A slow recap of the past 4 months that I have neglected my blog!

I came to the realization a few nights ago that I haven't done a post on my blog in 1/3 of a year. I have a lot of lame excuses, but I'll spare you. A lot has gone on since I last posted so I am going to attempt to slowly go back starting from the most recent event and catch everyone up on what's been going on in our lives. So I guess you could say I am officially back in the blogosphere:)

I'll start with sharing a few pictures of swimming in Nana's pool...or I should say pools (one for every stage of life as Nana likes to say!) My kids start begging Nana to put her pool up starting somewhere around April when the first warm days start to appear. So when Memorial Day rolls around and Nana breaks out the pool the kids become beside themselves with joys. They have a very specific summer time pool routine at her house. They eat lunch, go swimming, get out and eat ice cream, watch a short clip of Tom and Jerry and then they get back in and swim for a few more hours. It sounds silly, but they take it very seriously. They have even more fun if the cousins or some neighborhood kids can take part in the summer time fun. Thanks Nana and Pop Pop for setting the pools up and giving them so many fun summer memories at your house!

Who killed Mr. Tomato Head?

scene of the crime...

Matt. Caught red handed trying to destroy the evidence.

Don't try to hide. The camera never lies.

Edisto Beach

This was kind of an unexpected trip for us. Both of my parents retired in June and they asked us at the beginning of June if we would like to go to the beach at the end of June and of course we said we would love to. We go to the beach with Matt's family every winter but we have never been to the beach as a family in the warm summer weather so we were all so excited! My extended family came and got another house down the road, so it turned out to be a big family gathering. Edisto is the beach that my family always went to when I was growing up, but I hadn't been back in about 12 years. Not much has changed. In fact, it is almost exactly the same. It is a very non commercialized Island and we really enjoyed it because there aren't so many other distractions. We spent most of our time at the beach just swimming and playing in the sand. It was very relaxing and the kids didn't want to come home. They said they wished we lived at the beach! I posted some of my favorite pictures and even though I should have done a slideshow, I figured just making a post on my blog was good enough since it has been so long. I have to thank Matt for the intervention...I guess it's starting to work!

My kids are totally goggle obsessed. They think they can't go swimming without them.
This is Elijah's silly grin. Little does he know that a giant wave is about to plaster him!
The younger boys just had a blast playing in the very shallow waves.
Matt took the boys fishing at the point...Caleb had the most endurance and the others mostly ended up swimming. The water at the point was very calm and was almost like swimming in a lake. The fishing wasn't a great success, but it's always worth a try.
This is Ezra being so brave in the water. This kid would just run full speed into the water if we would let him. Definitely a water baby!

Who needs Mr. Potato Head...(Post 2 of 2)

...when you can have a Mr. Tomato Head. See what you can do while cooking dinner.

The crown jewel of this little produce creation is a giant German Johnson tomato we grew at our community garden plot on the campus of Guilford College. We live less than a mile from the campus so it's very convenient. We have also been expanding our backyard garden plot and trying to trim branches here and there to get enough sunlight without taking down anymore of the nice mature oaks that shade our house in the summer.



We have Romas, jalapenos, bell peppers, German Johnson's, and watermelons at the community garden. We had cucumbers but they got bacterial wilt pretty early on so we pulled them out at the first signs to save the melons which can be susceptible to the same disease. At home we had our first ever crop of potatoes (Yukon Gold), yellow cherry tomatoes (which Ezra calls "tatoes", yellow pear tomatoes (which make up the nose of our Tomato Head, other tomato varieties that we got from my Dad's volunteers this year, bush beans, cantaloupe, and several others. We also have an herb garden with parsley, mint, stevia, lavender, sage, basil and cilantro.

My Dad grew the squash, zucchini and cucumbers in the picture above. It's nice to be able to share produce with other gardeners. Our friends, the Grims, gave us some of their garlic tonight after a meal at their house. Check out what's been occupying their time here.

For more garden inspiration or for those of you non-gardeners interested in a good read on the value of compost look here. The Kruidenier's are a constant source of garden and other inspiration (whether they know it or not).

That's all for this intervention but I'll leave you with a little taste (pun intended) of what we have been up to inside the house this summer. Hopefully we will be able to post the long awaited before and after pictures of all of our home remodeling adventures by the end of August so stay tuned for that. Until then enjoy pondering how these pictures fit...




Hint for one of these pictures: we had to turn a boy's room into bit more of a girl's room. For those that don't know Vaughn baby #5 is a girl or so we're told. I don't normally like to find out but because we have all boys Kallie really wanted to know (okay so did I but I won't admit it).

An Intervention (Post 1 of 2)

So Kallie has not posted a blog since March 23. I (Matt here) have attempted not to invade this space with any of my random thoughts but now seems like a good time. So what's the intervention? The next post is just to help get the ball rolling and to keep some of you readers (Jenny Brown) from getting anxious for a new blog from Kallie. I'll spare you all from my thoughts and mostly just give you a brief glimpse of a couple things that have been going on around here.