Month: July 2009

We are taking full advantage of the library’s summer reading program, and are loving the freebies the children are earning just by enjoying a good book….or two…or twenty-two!  To date, the four of them have a combined total of over 150 reading hours (the ones they’ve actually logged).

On Sunday night the six of us took advantage of the children’s free tickets, and the half price discounts for all parents, and went for the first time as an entire family to one of our local Rangers’ games, and it was great fun!

Much to the kids’ delight, it was $1 Drumstick night, so we even splurged and bought everyone an ice cream!!

It was a stellar game: our home team started things off with a bang by hitting a home run the very first time up to plate. The play stretched into twelve innings before our Rangers defeated the Twins when the same player hit another homer to bring in another couple runs to wrap things up. Given we had a 3 year old in our party

we left after eight innings, while the game was tied.  But we were thrilled to hear things ended so well!! A huge thank you to the library’s wonderful summer reading program – what a wonderful treat this was!

A couple months ago a wonderful neighbor of mine gifted me with some store credit to Lowes. I waited to use it till I could find something that would stretch my dollars as far as possible, especially keeping my eyes open for plants to place along our new back fence, which has looked rather bare since last year. So when I was in the Lowes’ nursery a couple of weeks ago, and saw a table of Star Jasmine vine plants marked way down to be clearanced out, I snatched up a few. After planting them at the base of several posts along the back of our fence, it occurred to me that they looked lonely. Surely, getting a couple more to fill in the gaps would be more aesthetically pleasing, yes??

Without bothering to count before shopping, I somehow came home with exactly the right number to plant a vine at the base of each fence post: no more, no less. Why I chose the afternoon with temps above 103 degrees as the ideal time to plant these, I am not certain…but now that they are in, I feel such a sense of accomplishment. If by some minor miracle I can keep them alive through this heat wave, I will be even happier. But if not, thankfully Lowe’s has a full return policy on any and all plants that perish within a year of purchase.

While I sweated buckets installing my baby plants, the children amused themselves nearby (surprisingly, no, they did not cheerfully offer to help lug dirt or dig holes with me!). Patiently awaiting the treat of running through the lawn sprinklers when Mommy’s hard labor was finished, they amused themself by spraying each other with the hose, and then resting on their towels in the shade. I caught a few cute shots…

Perhaps wearing goggles enhances the picture book experience??

She worked on her knitting – doesn’t every girl put on her favorite swimsuit, and take some time to knit before running like a wild thing through the water sprinkler??

Tending his monster pumpkin plant he started from a seed:

Nicolas actually did jump in and help by watering several of my little vines after I got them in the ground:

And here are my Jasmine babies…I could only get eight of the ten in my picture, but you get the idea:

And a close-up of one little plant that I like to call “Wild Child”:

Last weekend we dedicated ourselves to the serious celebration of two special ladies in the family. On Friday night we had fun wishing Happy Birthday to Grammy Ruth on her actual birthday (we Hornes are very bad about celebrating the “day of”!). Special thanks to Papa Horne for providing the delicious tenderloin for the meal!

Here is Grammy getting some help blowing out the candles on her cake!

On Saturday we made up for the fact that we hadn’t yet found a good time to wish Auntie Sandra a Happy Birthday, given her special day was way back in June!! I did get to enjoy house-hunting with her though on her actual birthday, something we probably will not be able to replicate every year, so that is nice.

Abigail got pretty into the cake-decorating on Saturday:

She picked and helped mix all the icing colors, and even did these roses all by herself (wish I’d thought to take a pic before putting on candles!):

One more cake shot which shows some of the border:

The cake decorator and her Auntie:

Again, Happy Birthday to both of you lovelies!!

We can, and we did!!

Forty-five minutes devoted to making some cool cow costumes seems a small price to pay for some FREE Chik-Fil-A!

Even the cost of something as little as a fast food combo meal (or five in our case!) is not in the household budget these days, so we say “THANK YOU!” to Chik-Fil-A for such a wonderful treat.