This past week was another week full of average events for us. A couple things that happened for various family members (a book club meeting for me, a haircut for Joseph, etc.), while different than last week, were still rather typical events for us. 🙂 Paul did go to Lowe’s this morning and grabbed me another Mexican heather plant so that I could have one on each side of the tomato plant. The tomato plant surprised me because as I was watering other plants, I glanced over at it and saw hiding tomatoes. I thought I just had one growing! I went over and started to take a closer look. It turns out that I probably have more like 8-9 growing! Crazy plant. Paul also got some more mulch to spread around, and he mowed the front lawn. He might have also gotten the back yard, but I was upstairs cleaning the bathrooms (such a glamorous life we lead on Saturdays, huh? haha), so I missed it if he did. I’m so grateful for all the hard work he does to keep our yards looking nice. I’m also grateful that he brings me pretty flowers that I can tend to. 🙂 I did spend this week making yummy lunches (I was getting a bit tired of eating sandwiches every day), which was fun. I also threw some pictures in of the bathroom rug I got a couple weeks ago and pictures of how it looks with the decorations I already had in there. 🙂
This is what happens when I tell her to say cheese. She looks at me and literally says, “Say ‘Cheese!'” 🙂This was my rose bush on Monday……this was Wednesday……and this was today (Saturday). I can’t believe how many blossoms it has on it right now!She’ll just randomly walk up to me at times and ask me to take her picture. 🙂This is the perfect example of how our weather has been most of the week: warm, humid, and overcast. The sun came out a little bit every day, thank goodness. I need my sunshine!My new rug. I love how it looks. At first I was a little wary with it being so light, but it is machine washable, so I can just toss it into the washer when it does get dirty.How it looks with the rest of the decor.A close-up of the decorations in my bathroom. I got the porcelain flower at Target, I did the cross-stitch of the dragonflies, and a friend took the picture of the hummingbird that happened to be scratching its ear.She asked that I make a fort for her and her bat.Once it was assembled, she moved things around a bit and turned it into Minnie’s Bow-tique. I love her active imagination!Lunch one day was avocado toast and sauteed zucchini.Another lunch was a quesadilla (I love how crispy I can get them in my skillet) and sauteed yellow squash.Abigail asked for popcorn so that she could have a movie night (watching her current favorite, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”). I love that i can make fresh popcorn in the microwave without having to have bags on hand. A container of kernels takes up way less room than a big box! She insisted I take a picture of her with her “hat”. Also, she spent a solid 25 minutes inside the entryway closet with a flashlight, telling stories (with a lot of shrieks and gasps) to her rainboots. No, really…that’s what she told me when she finally popped her head out. This kid…The big clump of hiding tomatoes. I think there’s five in this bunch.Another three tomatoes.My new Mexican heather plant.I love having a plant on each side of the tomato plant. The one on the right is also Mexican heather, but I’ve had it a year or so…and it got pretty badly damaged from the cold weather in February. I should have taken it inside when we had our first hard freeze…I’ll be sure to be more careful this next winter with both of them…even if it’s just moving them into the garage so they avoid the frosts). I was happy to see the darker green bits pop up. That gives me hope that it’ll recover.The mint is looking amazing!
The main thing that happened this week was that we finally had a chance to take pictures of the kids in the bluebonnets so that we could update the picture on our wall. I’ve been putting it off because, well…Abigail is a bit of a wild child. She’s starting to listen a little bit better (though there is still room for improvement, ha) and is slightly more cautious (we could still work on that more, too), so I decided we’d go for it. I had seen a patch in the roundabout in Old Town Helotes that I wanted to take them to. Bluebonnets are pretty much everywhere this time of year, but most of the ones nearby are by the sides of busy roads, which is definitely a no-go. We opted to visit Old Town because even though it was a roundabout, we knew we could find a time to go when there would be little-to-no traffic. Other highlights of the week: I took pretty flower pictures and got my first COVID shot. I just had a sore arm and was a little tired the next day. Paul was able to get his second shot (he got his first one last month), which left him with a sore arm the day after, but yesterday (which was two days after), he felt kinda cruddy, tired, and nauseous throughout the day. He’s feel quite a bit better today, thankfully. It’s probably still better than getting the actual virus, though.
Snapdragons (the light pink ones) and periwinkles (dark pink, purple, and white). So fun!Horseshoe geraniums!A super-duper close-up of the blossoms on my broom plants.This is Pampered Chef’s new avocado tool. It’s rather handy! The serrated edge is perfect for cutting the avocado in half. Then the round part has little spikes that you can press into the pit. Once the pit is secure, all it takes is a little twist and the pit comes right out. All I had to do to get the pit off was use a paper towel (just to combat the slippery pit) to hold onto it and pull. Then I used the serrated edge to dice the avocado while it was still in the skin and I ran the flat side all around the edge of the skin to loosen up everything so I could scrape it all onto a plate. I know all of that could be accomplished with a knife (both to dice and to secure and remove the pit) and a spoon (to scrape everything out), but I’m always afraid when removing the pit that way that I’ll cut myself and I have cut myself when trying to cut up the avocado while it was still in the skin (I accidentally poked through the skin because I just wasn’t thinking about how I was holding onto it). It’s also a perk that it’s all one tool, so I only have to wash one thing. No wonder we’ve had birds hanging out in the yard a little more often than usual…I really had to zoom in to get a picture where you can see the actual nest.Happy to be outside!Round One is done!Last week’s bud has bloomed and there’s a new one right next to it!It was kind of windy that day, haha.Abigail loved it. 🙂This is why I’m grateful for digital photography…we didn’t have to print this one. 😉Or this one, haha. I think she was in the middle of saying, “Cheese”.I don’t even know what’s going on in this one…This one turned out really cute……but this is the one that we ultimately chose for the wall.Sweet boy!We walked around Old Town a bit and she liked this little wagon.Outside one of the antique stores. We purposefully chose to come after everything was closed for the day so that traffic (both cars and foot traffic) would be practically non-existent. Abigail was a bit bummed, because she wanted to “see all the stuff”. I asked what she was referring to, and she pointed to a large metal rooster (that was behind the fence). She told me she “wanted to ride the big chicken”. 😀 I told her it probably wasn’t a good idea since the big chicken was probably a bit pokey and scratchy. She conceded and was willing to just look at the other fun things. I had to do a frame swap. Before, the picture of the kids was in the dark brown frame and the driftwood picture was in the lighter frame. When we got the new picture of the kids, I knew I’d need to flip the frame direction, but found that the dark brown frame didn’t have a way to hang the other direction. So I put the driftwood picture into the dark brown frame and put the picture of the kids in the other frame. Ta-dah!
I thought I’d hop on here and make a separate post about our Easter celebration this year. It was just our little family, which is okay. Each kid got an Easter basket full of books, a fun item, and candy. Later in the day, Paul scattered eggs so the kids could do their own egg hunt. You’ll see in the video that each kid had their own method of collecting. Joseph went with quantity while Abigail was more interested in seeing what each egg contained as she found it. I eventually started putting eggs in her basket so that she’d have more than just a few eggs, because I knew she’d be disappointed at the end if her brother had way more than her. In between the festivities we were able to watch General Conference, which is always a blessing (especially since this year, President Nelson announced twenty new temples to be built!). I worked throughout the day to get dinner ready: starting with rolls, popping the ham into the slow cooker, working on rolls some more, starting the potatoes, defrosting the pie (thank goodness I decided on a store-bought pie), tossing the green beans on the stove at the last minute, making honey butter to go with the rolls, and then serving everything up. It was a really yummy meal…and we were so full that we didn’t even have dessert! We’ll just have to have it tonight. 😉
The Easter Bunny filled their plastic eggs with candy and left them a chocolate bunny and some Reese’s pieces carrots. Mom and Dad got them some fun new books. We also got Joseph a digital camera (yay for flash sales!) and Abigail got a dress-up doctor’s costume.He zoned in on exactly what I thought he would. 😀Checking out her new sticker book.Paging Dr. Abigail!All of us got very thorough check-ups. Oh, and if you notice the fish bowl sitting on the breakfast bar…we’re fish-sitting for friends who went out of town for the weekend. Rex the beta fish will be headed home sometime in the next couple of days.Figuring out his new camera.When one eats a chocolate bunny, one must always start with the ears.I had to get a picture of her face. 😀Paul put some eggs on the ground that were easy for Abigail to find.He used the fence line to put some up higher for Joseph to grab.More of the easy-to-find ones.And more of the higher-up ones. I do have to say that having the side yards in the back yard made for more fun places to hide eggs. I think that having our fence line extended was probably one of the best decisions we’ve made.Ham (super simple recipe: simply put some brown sugar in the bottom of the crock pot, put the ham on top, and then cover the ham with more brown sugar…simple and delicious!), cheesy potatoes (hash browns with a cheese sauce that has onions in it and then crushed potato chips on top), canned green beans, and homemade rolls with honey butter. I like that I was able to take short cuts here and there and still produce a really delicious meal. Dessert was supposed to be a chocolate silk pie (Marie Callendar’s brand from the grocery store), but we ended up not eating dessert.
