Lily's Garden

Its that time of year again....Lily and I have our seeds started for the garden.  Our early starts include tomatoes, jalepenos, egg plant, cilantro, basil, and new for this year kale and tomatillos.  I've already used "big yellow" to till the "English Garden" once....the name given to our garden in the JC.  It'll get another round or four of tilling before we are ready to put everything in the first week of May.

 

Before that though, we'll put the kale out next week.  Kale likes the weather a bit cool and is frost resiliant....so we'll see how that goes.

Lily and I just couldn't handle being so far from our garden this spring, so we decided to use the beautiful dirt around one of the trees in the back yard to make a small raised bed.  We've got a few kale seedlings in it right now....hopefully squirrels like kale less than bird food!

Spring break

On the second day of spring break, we took a little trip to the playground.

That is, after an initial stop at Bis-ki-bill!

Where the wild things are

Apparently, they're at the Children's Museum in Winston-Salem. Thursday was the first day of a week and a half long spring break for the girls, so we decided to visit one of our favorite places!

If you're scared Hokie bird, just say you're scared

The Demon Deacons welcomed the Hokies to Winston-Salem for a rematch of an earlier loss to the Hokies in Blacksburg.  Apparently, Papa needs to do some talking to the Athletic Department at VT because the only thing CJ was interested in seeing was that "turkey".....who was apparently too scared to show up.  But the Deacon wasn't!  He rode his motorcycle in with his usual engine-revving swagga.

Unfortuantely for the Hokies, the Deacs were fired up and took it to them.  If you can make out the final score in the back right of this picture, you'd see Deacons 90 and Hokies 79.....yeah, we hung a 90 spot on them.  The 11 point margin of victory was an understatement for the flow of the game during the last 10 mintues...both teams sent in all the subs for the last minute or so....no starters to be found.

 We took this picture at the ACC Tournatment in Greensboro this week....maybe Papa will find some consolation in it.

 And these....well the girls are just being the girls, which makes us smile :)

Fire! Fire! Fire!

Emily and I have had gas fireplaces at every residence we've shared....until now. We have discovered a major advantage of our 50's themed digs in Winston....a real fireplace! We tried it out a couple of times (yes, smores were involved) and everyone loves it. Here are some pictures of the family enjoyment (and yes, I actually read the directions on how to burn a log....occupational hazard.)

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Finally, Lily owes Papa a picture of her two adult teeth coming in....here we go!

Jump Rope for Heart

Lily is participating in a fundraiser at her school.  They are raising money for the American Heart Association by having a Jump Rope festival.  Hear a special word from Lily:

If you would like to help, you can click on the link below to visit her webpage at the AHA:

Help Lily Jump!

Eight Years

On the way to school today, I told Lily about the significance of this day.
The first day, eight years ago, of her Grandaddy's life in Heaven.

There have been so many moments during these last six months, that I have longed to share with him.  I can imagine his excitement watching our soccer Deacs throughout the season.  I know, despite the distance, he would have been here.  In my head, I recapped many games for him, imagining the conversation we would have had.  I feel he would have been so excited about what I'm doing and this brings me comfort.

You are missed, Dad, and loved so dearly.

Finger paint

The girls seem to be up to something that involves finger paint....wonder what it could be?

Glamping

Emily is currently in Honduras on a medical mission trip.  She left early in the morning on Friday (so early, in fact, that is was almost late Thursday night!)  We've all missed her, though I think Lily is at an age when she can understand more of what is happening and felt it a bit more.  CJ was said until she saw the next shiny object.

To help get our minds off how much we missed our Mama, we decided to go on a "camping" trip to Johnson City.  On the way, Uncle Chipper informed us that this is actually called "glamping"....glamorous camping.  When we got to the house we gave it a good showing, particularly with the food.  We ate camping staples such as hot dogs, mac and cheese and smores.  We even camped out on an air matress in the living room....this worked out until the middle of the night when the dog paw tapping on hard wood, refridgerator knocking sound and blinking Christmas tree lights combined with the sheer cold to force us all into the master bed.  We couldn't even handle camping in the living room!

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the fun.

Did I mention that we baked ginger bread cookies too?

Candy Rain

Grown-up Girl Bonding Time

Part of Emily's duties involves covering the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Today, she is on call at their performance of The Nutcracker. We decided it would be fun if she took Lily to the play for a big girls afternoon out. They took the opportunity to get dressed up.....here they are looking great before their big afternoon out!

Chillin' with the Boys

As they find new and creative ways to relax....its great to be a dog