Sunday, April 13, 2014

Gardening 2014: Starting out passionate

Lately I have been loving working in the garden!! Ever year is usually a complete failure (other than last year when I didn't even plant it in the first place. I had my friend Natalie plant it and reap from it for the summer/fall).

But three things changed for this year: I'm only planting plants I have plans for and none of my plants have to be bottled (yay! Bottling is still an overwhelming and new concept for me that I plan on conquering one day, just not this year! :)), Natalie showed me that keeping up on weeding and then actually reaping in the harvest is POSSIBLE in MY GARDEN (another new concept for me), and I've had a year to realize that having at least one successful year of gardening is a huge goal of mine that was subconscious until now.

So here's my first tapered furrow that I was sooo proud of!!
Here's my two rows of carrots and two rows of spinach. We eat carrots as a staple vegetable and I eat spinach in green smoothies almost every day. Green smoothies can be expensive but not if spinach (and strawberries-below a few pictures) are growing in my garden!!
Then I planted two rows of kale for some more green smoothie fun:
Other part of the garden that has me stoked is the strawberries! Kind of as a last minute decision, I decided that my garden is a green smoothie garden and therefore strawberries are essential! Sidenote: trav backs me up on all this and appreciates my effort but we've decided that its fine if it's "my" garden. :)

Anyway, 3 years ago trav and I added what we call black "weed guard" stuff to our flower gardens in the back. Although the black weed guard is WAY tacky when you can see it through the wood chips (sorry, Michelle, you've had to look at it all these years!) we dubbed this a fantastic decision because we haven't had to weed it for YEARS!

But this year I cut out a section and I'm going to plant strawberries in a few weeks and hope over the years the strawberry plants will spread and become a nice ground cover too.
Under the bay window will be flower bushes and in front of the window well be the strawberries.

So fun to have a hobby that's also productive on many levels!! :)

Monday, April 7, 2014

Motherhood: the 1 year old and 3 year old stages

I have loved watching Trevin in each of his stages but this 1 year stage has been so so fun! I love watching him not only learn to walk but how incredibly proud he is of himself as he's walking!! I love that he can sign and that he loves to learn new signs! And how he understands the main things I say about food and toys! Right now it just seems like he feels so accomplished and proud of himself which at this stage of learning and innocence is just the sweetest thing I've seen! I'm also loving that he sleeps through the night. Meaning: he wakes up between 7:30 and 8 for the day with the rest of us and can wait 10 minutes and have breakfast before his bottle full of cows milk!
I'm also loving how helpful Brynlie is becoming! How independently she goes potty! How incredibly excited she was when we ate our dinner outside! (Totally worth all the effort just to witness her seventh heaven excitement!) How when she sees Trevin cry when I can no longer play basketball with him picks up a ball and says, "I'll play basketball with you, Trevin." When she gets rewarded for such a kind and thoughtful gesture says, "what can I get if I play tractors with him?" Seriously? Can I just squeeze you!!!?
Love love love!!

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Motherhood: Have fun!

That evening (mentioned in the previous post), once the kids were asleep, I was reminded of a principle and then I also did something that completely rejuvenated my faith. I was reminded by Connie Sokol's free podcast called "Beat the Holiday Blues" (and she has many more) to have conscious fun!! I'm really good and working hard even when I don't want to. I love to have fun but easily choose "more important" tasks instead. So I made a list of things I like to do that are unproductive and things that I feel good after (can be productive). Like taking pictures of the details in our yard and organizing something.

Today I'm gonna make time to have full on fun even for 15 minutes!

Also, last night I combined and created my weekly dinner plan with a kids lunch plan, daily fun mom activity, daily kids activity and other calendar type plans (like playing with Hadley and her mom on Friday). I feel so organized and less "what are we going to do TODAY?" When I plan from "off the seat of my pants" I tend to plan things more based on my mood and the same things over and over. Normally it's fine and works well but just slightly exhausting. On days like yesterday where my mood and energy level aren't an asset, I need a solid plan that is unrelated to my mood.

Yay for a plan and "fun" solutions!!

Connie Sokol's free podcasts:  http://conniesokol.com/back-to-basics/free-podcasts/

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Motherhood: We will survive!

Today I had another one of the moments where I realized I had a choice make: to be a crazy and sad mother or a steller mom for my family's specific needs. I suppose I've chosen sanity because I have a plan for tomorrow and some determination way down somewhere in my bones. But I'm still bloated with an ulcer and overwhelmed. Unrelated to motherhood overwhelmedness, Trevin's got a fat lip, and Trav has the stomach flu.

Anyone else done with winter/spring sicknesses!?? They might just do me in! Phew! :)

Things are bound to improve though, right?! Chances are low Trav will have the stomach flu forever. And if I choose faith President Hinckly says things ALWAYS work out for those that have faith. And a grain of a mustard seed has been told to work!! 

Here's to fighting through those mothering blah and frustrating days.