A little perspective

Look at today's yummy tomato harvest!!! Aren't they gorgeous??


Same great taste... Just a little less filling...


The garden is struggling a bit in this heat wave. But we're keeping on! We got some disfigured cucumbers and giant okra too! It's like a circus garden!


- Posted from my iPhone

Quick like a cat

We often set up our own version of the water slide in our backyard. This particular evening Leah and Kevin were playing catch.


This picture makes me laugh. She better have some quick reflexes.



- Posted from my iPhone

Smurfette

Several people have questioned why I still take a bib with me everywhere I go... I didn't think it was strange until i started noticing other kids leah's age don't wear bibs anymore... Well, for those people who are wondering, I have just 4 words...

Birthday


Cake


Ice


Cream!



Truly, I wish it were acceptable for ME to wear the bib. I can be terribly messy and have ruined many, many clothing items over the years. Guess it runs in the family. :)

- Posted from my iPhone

a little medicine

Today I read this on a friend's blog... can you imagine not complaining about ANYTHING... even the WEATHER?? I am gonna try it and see how long I can go! :)

A grown daughter wondered how her mom, a missionary living in the African bush for 52 years with no electricity or other modern conveniences, had led a life of contentment in circumstances that would give anyone cause to complain. She found the answer in an old diary of her mother's. Her mother, Ella Spees, had written down this "prescription for contentment":

~ Never allow yourself to complain about anything - not even the weather.

~ Never picture yourself in any other circumstances or someplace else.

~ Never compare your lot with another's.

~ Never allow yourself to wish this or that had been otherwise.

~ Never dwell on tomorrow - remember that is God's, not ours.

(from Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow, p. 13)

m m m o p

Action!

Take 2!

-Posted from my iPhone

2 fish

It wasn't quite as impressive as the miracle Jesus performed, but it was miraculous to us! Back on Memorial Day, Leah and her daddy thought it might be a good day to go fishing. Leah picked out a Lightning McQueen fishing rod at the store and her daddy taught her all about the rod, reel, line, hook and the bobber. Then they practiced a little reeling for a bit.

We dug up some worms out of our flower beds and headed down to Kroger pond so Leah could try her hand at fishing. The first video is their very first cast. And the second video is their third cast.

You will have to pardon my excited voice... I was excited! And you will have to excuse the grandmother-length videos... you know the ones that are longer than anyone really wants to watch... except for grandmothers. :) (Actually, they are only about a minute a piece... and jam-packed with exciting fishing!)

Cars 2

Opening Weekend... you can bet we were there!

(This wasn't Leah's first movie experience you know... We went to our first Crybaby Matinee when she was 3 or 4 weeks old, I think. And pretty much every single Tuesday of her life for the next 7-8 months we had our 1:30 date at the Angelika. Many times one or both grandmas joined us and sometimes other friends and other babies too! But this was her first time as a big girl.)

Got $5 tickets! Did you know that the first show of the day at CineMark is always $5??? It totally made Kevin and I want to go on our movie date nights at 10am from now on!



THIS IS SOOOOOO EXCITING!!!!


All she could talk about was having juice AND popcorn AND candy at Cars 2! Her little snack box was heavy and I'd told her to hold on tight!!


She's got her booster and her daddy!

And her very own Cars cup...

A few minutes into the movie she hollered "FINN McMISSLLLLLLLE!!!!!!!" But that was her only outburst.

She enjoyed the entire movie but then had to miss the last 5 minutes to go to the little girl's room. She ate her popcorn and her pink laffy taffy... and couldn't have been happier with her "first" movie experience. At one point during the second hour of the movie she asked me to hold her... this reminded me of all those CryBaby Matinee's so long ago. :)

She happened to see a preview for the new Winnie the Pooh movie coming out this month... and her Daddy promised her that we'd take her to see it next! She brings it up every day. :)

-Posted from my iPhone

Chef Curley

-Posted from my iPhone

Garden gone wild

It's what happens to an overly-excited novice gardener... I knew I was planting way too many things and way too close together... But I did it anyway!


We are still getting lots of tomatoes...


And I have a couple of bell peppers growing too!


Beans decided to make a walking path right along the green beans so most of those plants are trampled. Everything else is still coming along, though a little crowded.





Posted from my iPhone

Sheep Spa

Leah and I headed over to the barn to help Aunt Leslie with some shepherding chores.


This was the first time to wear her new barn boots...


First, a few treats...


While Aunt Les and I chased the sheep all around the pen trying to catch them... Leah was carefully choosing some rocks for Grandpa. He had two handfuls by the time we were done.


Our chores weren't easy... but by the time we caught the last one we felt like pros. Leslie sat each one of them down, gave them their meds and a little pedicure.

You say tomato...

This is a tomato plant on steroids. Less than a month after the tiny tomato plant was transplanted... Every day it is bigger and bigger.




The day Leah harvested our first fruit there were 11 total tomatos growing on the vine. But only one was ready to be picked... This one!!!

She was only pretending in that picture but when we got inside and washed it she really wanted a bite.

After every bite she said "mmmmm... this is yummy" while making this face...




I think she had heard me go on and on about how yummy they were going to be that she had made her mind up to like them...




She gave it a good try...




And here are tomatoes 2,3 and 4! They were sooooooooooo yummy!




I lost tomato #5... It exploded right there on the vine... I let it get just a tad over-ripe... lesson learned.

NBA Champs!

Both the Mavericks and I were born in Dallas Texas in 1980.

And we have both been waiting a loooong time for a championship!

I was a little girl the first time I went to a game at Reunion Arena. I was watching when Jason Kidd played for us the first time. I was always a fan, but I remember when I went off to college in 1998.... and fell in love in my dorm room.

Over the next few years I watched Steve Nash and Dirk play some of the most exciting regular season and play-off games I had ever seen. I cant lie, it was always Nash i was more infatuated with. In my opinion there was no one more exciting to watch in all of basketball. And the combination of those two guys was a little bit magical!



Around the same time, Kevin and I were dating and I took him to a game for his birthday because his favorite team (Kobe, Shaq and the Lakers) were playing my Mavs. We sat on the very top row of the arena. :)

I had a hard time when we let Steve Nash get away... And I admit I even split my loyalty the first couple of years with Phoenix because I loved watching him play.

Then...my team made it to the NBA finals... And then we got swept. :(

But just look at them now! After a long road. So exciting! Wins like this are worth waiting for!!


I have been catching up on all the sleep I always miss during the NBA playoffs. After all the games I have to watch all the post-game coverage and interviews.... And then, especially after a win, I'm like a kid going to Disney World...
I'm just too excited to sleep!!!


For the last decade or so I have predicted every year to be "the year." And every year I am so sad for the NBA season to end... Not this year!!!! Go Mavs!!!!!

Warm Woolen Mittens

I just started sweating when I typed that title! But that is how the song goes...

At age 2 years and 4 months... wearing an old t-shirt of mine:

• Her favorite foods right now are chicken nuggets with ketchup, berries, watermelon and JELLO.
  


• Favorite shows are Veggietales... she chooses them over Disney movies and Sesame Street!?!
  


• Favorite outdoor activity is "Fwim in the Fwimming pool" (not sure when the 'fw' started, I thought it was only l's and r's that she rejected.) Both Grandparents houses are equipped with Kiddie pools too, so she is set for lots of summer fun.



• She loves to read. She has started reading several books to us. Her favorite right now is The Very Hungry Caterpillar... and she knows every word. If she picks up a book we haven't read in a long time she will open it and say "I don't know these words" and hand it to us so we can read it through a couple of times until she has it memorized. Then she'll read it to us.



• She loves to hear the stories we make up. She particularly loves one Kevin made up about best friends Rocky Raccoon and Philip Fox. She asks him for this story repeatedly. In the car with me she'll ask "Mommy can you tell me the story about the Jesus and the sheep?" This is a story I've told her about 200 times by now. She can tell it back to me too, which I love. I love hearing her little voice say "I don't like it when all the sheep go away from Jesus." She says it every time. :)



• She loves to sing. ALL SONGS. She loves nursery songs and any Veggitales song, especially Larry the Cucumber's hairbrush song. A new favorite is Dolly Parton's "Rockin Chairs" And I recently heard her singing Jimmy Buffett's "Apocalyspo" after she heard me singing it. You may have also heard her singing her hymns from time to time. She's been known to sing "Trust and Obey" several dozen times in a row at increasingly higher and higher volumes. I love to hear "Ho-Wee, Ho-Wee, Hooo-Weeeeeee."



• She LOVES cars and trains like a good little tom-boy... especially Thomas the tank engine and Lighning McQueen... but she also loves Barbies and baby dolls.



• She loves it when we pass a construction site and I can tell her about all the machinery... excavators, bulldozers, front-end loaders, bobcats and cranes. She always asks me what things are first and then immediately says "Oh wow, look at that Exa-Bater!" (I don't know them all... so everything falls into one of those categories...)



• She loves shopping - her favorite stores are Cabela's, Target and the grocery store. (FYI - she spotted a Cabela's billboard from the car at almost a half a mile away)
  

There aren't many things that Leah Curley doesn't REALLY like... and even love! Every time we leave an event, no matter what it is, she says "I had so much fun at _____!" and "I love ____ SOOOOO much!" So coming up with her favorite things is getting more difficult. I think it might be easier to just list things that aren't her favorites.

There is definitely one thing she currently doesn't care for... walruses... aka wasps. I told her one time to take a good look at them and make sure she doesn't ever touch one because wasps can sting you (and we have lots around our house... I think they like our flowers and vegetables and our covered patio.) So now every time she sees one she says "I don't like walruses! They can bite me!"

sowing with leah

Several weeks ago, Leah and her daddy went to the home improvement store to pick up a few things... and came back with a little project...

A Lightning McQueen planting kit. (Leah loves all things Cars and can spot the logo from a mile away!)

The kit came with some marigold seeds and soil, so she and dad got to work. I think they planted on 4/3.

I told her that her flower seeds would probably grow even faster if we put a nice worm in there to help the soil. She agreed and we dug up a "nice wormy" and Leah put him in the pot too.

In about 10 days the seeds had sprouted... and within 3 weeks we had a small plant.

4/27

Leah's main job was watering and making sure it was still growing taller.

...on 5/9...

In the meantime, she decided she wanted to plant something else, so she filled 2 more Leah-sized pots with dirt and we planted green beans and Swiss chard.

The day her first marigold bloom opened up, her green beans erupted the soil as well!

The Swiss chard was a fail.... I'm pretty sure we drowned it... so I transplanted some of my extra okra plants to that pot.

Leah with her marigolds, green beans and okra plants

Beans could have 40 dog bowls of fresh water, but she prefers to drink from puddles or straight from the watering can. She's just waiting for the pour...

Oil Spill Anniversary Post

Lately we have been playing in the kiddie pool every single day... and Leah's CONSTANT chattering while she swims and plays always brings this video to my mind... one of her greatest hits, to be certain.

It just so happens that I posted it for the first time exactly one year ago today.

Some things will never change.