Jessica's Blog

~*~Jessica~*~

Notice that Evangeline got bored waiting for the picture to snap and decided to snack on her toes... too sweet.

The kids pointed out the nest...

How quaint...

It is virtually impossible *not* to take a ton of pictures of Evangeline!

I love how big her eyes get when she's trying to get something in her mouth!

Now how can anyone not love all of that white chubbiness?

~*~My little Sanni...

No, the bees are not my friends, but we have been trying to get along for the past two days... and failing. And when we start to fail in sharing space I end up running around the yard yelling and screaming and waving my arms about. Now, people look at me funny, and say that there's no reason to do that, but they have also been stung numerous times in their lifetime... my method has kept me sting-free, so why reform?

The weather here in Colorado has cooked up to a whoppin' *almost* 85 degrees... or at least it will be tomorrow. I enjoy warm weather, within reason. We had a few wonderfully rainy days over the last two weeks, but as predicted, it has stopped... most likely for the whole summer. We have been in a drought for the last two years, we are under constant water restrictions. So with no rain, lots of sun, and when it's sunny it's windy... we spend a good part of the summer coughin' dust.

Knowing that it was going to be hot again today, I went out early this morning to get the other half of our garden planted. I know a lot of you have gardens that are way past the starting stage, but our growing season is about half of what everyone else's is. In other words, it snowed last week, seriously!

Yesterday we did some flowers, including a beautiful climbing yellow rose, and half of the vegetable garden. This year's crop is going to be~ cucumbers, a tomato plant that I'm trying to save, peppers, pumpkins, zucchini, carrots, lettuce and spinach. We wanted to do more, but since we are planning on moving and are unsure of when that will be, we kept it small and to what we know will really grow. Our zucchini always does extremely well, the average size of them is usually 8-14 inches and makes the best fried zucchini! Tomatoes don't seem to like our soil... so whether I get the one plant to produce anything is debatable... and cucumbers went nuts last year! I tried to get enough of them at one time to make pickles, but we kept eating them!

Had to get some pictures while I was out there! ~*~

~*~ This was a very special find near our front porch. My Mom had two miscarriages in a row two years ago and planted these... they didn't bloom until now, one for each of the babies.

Our family is one that likes to be up bright and early in the morning... with the occasional bout of just not being able to get up. Anyone who knows us, knows that we are in bed at or by 10 o'clock. For our night owl friends, it just doesn't click. The phone rang the other night at 9:30, a sound that could have woken the dead... I was walking upstairs with my herb pillows to heat up, and to re-heat my tea. After checking to see how much tea I had spilt and observing that Evie was now awake and crying, I answered the phone, it was a friend from Utah. He wanted to know if he could talk to Mike. I plied him with a rhetorical question, "Do you know what time it is?"... sure, it's 9:30. Mmhm, just thought I'd ask.

Recently, busyness, tiredness, and struggling with going to sleep had gotten me out of the habit of getting up early at all, and therefore I wasn't getting up until six or six-thirty. For a lot of people, that is very early. For me, it isn't nearly early enough! Getting up at six or later usually means I have just enough time to grab my clothes and get in the shower with children running out of bed right behind me. It also means no quiet time... no time to read, pray, and write.

So the other morning, I simply decided I was going to start getting out of bed, no matter how tired I felt, enough was enough. My alarm went off at 4:30, before I could be tempted to hit the snooze button, I got up and walked upstairs to the kitchen. It was raining, how I love to just sit and listen to the rain! I stood staring out the window in the dark for a full 10 minutes... without moving once, not even to turn my head. I had time to just think without anyone saying a thing, no one wanted to ask me something, no one needed something, I didn't have a quick look out the window before having to tear off somewhere, I just stood there. I couldn't have done that if I had gotten up at six... I had time to make a pot of coffee and have quiet time for an hour before I had to even look at another human being! I have time to write in my journal, read my bible and any other books that I am using.

I have been loving it so much this week! It makes such a difference in my day, and I'm ready and downstairs early enough to make muffins for breakfast, without it running into lunch. I read on someones blog last week about how she never makes anything for breakfast, though she has lovely, nostalgic ideas of sitting down with a cup of coffee and a fresh muffin and jam. No, she confessed that she sleeps through dawn and rises early enough to have a burger at one. How depressing. If only she knew how wonderful it is to get up to see dawn...

A few packages needed to be dropped off at the Post Office yesterday afternoon, generally my job so I got everything packed, labeled and stamped. As I was passing through the kitchen I noticed the children scattered about with coloring books and cards, so I asked "Who wants to go for a ride?". An uproar of voices is heard along with the thunderous sound of feet blowing in all directions for for shoes and jackets. Blank stares from Mother as she inquires if I'm going to take everybody? Sure, why not?

Due to a very busy and stressful week, I have avoided my blog. My step-dad had surgery on Monday, so the house and children have needed extra attention. We are just now starting to get caught up with, everything.

After getting lots of good sleep last night, Mom and I still managed to get out of bed early enough to go for a walk. The weather has been so pretty this week, very windy... but I don't mind that, I love blustery days. I love it when we are up early enough to enjoy the weather, take a shower and go to the store all before 8:30 in the morning!

We may not have very many trees here, (I'm from the east coast, so no, relatively speaking we do not have a lot of trees here), but we do have lots and lots of birds. We put up a bird house a month or two ago, and the kids have been dropping little handfuls of bird seed in there to see what they could attract. It didn't take long, soon we had what looked to be the bird club on our back fence. Now we have a permanent visitor who has been busy building a nest. I caught this one this morning with the camera~

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