Weirdo!

My fabulous friend Molly again had a fantastically funny entry in her latest blog; the idea being to share 7 weird facts about yourself. She then tagged me to do my own. Those who are tagged need to write on their own blog those 7 facts as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag seven others and list their names on your blog. You have to leave those you plan on tagging a note in their comments so they know that they have been tagged and to read your blog. (honestly, I think I only have a few blog-ing friends, so I may have to break the 7 friend rule--uh oh!)

1. I consistently, at every meal, spill something on myself. When I was pregnant it was particularly bad. Many of my shirts were thrown in the garbage covered in strawberry ice cream stains.

2. Until the age of 5, I lived in a log cabin in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. I played outside all day in the mud, splashed around in the creek, frolicked with slimy salamanders and went for long treks into the forest with my dogs. Birds, flowers, plants, fish: I love them all. But bugs? To this day, I scream every time I think there might possibly be a small tiny bug anywhere near me. And God forbid that the bug is actually ON ME! AWK! That makes me shiver just thinking about it.

3. I have an uncanny ability to summon people. Living people, that is. If there is someone that I haven't talked to for years, all I have to do is think about them and they contact me. Example: I emailed my old college roommate and two days later, she emailed me. The weird thing? She didn't get my email. The address I wrote she no longer checked. She emailed me on her own volition! Yeah. It freaked me out too.

4. My husband says I'm weird because I don't like hot chocolate. Actually, I don't really like chocolate all that much period.

5. I regulate my temperature through my feet. If my feet are cold, even if it's 90 degrees where my body is, I'm cold. Or, like the other day, there were icy breezes screaming up the coast and I had nice woolly socks on and was completely toasty!

6. When pregnant with Elliot, I was addicted to dairy products. I had at least 8 glasses of milk, a whole container full of cottage cheese and a pint of ice cream everyday. Then, when Elliot was born, he was lactose intolerant. I had to go cold turkey with no dairy at all.

7. I've been inside the pyramids at Giza in Egypt. Not so weird, I suppose, but uncommon right?!

I had a hard time with this (believe it or not!)! I always thought I was sort of weird, but I guess I'm not!

OK, so I'm tagging Hannah and Lara . Maybe some more of my friends will send their blogs to me...

Crayon Color Party!

Recently, Elliot has discovered that drawing with Crayons is the best fun any kid could have. Unless you're coloring with washable, non-toxic, juicy colored markers! Oh and it's great if Dad is there to help you along.

Hmm... Purple Mountain's Magesty? That sounds fantastic!

We're not sure whether Elliot is going to favour his right or left hand. He changes hands depending on the color of the crayon and well, just whenever he feels like it. So far, both hands seem to work very well.

Rumour has it that there are a few people on my side of the family that were ambidextrous. That'd be cool.

Never Too Early to do the Chores

Vegetable Garden

This year, I dug a new veggie garden in our backyard. There was an old raised bed that my grandmother put in probably 25 years ago which I tore out (which, I might add, took me 4 days in itself to get out! There was about 15 square feet of chicken wire and tarp under the ground that was intended to keep out gophers/moles, but I don't think it ever worked.) then I doubled the size. Then, I dug compost into the whole thing (the compost was black and crumbly and had been preparing to nourish my garden for probably 20 years!).

After the soil was dug and fluffy and picked clean of weeds and roots (there's a huge redwood not 5 feet away which may cause problems with its roots invading the area), I created 3 long, wide raised rows. In these rows, I planted beans (thanks to Shelley for the organic heirloom beans!), lettuce, zucchini, broccoli, carrots, beets, radishes, cucumbers, cilantro, peas, chard and arugula. Wow, that sounds like a lot of stuff written down on paper.

There's also an herb garden where I've planted a bunch of yummy herbs, including basil, parsley, oregano and chives. The cats are ecstatic that I've also planted catnip for them. Although, as I've learned in previous years, I haven't let them at the plant yet because last time a catnip plant was left unprotected it was crushed in the first 20 minutes of life. Around the plant are a few bamboo sticks trying to protect the plant from an overly affectionate kitty. We'll see if it works.



Here's how it looks now! Everything is very small and barely poking their little heads out of the soil, but I have high hopes... Soon, I hope to show baskets of fresh, tender produce!

Just Going for a Stroll

Please let me know if you can't see this video. I'm doing some experiments with this.

Outdoors in the Sunshine

At the beach....Elliot loved having bare legs and bare feet to dig in the sand.



In the garden... Our favorite thing is to get as muddy as possible and this garbage can lid filled with water really did the trick.