How Does Your Garden Grow, Phase II...

This weekend we finally got dirt in our boxes and gravel in the walkway. We just need to set up the watering system and we'll be ready to plant, yay! I had an event with Everett to go to (blog coming soon) on Saturday morning so I left Doug and little bro Corey to the gardening... I would have just been in the way anyway. Earlier in the week I asked Doug what I could do to help and he said "make lunch" boy, are we in 1950 or what?! Unfortunately it was probably true, considering I move slow and usually am distracted by a 1 year old. By the time Ev and I returned the boxes were full of beautiful rich soil and the truck was full of gravel ready to dump. I have never seen two people work so fast! I am so glad I found myself a handy guy :-)

Ev helping unload the gravel (AKA playing with rocks)

Ev helping me water, and discovering mud

Drinkin from the hose is fun!

A Visit from Baby Elliot (and his mom and dad)

Our friends the Roa's came down from Portland and brought the most precious piece of cargo, 4 week old Elliot Graham. Some of you may remember Calie and I became friends when she was a Rotary exchange student living with my family 11 years ago. She came back to go to college where she met her wonderful husband Anthony. They are currently living in Portland as Calie attends the dental school at OHSU and are hoping to move back when she is done (yeah!). We miss them terribly especially since Elliot has arrived. Its hard to miss out on one of the biggest events in one of your best friends lives.

We had a great weekend spending time with Elliot. I couldn't stop rubbing his fuzzy little head and changing his diapers (for some reason he liked to poop when I was holding him). We can't wait to visit with them again!

Here are some pics of Elliot's visit.

Everett always needed to be in Mommy's lap when Elliot was

Papa Anthony and Baby E

Smilin

the boys (never did get a great shot of the two of 'em)

just like riding a bike...

They meet at last

How Does Your Garden Grow...

Doug, Everett and I are embarking on a courageous adventure of growing our own vegetables this year! I grew up on home grown veggies and would love to be someone who knows how to produce her own produce! Each blog I do will contain some blurb about the progress of our garden.

Last weekend, in between hail storms and bike races, Doug managed to build 3 garden boxes that we intend to plant corn, tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, scallions, radishes, carrots, squash and maybe an artichoke plant or two. We have a little bit of room for and additional small box if we feel really motivated to plant some watermelon or something. We are starting with a manageable plot of land and hopefully will not get overwhelmed. Here are some shots of our garden spot and the beautiful boxes!

The small patch on the side of the house, once filled with space age weeds

Prepping

Buildin

Box one down

Box two and three... almost there!

This is what can happen

When your baby decides not to take a nap for a couple days...

It's Official

Doug has began race season. Today was the first in a series of three races, The Southern Oregon Time Trial. Doug not only exceeded his expectation for the individual race with a time of 35:19 (beating last years time by 5 minutes) but his team took second place in the first annual "Team TT". This is pretty exciting because Doug took the initiative to put together a team to compete, and I'd say he did an amazing job selecting team mates! It was rainy and freezing and windy and completely miserable but they still kicked butt!

About to take off. It's okay she has her hands there.

The team coming in for a finish (bad camera timing)

Shocking... another cold race day!
I think we have a thousand pictures like this.

Everett is now officially in a big boy bed. Saturday night we set up his twin bed and he went right to sleep in it with absolutely no problems. I slept horribly thinking he was going to fall off the bed but so far so good. He looks so tiny in it, it makes me realize how much of a baby he still is! He has started to use everything in the house as a jungle gym, climbing up precariously and then often tumbling down, one of his new tricks also is walking backwards... he thinks that feels pretty neat, and of course the dancing.



Pregnancy is beginning to take its toll. I'm just a little over 2 weeks away from being in the 3rd and final trimester. It's gone by so quickly this time! Little Brother is a busy boy, he moves so much more than Everett did. This scares me because if Everett is my calm child we are going to be in serious trouble. I'm starting to have trouble breathing, sleeping, and am moving much slower. The only thing that keeps me content is knowing how much harder it is when they come out.

So that's whats up with the Striley's this week. More race series pictures to come as I get better with the camera! Lets hope for nice weather next week!!

Life in Technicolor

Who doesn't dance like a fool to Coldplay?

Big Boy Bed

In preparation for Little Brother we have decided to transition Ev into a "big boy bed". Last night we semi-successfully put Ev to bed without the confinement of bars. Our strategy is to slowly transition to a twin bed by first having him sleep on his crib mattress on the floor. It only took about 30 minutes of crying/whining and 3 trips by us to lay him back down (his strategy was to roll off the mattress crawl to the bedroom door and knock, kick, and cry... it was kind of amusing for sadistic mommy) and he was fast asleep. I was completely impressed by this!

My anxiety level is still pretty high, it just seems odd to let him be so independent so young, but we want to get him used to a regular bed way before little brother arrives so we won't have two cryin kids in the middle of the night. I'm hoping the next few nights are even better and we can get him in his regular twin sized bed soon.

We are still open to ideas on transition strategies if anyone has a suggestion please leave a comment!