Garden

After last year's success with a pot of herbs and tomotoes on the balcony, and despite a lack of requisite gardening skills or space in which to plant, we've decided to try a real garden this year. We've adopted this unused piece of earth in a landscape island at the unfinished edge of our condo's parking lot, and we are going to plant tomatoes, peppers, onions, broccoli and brussel sprouts. At some point this summer, new townhomes are going in back there and we hope our little garden doesn't fall victim to the contruction (or to constanly being peed on and dug up by the neighbor's dogs.)
Here's our progress so far:
We'll keep you posted on how it turns out.

Happy Spring!

Today we did some "Spring Cleaning". We gave the whole house a good scrubbing and now if we could just get the weather to cooperate, we're ready for spring. (It was snowing this morning, but cleared up in time for us to plant a few flowers outside:

Rachel helped:

Peter and the Wolf

Last night Rachel and I were playing with plastic easter eggs and watching television while mommy caught up on some homework.
PBS was showing a recent adaptaion of Сергей Сергеевич Прокофьев (Prokofiev's) "Peter and the Wolf", which won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Animated Short:




Rachel was mezmorized by the whole thing, which was cool because it had no words, or Elmos, Wiggles, bright colors and shapes or any of the other sorts of things that usually get her attention. Just a neat stop-motion film and classical music.
She already has a refined taste, and better yet, a taste for Russian music!

I bet she'd love this as well:

Cheesy Kitchen!

We had a service auction for the Relief Society's birthday party. I "bought" Alia Maw's service to come to my home and teach me how to make cheese. It was so much fun. We chatted and made three different cheeses.
This is a Lemon cheese that goes great with fruits. I just loved this one. I know what it looks like, but it taste fantastic!

This was our second cheese. It is Mozzarella. It didn't turn out the way Alia wanted, but with crackers, tomatoes, and a little basil, I felt like I was in Italy! We also made ricotta with the left over whey.

Rachel found a way to entertain herself! She is so cute!

Marathon Madness!!!

I am doing it!!! I will run a half marathon May 17th with my sister Dawn and my sister-in-law Melinda. We are half way through our training. It has been challenging and so much fun. In the beginning of this maddness, I was looking forward to the challenge and the loss of a pound or two. Now, after two months, we are looking forward to running for an important cause. Dawn has a friend with four children--two of which have Muscular Dystrophy. After reading a bit about the disease, we decided to run for them. We are trying to raise money for research for the disease. If you would like to help in this cause, just click on the Ogden Marathon Site under "Links" on this blog. Before you donate, read a little about the boys and their family. They truly are special. Thank You!

Macaroni and Cheese

Rachel LOVES mac and cheese. She eats it about three days out of the week. I try to give her other things, but she knows what she wants. She can even tell me when she wants it by saying, "Maaa (breath) maaaa (breath) and cheese!!!"
She insists on feeding herself, now that she is a big girl. She always makes a big mess but has fun doing it.

Rach

Rachel had a very cute smile but then dropped her cracker and lost focus. She is very glad the sun has been out the past few days.

We did a little spring cleaning today. Rachel helped outside.

Home Improvement

Well, it took us two full weekends (as well as several weekday nights), but we are finally finished with our two latests projects around the house.

Our master bathroom originally had carpet and vinyl flooring, so we ripped that out to put in a tile floor. Here is what it looked like after we tore out the old flooring:

...and after we finished everything:

We also decided to put up crown molding in the living and dining rooms. Crown molding is a nightmare to install! This is what our floor looked like about halfway through the project:

Our ceiling was pretty uneven in a few spots which made the installation a bit tricky, but after all our effort, it looks pretty good: