November 27th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

Well, I was too busy having fun and interacting with my son to get many photos, but these are a few.  My brother orchestrated a lovely evening of delightful food, fun clues, and a surprise at the end for my  mom and dad.

November 19th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

Wow you have to love when grandparents start taking kids from you for 8 hour time slots.  My mom has been free on Thursdays lately and spending the day with Nolan- which has been just peachy for this mommy.  Today I did all sorts of things- but the fun thing I wanted to share was that I’ve made a little more progress on the garden beds that I’m building in the back yard.  Once upon a time our backyard was quite pretty.

In 2005… This was 5 years ago- man I look like a little baby!  To think it’s possible I could have had a 4 year old at this point since we’d been married for almost 5 years. Then in 2007… But by 2010 things have gotten into dissaray.  We had let things get overgrown as we had planned to turn it into a vegetable garden but hadn’t mustered the time or energy to do so…so it just sat and came to look like this…But today I got to work on making the 2nd of 2 large raised vegetable beds- they are 10’6″ long and 3’6″ wide.  I’m building them with reclaimed redwood lumber from the salvage yard-which not only is it really cheap this way, but this stuff is hearty!  They’re 2×8’s and since they’re old, they really do measure 2″ across, unlike lumber nowadays which totally skimps on the measurements.  Also they happen to be tongue-in-groove boards so they are fitting together real easily- another boon to this project.  Especially considering this is my first time building garden beds.  The boards are each only 7-8 feet long, so to create the length of 10’6″ on each side I cute a second piece to make up the difference and nail them together with these wide metal plates.  When stacking them 2 high to make the bed, I made sure to put the “joint” or break where the boards were connected on opposite sides of each other to make it stronger. Wow and I thought our little handsaw was so ugly- but in this picture it looks really cool. This is one completed bed I had made a few months ago.  The second one needs only to be nailed together now.  They are monstrously huge!  The cardboard is down to smother the weeds- taken from the book Lasagna Gardening.  The ground is completely uneven which is why the raised bed looks warped at the moment.

November 17th, 2010 by Busy Mommy

Nolan is 12.75 months old now and we recently attended another assembly.  He was walking and crawling this time so it was a little easier to let him do a little exploring at lunch time and of course he loved being with all our friends.

Trinh is going to be superdad- he’s liked those little monsters called kids even before he had any! Things have grown quit a bit for Uncle Trinh and Tita Mayte since my last post.  Only 6 more weeks, give or take, till Tyler arrives! Nolan spent a few minutes trying to be quiet with Bibi Elyse…it didn’t last long as sitting and being quiet is simply not on Nolan’s to-do list yet.Sleeping isn’t on his to-do list either when he’s among people, but he did finally have to give in for a short 1/2 hour nap out of pure exhaustion.