do the planting.  My dad is a gardener.  He has always had a large garden, and he grows all kinds of things - tomatoes, lettuce, herbs, berries, just to name some.  He bought my plants and planted them for me.  We have three kinds of tomatoes, three kinds of peppers, and some herbs.  My neighbor is also a gardener, and he came over to watch the planting.  He loves to talk to my dad!

 Drew "helped" with the digging.

 My dad used a mixture of soil and manure in the bed.

 After everything was planted, we put in the soaker hose.

 After we covered everything with mulch, we turned on the hose to test it.

 Drew had to check everything out.

 The soaker hose drips water all along its length to allow the whole box to be watered all at the same time.  I love that I can go out, turn on the hose, and just let the soaker hose do all the work.  After 10-15 minutes, I just have to come back out and turn off the hose.  The watering is done, and I have avoided all heat, sweat, and dirt - my kind of gardening!

We are looking forward to enjoying some vegetables and herbs from our very own yard later this summer.

We are already getting our first little tomatoes, and one of the pepper plants is starting to produce some tiny little peppers as well.

I will try to give a few garden updates as the summer progresses!