Weekend Reflection # 15

Wow, what a week! I haven't been able to blog since Tuesday. I think that explains how busy it's been in our house this week! Lots of things have been happening and lots of things have been accomplished this week. I am very thankful to my family for their help around the house and on the projects we had in the works. Let me just brag about my girls for a minute....my girls are wonderful. They are so helpful and I'm sure I don't express my gratitude near enough but I am VERY blessed to have them as my daughters. I cannot tell you how they help me day in and day out. I have hypothyroidism and even though I am on medication, I stay tired a lot. The girls are always quick to help me pick up the slack whenever I am having one of those days where all I want to do is take a nap! I love you girls!

Here's how our week went.

Last Sunday: Mother's Day! We attended worship and then came home to rest. We cooked out here in the evening and my MIL, FIL, and BIL came over to join us. My MIL and FIL brought me a beautiful plant for our new deck. It's found a nice place out there and is just gorgeous! Thanks you guys! We grilled burgers and I made some cowboy beans. YUM! After we ate, we talked MIL and FIL into watching Facing the Giants with us. As I've mentioned before, we have seen this movie a few times and bought it when it came out on DVD. I am convinced that I will never be able to watch this movie without crying like a baby (neither can Jeff!). The in-laws loved the movie and they both boohooed some too. It was a wonderful way to spend Mother's Day. Oh, I forgot to mention that I made an awesome cake for dessert. It was called Chocolate Lovers Cake out of The Baking Bible cookbook. It was two 9-inch chocolate layer cakes with holes poked in the tops of each, raspberry preserves spread over each top while it was still warm, a mixture of sweetened condensed milk, sugar, and chocolate chips heated until the chips melted and then spread on top of one layer cake, the second layer cake stacked on top, and a homemade chocolate ganache to ice the entire cake. It was dripping with chocolate. Well, ok, the chocolate didn't drip but I mean that there was so much chocolate everywhere! Honestly, I thought it would be too chocolatey but it was perfect. When I bit into it and tasted the raspberry preserves, I thought I would melt! LOL! It was very tasty and everyone loved it!

Monday: Not much went on besides our normal activities. A few things were done to the deck and we had a good day homeschooling. Jeff's been working alot and had a conference call Monday night.

Tuesday: Jeff has bagpipe practice this night every week from 7 to about 11. He surprised me by showing up at home around 9pm from practice. Things ended way early because the pipe major wasn't there and so having him home early was a nice treat. Caroline had ballet class from 4 to 5pm. I ran my usual errands while Caroline was in class.

Wednesday and Thursday: Pretty normal days. Nothing much to note. Caroline had ballet class again on Thursday. I had the wonderful job of having the oil changed in one of our vehicles and also had the tires rotated. I know, exciting! LOL! I was glad to get it done because Jeff has to really plan to get this done because of work. I was happy that I was able to lighten his load by getting it out of the way.

Friday: We were busy working in the yard this day. Jeff did all the mowing and weed killing. He's also on a mission to kill all of the moss in our backyard so he put lime all over it. It's funny because the backyard looks like it's been dusted with snow (the lime is powder). A few more things were done on the deck and it's coming along. We grilled hamburger steaks, had baked potatoes and salad, and tried a new salad dressing. We bought Kraft brand Sun Dried Tomato dressing. Now, I'm a Ranch or Raspberry Vinaigrette kinda girl and I made up my mind that there was no way I'd like this dressing. OH MY!!! I could not believe how heavenly it was when I tasted it! It's tangy, but not too tangy and is so very yummy! I'll be marinating some chicken tenders in it to grill this week! I'm telling you, you need to try this dressing! Needless to say, it was a most excellent meal!

Friday evening, Jeff decided to till the space for our garden. Everyone got into it! Caroline was tilling and I did also. I had never used a tiller and it was quite fun. We tilled out a 10x10 space for the garden and called it a night! We watched The Fountain and I have to say that while I enjoyed it somewhat, it was just plain weird. I got it, don't get me wrong. I just don't understand why it took two hours to get to the end of the movie. It seemed like alot of stuff to throw in with not a lot of need for it. Maybe it's just me. I guess I just expected more from a Hugh Jackman film.

Saturday: I'm still recovering from Saturday. My bones ache and I have a sunburn on my forehead and neck from being outside all day in the sun! We finally got our garden going! We got up early and Jeff started building the structure for our 10x10 garden. He did a great job! After the structure was built and put together, it was time to add topsoil and manure to the garden soil. The four of us worked on getting the dirt mixed for a couple of hours and then it was time to get planting. We are using the Square Foot Gardening technique as our guide although we chose not to make a raised garden. We chose to use our existing dirt and see how it goes. If you've never heard of SFG but want to have a garden, I suggest you check into this. It's a controlled way to have a garden. It makes a lot of sense and if all goes as planned, we'll yield a good number of crops. So far, we have planted Roma and Rutgers tomatoes, jalapenos, Corno di Toro peppers, green peppers, broccoli, okra, spinach, cucumbers, yellow and white onions, rosemary, cilantro, Buttercrunch and Mesclun lettuce, and a couple kinds of flowers. We still need to get some beans going and we have a few other open spaces for carrots and whatever else we come up with. This is our first garden so I pray it produces for us. It will be a huge encouragement to see all of that hard work pay off. Plus, I'm really excited about having fresh salads anytime I want them! I'll be sharing more of our garden experience this week.

I hope your week went well. I have a lot of blog reading to catch up on and I'm going to try and make sure I set aside some time each night this week to do that! Since the season finale of Lost is Wednesday, I'll have that time slot free to read for awhile! LOL! For more WR's, check out Judi's place!