9-8-11

Toward the end of summer, every year, we get the opportunity to go bask in all that summer means to us at a lovely little cabin in the woods with Dave's parents, sister Anne and her husband Mike. Amazing fun time. This year was extra special because Dave's birthday gift was a daytrip on a party boat (float boat? is there a proper name?)

boat baby!

charlie & papa (do you see how big this boat is! and i'm taking this pic from the middle of the boat! there is another half behind me!)

that's pretty much it, except this lovely picture of me & mike enjoying many margaritas with a baby sleeping in a carrier on my back.

yay! up north! can't wait till next year! Thank you Thank you papa and rah rah for a super fun summer getaway!

9-7-11

the heide family homestead had a bountiful summer!

planters of basil, cilantro, dill and chives. the back planter along the fence in this planter was sort of an afterthought filled with extra seedlings of peppers, beans and a few heirloom tomatoes that miraculously reseeded from last year all on their own.

and here is where mountains of tri color beans, 5 varieties of tomatoes, 4 types of peppers and our eagerly anticipated brussels sprout plants grow.

this is the same garden bed from the tomato end of things

this has been my daily haul from the garden pretty steadily since july

and the chicks! they are all grown up and moved out (THANK GOODNESS OMG MY POOR GARAGE WILL NEVER EVER BE CLEAN AGAIN. SO DUSTY! EW!)

look at the cute home dave built them!

big girls! (and probably a boy, we'll see)

EGGS! we get about a half dozen a day, they are fairly small so we're going through them all at home (yum yum yum) for now but we hope to get enough to supplement at the restaurant some also.

We have been having adventures and staying busy. life is fun.

8-10-11

Princess Day at the Madison Mallards.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Free admission for little girls in princess costumes. And princesses to take pictures with. And free carriage rides. Oh my!

Three cheers for daddy's who wear paper crowns to make little girls happy

and princes that sweep the field!

and princes and princesses that dance on the field during the dirt sweeping process (yes, i know the process probably has a name)

charlie wore his sunglasses for more than 3 seconds.

he even made silly face in them.


princesses + baseball = a really good time. who knew?!

7-19-11

I will remember her just like this forever.
















Oh lily.


I love her so much.

7-15-11

Ready to see a lot of pictures? Okay.. here you go!

We took a last minute trip to San Diego. We survived midnight plane flights and time changes and stress and recovered in time to enjoy a few lovely days in California.

Charlie's new "smile for a picture" face. He had his own seat on one of the flights and was so proud of himself.

here's another example of the "smile for a picture" face. pretty silly.

my babies love each other

we liked how this restaurant put out a caution sign around charlies highchair area. How did they know how appropriate this is for my messy impatient little guy?!

the kids had a blast in the inflatable bouncy castle at our friends Hannah's third birthday and playing with the goody bag was super fun! Coral wins at goody bags!

silly!

We played at the beach, a lot!

and found out that there are no dogs allowed on the oceanside pier (yes, tami is wearing her dog in Charlie's sling. we may have kinda pretended she was a baby, have a problem with that?)


Charlie rocked his first faux-hawk

and we arrived back in madison just in time to enjoy our first Madison Mallards game as a family. Cute!

we LOVED it! so much fun. so casual and "hometown fun" feeling. A very different experience than the baseball games i've been to in big stadiums!

7-2-11

WOW! Summer is flying by!!

We are soaking up the sunny days lounging by the pool, and enjoying the thunderstorms with quiet indoor days. Our chickens are growing big and strong and we should have eggs in the next few months. Our garden is in full bloom, and we are thinking of lots of new ways to use sugar snap peas, basil, cilantro, chives and dill, as well as a few little tomatoes. We are trying to figure out how to utilize the mass of tomatoes, brussels sprouts, peppers and beans we are going to be drowning in later this summer!

Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks

Strawberry picking at Carandale (OMG YUM)

At the theater to see Cars 2 (Charlie is in his own little booster seat! how cute is this!)

Spending time with cousins (second cousins? i never remember how that works)

and Tennis! Lily is signed up for several activities this summer. She's almost done with tennis and then we're on to soccer, art, and daycamps. Fun!

Charlie likes to help at tennis lessons.

This video is having problems. I'll stick it in here and fix it later.

Enjoy your summer!

6-10-11

How we've been spending our leisure time lately:

Impromptu fashion shows in the playroom

(Charlie looooves the high heels. Also purses and elbow length formal gloves. Just sayin)

Spending hot hot afternoons in the pool:

Finding fun and safe ways Lily can experiment with flavors in the kitchen:

(this was fancy trail mix, it was nice because she could totally customize it the way she wanted but it didnt require a hot stovetop, knives or a mess)

also spending a lot of time doing tons of gardening, cleaning up chicken poop and going to the vet a lot (advice: dont get multiple pets around the same age or they all start falling apart at the same time).

i've had some questions about our garden so i'll be posting about it soon. we are VERY inexperienced gardeners, and anything i DID know about gardening applied to San Diego which apparently means its void here (though the dig a hole and stick a plant in the ground part seems to still hold true) so any little successes are large triumphs for me.

Spoiler alert: when i post about the chickens and the garden next, they will not look like they did when i last posted about them here in april !