Yard Work

I've been terrible about posting more pictures of our progress on our yard, but when you see the progess we've made you might understand. We've done a LOT of work, and thanks to a Herring family work party, Tom's labor, and my dad's time and expertise, the yard is done. Well, at least the hard part. No more digging trenches, no more crawling under the house, no more laying pipe.

I wish that I had taken pictures when we moved in of the waist-high dandelions and blackberry bushes that inhabited every square inch of the yard, but pictures of our progress will have to do.

Here's what we've done since I last posted.

Dug a shallow trench and laid a rock barrier for our soon-to-be walkway. Note: My dad said that this would take all day, but Shannon and I got it done in 2 hours.



Pounded in cedar benderboard to serve as the barrier between the grass and walkway and started hauling in gravel to fill.



Clare likes dirt. And watermelon. Check out how dirty this kid's face is!



Played with Papa.



Herring family work party! The WHOLE family came over to help us spread gravel and beauty bark and clear out and level the yard enough that we could spread grass seed. Everyone was an enormous help -- raking, shoveling rocks and old yard waste, hauling beauty bark (we saved the hauling of gravel for Tom), entertaining Clare...You name it, the Herrings did it. They were awesome - and look how much we got done.

Theresa, Ceci, Clare, and Madeline clearing rocks and other yard waste out of the corner of the yard.



Bex, Anna, and Berna shoveling and leveling.



Gravel walkway is laid and rolled. Beauty bark is spread. All in a day's work - literally.





Over the last couple of weeks we've just been laying more benderboard around the outside of the yard, pouring and packing beauty bark, clearing weeds from under the tree and the side of the house and pouring more beauty bark. My dad's been raking and leveling for what seems like forever, but the dirt was finally ready for grass seed! Here's what the yard looks like as of yesterday. The grass is growing in (still a little sparse in spots, but it's filling in little by little).

To get an idea of what this used to look like, imagine a moss/weed walkway bordered on the left by blackberry bushes and trash left over from the previous owners.



Blackberries no more! This is now home to what will become our little grotto for Our Lady.



Grass! A real lawn in the back yard!!!



Ummm...Ignore the laundry drying on the deck. Someday I'll have a real clothesline. But at least you can see the yard!



My dad and I were spreading and packing another layer of beauty bark yesterday while Clare was running around barefoot in the grass. I just loved seeing her able to play in the yard!

That's it for now. There's a lot to catch up on, but now that the major yard work is done I'm hoping to have a little more time for staying up-to-date on the blog.

Looking for an AMAZING summer salad?

Try this: Asparagus Summer Salad

Shannon and I saw this in the latest edition of Sunset Magazine and decided to try it. Um, yeah, it's definitely making it to each of our recipe books. I wish that I could find a picture of it, because in addition to tasting fantastic and being super easy to prep, it's a really pretty salad. :) It was my favorite part of dinner last night and I can't wait to make it again.

SERVES: 6 TIME: 20 minutes (plus some time to chill in the fridge before eating)

2 lbs. thick asparagus, cut into 2-in. pieces
2 tbsp. each fresh lemon juice and Dijon mustard
3 tbsp. olive oil
1/4 cup each chopped fresh basil, chives, and cilantro
1 cup thinly sliced red onion
3/4 cup toasted pine nuts
2 oz. feta cheese, crumbled (1/2 cup)
1/2 tsp. each salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Drop asparagus into water
and cook until bright green and slightly softened, 1 to 2 minutes. Drain
asparagus and rinse with very cold water until cool to the touch.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together lemon juice, mustard, oil, and herbs.
Add asparagus, onion, pine nuts, feta, salt, and pepper, and stir to
combine.

PER SERVING 227 CAL., 71% (162 CAL.) FROM FAT; 9.7 G PROTEIN; 18 G FAT
(3.7 G SAT.); 10 G CARBO (2.7 G FIBER); 425 MG SODIUM; 8.4 MG CHOL.

A VERY share-worthy post for all you wives and moms!

I wanted to share with you a terrific post from one of my favorite blogs, Building Cathedrals. It's a great blog run by a group of Catholic moms, and this particular post struck me in particular as a stay-at-home-mom who is striving to live in the world but not be of it.

I completely agree with everything she says in this post, and I'd love to hear your take on it!

Corpus Christi

Here's one reason why we love being parishioners at Star of the Sea. Father Lappe is awesome! Too bad we were on vacation in California and had to miss this. Enjoy!



What a wonderful way to begin the Year for Priests. God is so faithful in giving us holy, dedicated men to bring us the Sacraments and lead souls to Christ. St. John Vianney, pray for us!

Making the switch?

I'm considering making the switch to cloth diapers with Baby #2 in October. Never thought I'd even consider it, but our good friends Darius & Janet do it with multiple little ones (and she's not up to her elbows in stinky diapers), Ryan & Erin are planning on doing it, and Andrew & Lindsey are considering it as well.

At first, the idea popped in to my head when my friend Erin wanted to make the switch with Emma. I had no idea that the cost savings were so significant until she mentioned it. Then I did the math for myself. Clare is 21 months old. If we spend roughly (sometimes more) $30/month on disposable diapers for her, that means that in her short lifetime we've spent $630 on her diapers alone! And when it costs 1/3 of that to outfit multiple babies (heck, they're washable and re-usable) in cloth, it just seems to make sense.

But what about the convenience of disposable? According to Janet, after making the switch herself, once you get the hang of cloth there's really not that much of a difference. The key is to persevere during the transition time.

Then a blog that I love, SimpleMom, has done the past week on Cloth Diapering 101 to dispel the fears that some of us may have when considering switching to cloth and to offer practical advice and tips. You should check out her series on cloth diapering if you have any questions, because it's pretty comprehensive (at least for me who doesn't know anything) but at the same time not overwhelming. You should also visit because she's doing a giveaway with some fantastic cloth diaper supplies from FuzziBunz, BottomBumpers, and Swaddlebees. Check it out!

Like I said, I'm still in the considering phase...we'll see where we end up going with this.

Happy Birthday Mary & yard project progress

Happy Birthday, Mary! We love you. Sorry for the belated post...Mare's birthday was yesterday June 2. But we celebrated a day early, so I guess we're OK. :)

Our current yard project: Make it habitable.

When we moved in here 2 years ago, the back yard was covered -- and I mean you-can't-see-the-ground-it's-so-thick -- with waist-high dandelions. We've slowly (with my dad's help and industrial-sized backpack sprayer) been killing off the weeds to just thin them out enough so that we could see the ground.

Well, this spring we finally got to the point where we could see enough bare dirt to bring a rototiller in and get the ground ready for planting grass seed. Imagine! A back yard with grass!

We rototilled it all up and smoothed it out with rakes - I had no idea until my dad showed me how to do it properly that raking was such a fine art. The back yard was almost ready to roll out and plant.

Then we decided that we wanted to put in an automatic sprinkler system.

Back to the drawing board. Fortunately for us, my dad has maintained golf courses his whole life and knows just a little bit (OK, a LOT) about irrigation and has been able to walk Tom & I through every step of putting in our own sprinkler system. It's been a lot of work and planning - my dad even went through the trouble of making a blueprint of our back yard and drawing in the arcs of each and every sprinkler head to make sure that we were getting even coverage! Dad has worked so hard on this, while Tom and I just follow his directions.

With his help, so far we've managed to cut in to our water lines successfully and install a pipe to bring the water for the entire irrigation system outside the house to connect to our valves for each of the zones we'll have, map out with little flags where each sprinkler head needs to be placed for maximum even coverage, bring in a trencher (in other words, not a small piece of machinery) and dig the trenches for the pipe we'll need. We're in the process of hand-digging (read: hard work) to clean out the trenches and make them ready for pipes to be laid.

Here are some pictures of what our front & back yards look like right now:



This is the front yard. Notice that we had to take apart the fence to the right of the house to get easier access to the back yard.



View of the side of the back yard from our deck.



The back side of the house.



My dad smiling despite the fact that he and I were both sweating in the 88 degree weather and covered in dirt.



Dad laying our first pipe and getting the valves fixed to the pipe that we have coming out of the house's water lines. Note: I dug this trench and have become pretty good at digging nice square holes. :)

I'll post more pictures as we lay pipe and get it all back-filled (hopefully by the time we leave for California next Friday). I killed the weeds yesterday so that they'll be dead by the time we are done back-filling. That way the ground will be one step closer to read to plant grass seed. Whew! Hard work, but worth it. My dad and Tom have been working so hard on this project and we love being able to see our progress.

Graduation and Bedtime Battles update

Clare with her Aunt Kristy ("Kiki") at the BBQ celebration of her graduation Summa Cum Laude from NNU. When Clare was born Kristy made me promise her one thing: that she would never be "Aunt Kiki". Well, unfortunately "Kristy" is a little difficult for a little mouth to say. So for now she's "Aunt Kiki." Sorry, Kris.



Clare got a little restless during the graduation ceremony, so she took a walk outside with Great Uncle Lee and Papa.



She was holding up the walk back to the hotel after graduation, so Papa put her on his shoulders -- she seemed to like the view from up here!



Clare and one of her new favorite people - my cousin Samantha. Sami was so sweet with Clare, and I think Clare liked having a "big girl" to chase around and hang out with while we were in Idaho.



Clare loves Fr. Lappe and babies, so Fr. Lappe + baby John Vianney = something that made Clare very happy. She's actually really gentle with babies, and loves taking "her turn" holding baby John. I think she's going to be a great big sister.



Enjoying the sunshine for a few minutes with Aunt Shannon. Don't worry, Clare was slathered with SPF 50 sunscreen. :) She now thinks that the only purpose for the deck is lying down, and can usually be seen dragging her baby, bear, pillow, and blanket outside to go "night-night" even after the sun's gone down.

And now for the grand finale photo of the month:



Yes, that would be Clare in her own bed with (along with her bunny and all 20 other stuffed animals and babies with whom she insists on sleeping) after going down for her nap today with NO FUSSING AT ALL. We've had a breakthrough in the last few days as far as bedtime battles go. Clare's been going to sleep and staying that way with little to no crying at all. It's been awesome, and she's a happier girl now that she's sleeping well. Finally, I no longer dread bedtime.