Weekend full of Gardening, Bird Catching, and Fake Dog Poo!

this is my favourite flower that we bought, I love the
green edges contrasted with the purple!

This weekend was an amazingly fun family weekend. We didn't do anything extraordinary but we did life together. It was one of those weekends that I rarely think to blog anything about, and yet it is probably a more accurate portrayal of our family life. If it had been Michael's weekend off it would have been perfect! Our kids didn't behave exactly how we wanted, they argued at times, we weren't perfect parents and lost our patience with them unfairly, and there may even have been some frustrated discussions on which direction to go to get to the nursery but all the same, we spent time in each others space laughing, loving, and just participating in life together, and that to me is a perfect family weekend! To me Saturday was wonderful, Michael may have a slightly less glowing review though, as he pretty well worked for 17 hours straight with his only rest coming in the form of driving our family to Armstrong. Saturday was a particularly busy day as we spent the day planning out our flower beds and vegetable garden. The kids and I started breakfast Saturday morning as we waited for Michael to finish up the morning chores, and when he came in we finished our cereal, took our coffee on the road, and headed to Armstrong for the Farmer's Market. The Farmer's market is a lot of fun, and it is neat to see all the different things that people sell, or try to sell, lol. One lady that particularly impressed our family sold hand made bird houses that were incredible works of art! The girls and Michael just couldn't get enough at examining all the details. When we were done at the market we headed over to Sleepy Hollow Greenhouses  to pick out flowers, vegetables and seeds for our garden (I highly recommend getting flowers there, great prices and lots of selection, if you can find it haha). We randomly met my grandma there and the kids were happy to run around with her. While the kids ran around exploring the flowers and animals, I picked out my plants. Sue (the owner) enjoyed watching our little ones run all over and couldn't help but chuckle and comment on how busy we must be, but that we remind her of the country song "your gonna miss this" (a song that always makes me teary when I hear it). We finished off there, headed back into Armstrong, picked up lunch for the road and headed home to start the planting. I have a habit of getting in over my head, as a result, I might have a garden that is too big for me to handle. I filled my garden boxes with peppers, Swiss charred, gourmet lettuce, spinach, carrots, and cauliflower, and now need two more for my peas, beans, and a more carrots. My garden itself is over flowing with potatoes, squash, zucchini, pumpkins, cucumbers, and 10 potted Roma tomato plants.  Michael doesn't have a lot of faith in me, I have a tendency to start strong and fade as the summer goes on, and he has even less faith when it comes to my weeding ability, but I intend to at least try and prove him wrong, haha. I got planting, Michael went to work, and the kids ran around trying to help while I tried to distract them with other tasks.

my garden boxes, it is so much more satisfying to plant vegetables

that are started already, lol, no patience required!

The garden, the black buckets are my tomato plants, the

hills are all the squash type veggies and the dirt is where the potatoes will be

building more boxes for me :)

The new flower garden, lets hope it all grows and spreads out

like it should and that I remember to water it!

The girls did soon become distracted and I was able to continue planting and I could hear them giggling hysterically about something. When I would glance over towards them I could see that they were playing in the mud and getting very dirty but couldn't really figure out what was so funny. When I got too close to them they would run away laughing and hide around the corner. I could see them darting around the deck, the yard, and our vehicles all the while laughing away and talking about some friends of theirs and what great ideas they had. Soon Michael came up to the house from the barn on his quad and the girls went running over to him laughing so hard they could hardly talk. When Cheyanne could finally speak she laughingly said "hey dad, have you seen any dog poo around?" He was like "Dog Poo, what?" and Cheyanne and Emme burst into hysterics and started pointing around the yard. While the girls had been playing in very wet mud they were shaping it into perfectly formed dog poo clumps and hiding them around the house. Michael looked around and found dog poo on the van windshield, his truck grill, the deck, and just about everywhere else outside. He laughed with them for a moment and then was quick to inform them that the truck should not, under any circumstances, have dog poo on it again. I wish I had a picture of their fake poo all over their dad's truck, haha. As the girls told me about their dog poo making and how their friends had hid fake dog poo around the yard to fool their parents I couldn't help but laugh with them as they were so proud of the idea and being sneaky enough to hide it around the yard before we found it all.

Later in the day I had finished my vegetable planting and the kids and I headed down to the barn for a walk and a visit with Michael. When we were getting close to the barn Cheyanne was lagging behind the rest of us and she started calling me, "Mom, Mom, look" I stopped, looked, and saw her running towards me with her hands held out in front. She had caught a bird with her bare hands! These birds are called "Killdeer." They run along the ground most of the time and make their nests in the tall grass. The moms often run in front of the babies flapping and pretending to have a broken wing to lure predators away from the nest. The babies can't yet fly but run really fast! Somehow Cheyanne got close enough to one of the young birds to run behind it and grasp it in her little hands. I unfortunately didn't have my camera! It had crossed my mind when we left the house but I decided we had lots of pics at the barn and I didn't really feel like bringing it along, I should know better by now that if the camera crosses my mind I should go back for it because something cool always happens! Anyways I did take a picture of Cheyanne when we got back so I had one to say, "this was the day she caught the bird" with, and I managed to google an image of what the bird looked like, so that's the best I can do. We spent the rest of our time visiting daddy, getting a fresh drink of milk from the tank, and jumping on grandma and grandpa's tramp.

I google imaged the bird that she caught, this is what it looked like,

hers was a little bit older than this one I think though.

this is when we returned from her bird catching adventure,

the dirt on her face is from her fake dog poo making.

We ended our day with an evening meal that made it feel like summer was just around the corner! We ate outside on the deck and had gourmet sandwiches and a spinach, orange, strawberry salad complete with toasted almonds and sunflower seeds. I experimented and made my own orange vinaigrette dressing that turned out pretty well considering I just threw somethings together and crossed my fingers (next time I won't use rice vinegar though, it's a bit too strong). Michael headed back outside to build my flower bed and the I began the task of bathing all the kids. Once all the girls were clean Michael read them a bed time story on the deck while Mason had his bath and then we tucked them all into bed. The night didn't go so well after that, Mason was up for three hours that night and we think the coyotes may have gotten our last remaining cat, we haven't seen her since Saturday night. Every day is different, but rarely is one all good or all bad :)

stories on the deck with daddy so he could get back to

building the flower garden as soon as story time was done

the kids were so dirty after a day of planting and gardening,

they all needed good long baths!

Sunday morning brought more of the same joy we had experienced on Saturday. When Michael came in from chores we enjoyed our morning coffee together and then hurriedly got ready for church. It was communion Sunday and I am always touched by the Grace God has shown me which in turn reminds me to demonstrate this same Grace to my children and the people around me. After church we visited with friends and then headed home for lunch. My parents came out for a visit, we showed off the new garden and had coffee on the deck with them, they went home, Michael went to work, Cheyanne and I did an exploration photo shoot and the girls and I decided to walk to the barn again. Cheyanne tried so hard to catch another bird, and I did have my camera just in case, but she had no luck, she couldn't even find one of the young ones. As we walked home she told me, in a rather frustrated voice, how she had prayed and prayed that she would catch another bird and it just wasn't happening! I stifled a laugh and told her how lucky she was to have caught a bird with her hands, I explained that me and my sisters used to take our binoculars and a salt shaker outside with us to try and catch a bird (my dad told us as kids if we could put salt on a birds tail we would be able to tame it, haha, kids believe anything) but that we never did. She seemed satisfied that she was a lucky girl and decided to tell her class about the bird for news and sharing. We ended the day with dinner on the deck and started a new bed time story, our first real novel with no pictures, "The Princess and the Goblin" so far the girls are loving it! It was a weekend that made me feel like summer was just around the corner, I can't wait until summer time when school is out and all our commitments end and every day feels like the weekend, we can spend it however we feel like, bring on the beach!

having fun exploring the creek

she loves to pose for pictures :)