All Tied Up

I've been finding little treasures like this all over the house.

Nollie has always loved to tie things up.  Initially if she found a belt or a watch that wasn't attached to a person she would wrap it around and through itself so many times that it looked like a ball.  She's now moved on to tying anything she can find.

I have started giving her a shoelace to play with and she will sit quietly for half an hour or more and just tie it up.

If there are beads about she will add them.

Look at this little diddy she did on her dress strings.

 

I'm happy to encourage anything that will keep the kids busy. This doesn't seem to be a fleeting obsession so I'm on the look out for ways to keep her excited with knots.  She's a bit young for a knot tying book so I guess I just keep her occupied with an assortment of items to tie up.

July Randoms

Sorry I've been so bad with the posts lately, I guess it's lazy summer mode.  I've got some ideas for posts floating around in my head but they just haven't made it onto the computer yet.  Here are a few tidbits to keep you up to date.

1. Our current house project has been the parging (the area outside your house between the siding and the ground).  I didn't realize how much it would finish off the exterior of our house, it looks great.  I can no longer see any sign of foam basement or Home Hardware paper just a finished exterior.  As with nearly every other project this one has involved some hurdles and taken much longer than we imagined but we should have it finished up by the weekend.
   
2. Our grass is coming in well, there are lots of weed throughout but with it all cut it looks like a lawn.  There are some patches of just thick grass and no weeds.  The girls & I have even started running around in our bare feet with no shoes on outside, its like Heaven.
3. We've finalized our mortgage & worked out all of that business.  We ended up saying goodbye to the bank that didn't think we were 97% complete and wanted to see all the trim done first and have switched over to our home bank and have a regular old mortgage instead of a builders mortgage.  It is so nice to finally start paying off the money we have spent rather than just paying interest and now we can leave our baseboards unfinished forever if we choose.
4. We've been enjoying lots of visiting lately with close friends and extended family.  It is so nice to get together.  Sometimes the hermit in me is just so happy to hang out at home that I don't make an effort to get out and visit and I should, I enjoy it. 
5. The girls just continue to grow and play.  I'm so happy that they are so close in age and have eachother to play with every day.  I love to hear them running around and giggling or to see them sitting and playing together and my heart almost skips a beat when I hear them in another room using nice manners with eachother without any reminders.
6. The garden is doing great, well except for the carrots, I think I have two growing carrots, boo.  We've been eating lettuce like crazy to keep up with it before it bolts and it tastes good, a lot of time with home grown lettuce it tastes really bitter or just like grass but this stuff tastes OK.  This weekend I dug around and we ate our first bit of baby potatoes, they were amazing, ...amazing.  We have grasshoppers like crazy but so far they haven't eaten too much of the garden, I hope they stay away.  Tomatoes, they're coming, still green but I have lots on the plants and many more plants flowering, looking forward to a tomato extravaganza this fall.
7. Curt has been swimming 1 mile atleast twice a week at lunch time  for the last 4 months and I'm so proud of him for keeping it up.  He started with whatever he could, maybe 10 laps stopping between each one to catch his breath before going on to the next and each time he went he kept adding one lap until he was up to a mile, now he's just working on getting that mile a little faster.  He's my hero.
8. Me, I'm just doing my regular thing, reading, laundry, keeping the girls entertained, baking, thinking about but not actually sewing, on ocasion knitting, watching movies, playing in my garden.....regular stuff.
   
9. Just watched a deer walk through our back yard,... I love this place.
   
10. I've added a link on the left side to subscribe by email.  If you wish to sign up you can receive Ranch on Relaxo posts right to your inbox each day that I post them.  That way you won't miss any of this exciting business going on at the Ranch.

Back From The Sun

We returned from our first family holiday in two years a week and a half ago and it has taken me this long to post because I was having a hard time getting out of holiday mode. 

We spent just over a week at Mama & Papa Buchan's Condo in Sicamous, BC, it was glorious.  The weather was a nice sunny 25 nearly every day with a couple 30 days near the end.  30's are a bit hot for me but with a pool close by, air conditioning, ice water and lots of frozen treats I handled them just fine.  We invited some friends of ours to come stay with us and I'm happy to report that after the week we are all still friends, it went very well.  It was so nice to have the company for both the adults and the kids.  As soon as we left the condo to drive home Nollie was asking when are we going back to see A & T?  I think they all had lots of fun together.  The condo was really a great environment for the kids.  The building is a u-shape and all the patios open onto a central courtyard, we were on the main level so the kids could just go out the back door and play on the nice grassy area.  There were lots of kids in the building and they would all just meet in the courtyard and play together.  With 5 kids under 5 plannings outings became a bit of a challenge but we just went with the flow.  We enjoyed a few trips out on the boat, time at the beach, walks to the grocery store, a small kid friendly hike to see a waterfall, a trip to Enchanted Forest, lots of time in the pool.  We celebrated two birthdays, Curt's 29th and Nollie's 3rd (OMG). We ate lots of fruit & ice cream, the boys did some golfing, Curt & Linda went on a high ropes course, I did some reading and on top of all that we just generally relaxed and had a great vacation, with no thoughts of the house back home.  We enjoyed it all so much that we hope to go back in September, this vacation thing is good!

Here are some pics

 

  

Gardening

My garden view from the tub

There's only one place from inside my house that I can see my garden and it involves standing in the jet tub in my ensuite.  This doesn't stop me though, several times a day I step into my tub and lean on the unfinished windowsill and admire my garden.  I love this part of the season where all the little plants start to pop out of the ground.  When I'm outside I just make laps around my garden noticing any changes since my last visit.  Within 24 hours I saw the zucchini, corn, beans, potatos, and peas all start to peak out.  At this point nearly everything has made an appearance, it makes me oh so happy.

 First sign of Onions

Rather than a traditional row garden I opted for a plan that is modeled on the square foot garden (Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space With Less Work).  The garden is separated into various sized quadrants with a few different types of plant in each section.  The individual areas are separated by various pieces of scrap board that we had lying around.  The boards serve as a walking path so that you don't have to walk on the dirt, although both Simon and Luca don't get this and I'm continually hollering at them to get off the dirt. Not an easy concept when the whole yard is dirt.  Most of the areas are no more than 4 feet wide so that the entire square can be reached from the outside boards. The square foot garden is supposed to allow you to fit more plants in a smaller space with less work.  You don't have all of the wasted space between each row where weeds can grow up.  This style of gardening also makes it easier for companion planting so two or more plants can work together to mutually benifit one another.  Another concept of the square foot gardening is that you plant exactly the number of seeds you want rather than planting extra & then thinning down at a later date.  This is a little tricky for carrots, with their small seeds but I made an attempt.  It's a trial year for the garden, I was reading about it and liked the idea.  I thought I would give it a try because you will never know how something works unless you do.  I must say, so far I really enjoy the boards to walk on, rather than the dirt and its very eye pleasing to see all the little separate squares rather than just one large area of black dirt. In my garden I planted zucchini, corn, beans, peas, lettuce, spinach, beats, carrots, cucumber, pumpkin, potatos, onions, garlic, and of course tomatos.

I got my shipment of plants from the Saskatoon Farm on Friday and got them all planted this weekend.  Saskatoons, raspberries, strawberries, asparigus & rhubarb for the garden and a few trees & shrubs for the yard.  I'm not sure that I will get any fruit or vegies off these plants this year but next year they will be producers.  I was a little nervous about getting plants shipped on the Greyhound but they all look great, very healthy and they threw in a few extra of each of the fruit plants.  I guess they know what they are doing, they do make a business of it.  If you are in the market for fruit plants I would highly recommend you check out the Saskatoon Farm, good prices and nice looking plants.

Newly planted Strawberries & Rhubarb

In closing I have another Tomato confessional, I wasn't going to say anything, kind of embarassing.  The  Tomato plants I was talking about in a previous post, I let them freeze.  Agh, the one night I didn't pull them in.  As soon as I woke up in the morning I knew and as the day went on they all wilted and died.  So again I went out to buy some more Tomato plants, I'm sure I'm up over $50 worth of Tomato plants this year. Gardening saves you money, you know.  I planted the new Tomatos in the garden after the weather forcast was showing no sign of frost like evening tempersatures.  Now you may know that I have a hard time throwing anything away so the "dead" tomato plants were still sitting on my deck.  I was watching them and it looks like some of them, most of them may survive. They have new little leaves coming out of the v's of the plant.  I cut off the dead spots & planted them in the garden too.  My garden is basically a tomato garden with a few extra plants.  Maybe I'll get a booth at the Farmers Market in the fall.  That's how Louis Hole got started you know, she just started selling the excess produce from her farm.

 Garden view from the back deck

Big Girls Sleeping

This week the girls room got a bit of a makeover.  We took down the crib and split the bunk bed into two single beds.  Luca was making the move to a big girl bed.  We were anticipating a week or so of long nights putting her back into her bed several times, having her crying at the door, etc.  Well I guess she was ready because there was no such thing, the transition has been really smooth.  We know she has been off her bed because there are some extra books on her bed when we check on her but she makes it back to her bed and goes to sleep so I'm OK with that.  I think it helps that the girls share a room and she can see that Nollie is also in her bed going to sleep.  We didn't change anything else about the bedtime routine so that made the transition easier I'm sure.  The two twin beds with matching bedspreads look so cute in the room together and Luca is so proud of her new bed.  I'd post a photo but their room is a disaster.

The same night that we were introducing the new bed to Luca, Nollie announced that she wanted to wear panties to bed like Mom.  Up until this point she was wearing a pull-up stype diaper at night time.  I had been  making an effort lately to be sure she goes pee right before bed and as soon as she wakes up rather than letting doddle around and pee in her diaper.  Some mornings she was dry but others she was not so I hadn't introduced the idea of ditching the pull-ups yet.  I knew this transition would likely mean more laundry for me to do but if she says she is ready we will go for it.  She was immediately wondering what we would do with all the extra diapers for her, determined that she would never wear them again.  This week has gone quite well, I've had a couple extra loads of laundry but she's had some dry nights too.  I love when the transitions just happen.  Two girls moving on to a new stage of night time sleeping in one week.