Thursday, June 16, 2011

Monkey in a Tree

I was looking for Brech today and could not find him. It was nap time and he has avoided a nap every day this week. I yelled "BRECH where are you?" He says "I up here on Rex's bed." So I walked up to find him. I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was a monkey in the tree. I thought you would like to see my "monkey in the tree" Brech.
TA DA
Swinging from the bed.
Feet on the bed, feet in the air!
Yes I know I'm cute....
Climbing the "tree" to a higher branch.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

A Morning Gift

Every morning I am treated to lovely gift from God. He has given me one of the sweetest blessings a mother can receive - A HAPPY WAKER UPPER. Miss Gianna wakes up, 9.5 times out of 10, in a very happy mood. She will smile and coo and just wait until you come to get her. Stephen used to be the same way when he was her age. This morning I decided to bring my camera with me to see what kind of special moments I could capture for you to see. ALSO - I wanted to make sure that her Grandma Bestgen got a good dose of Gianna mornings. Its almost as good as coffee. Almost.



What do you think of my gift?? I am one lucky mommy, blessed by God!!

Garden and Flowers


Welcome to Gebes Garden 2011 - Freshly Planted Edition....

We will start our tour with the mount of dirt directly in front of the gateway. I am the wrong person to be giving this tour as I did not plan a single thing this year. Darren says that he plants the garden, I tend it (including weeding and speaking lovely growing thoughts to tender plants), and we both harvest it. It works...
As I said - mounts of dirt. I am certain they are the squash and pumpkin hills - but not certain which is which. There is also a hill of zucchini requested by our sons so I can make more jelly. That is love in its purest form - mom allows zucchini in her garden so she can make more jelly for the boys. Please remind me of that love when it comes time to make the jelly. In the way back of the garden you can just barely see a very weedy patch of strawberry plants. They are doing GREAT this year. Now the trick will be to beat the animals to the lovely strawberries.
Now we will proceed with careful steps to the rear of the garden, or the north side, or the spot next to the weedy strawberry patch - call it whatever you wish. Here we have the tomato plants, pepper plants and your guess is as good as mine. I know he planted some peas in that section and possibly some beans.
This section of the garden will produce our magnificent onion crop. You gotta talk nice to onions or they don't grow. I learned my lesson last year! We planted extra onions so we could pickle some for my dad. I also had Darren plant extra carrots and tomatoes.
Ok - here we are standing between those magnificent onions and the tomatoes. We are looking southwest. It is just another view of what you have already seen. I just realized I did not get a close up picture of the carrots and the other things planted in the southeast corner. Oh well. I will photograph those magnificent onions, sweet and tender carrots and juicy, crunchy green beans when they start growing. Along with the mean and ugly weeds....booo hisss!!! (Gotta talk mean to them so they know they are NOT welcome!!)
Since the garden isn't showing its finer, greener side just yet...I thought I would post some of the color I found in our yard. Mostly green...followed closely by brown. Then I spotted a purple and yellow blessing by the tennis court. How beautiful! A lovely lady! I also spotted some yellow flowers, but didn't venture close enough for a picture. Maybe some other day.
AND the biggest, sweetest surprise was the first rose bud on my new Mother's Day rose bushes. I am a huge fan of yellow roses. They were my flower of choice for my wedding and still, to this day, are my favorite flowers on all of God's green earth.
This morning I found it had opened to a lovely shade of yellow. This is one of my favorite shades of yellow. Yes, I even have favorites yellows within the yellow family. Oh and don't get me started on my favorite oranges and greens.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Green Thumb Indeed

Our greenhouse plants are growing quite well. Here are a couple of pictures take a week after we planted the seeds. Stephen needs to transplant his cucumbers already. We will let them get a bit bigger before we plant them in the garden. I think that Cormac and Brech's flowers will do well in the front yard flower garden. Rex's sunflowers are growing nice, but we aren't sure where to plant them yet. Blase's tomato plants have a bit more growing to do.
We did set them outside in the sun yesterday. They grew leaps and bounds after some water and sunshine!!

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Baby Trees

While we were working in the garden last Saturday we found a handful of baby trees. Blase and I carefully dug them up and stored them in a container of water until we could get around to planting them. Blase is determined to grow them.

All was going just fine until Monday. A stinkin' little chipmunk managed to get itself stuck in the garage on Sunday. The garage door was open and it thought it should stay for a visit. Poor little thing was hungry so he helped himself to one of our acorns. I suppose that was incentive enough to get them planted.
Here is picture of one of the trees. It has also been a great science lesson. Especially since we studied Botany last school year.
First Blase placed the tree in the container.
Added some more soil...
Water the thirsty babies...
And watch them grow.......

A Jar of Worms

Blase is doing a science experiment of sorts. We found some worms while we were weeding the flower bed. We decided to keep them. If you find some worms you want to keep here's what you need:
First you need some black paper and tape.
Next you need a glass jar, filled with dirt. Then you put your worms inside.
You will need to wrap your black paper around the jar. We are leaving a gap on the top so that we can just slip the paper off the jar. You then need to leave the jar covered for a couple of days. When you are ready to see your worms, take the black paper off. You will see a surprise!! Maybe we will take a picture and show you our surprise.
A job well done!!

Saintly Brother

BLASE ROBERT BESTGEN
March 29, 1984 - June 6, 1984

Yesterday marked the 27th anniversary of my brother Blase's death upon this earth and entry into heaven. St. Blase pray for us!

I am such a heel because I talked to my mother TWO times yesterday and didn't even mention "Happy St. Blase's Day" to her. In my defense (piss poor as it is) I did think that yesterday was June 6th not the 7th. SOOO Happy St. Blase's Day (a day late) to my family!