garden update

Okay, so the pictures on the last post did not turn out as planned. I uploaded them from facebook, and I didn't know half of the picture would be cut out. Oh well. If you want to see some pretty pictures of our trip just go to Sarah's blog, May Days on my sidebar.

Anywho..... several months ago I planted a garden. It was our first garden, and I really didn't, and still don't know exactly what I'm doing. Here are the plants that actually grew and gave a good yield:

- squash: We were overrun with squash for about two weeks. I couldn't cook it fast enough. Next time I'll grow a lot more squash, but I'm going to space them out every few weeks so they don't all come in at once.

- Cherry tomatoes: those have just started to bloom, and they are fantastic. I have already used them to make a roasted bell pepper and tomato salsa, and I have put them in salads. I still have plenty in the garden that are just waiting to ripen.

- Regular tomatoes: not as high a yield as the cherry and they are still ripening, but at least they grew, right?

- Cilantro: we had fresh cilantro in various dishes and salads for about a month. I found out that I love the taste of fresh cilantro, and I'm going to dedicate several squares to it and I'll try to grow them for the fall as well.

Here are the once that failed miserably:

- parsley: we had maybe only one measly leaf grow. It was pathetic.

- Snow peas: very viney, and not a high yield. Not worth it.

- Garlic: Yeah..... I have no idea what that was supposed to do.

- Okra: it was terrible. Hard as a rock, low yield, and even when I fried it and covered it with ketchup it tasted horrible. I'm not sure what went wrong, maybe I harvested it either too soon or too late.

- Spinach: I shouldn't have planted it in the summer. It wilted as soon as the sun touched it, darn georgia heat. I'm going to try this one for the fall as well. Apparently I missed the memo about it being a cooler weather plant.

My peppers are still up in the air. They have grown, and there are little flower buds, but no actual pepper yet. We will see!

Home again

Well, we just returned from another 8 hours away beach trip. This time we went way down south on the Atlantic Coast of Florida to Jupiter beach. We stayed at an absolutely gorgeous and gigantic house that was right on the river. Oh, and it had an amazing pool. I took almost no pictures while we were there, mainly because my brother Zach and my mom had their camera's, and I'm super lazy like that, so I'll just go ahead and say that I took these from Sarah and my mom's facebook albums.

We went there with my parents, Zach, Sarah, Micah and Connor, Andrew and Krista, and Joel. Mimi and Ted were there off and on as well. It was a blast! Leah loved the water; she was usually the first one in the pool, and the last one to get out. She also ventured into the ocean and braved the waves with my mom as well. I had a wonderful time relaxing, swimming, reading, and playing with Leah (actually it was more like watching my mom play with Leah). The boys had a great time fishing too. Tony caught a pretty big one, and we actually ate it for dinner (when I say we, I don't mean me, because I hate fish). We are happy to be home, though, and I have made myself a vow that I will not be in the car for more than 30 minutes at a time for quite a while :).

Leah thinks she is quite a swimmer now. By the last day she was kicking around the pool with this little floatie on. She did not want anyone to hold her. It was precious.

Playing with nana and Tony on the stairs.

This is the outside of the gorgeous house!

This is the view from the backyard.

Four generations! Mimi, my mom, Leah, and Me.

Aren't these cousins just too cute?

My little beach baby.

End Table

-Lumber from Lowes: 15 dollars

- 2 packs of screws: 5 dollars

- New drill bit: 2 dollars.

Having a friend ask you if this end table you built is the one from the Hyde Pottery Barn collection: Priceless.

I know, I'm sorry this post is so braggy too. I promise I will try to contain myself from now on.

2 weddings

Within the past couple of weeks we attended 2 weddings. My younger brother Andrew, and Tony's older brother Javier. They were very different, and we had a great time at both. Andrew and Krista got married at our church in Gainesville; it was big, fun, and lots of family and friends were there. We had a great time hanging out with family and relaxing in Gainesville. The ceremony and reception were beautiful, and the Palmer family did a great job with everything. I did not take any pictures while I was there, though.... so no pics of that here.

Javy and Angel had a destination wedding in the Florida Keys, and we had a great mini vacation down there. Their wedding was on the beach, and we stayed at the coconut cove resort.

This is the actual "cove" at the resort.

It was a lovely little place with a great view of the ocean and an awesome pool. We spent the two days were there playing in the pool and hanging out at the beach. Leah absolutely loves playing in the water, and she had a blast the whole time.

I could never get her to look at the camera, so most of the pictures I have are of her hat or the top of her head.

This was taken right before the wedding.

The beautiful beach ceremony at almost sunset.
The day after the wedding we went to a little outdoor aquarium. We saw a parrot, dolphin, and Sea Otter show, took a tour on a bottomless boat, and saw all sorts of other marine animals.

Thoughts on LOST

I think there are two types of people in this world. Those who loved the finale to LOST, and those who hated it. I am one of the former. I thought it was great. It was funny, emotional, and in my opinion offered great closure. It took me a while to get it, but the more and more I think about it, the more I love how it ended.

Everything that happened on the island happened. It was all real. The flash sideways was when they were all dead. They all died at different times, some before Jack, some after him, like Christian said but in the afterlife there is no timeline so they were all there together. The flash sideways was like a resolving of all their conflicts and inward strife. Jack became a better father, and was able to make peace with his father. Claire decided to keep her baby, and was reunited with her family. Kate was finally able to help someone else, Sawyer was a cop, not a con, Sun and Jin were together and happy, Sayid found Shannon again, Charlie was alive, Locke reunited with Helen and regained use of his legs, etc etc. To paraphrase words of C.S Lewis from the wonderful book The Last Battle, "all things sad became untrue." In my opinion, the flash sideways was a picture of redemption for all these sad, broken, and flawed characters that we were introduced to 6 years ago.

They were in this flash sideways together until each one of them was ready to let go and move on. One major theme of Jack's character that we saw over and over again through these 6 seasons is that he had a hard time letting go (remember the episode with Boone?). That's why he was the last to arrive. It's also why Ben's character didn't go in. He wasn't ready yet. He still had things he had to work out. Very fitting, in my opinion. I think they were all in the church to move on to the next stage of afterlife, ie, heaven, together. As my brother Andrew put it, very much like Frodo and Gandalf setting off to the Grey Havens. Maybe it's not theologically correct, but I think it's beautiful. Again, it's also very Last Battleish; all of the characters walked through the barn door at different times, and died at different times, but they ended up together(dead) in that limbo land waiting for Aslan to arrive.

No, all our questions were not answered, and it may have even left us with more questions.... but isn't that part of the beauty of the show? Some things we just have to accept as being part of the island's mystery (like why women can't carry to term).

I think every religion can probably take something from the show, but I definitely see a lot of Christian and Gospel parallels in the season, and especially in the finale. The most obvious, of course, is Jack's sacrificial death in order to save the lives of his friends. As my dad put it, "the good shepherd laid down his life for his people." I have no idea if the writers meant for it to be interpreted this way. They probably didn't, but even Hollywood can't help but reflect the power of the gospel. It is embedded into every great story, because there is nothing more moving or more powerful than someone's sacrificial death to save others.

Another thing to ponder: Jacob is like Adam. The one thing his "mother" forbade him to do was to go into that light, but he screwed that up. Through one man darkness (black smoke) entered the island, and through one man, darkness was defeated and light was restored.

Man, I love this show and I'm so gonna miss it!

New Bookshelf

Okay, this post may seem a little bit braggy, but that's because I am extremely proud of myself; I made this bookshelf all on my own! And when I say make, I actually mean make, not assemble. Like out of real wood, that I measured, cut, screwed together using an actual drill, sanded, and stained.

Okay, well Tony technically sawed the boards for me, but that's just because the skill saw is really loud, and I don't want to cut my arm off. But everything else I did on my own! I followed the plans from a fabulous blog called "knock-off wood", which my sister in law Sarah told me about. This blog has ridiculously cute furniture and she details how to make it. I think this may be my new hobby. I want to make an end table and a coffee table to match the bookshelf, and maybe even a farmhouse style dining room table.

Here is the view from the back. This is actually a "room dividing bookshelf" that separates our living room from what is currently the playroom, so this is the side that we see from the playroom. I sanded the back, painted it with magic magnet paint from Lowe's, then added a top coat of magic chalkboard paint to it. So now it's a magnetic chalkboard that Leah loves to draw on. Pretty cool, huh? So far she can only draw lines, but I see a bright artistic future for her.

Here is how this project began; I was looking at this blog, and was trying to convince Tony to build me a bookshelf:

Me: "Why don't you build this one?"

TOny: "I don't want to build one. It will just come out lopsided and I will have wasted time and money"

Me: "Fine. I'll build it"

Tony: "You can't build a bookshelf"

Me: "Um, well, I'm going to build it!"

Tony: "There's no way you are building that."

Me: "Oh, I'm so doing it. "

The next day when Tony got home from work I had written out all the supplies we needed.

Tony: "I thought you were kidding about this"

Me: "Nope, we're going to Lowe's!"

Two days later my lovely bookshelf was finished, and I discovered that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. What started out as an attempt to prove myself may become a huge hobby of mine. Maybe not, though.

strawberry patch

This past saturday we went to Lane Packaging to pick some strawberries. Lane's is quickly becoming one of my favorite places in the Warner Robins area. They have fresh produce, the best strawberry and peach ice cream ever, a great lunch buffet, a nice playground, and other awesome stuff such as dressings, wines, pecans, fudge, and jams.

This is the beginning of our day. Leah just wanted to play with the big peach.

Tony had to restrain her at first from destroying everything in her path, but she eventually got the hang of it.
She finally understood that she needed to pick the red berries, not the green ones, and she would put them in the basket like a good little helper. She did squeeze a couple of them and rub them on her dress, but that's okay.

This is one of the big John Deere tractors on the playground.

She is making an interesting face here, that's for sure.
These are all the strawberries we picked. It's not a ton, but it's enough for now. I froze some of them for smoothies because I think they would have gone bad by the time we ate them.