Elizabeth is a cherry snob

We picked up some Bing cherries at Yokes a few days ago. Nathan and I were snacking on them today.

Elizabeth said, "I don't like that kind. I ONLY eat Rainiers."

We're going to Royal this weekend. I'm sure Papa Norm will be able to find some cherries to pick somewhere. I'm not sure they'll be good enough for the 3 year old cherry snob though.

Swimming Lessons

 

Hydroseed

A big truck with a big hose showed up at our house today so the kids were thrilled. The guys sprayed out the grass seed. We'll just keep it watered 4-5 times a day for the next month and we should have some nice grass! 

Elizabeth writes her name for the first time!

Elizabeth hasn't shown much interest in writing. I've never wanted to push her and have her get frustrated. Today, she decided she wanted to write her name! Now, it is a very long name and we don't use a nickname. I told her the letters and she did her best to write them. 

Her  first"E" has a few too many lines but she got better by the second one. Her B, I, and T look pretty good! 

Our Sad Yard

There is always a trade off when buying a house. No property is perfect. In our case, we found the perfect house. It is exactly what we wanted. 

 However the YARD is...well...far from perfect. When we made the choice to go with new construction, we knew we'd have to put in a backyard and do all the work that goes along with that. But we wanted the house! So we're dealing with the yard issues. 

Grandma Pam was nice enough to buy us a few blueberry plants for a housewarming present! We've got them planted in big pots for now. Once we get the yard in, we'll decide the best place for them and plant them in the ground. Here is Jeremy staking the plants up so the wind won't blow them over! 

Right now, our backyard is dirt. Just dirt. Jeremy hired some high school kids and they came over and raked up rocks and smoothed things out. 

Tuesday will be a FANTASTIC day. The hydroseed guys are coming to get our yard going! We should have grass in a few weeks and should be allowed to play on it in about 6 weeks.

 We've been living here for 2 weeks and having dirt for a backyard has not been fun. People are only allowed to wear boots outside and are not allowed inside with their boots! 

Nathan made a funny joke today while we were reading a book. In the book, we learned that elephants like to cover themselves in dust to keep the sun from burning them. Nathan said, "Hey, they should just come here! We have tons of dust! And the hippos could come wallow in the mud!" 

Yes, we could have a wonderful backyard zoo for all animals who love mud. We could get pigs Papa Norm!  I'm sure the kids would just love that. 

Nathan with the blueberries. 

We moved in at the end of June. It was really too late to start a garden, but we thought we'd try anyway. We planted a few peppers and tomatoes. We'll see what happens but my guess is that it will freeze before we get much of a crop. Nathan loves to garden so I did it for him. I hope we get something! 

Cupcakes for my birthday

Tomorrow is my birthday so Elizabeth announced she needed to make the cupcakes. Here she is hard at work with her "cupcake" machine and her little cupcake pans. It was the cutest thing!

 She used brown playdough so the cupcakes would be chocolate. It's easy to find brown playdough in this house. 

Happy 4th of July!

Eating popsicles on the 4th of July! Nathan was very cooperative and wore his flag shirt and red/white/blue shorts. Elizabeth told me that the yellow tank top was her 4th of July shirt. Ok. 

And yes, that is Jeremy mowing in the background. He worked last night and wanted to get the lawn mowed before work. 

Since he did work, we didn't head out to any fireworks. Elizabeth can't handle staying up late without completely falling apart. Nathan was a bit disappointed we couldn't go. Last year, Jeremy had the 4th off so he took Nathan to fireworks.  However, I let Nathan stay up late just to see what kinds of fireworks we'd see around the neighborhood. 

I don't think he was disappointed. Even though aerial fireworks are illegal in West Richland, no one appears to follow the rules. We had quite the show! We sat on the east side of the house (no houses there yet...the house next door should start going up next week). We could see north, east, and west. Huge fireworks all over! Nathan loved it. At about 9:50, he said he was tired and came in and went right to sleep even with all the noise. Elizabeth slept through it all (I kept a fan on high in her room).