Berry Pickin & Tadpole Collecting

Mike got home from his week in Nashville yesterday so we decided to head out to do a few things today. One stop was at a place called Belvedere Plantation. I've been looking for a place to take the kids to pick strawberries that was fairly close to home. Most of the places I had found were farther than I wanted to go. I knew this place existed but didn't know they grew strawberries there until last week. It's less than 10 miles from our house so off we went to go strawberry picking today. It was a really nice day since it finally decided to stop raining. It's rained so much over the past week. When we got there we got to go on a hayride out to the strawberry field.

Joshua thought that was pretty cool. They gave us each a picking tray, although we gave 3 back. Each tray could hold up to 10 pounds of berries and we certainly don't have a use for 40 pounds! They had several fields and there were PLENTY of berries for everyone. We didn't fill up our tray. We ended up picking about 5 pounds which was plenty for us. I mostly took them for the fun of picking since they've never done it before.

After we finished picking we took another hayride back to the market to pay for what we picked (minus what was eaten in the field). We noticed a pen that had a mama goat and some brand new babies in it. Aren't they cute? This little white one was very social. He wanted to be pet like a little doggie. What a cutie.

We'll have to make sure we go strawberry picking there every season. What fun! We had a really great time. Except for that swarm of bees. Not so much fun. I missed it when I went to pay for our berries, but apparently they passed Mike and Cassie while they were looking at the goats and headed in to the moon bounce where Joshua was jumping. Luckily they left quickly. I'm kinda sorry I missed it. I've never seen a swarm of bees before.

I went with Joshua on his field trip Thursday. All of the kindergarten classes went to a large park that has a big creek out in the woods where they were to go dip netting for creatures. They had a really good time. Joshua's little friend Mason was assigned to stay with Joshua and I for the day. When it was their classes turn to go to the creek they handed me a jar and 2 nets. I knew they were catching stuff but I didn't know they were keeping it. They got a lot of things, mostly tadpoles and a few things with legs. Guess who got to sift through the junk in the nets and scoop out the creatures and put them in the jar. Uh huh. That would be me. So gross! Ick! And yes, that bite I got on my hand from whatever creature is feeling better....geez. Standing in a creek and fishing for gooey things, not my cup of tea. I acted like I was having a ton of fun though. Mostly cause a lot of the other moms didn't..lol. The boys thought I was pretty cool and that's good enough for me. I was muddy and really smelly when I got back but I'm really glad I went. He thought I was just the coolest mom ever and has suggested that I go buy some nets so we can go do it again. They caught a lot of things and were really excited when they got to dump what they caught in the container that was going back to school.

I don't break for squirrels

I used to break for the hairy little rats. I haven't always thought they were bad. There was a time when I sorta liked them. Things do change you know. I'm not a hunting woman. In fact, I'd be one of the least likely people in the world to hunt. I'm not opposed to hunting, I just like to keep far away from it and have no desire to ever see something that I might be eating. While I know where it comes from, in my happy little world it comes from the grocery store and that's it. I'm funny that way. If I'm fixing to eat chicken and think about it actually being a chicken, I can't eat it. I'd be a very happy vegetarian you see. If I told you right now that I didn't have a burning desire to grab a gun and take out every squirrel in this forest I'd be lying. I love animals, not rodents. They're annoying and destructive. Go ahead and play chicken when I'm driving next time. I hope you're not too shocked when you realize you're walking through the gates of squirrely hell. Why my sudden hatred of squirrels? Well since you asked......I've never really liked them. I just like them a whole lot less now.

The kids know that I love birds and that I like watching them. One of the things they got me for Mother's Day was a large bird feeder. Mike hung it in a tree on a very narrow branch away from all the others. He put it there because he didn't think the squirrels could get to it and because I could see it out of my kitchen window. They also got me a huge bag of seeds for it. The seeds they got were meant to attract cardinals and it did. I watched a bunch of cardinals, sparrows, and robins eating out of it. I noticed some squirrels on the tree and saw them trying to get to the branch but it was too skinny. They couldn't seem to get a hold of it. I think it was really ticking them off too because on the second day after he put it up, it looked like a squirrel was hissing at the birds. I looked out the window a little while later and instead of seeing cardinals you know what I saw? One of the ugly little rats was hanging upside down by his feet from the branch, with his thieving little hands in the seed knocking them all out on to the ground. This is a large bird feeder and he kicked out over half the seed. I was so mad! He was kicking it out for all of his friends! There must've been 15 squirrels down there eating while he was kicking them out. If I would've had a grenade there would have been mass squirrel casualties. I obviously had to take the bird feeder down for now. Mike's been in Nashville all week so I'll have him figure out another place to put it when he gets home. Unless we put it back and he gets me squirrel ammo.

Speaking of Mike being in Nashville, this is one business trip I'm not jealous of. I hope he's having a great time down in country music land....ick. I hope his next trip is somewhere interesting because if it is and the timing's ok I might go with him. I wish I could've gone to California with him one of the last times. At one point he mentioned Hawaii. If he ever goes to Hawaii, I'll definitely be on that plane. I don't care if the timing's not right...lol. I do feel bad though...he's been sick most of the time he's been gone. I've not been feeling like myself today either...my head hurts and my throat's all scratchy. I hope I feel better tomorrow because I'm chaperoning Joshua's field trip. We're dip netting for dragonflies and other things on the bank of a lake. I wasn't comfortable at all with letting him go to a lake without me.

We took Cassie downtown on Saturday for that ice cream eating contest. You shoulda seen how much ice cream they brought them! I never would have thought...wow. They each had a bucket filled with scoops of vanilla ice cream, with chocolate syrup, brownies, and whip cream. She didn't win but she sure did have fun trying. I especially liked watching her and the bald guy race each other...lol. He came in second.

Spidey and that darn fairy

She's done! Woo hoo! I finally finished that "never ending" piece I was working on. Really, it didn't take THAT much time out of my life. 19 days but who's counting?? I really don't think the project would have bothered me so much if I wasn't having thread issues. Let me start from the beginning.....




I was in the shop looking for a small-medium sized fairy or angel piece to stitch for a gift. Not one of those L&L or Mirabilia monsters but something smaller and doable within a couple of weeks at the most. I did see a new release from Mirabilia that I really liked and the stitch count wasn't bad at all. It's Poppy from the Pixie Coutoure collection. Such a pretty little Pixie and I know the recipient would love her but I wondered if I'd have enough time to get her done. Someone overheard me talking and offered to let me borrow a chart she had called Fairy Stitcher from Passione Ricamo. It's a free chart but can't be copied or reproduced in any way so she lent it to me. I was really excited because the cahrt didn't look big and it was all in one color. All I'd need is a single color of thread and a cut of fabric. I headed over to the rack of Sampler Threads and picked out a skein of Briar Rose. I then picked up a second skein of it because the chart didn't say how much thread I'd need and I didn't want to come up short. That left one skein of it on the rack. I headed over to the fabric and settled on a really pretty piece of 28 ct. Vintage Cashel linen in Pink Whisper. I wasn't paying any attention when she cut the fabric. When I took it out when I got home I thought surely the piece of fabric was so big because she wanted me to have tons of room for framing. Nope. I didn't even pay attention to the stitch count when she handed me the chart. After all, the chart looked way smaller than Poppy. After I started stitching the first part of that wing I realized quickly that this wasn't the case. Oh well...I liked her fine and bought the stuff for her so plugging along we go. Oh my, look how quickly we ran out of that first skein of thread...hmmmm. Ok, on to the next skein......this one seems to be going just as fast. I'd better hurry and run back to the shop and get that last skein before somebody else does. That would stink something fierce if I ran out and had to get it somewhere else, don't ya know? Being how's the thread is hand dyed and all, the likelihood of getting the same dye lot from another shop, not good. Ok, get to the shop, grab last skein. Come back, on we go. Ya know....it's looking like this #%$&*&^&*#@ fairy is gonna need more than 3 skeins! Not good! I bought the only 3 the shop had. Hmmmm...I could drive to my fav shop in Alexandria. Nah.....gas is too much.....it would cost me at least $25 just to get there and back for some thread. Ok, I'll call and hope for the best. I asked if they had any of the stinkin Briar Rose and they come back just as sweet as pie to tell me they have a whole handful of it. Great, I need to order a couple of skeins (because we know if I only order the one I'll need 2!). Sure they said. I explained to them my dilemma with said fairy and she got quiet for a minute. She then asked me if my skeins were more purple, pink, or red. No..no, no, no, no, no! Cause she had several different shades of Briar Rose. So what do ya do??? Ya order ever darn one of them and hope for the best :(. So they come and I carefully open the envelope to discover none of them are just like the ones I had used. There were bits and pieces in some. So what do ya do now? Ya dissect the thread. Ya pull out all the little bits that will work and realize after you've finished the whole project that a smidge of it is a wee bit brighter than the rest and hope nobody can tell. So can you tell? Look at her. Lie to me if ya can. I really need you to lie to me and tell me you can't tell. Cause if you don't you might wanna throw me a life jacket so I don't drown in my tears. What lesson have I learned? Next time I do a project in one color, find a place that has 10-50 skeins and buy it all. I can't believe I thought 2 would be enough...then 3...then...well I can't tell you how many since I had to butcher the other skeins. I honestly thought I could finish it in a week and it took nearly 3. Turns out I probably could have stitched Poppy after all. Perhaps for Christmas. I need to get her framed. If the frame shop can't finish her by the 23rd I'll probably just have to do it myself. Which wouldn't be the worse thing in the world since I've had some interesting framing experiences with shops before. Alas, she's done and now I can get on with my life. Whew.



I'm pretty sleepy today. I stayed up late last night because we were under a tornado warning for about an hour. Who knew? I didn't even know they have tornadoes here. I think they followed us from Texas. It was thundering really loud all night and when I did go to bed it scared the poo outta me it was so loud. Nice lightening display too. Except for when I went potty and got a really good show while sitting under that skylight (see pic in a previous post). I didn't stay there long...lol.





So when I'm getting ready to leave to take the kids to school this morning, this was guarding the front door so instead of killing it I decided to catch it. I don't kill things once they get to be a certain size. He's so big I think he needs a name. Anyone know what kind of spider this is? He's sitting upstairs in a rubbermaid take-along waiting for Mike to get home to release him. Oh you wanna know why I'm not releasing him? Why, because he's a jumper of course and I figure if I let him go he's coming after me. I just couldn't have this little buggy walking around my house. Eww!


For all of my stitching friends, there's a really great contest here if you'd like to enter. The blog is called Stitch Pink and the contest is called the Pink Fiber Heaven contest. The hope of the site is to bring awareness of the importance of breast screening, and early detection of breast cancer. Really great site. Be sure to leave a comment so you'll be entered to win some of those pretty pink threads.

Keep your eyeballs open for my next post. I hope to take ya on a field trip in Historic Downtown Fredericksburg. Or at least start it. Cassie is participating in an ice cream eating contest at the Fudge Factory tomorrow so I should have lots of fun pics to share. What fun, I can't wait. She's really excited.

Duck, Duck, Duck, Goose!

I was SO bad today but it was SO good! I took the day off from my quest to drop a few pounds to celebrate Mother's Day a wee bit early. Mike is leaving on a business trip to Nashville on Mother's Day so since he had today off, we decided to go out today instead. I doubt very seriously we would've gone out on Mother's Day anyway. The restaurants are far too busy. It was much nicer going today. He and I went out to lunch. I LOVE Mexican food and we hadn't had any since we moved so we decided to try a place out today. It was SO yummy! I quickly discovered though that the Mexican food they have here isn't like the Tex Mex I'm used to eating at home. I SO miss El Chicos. Whenever we do manage to make it back home, that'll be my first stop. Yuuuuuuuummy. The restaurant we went to today was still really good. I had a chicken enchilada with a chile relleno. Yum yum. It was nice to go out without the kids today. I miss having someone to watch them so we can go out. The restaurant we went to was in Central Park. I did take my camera so we could start off our field trip there but when I took my first pic it said memory full on it. I knew that was bologna because I just bought a new SD card. I opened up the card compartment and realized I left my card at home. I can take a few pics that are just stored on my camera. It lets me take a whopping 4, give or take a couple..sheesh. I decided to postpone my blogging field trip when I found some other things I just had to take pics of.

If this isn't one of the prettiest little mamas in the

world I don't know what is. 9 babies! Could you imagine? I certainly couldn't. Happy early Mother's Day, ducky.

And while this mama is taking care of all of these babies by herself, I see these daddy's waiting right outside the restaurant doors having a siesta and waiting for scraps. And why oh why are you sitting back while she's taking care of all of these kids? Hmmmm??

After we got in to the car I wanted to drive across the street to a pond where we saw a lot of geese. I discovered when we pulled out we didn't need to go over there because there were geese right in front of us. This is the first time I've seen one of these as a baby. They're a lot bigger than the baby ducks. So cute...aren't they pretty? I wanted to get closer but when I was a teenager I had a friend who was chased by a goose and it wasn't pretty so I decided to keep my distance. I love birds.

After we picked the kids up from school we took them to the Coldstone Creamery. We hadn't been before and some coupons came in the Sunday paper. I'm not usually an ice cream eater but it was SO good! So you pick out which kind of ice cream you want. In my case..no our cause Mike picked the same thing as me cause I'm a good picker of things and stuff. I picked cake batter ice cream. You can pick one topping/mix in. Well, you can pick more than 1 but our coupon was for 1 and I didn't want to pay for any more. So I picked brownies. She took the ice cream and put it on a smooth surface. Then she took the brownie and sat it on top of the ice cream and just sort of mashed it all together. After she finished she put it in a chocolate dipped waffle bowl. That ice cream was SO good! I've definitely had my sugar/Mexican food fix for a while. Back to my regular schedule tomorrow. It was all pretty bad but it was a lot of fun :)

I'm happy to say I see a light at the end of the tunnel in regards to this never ending stitching project. I plan to stay up and finish it tonight. It's not that it's taken forever, it just caused a few issues and took a lot longer than I thought it would. Hopefully I'll have a pic to post in the next day or two. I've got to make a mad dash to the framers or it'll never be finished in time. It may not anyway because I need it by the 23rd *sigh*. My new Prairie Schooler charts have been screaming at me to stitch something from them. They're patiently waiting for me to finish "whats her face".

My favorite tree

I got to thinking when I was driving around running errands yesterday that I should have brought my camera with me. There are so many things around here that I want to show everyone. I want everyone to see some of the things I see and the places I go. I'm going to try to make it a point to keep my camera with me so I can take you all on a field trip of sorts. We're not venturing out today but I got to looking and there are plenty of things to show you around here. For today, we'll talk about my favorite tree, shall we? It's in our backyard. It's really really tall and really pretty. We have a lot of animals in the forest, tons of squirrels. I've yet to see one brave enough to meander up to the top of it. Did I mention a little while back that there were some deer back here? Yep. Cassie came in and told me but I didn't believe her. She took the April fool's thing a little too far this year so I thought she was messing with me. I went out there and sure enough, there were a couple just laying around enjoying the breeze. Back to the tree.....I tried to take a single pic for ya but not gonna happen because it's so tall so I took pictures in parts for ya. In all it's glory I bring you my favorite tree:

Isn't it great? All of that is one tree! And you know where else I can see said tree without going outside? In the bathroom. Here's your view if sitting on the potty. I can't tell you how many times I've sat there looking up when the wind was blowing really hard praying that one of those branches didn't decide to snap.

Seriously mom, have we not taken enough pics of trees already???

Speaking of trees, I got to thinking that we use way too many paper napkins. I kinda feel guilty when I think about how many we use. I'm thinking that I should invest in some cloth napkins and only use paper napkins to pack in lunch boxes.

Yesterday was the best mail day ever! Not only did I receive two Prairie Schooler charts that I ordered, but I also received an OOP (out of print) Prairie Schooler chart that I won on ebay. The OOP chart is book #10, A Prairie Christmas. The cover is a little worn because the chart is so old (23 years!) but it's perfectly readable and I'm thrilled to add it to my collection. The 2 charts that I ordered are books # 55 & 56, Garden Blooms and Garden Birds. I love the Garden Blooms chart and have plans for those flowers. The funny thing is, yesterday morning way before the mail ran I had to run several errands. One of which was stopping by the stitching shop to pick up a couple of things that someone wants me to finish for them. I knew my other charts would be coming in soon but I've been having some "getting a new Prairie Schooler chart" withdrawals so I bought Cranberry Christmas while I was there. Oops! He he! Yesterday was a great Prairie Schooler day and I plan to stitch some of these things up after I finish this never ending gift I'm stitching. Have some Prairie Schooler charts that you don't want that I don't have? I'd just be ever so thrilled to take them off your hands. It's an addiction I tell ya. In a perfect world they'd re release some of their retired charts :).

Another birthday gone

My baby turned 7 on Friday *sniff*. Time sure has flown by. I think for a few weeks there I might have been going through some sort of "my baby's not a baby anymore and I think I might need another one" thing. I only told 2 people about that, one being my husband. He thought I had lost my mind and I think I nearly did. Since the day I had Joshua, I said I'd never have another one, two was all I wanted. I don't know. Being up here all alone had me thinking I needed to repopulate my corner of the world and then I wouldn't be so lonely. I sobered up though and realized it's best for me to not have anymore. Back to the birthday boy....

He had a really good day. We didn't have a big party for him this year, we will next. I don't really know anyone he goes to school with nor do I know their mothers. I thought it best that I take cupcakes and goodie bags to school during snack time and then we had our own little celebration after school. He was really excited that is birthday was on pajama day. One thing I did learn with the cupcakes I ordered is to make sure they're all the same color and that the picks on top of them were exactly the same. They all had happy face rings on them. 16 were yellow, 4 were red, and 4 were orange. I didn't order them that way, that's just what they stuck on there. Everyone thought they needed orange or red and didn't seem to think it was fair if they got yellow. Ungrateful little turkeys. I'm certain that if there would have only been 4 yellow, they all would have wanted them. He's really excited because he's the oldest one in his class. I'm glad we had him do kindergarten again this year. That was one of the best things that we've done. It was hard, but good.

After school we came home to have cake and open presents. He was in a hurry to get those things done though. We told him we'd take him to eat dinner and then we'd take him to this big indoor/outdoor amusement place called Funland. It's really expensive so not a place we'll be visiting often. They got to ride the bumper cars, play mini golf, play pool, slide down huge windey slides, and ride on this really cool thing called the frog hopper.It takes you way up and then drops ya down, then back up, then down a bunch of times. They loved it and I know they must have rode that thing at least 6 or 7 times. Every time they got finished they'd get right back in line again. He got quite a bit of birthday money this year so after we finished up at Funland we headed out to do some shopping. He found a lot of goodies. I think his favorite thing was a Wii sports pack he picked up. It has the baseball bat, tennis racket, and golf club. It's a good thing he had that birthday money because I wouldn't have bought it. That Wii stuff is pretty pricey. He picked it out all by himself. I was surprised that he chose that. He was really excited that HE was buying something that everyone could use. I thought it was really sweet. He's a really thoughtful little guy. He had a really good birthday.

Cassie had a date last night with some girlfriends. Another one of her friends just turned 10 and her mother called to ask me if Cassie could come over for a girl's night. Her new BF and another friend from class were coming too. It wasn't an all night thing, her mother brought them home at 10:30. We did drop her off and while I can say not much as surprised me since we've lived here, what we drove up to certainly did. This was the first time I had been in to this neighborhood. That house was enormous . It looked like something off of TV. I think all 4 of us gasped when we pulled up. I took her in and honestly was afraid to touch the doorbell. I stayed a whole 2 minutes I think. Just long enough to give her mother our address for when she brought her back home. I waited for her on the front porch when she got back. I was pretty anxious to hear about her night. She told me that her friend's house has several bathrooms, 2 dining areas, 2 living areas, a bunch of bedrooms, a theatre with the seats and everything, a game room with a pool table, air hockey, and tons of other things, and a gym with tons of exercising equipment. I know I'm forgetting some other things. I think I stopped listening when she was talking to me after she got to the theatre part. Here's the shocker, her friend is an only child and her mom is a stay at home mom. I'm telling you that house had to have cost a bazillion dollars. I'd love to know what her dad does. Maybe they won the lotto or something. They had so much fun! So much in fact she told me this morning everything that she told me last night again...lol. Some of her friends here really have a lot. I hope she doesn't start to think that she needs what they have. I'm doubting very seriously that we'll ever have a theatre in our house no matter how big that house might be. I don't watch TV much at all and the idea of sinking so much in to it seems like a waste to me. I'd rather spend it on trips or something. I hope you all had a great weekend! My exercise bike is calling my name. Not the one in my gym, the one in my living room...lol! So off I go....

Back to my regularly scheduled programming.....

I'm good now. Thanks to those of you who emailed me and sent cheery thoughts. I really appreciated them! I'm fine now....really I am. I had a very good & productive day. I was supposed to get my Santa Fe inspected before the end of April but didn't. I tried last week but I couldn't find a place. I went to 4 different places one day thinking they'd do it but they didn't. I got tired of looking so put it off. I remembered yesterday when half of Fredericksburg remembered they needed to get theirs done too. The first place I went said there was a 2 hour wait. The second place said a 2.5 hour wait. The third place said a 3 hour wait so I gave up at that point and decided to go this morning instead. I'm glad I did because I was only there for about 45 minutes. After they inspected it they removed a pesky nail from one tire and a piece of metal from another. I'm not surprised, living out here in the sticks and all. I'm glad they noticed them. After I left there I finished up Joshua's b-day shopping. I can't believe he's gonna be 7 tomorrow! It seems like I just brought him home from the hospital. Every time I think about being in the hospital when I had him, I get so sad. I had my camera with 2 new rolls of film for everyone to take pictures for me. I don't know who ended up with my camera but can you believe not one single picture was taken of me with Joshua? There were a lot of pictures with Mike and him & Mike's family and him but not one single solitary picture of me and him. It breaks my heart every time I think about it. Obviously I couldn't take them myself. I didn't think to ask anyone to take pictures of me and my baby, I just assumed the dummies would know to do it.

While I was out I picked up a couple of picture frames for a couple of Mother's Day gifts. How great are these? I took my SD card and popped it in to one of those Kodak picture maker things at CVS. I've printed pictures off of that thing dozens of times but just noticed this time that there is a choice to make a photo collage. I decided to give it a whirl and created these neat collages from pictures I took of the kids a couple of weeks ago at Virginia Beach. Can you believe it only cost $1.69 to make each of these?! You get to pick your background color and everything. Definitely a bargain and they look great. I didn't realize you could make greeting cards on that thing too. If I hadn't have already bought Mother's Day cards I would have made them on that. They're only $1.69 too. I'll definitely be making some Christmas cards on it. That Kodak picture maker is a very cool thing. I think I'm going to be making a lot of these collages in the future.

I am pleased to report that my forest is in full bloom and the trees are no longer naked. I haven't planted any flowers yet but I should. I'd be more inclined to if I didn't stink at it so much. Gardening is just not my thing. Mike keeps saying it's because I don't try. I don't want to try, it's not my thing...lol. We do have several bushes/shrubs/hedges, whatever you call them that are in bloom. We have about 7 of these but I'd like to get more. Do any of you know what kind of bushes these are? I'd like to know what they are called so I can get some more of them. The flowers are really pretty. I hate that they're fixing to drop off. I love spring here. It's so pretty.