Last fall one of my good friends called me up wanting to know if I was interested in seeing New Kids on the Block (NKOTB) with her and a few of her friends. I was pretty hesitant since I am not a late night, crazy concert going type of person but I was in kind of a rut with being home with my kids so I said yes. At the time my son was about seven months old, had never been left with anyone (including my husband), still nursing every two hours around the clock and refusing most solid foods. I told myself he would be weaned by his first birthday and because it was six months out we would be able to leave him with all sorts of people by then.

Of course my son decided to follow his own schedule. A week before the concert I texted my friend and told her I wasn’t sure if I could go because, get this, my son was still nursing 4 or so times a day and before sleeping and I could not get him to stop. That’s right. My son had back to back colds all winter into late spring and since he would not eat many solid foods or take any form of sippy cup, bottle, straw or regular cup I was not allowed to wean him until he got better to prevent dehydration. It was a long season of sickness for us.  We had also only left him one time at night with family and it was only until a little past bed time so I could nurse him late if he refused to sleep.

I decided to bite the bullet and try to go to the concert and it was the best decision I have made in a long time! I really focused on weaning my son the week before and was able to put him down a couple of times without nursing at bed time and my husband had no problems putting him down that night, and the next night as well since I went to my oldest daughter’s high school award ceremony without the little kids. I am pretty sure we are at the very end of nursing and it is very freeing. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge supporter of breastfeeding, but this is my third kid and I have had a hard time with all three of them.  My son was the most difficult of the three and I was very ready to wean him by a year so the extra few months was really wearing on me.

My advice to my fellow worn out, exhausted, over touched but love your kids so much moms is to do something unexpected every once and a while.  Reach out to someone new, try a new experience or just get out of your comfort zone for a bit.  I had an awesome time at the concert and my kids were so much better behaved after being away from me for a while. I went and I sung my heart out, danced for hours and came home and crashed in bed immediately.  I never would have sung and danced like that before I had my kids, and I have been to a lot of concerts.  I have always been the shy person that might not even stand up for the entire concert so for me to be loud and not care was a huge change.

There was a magical energy in the arena as if all of the moms (and there were a ton of us) were free of their obligations and for this one night we were young again, dancing and singing our hearts out. NKOTB put on a very professional well laid out concert. Boyz II Men and Paula Abdul opened which was awesome because I had forgotten how much I loved their music.

I am not someone that usually takes photos as concerts because the always turn out terrible but I took a few to show my husband because I missed him.  He and I used to go out every few months to concerts when we only had one kid and she was gone every weekend. I really miss that. I miss dating him and having time together where we could talk about real things besides what the kids are doing or how we need to plan our budget for the next whatever time. Now that I am finally able to leave the youngest I fully plan on hanging out with my husband alone in the near future.

So fellow moms, don’t forget to take care of yourself and get out once in a while. I really needed this time out and I am sure many of you do to!

We had a really busy week this week with playdates for the younger kids and prom for our oldest.  There were errands to run and the one year old didn’t nap all week. Both little kids must be growing through a growth spurt because I spend a lot of time feeding hangry (yes hangry) kids who had been fed an hour prior and then having to run to the store because we some how were out of everything. There was a lot of cleaning up of messes and my husband and I spent all of Sunday working on cleaning out the garage. We made a lot of progress and I feel much better about it.  We just need to add another shelf to the ceiling and some along the walls for our gardening stuff and we should be mostly done. Ug. It was both exhausting and fun hanging out with the kids this week but we didn’t get a lot of gardening done.

I spent most of my time weeding and cleaning up the back yard.  I didn’t have a lot of time so I pulled the biggest weeds from the asparagus bed, around the fruit trees/bushes and in the back around the deck/huckleberry bush.  I found the biggest Stinky Bob plant I have ever seen underneath the huckleberry bush. It was easily three feet across. They are native here so they are everywhere in our back ravine and luckily they are easy to pull once they get big enough.  My teenager also spent quite a bit of quality time with her sister pulling ivy along our back slope in preparation for the back fence.  Getting the back area clear will be a family effort but well worth it once the fence is in and we can let George out to roam.  I didn’t get any pictures of her efforts because I was busy in the garage (which I didn’t take pictures of either because it was a huge embarrassing mess).

Our indoor seedlings are past the point of needing planting but I was waiting on our trellises to come in the mail. I ordered them from Gardeners Supply Store a few weeks ago but you can also find something similar on Amazon and they will come much quicker since I had to wait almost three weeks for them to ship which was kind of a pain. I am going to plant my Luffas along the red three panel trellis and my three year old and I planted some pole beans under the bamboo stakes to create a bean tepee for her and her brother to play in.  She was very excited! I let her choose beans or peas. My kids love their vegetables and peas and green beans are their favorite. I am really glad she chose green beans because I am not a fan of peas and I have been having to eat them quite a bit lately so that I am modeling good vegetable eating behavior.

My Luffa plants are doing well. I have been hardening them off all week and they should be ready to plant some time this week.  I am really excited about them but also nervous because we just started out gardening and these are a little unusual.  I have some bottle gourds that are ready to plant as well but I am in need of another trellis for them to climb.

I used some Earth Staples to anchor the trellis and some of the soaker hoses down.  I plan on anchoring more of the soaker hoses down but I am waiting for after I add another trellis or something for the gourds to grow on.  I probably need to use a splitter with my soaker hoses so there isn’t so much wasted water but I am still trying to figure out a good configuration for them. I am afraid that if I bury them I will forget where I put them…

Our green bean trellis is looking good. I am hoping it will be fun for the kids to sit in and sneak eating beans while I work in the garden.

Our pumpkins and squash are doing well with new growth and lots of flowers.  I am hoping to get at least one good sized pumpkin and I know that the zucchini will probably over produce so I plan on freezing a bunch of it for the winter since I am the only on that really likes it.  I only have two plants in the garden and a couple still in their red cups but I don’t think I will be planting the extras since two zucchini plants it probably enough for us.

After I worked in the vegetable garden I spent some time looking around the rest of the yard while my husband and son watered the asparagus and the front garden bed.

My gigantic bush by our front door is abuzz with bees.  It is really pretty with all of it’s white flowers and the way it is shaped.

We also have these pink flowers that are stunning. We almost killed these last year when we planted the asparagus. They die back every year and the previous owners must have cut them back before they put the house on the market so we had no idea they were there until after they had been stepped on. They did not bloom last year but this year the bush is much bigger and has several big blossoms. We have really enjoyed the anticipation of waiting for the flowers to finally open. Our three year old has been checking them daily for progress which has been fun to watch.

This week I am going to continue to do bi-weekly watering, try and plant my luffa plants and maybe the gourds or my leftover cucumbers. We also have a ton of cleanup work to do in the yard for the oldest’s graduation party in two weeks (time has flown by too fast!) and to get the back ready for a fence.  Our strawberries are starting to ripen and we got one berry off of them this week which the three year old promptly ate.  I did find some unwelcome visitors in the garden this week and I used a non-toxic solution to hopefully get rid of them but that is for another post!

Happy gardening everyone!

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Fire Pit S’mores on the Deck

S’mores on the deck are a great way to spend time as a family! Read more about our first experience with them over the summer.

My husband has wanted a fire pit ever since I can remember and once we moved into our house we knew we would get one.  Last year we never got around to it but a few days ago we decided to take the plunge.  We ordered it from Amazon when they were having a lightening deal on it so it was a decent price.  It called a Solo Stove and is supposed to cut way down on the amount of smoke it releases. The fire pit can also be used on a deck without damaging it which is nice since our deck takes up most of the flat area in our yard.   Just to be safe we put our heat shield from the grill underneath it and aside from the gigantic spider that went running there was no damage to our deck.

The little kids loved playing with it while they were waiting for dinner. They kept stacking the wood and moving it all about which was hilarious. Our son loves anything mechanical so he spent a lot of time trying to figure out the wood holder and how the fire pit was put together.  Our three year old “pealed” the wood for us and rearranged it so that it was just so.  It was great fun and luckily they understood (mostly) when we lit it on fire that it was hot and they were not to go near it.  We still had a grown up watching them at all times once it was lit since you can’t ever be careful enough with little kids and fire.

The wood we used was from extra large branches that fell during the first major wind storm we had in our new house about a month after we moved in.  We cut the larger branches up and stacked them and they worked pretty well for our fire pit. Most of my neighbors sent their branches to the yard waste bin but I was in the back yard super excited about all the free wood we got.  My husband probably thought I was slightly nuts being out there pregnant and insisting he cut the branches into manageable pieces  instead of throwing it into the bin but my mind was on how we could use it later. The branches were a good size and burned for just the right amount of time we needed so it worked well plus we didn’t have to spend a bunch of money buying fire wood. If you have a place to burn it is a good idea to keep some wood around for emergencies.  We lost power for a couple of days our first winter and it would have been really nice to have some seasoned wood to burn in our fireplace to keep the house semi-warm. Luckily my mother-in-law had power so we were able to hang out there once the house got too cold.

My husband lit it with some fat wood and we were ready to go. We shut the slider to keep the kids off the deck, ate dinner and then the fire was perfect for S’mores. Our kids love S’mores (and we do too).  There is something magical about them.  My childhood is filled with memories of being promised S’mores after a long day of working in the woods but somehow they rarely materialized.  My husband and I are all about creating family memories and having a great time with the kids and I could never imagine promising something like that and then never following through.

I found these jumbo marshmallows at Target and some dark chocolate that is dairy-free for our daughter.  Our son was given a chocolate free S’more so that he would definitely sleep tonight. Ha ha, I wonder how long that will work before he realizes he is the only one without chocolate. The jumbo marshmallows worked ok but they really were too big for our fire since it burned pretty hot while we were making them.

Somewhere in our house are some long skewers we bought many, many years ago to roast hot dogs in our fireplace at the townhouse during a power outage but they got lost in the move.  Hopefully we can find them when we get some more cleaning in the garage done.  We still have quite a few boxes that we are slowly sorting and unpacking.  I would highly recommend not moving in a crazy disjointed manner while one of you is pregnant since it becomes impossible to pack properly for a three week close on the house you are selling with items being stored at 4 different locations while you live at your mother-in-law’s house during the closing of the house you are purchasing. Whew. It was enough stress to make me never want to move again.

There is some debate about the proper way to cook a S’more marshmallow but I fall firmly in the light it on fire camp.  I love a little char on my marshmallows with a gooey center. Delicious!

The fire died down in about 2 hours from when we lit it. We did not add any wood to it and it ended up being the perfect amount of time for us.  We got a chance to hang out on the deck as a family for a bit while the kids ate their S’mores and by the time they were ready for bath it had mostly died out.

We had a great time tonight and we are looking forward to a full summer of S’mores and chilling around the fire pit.  Now off to buy hot dogs for tomorrow night!