Dinner, 24 April - Benedicts?

I want to say these are the benedicts that Josh made a while back... everyone dug in before I thought to get the camera out! They were really beautiful and incredibly delicious...

Bikey Gang

Two days ago, a small-scale bikey gang rode up on our front lawn:

Bikey gang individual portraits: Lemy-el.

Ezzie-Bug.

And King Dididi.

This is what King Dididi does to naughty mosquitoes.

Another pose -- I was telling them to put their hands on their hips. They had their own ideas...

And Elspeth (aka Espiff) wanted in on the bike riding as well.

Two Princes and a Princess

For Ezzie's second birthday, she got some My Little Ponies and dress-up shoes from Josh and Rebekah. Once she tried them on with her princess dress from Stephanie, the boys wanted some costumes too, so Rebekah made capes for them out of playsilks and a nursing cover, and I just had to get some pictures.

Here are Princess Ezra and Prince Lemuel, but where is Prince Cedar?

Maybe this way?
There he is! Look at the camera, everyone!

There we go!

Planting day!

Silver and I have never had a garden of our own, and that was a big thing we were looking forward to doing here -- because it's fun and delicious, but also because it's good practice. Our dream -- all of us -- is to have a piece of land one day with some animals and a big, big garden to grow basically all the produce we need. While we can't tackle have some livestock yet (I'm not sure if we're zoned for sheep...), we do have the opportunity to get in some gardening practice.

The men worked really hard turning over the soil, building garden boxes, and incorporating some compost -- and then, finally, on April 21st, we were ready to start planting! It was a beautiful day, and we spent almost all of it outdoors.

Lem and Cedar on the baby playset:

The boxes! Here you can see we've started cordoning them off -- we're doing the square foot method from a book that Josh has:

Me and the Pumpkin -- otherwise known as baby Elspeth:

Cedar peeking through, and Silver supervising while Ezzie climbs...

Rebekah also cleaned up the whole backyard that day -- here Cedar's discovered the turtle sand box that she's pulled out to hose off:

Ezzie and Lem decide to join:

Ezzie bug:

Ezzie and Lem:

Pizza! Not homemade, but the next best thing: Take-out from Lil' Mike's, where they do east-coast style pizza so good it makes you homesick. Well, it does me, anyway.

Homemade Condiments

I think this was the day that Josh made dinner -- a big old potato casserole, with plenty of cheese and broccoli... and I forgot to take pictures. I did manage to get a picture, though, of what I was doing in the meantime. I made some ketchup to go with the potato casserole (I really wish there was a better name for it -- it was improvised wonder), and some mayo so that I could make buttermilk ranch dressing.

And you need almost nothing to make them -- a pot and a can opener for the ketchup, a blender (or food processor) for the mayo, and maybe a knife for the dressing. Here's where I got my recipes: Homemade ketchup, Mayo, Buttermilk Ranch Dressing.

Dinner, 18 April - Waffles!

Forgot to take pictures before we dug in! Here we've got some tasty waffles:

And some broccoli baked with cheese on top (what's left of it, anyway):

Some sausage we cut and fried up in the pan:

And Lemy and Cedar eating some waffles... in monster/dinosaur jammies.

Dinner, 17 April - French Onion Soup

French onion soup with salad and no-knead bread