For the love of outdoors...

Oh, what a great Easter/Spring Break had we! For the first half of the break, Grace and I traveled to Cleveland to be with Nanny and Nate. When we arrived, I found Mom (Nanny) in her yard clothes about to tackle some very tall grass. While she buzzed about on the grass and weeds, I plugged in one of my favorite yardwork devices...the leaf blower. I know, I know...but I LOVE those things! In the end, we raked and bagged 16 bags of leaves! 16! This was only from part of the back yard...eep! Over the weekend, we dyed eggs, hid eggs, beat a Spongebob pinata half to death, and generally had a great time! We even took in a matinee showing of Disney's How to Train Your Dragon...loved it! Boy did Grace and Nate rack up for Easter...that bunny sure is something else.

Grace and I departed the Delta Tuesday afternoon so we could be prepared to retreive Jake from the airport Wednesday. Grace and I decided that daddy should enjoy the Dragon movie, so we took him to see it Thursday...after lunch at Five Guys. We came home and began the yardwork...

Several of you have never been to my house so you may not know that we live on the edge of a field. Thank goodness for our riding mower (which is another of my favorite yardwork devices)! While Jake weed eated (is that how you say that in past tense?) and sprayed round-up, I hopped on the mower and went to town on the field. Lots of things live and grow in the field and one of the most annoying (and painful) is thistle. It can be pretty to look at, but I'm telling you...you DO NOT want your bare feet (or any or bare parts for that matter) to come into contact with this plant. It hurts. Very much. I decided to snap a few pictures of some of the larger thistle heads while mowing. Check out the pics:

We also decided to start a small veggie garden. We nailed together some scrap boards to make the frame and filled the frame in with lots of yummy manure/dirt mix from Fads and Frames (I had no idea they carried that kind of thing). We planted 2 types of tomatoes, 2 types of yellow squash, bell peppers, banana peppers, and eggplant. Jake says there is too much in the bed, but we will just have to see how it goes. It sure was a dirty job!

Jake and Grace are cleaning up afterwards! Grace has quite a green thumb already.