Spring Happenings

Spring is closing out, so I figured it was time to give an update!

We had our first camping trip of the year in March and went with our Sunday school class up to Lake Georgetown. We stayed close to home because we were trying to get more non-campers to join us. Over the 2 days we had about 11 people and 3 dogs so it was a success!

Bernoulli was visiting for the weekend so he got to join the fun

Zelda with her backpack

A few weeks later, we had another cousin wedding in my family. David and Skye had their wedding in Houston and so we drove in Saturday afternoon for the rehearsal dinner then the wedding was Sunday afternoon. They had the ceremony in a chapel, then the reception was half indoor, half outdoor. The outdoor area had cornhole and giant jenga for people to play games which was kinda cool. 

playing with baby Daniel at the hotel

It was really great to spend time with family, I just love big gatherings, its so fun!

We are now owners of 7 Quail! Our friends Aaron and Jean have been talking about backyard quail and all the ins and outs of owning them. They have a pretty small footprint, are quiet, and a lot easier than chickens. They also are high producers of eggs. Anyways, Aaron wanted to try it out, so we agreed to help and let our backyard be the host of this project since they live in a small apartment. So Aaron built a really cool house for them to live in that we can just drag around the yard to different areas. There is chicken wire all around, so no cleaning required, they just poop and it falls out the bottom. There is also an auto food dispenser that we just fill up and the water is similar, we just fill up the outside container every few days. They have the first room that's open, and then under the slanted roof they can go for protection from rain and thats where their food and water come out. They are pretty fun and have started laying eggs, we are up to 14 now!  He was right, they are pretty small even full grown, and very quiet. Gaius is pretty unsure of the whole endeavor, but he is adapting pretty well. They also have a built in dirt bath and then another container we put in for a second one. We fill it with top soil and they love love it. Its pretty funny watching them get dirt all over themselves.

Michael planted his spring/summer garden a few weeks ago, and it is already doing really well! We did beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, watermelon, cilantro, blackberries. potatoes (those are the big ones in the middle), and started an asparagus bed. He also puts wildflowers around the edges for ants/other bugs on congregate on and stay away from our good plants. The potatoes and watermelon are a new venture, so we will see how those turn out! The dwarf peach tree is doing well in the back, hopefully it will give fruit this year?

In true spring fashion, we did some spring cleaning out of our flower beds! We spent all day on a Saturday about 2 weeks ago when Michael's parents came to town to clean up and re-do some of the front flower beds. There is just SO MUCH and its been needing work for awhile. So here's the before:

And the much much better after!

So glad to get that done! We still want to line the walkway with bricks or stone to make it look a little more polished, so hopefully we will do that soon. Longer term, we may take out all the bushes in a few years, but for now, it looks so wonderful!

Summer Garden and An Ottoman Project

Michael planted our summer garden!

The left is tomato plants and the right is cucumbers and green beans. Last year, the tomatoes and green beans did really great so we figured we would do more of those and the cucumbers are an experiment.

And in our 3rd bed, the strawberry plant is still going strong!

Of course, you cannot plant a garden without proper supervision :)

So quite a while ago, Michael found this ottoman and decided that he wanted it in our bedroom next to our window so that Gaius could "supervise" the backyard while we are at work. It was a good idea, except for the fact that it came from our neighbor's curb and it was not really a very good color or in the best of condition. Here's what it looked like:

I wasn't all that excited about it, but Michael really wanted it so I said what the heck. I had plans to recover the cushion, but that wasn't going to work out.  So Michael found a really good tutorial online on how to make a slipcover, and finally after months of it being in our house looking terrible it now looks like this!

Pretty much like 1000 times better. I originally was just going to use one fabric all the way down, but the fabric I bought wasn't wide enough so I added the lighter fabric on the bottom and really liked how it turned out. I did however, make the mistake of not making sure it lined up perfectly at the corners and didn't realize what I did until the very end. Soooo I just turned the really bad side against the wall and figure no one will look at it except me and Michael. Plus, Gaius doesn't really care. Maybe if it gets to bothering me too much I could rip out all my seams and re-do it, but for now, I am ok with it not being perfect. :).
Here is is next to the window, if you look really close, you can see how the light fabric at the bottom doesn't quite line up.

April

I cannot believe that April is over tomorrow! This month has seriously flown by. We have had sooo much going on, here's some of the highlights:

EMR:
We switched over to Electronic Medical Records (EMR) at work. I had tons of meetings getting ready for it, and the past 3 weeks I have clocked lots of overtime. It really is a pretty good system, but transition for anything is difficult. I just keep listing the positive things in my mind and it really helps keep my attitude in check :). I will say that this week (the third week) has already been 1000 times better b/c we all just keep getting better and better at using the system. It definitely has been a major change for my brain since I look at/use a computer all day long now.

New Furniture:
Nothing too major, but we added another bookcase in our master bedroom and also got a new nightstand for one of our guest bedrooms. We got both at ikea, and I spent a Saturday morning having a lot of fun putting them together. I love the look of the new nightstand because its less obtrusive, and there is now room for a chair in that room. As to why we got another bookcase, it obviously made perfect sense to us to just buy another bookcase to hold all our books instead of just getting rid of some. haha. I may or may not have a slight book obsession.

Visitors!

We had lots of visitors this month which I love! 

First, Garrett came and spent 3 days with us since his mom had her thyroid ablated and was in strict isolation for 3 days. Sadly, he came the first week of switching over to EMR (yikes!) and I was only able to take off one day that week, but thankfully my sister was able to skip a couple of classes and come watch him 2 of the days while me and Michael were at work. He was a great visitor and really bonded with the pup while he was here. We were pretty sad when he left because all of a sudden our house felt so quiet with him gone! 

Our second set of visitors was Lisa, Josh and their 2 girls. They were just here for a Sunday afternoon and half day Monday, but we loved having them. We grilled out and did lots of playing. Phillip and Loren even came over for dinner Sunday night! Josh's birthday was the day before they came, and they had gone to San Antonio for the weekend to visit some friends and go to Sea World. Cam (my dad-in-law) came up Sunday night and all 3 boys went and played golf here in Austin Monday morning. Cam and Judy just bought a pop-up camper that they are storing in our garage so he brought that with him. We got a pretty sweet deal from that since we are allowed to use it anytime we want in exchange for storing it for them. We are already planning our first camping trip with it!

I didn't get any pictures from that weekend since I was too busy playing and hosting, but Lisa got a sweet picture of Abby and Gaius hanging out in his window:

Apparently a few min later, she had a book out and was sitting up there reading to Gaius and her dolly. Did that make your heart melt just a little? Yeah, mine too :).

Our third set of visitors were my parents!

Kristen's semester is almost over, so they came up for the weekend and took a car load of her stuff home with them. We spent most of the day just hanging out and playing board games. Saturday night, we went and played putt-putt and got ice cream. We missed having Phillip with us, but he is currently having the time of his life on a 10 day trip to Italy! We all had a great time and I told them they really should visit more!

Garden:

My strawberry bush is doing so great! I picked these the other day and they tasted amazing. It's almost time to plant again, and we are planning on putting in several tomato plants and green beans!

So that was our month! Things should be slowing down just a little bit and I already have a list of projects around the house that I want to try to accomplish in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Winter Garden

It's been awhile since I wrote a garden update, so here it is! Michael cleaned out the beds from the spring/summer stuff and planted a strawberry bush, several types of lettuce, and carrots. Here's how it looks now:

The vegetables that we planted in the spring did pretty well. We had lots of tomatoes and peppers, and a few very small cantelopes. The cantelope/watermelon bed got pretty out of control but we managed to get a couple of melons that tasted kinda like a bit of a hybrid between the 2. So maybe putting them right next to each other wasn't the best idea?
We are letting the tomato and pepper plants finish out since they are still producing a little bit, and then will let that bed rest until springtime. I have high hopes for that strawberry plant so I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will have lots of yummy strawberries in a few months!!

Rain

I am loving all this rain we have been getting all week! It has made my garden flourish, and we already have a few little tomatoes. I hope it just keeps on coming :).

The pups love to "monitor" the backyard activity when they are forced to wait inside during rainstorms