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As Promised.

A gardening update. My little baby seedlings are growing into fine young adults. I have transplanted all of the veggies into bigger pots and they seem to be doing ok. I have had to move them out to the table that I have in my kitchen which thankfully is under a very large window.

My flowers are all (except for my sweet peas) still in the seed tray. A couple of my zinnias have kind of withered up. I guess they should have been transplanted. They grew up pretty fast though and I have seeds still, so once the ground thaws out, I'll plant some more seeds out in the garden.


My kitchen garden. They are patiently waiting to go outside.

My zucchini. I am very happy with how these little guys are looking. I can almost taste the zucchini casserole and zucchini bread now.

30 tomato plants. There are 15 red and 15 orange heirloom plants growing here.

A little mater. I'm cautiously optimistic about these tomatoes. I am so curious to see how big these plants get outside. I will be shocked and amazed if they grow into full size shrubs that produce fruit. Fingers crossed.

Some green beans. There are four plants in that one pot and three of them are dying. I was trying to figure out why. It then dawned on me that when I transplanted them into bigger pots, some of the roots were kind of ripped out of the dirt. Ooops. I guess I need to use a more tender touch. Again, these grew pretty fast and I think once we can plant outside, I'll throw some more seeds into the ground. We are going to plant these babies out where our potato patch was last year. I have plenty of room to work with. The question is, do I really need all that many green beans? Although, I have been loving eating my dilly beans that I canned last year. They are PERFECT on a salad. Yum.


So, now we just wait until this shows some warmer temps. I can only hope that it's around the corner in a couple more weeks. I'm tired of the cold. Oh, that reminds me. I need to research if the time changes on Sunday. On our city calendar it's listed as changing on Sunday. Didn't that change? I guess I'll have to go figure it out. Yay to longer days though!

I'll leave this post with a couple of cute pictures. The first one is of Patchy. Yesterday he put his front paws up on my legs and stayed like that for about 2 minutes. He was watching the crazy squirrels in the back yard. As I type this right now, I'm watching 8 different ones race back and forth on the power lines, into the trees, into the rhododendron and on the to the fort. They are crazy. Patchy enjoyed watching them too.

Patchy

This next picture is of a bird we've seen recently out on our front tree enjoying some suet. I thought it was a woodpecker, but now I'm not so sure. I'm going to have to dig out our bird book and see if I can figure it out. For now, we just call him zebra. =)

Zebra...woodpecker?

I hope everyone is gearing up for a warm Spring.

Handsome little devil.

Handsome little devil.
Originally uploaded by busybeebiz

This is a test of my using Flikr. I've been playing around over here with some of my pictures.

Quick Post.

This is just a quick little post because I'm getting ready to get into bed and try and warm up.  It's been way to cold today.  At least we didn't get all the snow that others around us have.  I'll grumble about the cold and the wind but at least I'm not out shoveling snow right now.

I wanted to post a picture of the cake that Tim and I made for Aidan.  Now, history on this.  We had a hamster up until two weeks ago.  She died peacefully in her sleep and honestly, we weren't that sad to see her go because she was mean.  Aidan had said that for his party he wanted a hamster cake.  When he had made this request, Rhino was still alive and he was watching dvds of Hamtaro.  So, he had hamsters on the brain.  After Rhino passed we asked Aidan if he wanted to change the theme of the cake.  I was thinking maybe he would change it to Kirby or Bolt or something that is relevant to what they are watching/playing right now.  Nope.  Aidan just said, "Let's make a dead hamster cake".  Voila.

I made the cakes on Friday.  It was a fiasco.  I made four round cakes and the 13x9.  I sprayed all the pans and thought it would be ok.  Every single one of the cakes stuck to the pan and broke as I tried to ease them out.  We, at this point, also realized that I should have made 6 round cakes so that the hamster would be taller.  So, I redid all of the cakes.  We crumbled up the broken cakes and fed them to the birds.  This time I put parchment paper on the bottom of each pan and they came out beautiful.  I was beat after all of the baking though. 12 cakes in one day is a bit much.

Saturday morning Tim got up and pieced the cakes together.  I made a huge batch of buttercream frosting and he stacked everything up.  He carved the shape and then covered it with frosting.  Then he covered it with fondant and painted it with edible paint (corn syrup and food coloring).  All in all, it was a great success.  The cake recipe was very tasty and moist.

I think that is all for now.  I promise I will do a gardening post soon. I got a bunch of my seedlings transplanted into bigger pots and now I am in a holding pattern until spring.  Oh Spring, where are you?

Six years ago today...

We brought this little guy into the world. 

 Yup.  Aidan turned 6 today.  Where does the time go?  I've spent the last couple of days going through six years of pictures.  I've picked out some of my favorites.  There are a lot of them.  It was a lot of fun looking through the pictures and remembering all of the places we've been.  One thing that is constant in all of the pictures though is how happy the kids are.

He was a thinker even just days old.

Connor was very happy to be a big brother.

They spent a lot of time together.

Checking out how handsome they both were.

I think it is safe to say Aidan was teething in this picture with the drool coming out of his mouth.

Aidan always loves being outside.

In one of his favorite places to be, Nana's pool.  He is counting down the days until he's in it again.

How cute was this kid?  

Aidan rocked the Chucks.

It was amazing how many pictures I have of Aidan with food all over himself.  No wonder Corky loved him.

This is the face we call the "angry monkey".  Aidan didn't get upset all that often, but when he did he always brought out the angry monkey.  We still see it from time to time.

Out exploring again.

This is the "don't mess with me look" that he pulled off from time to time.  Too bad he was too cute for it to work.

What was I saying about food all over him?  I don't know how he fell asleep in his highchair.

He loves picking apples and pumpkins.  Thank goodness we moved up to the North where we can do so.

As Connor and Aidan get older, they still are best buddies.

Maybe I'm biased, but I think these are the two cutest kids around.

Aidan always loves to help me in the kitchen.  He's my little sous chef.

He's also very much into the arts and crafts. Here is stuffing a sock monkey tail.  Look at that determination.

Even though he looks happy here, he is not really a snow child.  He likes to go in it for a very small amount of time and then gets fussy and wants to come in.  Perhaps he is a true Florida boy.

We are so lucky to have this little guy in our lives.  He truly makes us smile and laugh all of the time.  He is a happy, easy going, adventurous, dare devil, artsy, craftsy, warm and tender hearted little boy.   He loves his big brother and Connor does a good job pretending to tolerate him even though he knows he really loves him.

RIP Rhino

Our evil hamster is gone.  Today was cage cleaning day and she was curled up in a ball.  Tim took the lid off and she didn't attack (like she usually did) and he poked her with a stick.  Nothing.  I was in the shower at the time and he comes in to say, "We have a problem".  He then tells about the passing.  He then went to tell the boys.  I heard the feet running down the hallway to go look.  When I got out of the shower, I was happy (and maybe a little concerned) that the boys weren't sad to see her go.  Connor was singing, "Ding dong, the hamsters dead".  He is a tender hearted kid usually.  Aidan wasn't too upset.  For the last week he's been begging us to feed it to the snake.  I think it's safe to say there will be no more hamsters in this house.  I can't even begin to say how much money we've spent on that beast.  

Here's the funny part of this...yes, we can find humor in everything.  Aidan is having a party next weekend.  We asked him what kind of cake he wanted.  He wants a hamster cake.  We were going to build a cake into a hamster sitting on his hind paws holding a nut.  Now Tim wants to make a dead hamster cake.  I'm trying to talk Aidan back into a Kirby cake.  I guess I have a week to try and figure that out.

RIP Rhino...although I'm sure she's headed to hamster hell.

Note to self.

Yes, it's another note to myself.

Dear Self,

Next time you take your driver's license and credit cards out of your wallet and put them into your camera case (I did this for the hockey game) make sure you put them back into your wallet before you attempt to go food shopping. Imagine how silly that would be. Oh wait, you don't have to imagine. You were a dumb ass and went to the store and spent a good 45 minutes strolling the aisles looking for good healthy eats for the week. You stood in line. You unloaded your entire cart in an organized fashion...you know, like you always do with all the boxes together, all the produce together, all the frozen together, etc. The cashier starts to reach for your first item and you open you wallet only to realize it is empty minus all the other crap you carry around in there. You uttered a bad word (thankfully the kids weren't there), you turned a brilliant shade of red, and you unloaded the groceries back into your cart in an orderly fashion. You drove 20 minutes home, grabbed your cards and drove 20 minutes back. Did you learn your lesson? I hope so...if not, read this message again frequently and learn from your mistakes.

Thanks,
Self