Bluebonnets 09

The blue bonnets have not been great this year.  We only found a small patch so we did close up shots.

I am not quite sure what to do with Jacob's hair.  I wanted to try longer but I am thinking this is not a great look for him.  We will probably have to go back to the short crew. 

Jacob's greatest life moments thus far are when he gets a new character on the Lego's star wars game and receiving a spider man t-shirt.

My favorite song Jacob sings is the Wise Man Built his House Upon the Rock.  He has slightly altered the lyrics to "the rains come down and the flowers come up."  It so appropriate for this time of year, I ask him to sing it at least 2 times a day.

Sweet Merry found one little pink primrose in all the blue bonnets and wanted me to take a picture.  Unfortunately I missed the flower.  

Gracie ate lots of blue petals.  Hopefully they are not toxic.

Jacob is a lover.  Merry and Gracie are fighters.

This is my favorite shot.  Merry has such an expressive face.

The Caballero cousins were here visiting.

I love the 2 little dolls in the blue bonnets

Almost Spring

Gracie has a big surprise

She has a little snaggel tooth on top. Hopefully the adjacent tooth catches up soon. But until it does we will mock her and call her snaggle.

We have yet to find a good patch of blue bonnets for pictures this year. Hopefully with all the rain that came this week more will come. If any one knows where a good spot is please share. Otherwise I am going to be sticking my kids in the ditch by the Valero.

Merry's forced smile with our little blue bonnet plant in our back yard.

These 2 don't look any thing alike to me.

Jacob is such a big helper. He loves to feed Gracie. Don't you love our feeding method. Mopping the floor is easier than scrubbing a high chair.

Spring is almost here in our yard. The little roses on the arbor in front of our playhouse are about to bloom. I can't force myself to prune it because I don't want to cut off any of the blossoms.

Enchanted Rock

We visited Enchanted Rock today. Jacob and Merry had a great time. Grace slept half of the time. I think she had a pretty great time while she was awake.

Hiking buds

Nothing says happy birthday more than a fresh honey bun.

Fun YW hiking crew.

Happy March

Please wear lots o'green!

Brown bread a la Kelly

A new break through in the kitchen. I made brown bread for the first time. Kelly gave me the recipe that is why I named it after her. It had another person's name in the title previously, but since Kelly gave it to me, I say it now gets to be named after her. She blogged the recipe earlier so go visit her because I am too lazy to retype it all out. The only thing I changed was I used melted butter instead of oil because I like butter better.

The whole reason I had to make bread was because I made jam. Boy this cooking thing is a vicious cycle.

Merry had a great day. She just has a little bit of the poor me syndrome right now. It probably doesn't help that I am there taking pictures of it. Merry was very helpful and tried to fix a broken piggy bank by gluing it together with hydrocortisone lotion. Maybe this is why she had a sad face, maybe not. Who can know for sure?

Jacob told me he loved me a gazillion and forty-six. Merry told me she loved me eighty seconds. I am thinking that they are about the same amount as both are the most either of them can think of. I do feel pretty loved

Little Gracie just says- huh?

Pure Heaven

Today we went to Fredericksburg to pick strawberries. It was beautiful. The weather was perfect and the strawberries nice and red. Merry tasted the fresh strawberries as we picked. The farmer said that if we sampled too many he would weigh us on the way out. I think little Merry needed to be weighed.

Pensive Merry pondering whether or not to eat more strawberries.

I guess she decided eating was better than saving

Red, ripe strawberry finder extraordinaire.

He actually didn't eat any the whole time because he was sure he needed them dipped in sugar. I finally convinced him to try one with out sugar when we arrived home. Then he downed a few more without complaint

a prime candidate

A motley berry picking crew

Pick berries I say.

Grace slept in the stroller the whole berry picking time. She is 10 months old now and has developed very strong opinions on most things.

She loves blueberries, eating rocks, things that roll and hair.

She strongly dislikes being carried by one arm and a neck (which unfortunately happens quite often) and her crib (so the travel crib will still have to do).

She has quite a list of talents now which include clapping, waving and free standing for about 5 seconds. Her favorite hiding spot is in between the 2 green chairs in our family room.

In my kitchen window a little zucchini is sprouting.

Tomorrow we will be canning strawberry jam, jam, jam.

If you live in our area I highly recommend Marburger farms for U-pick. I will be returning for blackberries in a couple of months and probably more strawberries in a couple of weeks because I will probably eat so many we will have none left to make jam, jam, jam.

Disturbing

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with this post, but I felt it must be shared.
The title of the post is referring to catching a mouse in my garage. We caught the mouse on a sticky pad trap. Very disturbing. Even more disturbing was that I discovered it alive on the trap. So what would you do with a mouse stuck to a sticky pad? The most disturbing thing of all is that Merry ran upstairs, got her little pink croc knock-off shoe, and wanted to squash the mouse with it. When Brian pointed out that this might soil her shoe. She then proceeded to take a full-size shovel off of the peg board hanger and wanted to squash the mouse with it instead. Very disturbing indeed. Let's just say the mouse was properly disposed of and Merry did not get to squash it.

PS- I am going to have to post childhood pictures of Brian's sisters and aunts because Merry, pictured in the eighties style photo in the previous post, looks just like them.