The Garden: Fourth Week

It has been a month since these seeds went into the ground and it is really taking off. We might have to start giving these guys some more space.

Oregano:

They are still growing! I swear! They are really small but they have started growing their second set of leaves. It is amazing that they were the first ones up and yet, they are so tiny still.

Parsley:

I pruned these during the week to give them more space to grow. I love their second set of leaves! I'm a little obsessed with how different plants look. There is such an amazing variety and it makes the world so beautiful and unique.

Zucchini:

The first zucchini!

Do you see why I'm scared that they are going to start flowering before they leave the house in a month?

Look how big the leaf is on the second one to come up! Even though he was slow, he sure has been working hard to catch up.

Onions:

A little growth and maturation at the top but I assume that they are working hard under the dirt.

Tomatoes:

I pruned these like crazy. We had so many of them and I still don't know what we are going to do with the 5 that we have. Seriously, I'm thinking about the space outside and I don't know what is going to happen.

Pole Beans:

Look at those leaves!!

Seriously, I don't know what it is going to start climbing up on...I better figure that out pretty fast.

Sunflowers:

Still growing onward and upward. They are getting a third set of leaves!

Mint:

One last picture of my mint. Isn't it beautiful? I love how bushy it is getting. I love the way it smells AND tastes.

My sister gave me some apple mint this weekend and I'll let you know how it is growing in a couple weeks when it comes up.

Spinach and other onions still aren't in the ground. ARG! I'm foiled by school and work again. At least I'm getting more planted than last year. I need to forgive myself for not planting EVERYTHING that I like eating.

Rachel Getting Married

Congratulations Rachel and Jeff Cooper!!! They got married yesterday in the Salt Lake Temple for time and all eternity! It was so beautiful to be there when she got married because I've known her for so long. I'm so happy that she found someone that was good enough for her!

My family came out from Texas to be there. It was great to see them this weekend and I'm going to miss them now that they are gone.

This is what hanging out with my family feels like ALL THE TIME. I love it so much and I can't wait until I get to enjoy my children as much as I enjoy my parents and siblings.

This was all the family that came to the temple.

It was a beautiful day and we got to spend the day with wonderful people that we don't get to see often enough.

Congratulations Rachel and Jeff!! Marriage is wonderful and you will love it!!

Cub Scouts: Faith in God

We have some boys who were one requirement short of earning their Webelos badges and it was only in the section for Faith in God. The requirement was to go to an art museum, concert, or other cultural event.

I looked at a couple art shows to try and find something appropriate. It is hard to find an entire art show that is appropriate for 10 year old boys! So many boobies!

Finally we settle on the Eccles Community Art Center in Ogden. They had a show up for the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouts and then an exhibit of pieces that are always on show.

I was really nervous about bringing these boys to an art show...I figured that they would be bored to death and start running around. I was very pleasantly surprised.

I started this game where the boys had to look at a painting and tell me what was used to make it. I taught them how they could tell the difference between oil and watercolor.

Oddly enough, at one point we were in a room of the museum all having a laugh about different roller coasters and what made them scary. It was a really fun conversation...we actually had a lot of fun conversations with the boys. There was apparently a picture that was as "graphic" as da Vinci's Vitruvian Man that they boys were trying to shield me from. They didn't think that I should have to see something like that. Aaron told me how "graphic" it was to stop me from feeling embarrassed for subjecting the boys to something like that.

Anyway, the trip was really fun and now we have two boys who are going to get their Webelos badges this month!! We are pretty excited because they are both finishing up with PLENTY of time to work on their Arrow of Light! I can already feel that it is going to be a fun summer!

The Garden: Third Week

Everything is growing!! And I mean, EVERYTHING. We always plant a few seeds just in case some don't make it...but they are all coming up.

Let me show you how everything is growing. After I get pictures of everything, the pruning will beginning.

Oregano:

Looking about the same progress wise but they are alive so...that is cool. I don't really care how slow they grow because they will always be an inside plant.

Zucchini:

Luckily we just planted two zucchini seeds because they always grow crazy fast.

This is the first one that popped up.

The second one is starting to catch up though!

I'm scared that they are going to be flowering before we even get them outside! But the sooner we get free food, the better!

Sunflowers:

We planted 4 seeds in only 2 planters. All four seeds have sprouted.

I don't want to prune any! Even though I need to...maybe I should just pull them out and try to replant them?

Pole Beans:

We put in 12 pole bean seeds and we got 10. Again, it is going to be really hard to prune these guys. They all deserve to live...maybe I am just greedy and I want to eat as many fresh vegetables as I can.
Some of these beans are getting so big that I'm scared we will have to put something for them to climb up before they can be planted outside.
True story: Legumes pull nitrogen into the soil and so you want to move where they are planted every year. This year we are going to plant them were the tomatoes have been for the last two years, it will help to rejuvenate that soil. I learned that in my botany class last semester.

Tomatoes:

Same problem. Too many of them up and not enough space. We don't need 4 of the same tomato plants....let alone 12. I'm not going to feel too bad pruning these guys done. We are planning on buying a cherry tomato plant later in the season so we will be good for tomatoes this year.

Remember the little tomato that we talked about in the mint pot? Here he is. He looks like a tomato plant and I know how it would have happened if it IS a tomato plant...but I think we will wait and see what happens with this one.

Onions:

These look about the same up top. They look like a balding chia pet from here but I'm sure under ground they are working hard. No real pruning required here. I still have yet to plant more of them in the egg carton like I said I would.

Parsley:

Remember how with the last post, the parsley hadn't come up yet? And I was a little worried? Well, the next day, they all just SHOT out of the ground. It was ridiculous. Now look at them!

They've only been above ground for 6 days and they are thriving!

Spinach:

I said that I was going to plant some. I have the seeds...and I haven't planted them yet. Lame. They are actually something that should be planted while it is still cool...so I better hop on that quickly.

Basil:

I planted some that I bought at the grocery store with the roots and dirt still present. It died in 4 days...from mold, I believe. I need to get some sandier soil, I've read because mold is a big issue. I tried to water it less than I normally do but alas, earwax.

On the plants outside...

Raspberries are starting to grow leafy and soon they will start to send out branches for wonderful delicious raspberries! The blueberry bushes are still alive...which is an improvement from this time last year. They made it through their first summer (which is a BIG milestone for blueberries) and they are starting to grow back after winter. I don't know whether we can expect many blueberries this year, but I'm very very hopeful.

Think Pink

My mom never let me dye my hair. She told me that I needed to love myself for who I was before I could start dyeing my hair. Since graduating from high school almost 5 years ago, I haven't had my natural hair color. I've gone red, blonde, brown and back again multiple times. I've loved red the most.
But during Spring break, I decided that it was time to go...unnatural. I went pink.

Not the best picture of me...I took it myself...so there you go. I kind of liked it. I didn't think that it would be okay for teaching at the preschool or going to church, but it was fun for the week I had off.

One of my Webelos scouts said, "Wow, Sister Reinert, your hair is EXCITING! But...I think that brown would suit you better." <3 I thought that I better put a photo up here for posterity, since I don't think it will happen again in the near future.

Cub Scouts: Engineer (Circuits & Bridges)

I wish that I brought my camera to scouts but I totally blanked.

We made circuits with the three boys that were there. Aaron is so good at talking nerdy to kids. He showed them a circuit set that he made at school that has two lights that take turns blinking back and forth. It is pretty cool. He then showed them how to make a simple circuit to turn on a light bulb. He promptly took it all apart and had them take turns putting it back together.

Meanwhile, I was teaching the boys about different kinds of bridges. They have to draw pictures of three different kinds of simple bridges so my job was to talk them through it.

When they were all done making the circuits and drawing bridges, the boys took turns making the different kinds of bridges that we drew. We made them out of books and index cards. I was pretty impressed with how much weight they were able to hold...but you will never know how cool it was because I didn't take pictures.

The one boy who was very interested in the catapults last week, had the same kind of enthusiasm for the circuits. The last 10 minutes while the other boys played basketball, Aaron and this boy sat and worked on making different circuits and talking more in depth about how this stuff works. I think Aaron had a ton of fun with it and the boys seemed to enjoy it too. We've been having some fun activities lately. The warmer it gets, the more fun we seem to have with the scouts.

The Garden: Two Weeks

For the first week of growth, I was a little discouraged. I was going to take pictures at one week but...it would have been pictures of dirt. Usually the zucchini comes up after 3 days and the beans usually follow pretty closely behind. After 7 days, I was pretty sure that NOTHING was going to come up.

THEN, one day 8, I had a glimmer of hope! Oregano!!

The tiniest bit of green was coming up! That picture was at 2 weeks...so it wasn't nearly THAT green but it was green!

Aaron went digging for a zucchini and we made a discovery. The plans all decided to start growing DOWN first instead of up. They wanted to get to the banana/egg shell mixture before making their way to the surface! That's fine with me!

By two weeks, EVERYTHING is coming up!

We have 2 Zucchinis.

All 4 sunflowers came up. I didn't realize that Aaron planted two seeds in each container. I HATE pruning. I don't know why but I feel like I'm killing something that would have been perfectly healthy and later, delicious. We might try to transplant.
We have TONS of tomatoes. I think we have like...11 sprouted now. We even have one growing in our mint pot....which might have been a transplant from a tomato that we ate and threw the part we didn't eat under the soil to compost.
We also have about 9 onions coming up. I'm actually going to be planting more of these since, I want WAY more than just 9 of these little onions.

I think that the last plant to come up with the banana/egg shell mixture was the pole beans. They have been taking their sweet time. They STILL aren't all the way up. But they are firmly rooted down so I guess that that is good.

The parsley still hasn't come up. I'm hopeful though. Maybe it just needs time and more sunshine. I hope that I didn't plant those seeds too deep since they are REALLY small.

I'm also going to plant some spinach this week. I LOVE spinach. And I hear from my amazing gardening sister that they aren't that hard, which is super. I'm not super with plants with special needs. My blueberry bushes are the only special needs plants that I can deal with. And maybe some basil. That is pretty special needs but I want it.

I'll keep you posted.

Cub Scouts: Engineer (Catapults)

Aaron was pretty excited to work on the catapults with the boys. For the whole week leading up to it, he was working on them making sure that they would work and be fun for the boys.

We made them out of scraps that we had so that it didn't cost the church anything. I didn't think that they looked that good but they worked. And...as it turns out, 10 year old boys DON'T CARE what they look like.

The boys absolutely loved them! It was the first time that I got to meet one of the boys. I think we are going to be having a lot of fun in the next couple months.

The boys got to use Aaron's drill. They loved that working with power tools!

Each boy got their very own catapult. And last week they made parachutes to shoot from them(which Aaron took home and secretly made better).

We took turns shooting them off the stage.

For the last 10 minutes, after we shoot the catapults from all kinds of different levels, Aaron said the boys could either keep playing with them or play some basketball. One boy decided that he wanted to keep experimenting. I think that Aaron is going to have fun with this kid. He wanted to have two sticks on his catapult. They were two different levels so they had two different strengths. Aaron and him had a great conversation about why that happened. It was a pretty cool meeting.

Brilliant Children

I love hanging out with and talking to the children at the preschool. The best days are when I can sit down with the kids and interact. They are so smart and creative. It is incredible. We really under estimate abilities of children.

For example, Friday the 2nd, we woke up with a TON of snow on the ground. It had been snowing all week. While we were playing with Legos, I asked one boy what he was making and he showed me this.

He told me that it was a car and the front that comes off the top and travels all the way to the ground with a big flat piece laying flush with the ground, is for pushing snow off of the road. He rolled it around a little bit to show me how it would work and he pushed "snow" Legos out of that way.

Another day we are coloring with markers and another kid shows me this.

He just said, "Lion people!"

I'm constantly amazed by the things that these kids come up with and how they are piecing together their world.

Another girl wrote down "Old McDonald" to the best of her abilities. At first the paper looks like it is gibberish. I wish that I had taken a picture because it was BRILLIANT! I asked her what she was writing and she pointed at the letters, "OD MCDND D A FRM E I E I O ND N TAT FRM E D A DAG E I E I O" and sang, "Old McDonald had a farm E, I, E, I, O And on that farm he had a dog E, I, E, I, O".

So much emerging literacy! It is so exciting!

I love my job so much and I imagine that being a mother is just as exciting except that a mother will get to watch from birth and continue on through life and I just get these brief few years.

Yup...just thought that I would share.

1st Sign of Spring

On Friday we had finished up the snow storms and I played outside in the snow with the children.

There was a little puddle of melted water to the side of the play equipment, right in the sun, and I watched a little bird land in it and start bathing. I grabbed the nearest child to me and said, "Do you want to see something cool?" I walked him slowly over to the bathing bird and said, "Look, that bird is taking a little bath." The boys eyes got big and we held very very still until the bird flew away.

Spring is coming.

On Sunday is was almost up to 50 degrees outside. The air smelled amazingly fresh and I suddenly wanted all of that fresh air to fill up my house. Aaron and I opened up all of the windows and turned off the heater. We started to clean a little around the house. Fresh sheets, freshly vacuumed floors, and fresh air. It felt wonderful. I can't wait till it is full blown spring and we have plenty of time to deep clean all of the house and make everything fresh again.

We also decided that it was time for our garden to take its first trip outside. I've been worried about the lack of sun since the snow storms came through last week. So we set them outside. I haven't seen a single thing start to peep out from the ground which has me a little concerned. Usually zucchinis are up in 3 days. Same with pole beans.

I know that my herb garden appreciated the fresh air. My mint was looking lively.

I'm so thankful for that patch of green that I've had in our house since December. I went around our garden while we were outside and checked on the plants that stayed outside all winter. The blueberry bushes, I was surprised to see, were still alive. When I snapped off the tiniest tip of a branch, I was pleasantly surprised to see garden in the center. The raspberry bushes, I have no doubt will come back in full force come spring time.

The last thing that I will show you is a little funny. Can you tell where the sun never shines in our yard?

As it starts to warm up more, it won't matter where the sun does or doesn't go, it will all be gone. And I know that that is coming soon.