Week ending 7-18-21 Alexis' birthday, garden and woods work

 This was a nice stay-at-home week with no camps or treks or anything. We work outside every morning from 8-11, eat lunch, then have free time in the afternoon. Dinner at 5 and scripture reading, stories, and bedtime follow.

Monday: Alexis's birthday breakfast! 

First thing she wanted to do was hair, makeup and nails.

Alexis looks like Kylie with the same color hair and wearing Kylie's shirt.

Kaitlyn's pretty hair.

Making her cake.

Andy made Alexis some paper presents which included a phone, a flashpad, and a gadget that makes whatever you want. :) 

I gave her cheap earphones and the piano music for 42nd Street and Brave. Her grandma's gave her $20 which allowed her to buy shirts and jeans the next day on our mommy date.

Her finished homemade chocolate cake with 16 sweets on it for her Sweet Sixteen!

Happy 16th birthday, Alexis! I can't believe it. I loved her being born because she was #4 like I was #4 and my first to have brown eyes like I'm the first to have brown eyes in my family. She was my first summer baby and it was awesome not to have to wrap her up. She was also my first baby under 8 lbs (7lbs 8oz) so I loved having a "tiny" baby. Now she is my biggest helper, always cheerful and cooperative, plays the piano, and loves to read. She'll be a senior this year and I'm excited for her to go off to college and spread her wings but secretly I hope she chooses to stay with me another year. :)

Tuesday: Weeding the garden. We've been working every morning on the driveway, cleaning sheds, pulling vines out of the wildflower garden, or cutting up trees that we've neglected our garden bigtime. A few weeks of not weeding in the South equals the plants taken over by grass. See if you can find the 3 bell pepper plants in this garden bed.

So embarrassing!

This is Alexis's herb garden.

The tomato bed finished!

Herb bed almost done.

Bell pepper and herbs done! Whew! We're hot and heading inside.

Kaitlyn found 2 pumpkins, yay! We love growing pumpkins.

So sweet to see Thomas reading a Frozen book to his little buddy, Talea.

I had fun playing Upwords with Talea and helping her spell simple words. Reminds me of playing with Madalyn who at this age could spell hard words.

Sam and Andy slept in the hammocks.

View from the front door when I peeked out to hear if they were still talking or had gone to sleep. The picture doesn't look great but I wanted to savor the view of seeing two cute boys snoozing in hammocks in the dusk.

Wednesday: We took Alexis and Thomas to the Shipley's where they had YW/YM (with just them and the 2 Shipley's) and we hung out in the playroom downstairs and played Lamanites and Nephites.

Thursday: Pushing over dead trees.

Both Thursday and Friday we worked at the edge of the front woods cutting up fallen trees and hauling them to the wood pile to burn this winter. It was a lot of fun and my favorite work because it reminds me of my childhood. My dad would saw a log into pieces and 2 or 3 of us would load it into the wheelbarrow and 2 or 3 of us would be at the woodpile to unload it.

Bear scat? Looks like he's been into our berries.

I loved my job of sawing the trees into fireplace sized pieces.

Friday: I came outside and found all the kids watching a black snake in the mulch pile.

Next we went and watched the cattle cross through our front woods.

This little brown calf is our favorite. We joke that we're going to steal it.

There were 5 little black bums facing us as the cattle were sniffing at a box we left there that we were piling sticks into for kindling. Kaitlyn shoed them away and brought it to us but they had pooped and peed all around it. I never knew cattle were territorial like that. 

Saturday: We babysat 3 kids so their mom could drive the youth to the temple. It was Alexis's and Thomas's first time going to the temple in 1.5 years and first time ever to go inside Raleigh. So neat to be back in the Raleigh Temple district! I can't wait to go. I babysat from 8-5 so it was a long day (2.5 hours each way and they stopped for a long lunch) but we had fun. These two 4 year olds had running races.