I know, I know...

picture overload. We all know I'm a person of few words though.

Too much has been happening. We're busy, busy, busy. Randy and I put the girls to bed and get to work. It has been fun making our place our own. Slowly, but surely.

Also, we've been doing a little of this:

and this,

and this.

There've been a few birthdays around here.

Happy birthday to Lucy!

Here she is in the birthday hat! The birthday hat is very exciting.

We love the hammock.

Last Saturday, to celebrate birthdays for Anne, Ruby, and Lucy, we went to Philadelphia for the day. We saw some great fountains and cool buildings.

And we enjoyed the Academy of Natural Sciences.

In this picture, they are walking on the tread mill to make that dino on Randy's back run. It was pretty cool.

Yuck!

Ruby loves to give a good tea party.

{and birthday party, and any other kind of party that comes to mind}

So for her birthday we had a tea party with her little friend.

This picture was taken as they waited (not so patiently) for their guest to arrive.

Sorry, all the pictures of the table were blurry. :(

They made fancy tea hats to wear.

Isn't she lovely? Happy 3 to Ruby!

And here is one of the night stands Randy made for our room!

Lets hear a hip, hip!

We also installed a filter for our well, made a countertop, and installed our fire pit. We love our home!

A Picture

is worth a thousand words. So, here are a bunch to save me a little time:

I tried and tried...and tried and tried to upload my video tour of our house to no avail, so you'll have to make due with this.

Our front room. I took the picture standing by the front door, on the first step going upstairs.

We checked everyday for weeks to see if our mystery flowers had blossomed yet.

Hooray for peonies!

The 13th of May, Anne turned 5! I can't believe I have a five year old.

She had a few specifications for her cake. (and party too)

In one of the many clipping projects Randy has done in our yard, there happened to be some casualties that were fun to look at. (nests are so cool)

Lucy needed to get down to see too. She is nearly impossible to hold when she's decided to be down!

Max and Ruby is popular around here and I think this idea stemmed from something they saw on that show.

A Pajama party!!

{they needed makeup with rouge!}

Every night while we do the bedtime rituals for the big sisters, the littlest sister has a hay-day with their toys. Her favorite: magnetix (or however you spell it)

This weekend the temps have hit the 90's so we pulled out the swimmin' poops. (click this link and watch the movie for an explanation of all the poop)

and the swimmin' poop.

This one has learned to make funny faces. And in related news, one of her first words was "cheese."

(but not Wensleydale)

Rock Garden

As a plant lover, I've never really like the idea of a rock garden.

With the warmer weather and the risk of frost dropping, I rented a tiller from Ace and started working on some plots for vegetable gardens. The plan was to do two plots, one on the side of the house and another at our back door that would eventually become a flower garden.

I must admit that as I started plowing the virgin land next to the house, the tiller threw me around quite a bit. You see, I'm small and skinny. It's not like I've never used a tiller before, but this time I had a very hard time getting the tiller to dig into the ground. At first I thought it must just be hard ground because it had never been tilled before, but then I saw the rocks...

Two hours later, sweaty and beat, I decided to take the tiller back and just do one plot this year.



As you can see, I pulled out a lot of gravel (not sure if the gravel is from construction) and a lot of bigger rock. I talked with a neighbor that was walking by and she informed me that the whole neighborhood grows rocks on their ground, not just mine :).

After pulling out all that rock, I don't think it looks a whole lot better.

It's still hard for me to believe that this hill, that looks as fertile as the Tennessee valley, has this much rock. So now that I have a rock garden, I can say with confidence that I hate rock gardens.

Next up: Randy vs. rabbits.

Here's the Magnolia in bloom.

See those brown trees behind the house? They are all green now and the view is quite altered.

Here are some of the blooms from the tree we had to take out.

Aren't they pretty? Sad it had to go. Also, we chose that color grey for our kitchen.

Here's a view across our back yard.

The kitchen in one of it's various stages of disarray...but notice the dishwasher (!) Randy and his dad put in for us. Wahoo! (also, as you notice, we haven't actually painted the rest of the kitchen yet)

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure. I've been fiddling with our new camera. Too bad we left our old camera at the beach, sitting in our stroller. :(

Guess it was about time for a new camera and stroller anyway. (stroller yet to come)

I'll try to get some better pictures of the inside of the house so you can see how cute it is. Even unfurnished.

The Magic Number

is 30 for us.

Today the 30th day of March, my love turned 30 years old! For his birthday we got 30 years worth of debt.

Happy 30th Randy! I love you!

"Happy Green Patrick's Day!!"

said Anne.

She's still a little confused about this holiday, but we're working on it.

In other news, Lucy has been busy.

Two weeks ago she started to crawl! Woo!!

{She still won't roll over, but I don't mind. It makes diaper changes and other things so much easier on the mom.}

Last week she cut 5 teeth. Count 'em. FIVE. 4 on top, and one on the bottom next to the well established 3. Yes, she already had 3 on the bottom, and they've been there for a few months. Needless to say, NO ONE got sleep last week. She also started a runny nose, which we attributed to the teeth--until the cough started.

This week we went in for her 9 month check up (!) and a sick check while we were at it. Turns out she's got bronchiolitis (?) and the beginnings of an ear infection. BOO! We came home from the doctor with a nebulizer machine and a slew of medicine for the Little.

On a positive note, the nurses, the pharmacists, and a few other random people stopped to admire and tell me what a cute babe I have. They loved the hat from Grandma Griffiths with her chubby pink cheeks. Thanks again for the hat!

Here's the nebulizer--it vaporizes her medicine so she can breathe it in. It makes it so she doesn't wheeze.

Anne loves to play "What's on my head" with us ALL.

Exercising outfits.

*note R's jammies under hers. She hates to take 'em off.

Anne saw an exercise video and came up with her own version of workout clothes. Pretty stylin'.

Second attempt at french bread: success!

Delaware Children's Museum. We met some friends there to play.

Are you asking yourself why R is wearing little boy's pants? --Well it's a long story. One where I say, "Yup, that was my child." sigh. Poor thing couldn't find her way out of the maze in time and had an accident. Somehow, we had a change of everything but pants.

Other than that, we had a great time! My girls love this place.

So, happy Green Patrick's Day!