A few more flower pictures

I had to share these because I just love these red lillies!  I don't see many around in this color and I have a ton of them blooming right now.  I honestly don't ever remember planting these although I'm guessing it was a couple of years ago.  Last year not a single one bloomed.

The newest additions...

...to my garden!  Thanks to my free money from Swagbucks, and a major revamping of our budget (thanks to Dave Ramsey, more about that in a later post) I was able to pick up a couple of things that I've been wanting for awhile. First, my new rain barrel, or the fancy name "rain harvesting system"

And then my new compost bin:

I love them both!  The rain barrel fills up with just the slightest of rainfall.  Obviously this year we are getting tons of rain, so I don't need to use it very often.  But I imagine that won't last all summer.  The composter is a three-chamber system so I can have compost brewing at three different stages at the same time.  I considered a tumbling composter, but you can only put your materials in till it fills, then you can't add anything more till the compost finishes.  In some locations that could take all year.  I've only been using it for a month and my compost is ready to be moved to the next chamber so I can start some more.

And here are a few pictures from my "garden"

My hydrangeas in full bloom!  I forgot to add the acid this year so they are pink, but still gorgeous!  The yellow flowers are buttercups, and they have been in bloom for almost 3 weeks now.

Here is a small side garden, we call it Alexandria's garden because of the plaque and bench.  It is completely shaded so it's not all that pretty.

This is my tiny little garden.  The three large plants are raspberries, on the side by the brown fence are three tomato plants.  The other plants are 2 butternut squash plants, a watermelon plant, potted strawberries, and there are two containers of sweet peppers that aren't in the picture.  I also have a new blueberry bush not in the picture.   And here's on last picture, my tomato plants!!

Tomatos, Raspberries, and Squash...oh my!

On our daily trip to the garden today (and I use the word "garden" very loosely) Miriam and I discovered tomatoes!  I only have three plants, it's my first time growing them so I didn't want to get carried away this year.  I started three plants by seed this winter but lost two of them from a late frost.  So one of the plants is the Beefsteak tomato I started from seed and I have two store-bought Early Girl plants.  We also have an abundance of raspberries growing!  They are fall berries, so they aren't edible yet, but they are certainly getting big, we will be swimming in them this summer.  Like I said, it's not really a full out garden, just the plants I mentioned already and a few container-planted sweet peppers, two butternut squashes, and our experiment this year....watermelon. I also have a pot of strawberries but some annoying critter ate all but one of the berries.  I'm very thankful for the gigantic tree in our yard, which shades the entire yard at the warmest part of the day, but it does make it difficult to grow veggies. 
All of the rain has definitely given us some beautiful flowers this year though!  My buttercups are going on their 3rd week of blooming, and they don't typically bloom that long.  My hydrangeas are looking great, my tiger lillies are opening up, and everything else is  looking good too.  I suppose now would be a good place to insert some photos...but I am slacking.  Just imagine them in your head...they are pretty, aren't they?? :)

I didn't forget, I swear...

...about this blog that is.  I realized that I haven't posted in awhile and thought I'd post an update on us. You may have noticed that I now refer to the kids as M & K.  I read some interesting articles on other blogs recently and decided that I want to keep their names half-way private.  I'm sure someone with enough time and interest could easily find them other places, but I'm going to make them work for it.

M has just a few weeks of kindergarten left.  She is excited to have a summer break but at the same time I think she is a little confused on how it all works.  She thinks it's like a couple days off and then back to kindergarten.  She doesn't quite get the concept of 1st grade just yet.  So far the only plans we have for the summer are swimming lessons but she wants to play soccer in the fall and maybe some dance or cheerleading classes. 

K is 16 months now and pretty much the complete definition of a boy.  Getting into everything, climbing on whatever he can, torturing the cat....  He went right from learning to walk to running and moon-walking all around the house.  He is slightly behind verbally, he doesn't say much, but he knows just enough to get himself in trouble. 

We  finished up our garage sale a couple weeks ago, what a relief to have it done!  But yet we are already talking about the next one, possibly this fall.  It feels so good to get rid of junk (and even better to make money at the same time.)

We also started ourselves on Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, thanks to input from lots of friends and another good friend that sent us copies of the books.  It really is a great program and I highly recommend it to everyone.  Even if you don't have a lot of debt, I'd be willing to bet that most people don't have enough money set aside for retirement.  Since being on the plan, we've paid off two debts.  Before the plan we anticipated having our credit cards completely paid off in about 18 months.....but with the plan, and our dedication to getting it done sooner, we now think they will be paid off in 9 months!  We'll still have massive student loans and a hefty mortgage, but that will be it for our debt. We don't have car loans, no personal loans, 2nd mortgages, etc.  With me not working, I've been really worrying lately about not having a retirement plan for myself.  Our goal is to get the debts paid off and just throw tons of money into retirement funds so we can live nicely when that time comes.

So right now that is pretty much all that is going on with us...other then my slight addiction to Animal Crossing for the Wii.  :)  I will be better at updating, I promise!

The results are in!

So I found out the results of the craft contest today.  I mentioned it earlier in one of my posts but was pretty vague, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to give details.  Anyway, it's over now, so here goes!

The first 100 people to respond to an iVillage wall post on Facebook was sent these.  A 36-pack of Bic Mark-Its.  They are like Sharpies but have a wider variety of colors.  And the ones I had were fine tip.  The first thing I noticed was that they wrote on glass, which sounded fun.  I rummaged through my garage sale pile and found an old picture frame that I was going to sell for $1.  I took all of the backing out and turned the glass part into a calendar.  I used the permanent markers for pretty  much everything except to number the squares.  I did that with a dry erase marker so it could be changed every month.  Here is what I made.

If you want to see all of the entries, including the winners, click here.  I did NOT win the top prize of a $400 Michael's gift card.  I still think mine was the best though ;) but I did win the 1st runner-up prize, a $50 gift card to Michael's.  Oh yeah, and of the 100 people sent the markers only 14 decided to actually submit a craft item!

Kids...

...they really do say the funniest things.  Since I have nothing Earth-shattering to write about, I wanted to share a few of the things that my daughter (6) has said in the past few days.  She cracks me up.

"Mommy, why do they call it a "dead end??"  It sounds like there is a cemetery at the end of the road."

Jason threw his gum out of the car window today and this is the conversation that took place:
M: DADDY!!! Today is EARTH DAY!
Jason:  It's gum, it's bio-degradable.
M: Well, it's really annoying when you step on it.
Jason: It's in the grass
M: Daddy, kids play in the grass too
(I'm guessing we're no longer able to argue logic with her anymore.)

She has a concert coming up where they are going to be singing songs about bicycles.  I sang the Bicycle Song by Queen and asked her if they were singing that song.  She told me yes.  Then she said "Dylan said it's some kind of a Princess song."  I asked her "what?" and she said it again.
It took me a few minutes, but then I finally realized that, to Dylan, Princess=Queen.

16 & 22

Those are my numbers today!  16 is pounds lost and 22 is inches lost (includes waist, thighs, hips, arms, & bust.)  My weight hasn't moved much in the past month, thanks to a lovely new medication that I'm on.  But I am more active then I have been in a long time.  My walks to pick M up from school are about 6,400 steps and 2.4 miles round trip, and today I walked her to school in the morning and walked to go get her this afternoon.  K and I also took a smaller walk in the middle of the day.  All together we walked around 5.5-6.0 miles today.  And I still have the energy to walk more, I've just run out of daylight.  Oh yes, and I can't miss American Idol, right?
Anyway, i guess I wanted to post this so that you, my hundreds of readers, know that I really am still working on my goals even though I haven't posted about it lately.
Also, I submitted my craft project that I mentioned in my previous post!  The contest has been open a few days now, and it closes at the end of the month.  So far there are a whopping 2 entries.  I'm hoping that the others just forget to do their project.  I really want a Michael's gift card!