The Subject of My Enthusiasm Today

I have been bitten by the gardening bug again!

We didn't think we had a spot for a garden at our new house, because there is a huge tree in the backyard which shades it too much to grow vegetables and herbs. But alongside the driveway, in a sunnier spot, there were these huge, unsightly, overgrown azalea bushes that Nathan tackled last weekend, and now I have a really nice sized garden plot.

Today, the kids and I bought a bunch of things to plant, even though we haven't finished prepping the soil: tomatoes, zucchini, crookneck squash, orange peppers, cayenne peppers, basil, Greek oregano, mint, chives, English lavender, and more. I also have a lot of seed packets that I've saved from years past. I don't know if the seeds are any good anymore, so I am going to start them in little pots and see if anything grows. I have everything from green and orange striped cherry tomatoes (which, bummer, didn't produce any fruit last year) to a variety of flowers. Our entire yard is a blank page right now, because, like much of the house, it wasn't maintained well by the elderly previous owner. So we are pulling everything out and starting from scratch, which is proving to be more fun than I originally thought. It's a lot of work for Nathan, though!

I love growing tomatoes. Not only is a garden fresh tomato just far and away more tasty than what you can get at the grocery store, but--and I think this is what is most exciting for me--there is such a huge variety. You can grow huge slicing tomatoes, paste (Roma) tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, pear tomatoes, and more. And they come in so many colors! I think I've mentioned before that, one day, I'd love to have a garden big enough to grow tomatoes of every color. Well, I realized this afternoon that if my little plot is sunny enough, I will be pretty close this year. So far, I've got: red, pink, yellow, orange, green/orange striped, and black.

If only I hadn't given all my tomato cages to our neighbor when we moved!

:)

Noah's Fourth Birthday!

Well, here it is almost Jane's birthday, and I haven't posted anything about Noah's yet! I'd say it's time.

Noah turned four on January 9. So far, I have to say that four is my favorite age. Potty training and most of the rebellion from the terrible two's is over, and let's just all agree that putting those two things behind you is a happy thing. So what we've got now is a sweet, pretty well-behaved, FUNNY little boy who loves to play all day long. Also, because he has advanced quite a bit verbally, he comes up with the funniest stuff and makes us laugh every day. And he is finally interested in learning. He sings the alphabet song every day, is learning how to spell basic three-letter words, is asking questions about counting and simple addition, and so on. He does still need a little help with his speech (he still doesn't have his G's and K's), but we'll be working on that this year. All in all, he's very much a delight.

Here are Jane, Elizabeth, Spencer, and Noah at Noah's party. This is probably the one half minute when they all sat where we told them.

For probably six months, Noah had been talking about having a volcano cake at his birthday party. So we went with a dinosaur/volcano theme, had a huge inflated dinosaur and other dino decor, and had this cake:

Y'all, I spent hours the day before making that cake. I thought it looked a little science fair-ish, but Nathan the Geoscientist was so impressed that I started to feel pretty good about it. And all our guests thought it was pretty cool, too. Nathan kept it well fed with dry ice, so it smoked for the whole party, until we cut it. Everyone loved it so much that I came to feel that that volcano was probably my biggest success of the year so far. Ha!

Noah was very focused on opening presents. It was as if no one else was there.

And that cake didn't just look good. It tasted good, too!

We sure do love our Noah Thomas!

Stuff Noah Says

While singing, if he doesn't remember the words exactly, he gives an approximation:
- "Twinkle, twinkle, little star. What do I know about you..."
- "The B-I-B-L-E, yes that's the book for me, I stand on top of God, the B-I-B-L-E." (It's supposed to be, "I stand alone on the Word of God.")

Other funny things he's said lately:
- "Well, well, well. What do we got here?"
- When practicing a Bible verse: "Perish, perish, perish, PERISH, PERIIIIISH!!!!!" He said it with wilder and wilder enthusiasm . . . kind of a dark enthusiasm, actually. . . .
- He says "man" a lot these days. As in, "Man, that was so close!"
- The other day, he ran down a cacophonic hallway yelling, "Echolocation! Echolocation!" Ha ha! It cracked us up! He used to yell "echo," but not anymore, evidently.
- Me: "Noah, why don't you like your potatoes?" Noah: "I don't want to talk about it."

Christmas at the Beneshes'

Taking a break from opening presents with Grandma and Grandpa

The Fam (part of it, anyway)

There are just a few stockings at the Benesh house.

Nap time!

Playing games with Matthew and Emily in our new robes from Grandma T.

Some funny plays in Apples to Apples

Really, you can't beat this one.

Christmas at the Williamses'

Uncle Ken and Noah

The kids and I got all the men these musical Christmas ties from the dollar store.

Granny in her new coat and scarf.

Sweet Santa

Scary Santa

My mom and the kids

Christmas Lamb

Noah was a lamb in our church's Christmas program.
He was a remarkably undisciplined lamb:
1. He got tired of crawling down the aisle, so, saying to himself, "Enough of this!" he stood up and walked behind the crawling sheep down to the stage.
2. He stood a bit vacantly on the stage, looking at the audience, not paying attention to where the rest of the sheep were being shepherded.
3. At some point, he started swinging on a freestanding handrail on stage. Then the other sheep followed suit. Imagine a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds dressed as sheep and swinging away.
4. At the end, he was the only person on stage to take a bow. We cracked up, particularly since we didn't know he knew how!

Noah and Jane in front of the live nativity after the Christmas program.

Gingerbread Championship 2011

For a couple of Christmases, my mom has had a "gingerbread" house competition, where we build things out of graham crackers. The last one was won handily by Ken and Meredith, and, if you know them, it will not surprise you to be told that they made t-shirts that said "Gingerbread Champions 2009" and wore it on the plane. They are always good for a laugh.

But I was not to be put off by their braggadocio. And after all was said and done, I was the Gingerbread Champion 2011.

Here is my house. The snowman put it over the top.

I also had a pond and a garden in the back. Ken--a sore loser--pointed out that my house would be awfully cold, what with the open roof. Details, details.

This was Nathan's contribution, a Batmobile.

Meredith's house, which caved in. Ken called it Concave House.

And Andrew's creation, which was . . . are you ready for this? . . . a prison.
Ha! The lifesavers are rolls of barbed wire, and there's a helipad on top.

After all, nothing says "Christmas" like a prison.