Welcome Summer!

Today was the last day of Kindergarten for my son Ezra.  This day has been anticipated for quite some time.  Kindergarten is not hard, but the days are long and this has been the constant complaint from Ez all year.  He had a wonderful teacher this year and although he says he'll miss her and his classmates, he is so happy that summer is finally here!

To kick off summer right, I enlisted the help of my daughter and our neighbor's little girl.   We taped HUGE sheets of paper up on our garage and got to work with the washable paints.  My husband brings home these giant pads of paper that has blueprints on the other side.  Instead of throwing them away when they are done, the paper is great for the kids to color on and now paint one.  The girls loved this so much!  Not being limited by a tiny 8.5x11 sheet of paper was pure bliss! They were sad when I told them it was time to clean up and go inside, but I promised them they could paint like this again soon. 

Blank canvas ready for some color!

I could barely get the words on the paper, they were too fast with the paint!

Contemplating which color to use next!

Yellow it is!

The little artists!

Eden gives me a happy cheese grin, I think she's appreciative of my choice of activity today.

These little bottles are great, but won't last long for us. 

When we pulled into our driveway with Ezra later on, he was amazed at the sign.  He absolutely loved it!

Our 1st Bag Garden

A few weeks ago the kids and I ventured into the world of gardening! I've always wanted a garden! A friend on Facebook posted a link about bag gardening and I knew this was just the thing for us (except on a much smaller scale). So I picked up my son from school, headed to Sonic for Happy Hour and hit the Home Depot for supplies.

We decided to start small since we've never gardened before.

Our supplies consisted of:
3 bags organic soil
3 bags of wood chips (I only needed one though)
Several sheets of newspaper
A few starter plants (strawberries, tomotoes)
Seeds

The first step was to figure out where we wanted our garden and lay out several sheets of wet newspaper.  The wet newspaper will help rid the garden of weeds.
 

The next step was to take our bags of soil and puncture several holes on one side to allow for root growth and irrigation.  We used a couple screwdrivers to make the holes, my kids really loved this and they were very careful not to stab their little hands in the process!

Next we flipped the bags over and I cut out the other side of the bag (leaving a least a 2 inch edge).  The kids helped me fluff the soil.  It was pretty stinky and they were pretty dirty afterwards.

The next step was to plant our fruit and veggie starter plants along with some seeds.  After the planting is complete, we covered the garden with mulch and this helped to cover the ugly plastic bags.

After two nasty hailstorms and a lot of rain later.....here is our garden today at 3 weeks old.  Our peas, beans and pumpkin seeds have sprouted, but unfortunately our lettuce has yet to produce a seedling. The leaves on our tomato plants are sad, but we do have some blossoms on our strawberry plants.  The kids enjoy checking out their garden daily and they both fight over who is going to water the garden.  I hope all this work pays off in the end!