Around the yard: May

These pictures are from our yard in early May.  We made the decision to not have a vegetable garden this year.  We are going to be crazy busy all summer and out of town a lot and just wouldn't have time to tend to everything.  I'm bummed that we don't have fresh veggies popping up, but we have an amazing farmer's market very close to us.  I think I'll try and have veggies next year.....maybe.  We do still have all of our fruit trees and of course our berries.  In these pictures the peaches and apples are pretty small and the berries have yet to fruit, but right now in June, the peaches are about ready to pick, the apples are bigger than golf balls and we have a gazillion raspberries and the start of blackberries.  Our hydrangeas are also in crazy bloom right now.  One big change in a yard is that instead of grass we have clover coming up all over.  We started seeding clover last spring and did another seeding in April this year and boy, is the clover coming up!  Clover is a great alternative to a grass lawn because it only grows so high (about 8 inches) it doesn't need to be fertilized because it gets it's nutrients from the soil and the air and it has the wonderful benefit of flowering.....which brings bees to our yard and our fruit trees and bushes.  So far we are very happy with out clover lawn.  Even Dan who is very picky about his yard seems to like it.  It's been nice playing outside this spring while the weather is lovely!

Soon to be raspberries

Soon to be blackberries

Eleanor paints

I start my girls off young with art projects.  I like art, they like art, everyone wins.  With Maddie her first experiences with art were very controlled and easy to clean up.  With Charlotte she got a modified version of whatever Maddie was working on.  Eleanor on the other hand demands that she gets to do whatever the big girls are doing.  I tried to give her less messy versions of whatever we were working on, but she refused to play along.  My baby girl is an artist!  I've never been super fussy about my kids being dirty or messy.....I just figure its a part of life.  Messy kids are happy kids!  So, I give Eleanor her art supplies and instead of hovering, I walk away and let her create.  Mostly she creates a mess, but she has an awesome time doing it and as a reward I get amazing pictures of her where it looks like she has a goatee.  I hope my girls always want to hang out and make art together!

Plastic eggs.....not just for Easter

With all of the Easter festivities that we participated in, we ended up with a lot of plastic eggs!  For a while they were scattered all over our house, but eventually I rounded them all up and stuffed them out of sight in the garage.  Well, fast forward a couple weeks and imagine very bored girls.  I had a genius idea.  I got all the eggs out and had the girls take turns hiding eggs for each other to find.  They seriously spent a good 2 hours playing hide the eggs over and over again!  We also played with smiley stickers that grandma C sent for Easter......Eleanor mostly stuck them to her face.  We were able to enjoy the plastic Easter eggs for a few weeks before they mostly disappeared and some of them were left in the yard and eaten by the lawn mower.  It was fun while it lasted!

 Do I have something on my face?

Strawberry fields forever

This was the 4th year that we have gone strawberry picking with the girls' preschool.  I can still remember taking little Maddie on this field trip with an infant Charlotte and now Maddie is through with preschool, Charlotte will be in the oldest class and Eleanor will be starting next year.  It's amazing how quickly life flies by!  Maddie and Charlotte always love this field trip because......well, field trips are fun!  They like picking strawberries (for about 10 minutes before they lose interest) they love playing in the sandbox at the fields and they especially LOVE that they get an ice cream at the end.  I love that I get to eat juicy ripe strawberries while we pick, and that I get 3 huge buckets full of berries to take home and freeze and I also love the ice cream at the end!  Eleanor had a good although she wasn't huge on eating the strawberries while we were there.....she's not a big fan of fruit!  She did gorge herself once we got home.  Since the field trip we've gone back and picked more strawberries and I'm sure we'll do it again before the season is completely over!  Love strawberries.

This is Charlotte's best friend Wynston

Strawberry face

Ice cream face