Bone Shirt

Every since he got his "bone shirt" late last summer, Kieran has been absolutely infatuated with his favorite sweatshirt with glow in the dark bones.  I am surprised this sweatshirt has not already worn out, as he wears it EVERY day that he is allowed, begs to sleep in it each night (he is wearing it to bed tonight with Mommies permission).  He loves to stand in front of a bright light and then turn off all the lights and see the bones glow.

I shouldn't have been surprised given his love of this sweatshirt, but when I was carefully explaining to him a few weeks back that we would all be dressing very nice for Easter Sunday and I needed his help to pick out his best clothes, he immediately responded with "my bone shirt is really, really nice!"  Sigh....  There was nothing I could do to convince him that a button up shirt and vest was "nicer" than his bone sweatshirt, so it was a rather distraught three year old in the back of car that morning on the way to church.

A week after Easter Sunday mommy was getting the boys dressed to go take portraits.  As she explained to Kieran that he was wearing clothes that looked very nice matched well with his brother Tristan he paused, and then asked in his most persuasive voice, "can I wear my bone shirt, 'cause I want to look nice AND cool!"  Needless to say, the cool factor did not end up meeting his expectations...

Luckily he still has some room to grow, so the bone shirt may be with us into 2010.   

Cold Weather Garden Update

Our spring vegetables are really growing with the recent warmer weather and lots of rain.  We have Brocolli and Cauliflower plants about eight inches tall, snap peas are about the same and growing rapidly.  Our loose leaf lettuce and collards have sprouted, I thinned the rows last night.  As usual I grimmaced each time I pulled out a seedling!  White and yellow onions and radishes are coming along nicely, but still waiting on the green onion and carrot sprouts.  Hopefully with warmer weather coming this weekend (upper 80s) we will see some germination.

We also have started warm weather vegetables inside, including summer squash, winter squash, beans, and cucumbers.  Maranda also started a bunch of Mallow flowers and they are doing excellent.  In about three weeks after danger of last frost we will be moving those out to the garden.  Pics coming soon!

Tristan Portraits at Four Months

Tristan is now four months old.  It is incredible how fast the time is flying by, he will be crawling before we turn around!  Here are a few shots I took of him this afternoon in our front yard.  He is quite the little poser!  :)

Really Cool Dudes

So I noticed a model shoot going in a local park one afternoon, and managed to steal a couple shots of these outrageously cool gentlemen.

Weekend Survival

Sometimes we are just happy to have survived the weekend!  We had lots of plans for how we might spend this weekend, all the projects and things we could do, perhaps even heading into DC for the cherry blossoms.  Alas, this was not to be our fate...

To start things off, we have a new dog in our family (Duke), who is a big male from the first litter we raised close to three years ago.  The owners had to give him up and we had asked that all buyers look us up if there was a chance a dog would be given to a shelter or pound.  We agreed to take him in and have quickly found he is in need of a LOT of training.  

Along with the training, Duke and his mother have been having stand offs over who is the new pack leader.  She is 15-20 pound lighter than him, but fully undeterred.  Finally Saturday morning it reached a climax and they went full bore for several minutes.  When I finally headed down with gloves on to bring things up, they separated and Duke went scurrying toward the house, looking like the beaten dog.  Both dogs had bite wounds to their ears, but Duke was way worse and had a wound on his chest as well.  

SO, Maranda and I spent several hours midday Saturday cleaning dog wounds, flushing them, and applying antibacterial salve.  Maranda did the lion's share of the work, I did the restraining when the worst wounds were addressed.  We have continued to rinse and clean the wounds since, and antibiotics will be here tomorrow....wheeghh.

Today Kieran and I scampered away after church to try and put a hurt on the local bluegill population.  We had tried one spot with no success, and had relocated to a place that clearly had a MOTHERLODE of big bad blues...  Shortly into the afternoon, with only two decent fish on the stringer, I suddenly heard a big splash next to my elevated position near the shore.  Kieran had been playing with a stick in the water when his straw hat blew off in the wind into the pond.  

Instead of calling to me he had rushed into the pool and was up to his armpits in water.  I jumped down and fished him out, and then saved the hat.  He was rather distraught over the hat, and then became distraught over his soaked clothing.   So I stripped him down to his briefs, packed up, and headed home.

So hear I sit after burping a fussy baby for the last hour, with a late dinner in the oven, wondering where the weekend went!  I actually am thinking how nice it will be to ease into my cube tomorrow with a big cup of coffee.  I guess the one thing I can say is that all creatures in our home survived the weekend, everything will soon be fed, and tomorrow is another day....