How does your garden grow?

Right before Mother's Day, Sister and I planted some watermelon seeds as starters in a little cookie Monster 'greenhouse' Papa bought her from Lowe's. (She calls Lowe's "Daddy's grocery store.") She also had a pack of sunflower seeds too.

When we got back from the lake...they were about 3 inches tall. They grew that much in 4 days! So, I told WB we had to get on our garden or we would have watermelon vines growing all over the kitchen! Last Friday afternoon was the day! So, we stopped by Uncle Jim's store and bought the rest of the plants/seeds and headed to the shop. 

Sister helped her daddy scrape the grass off the ground. You can't see the smile on her face here, but this little girl LOVES to be on the tractor with her daddy! Especially when he lets her drive...she's pretty good too. I know how she feels, I always loved riding the tractor with my daddy too. I still do! There is nothing like getting in the cab with him and just talking about all kinds of things and nothing. I miss the farm a lot!

Once they got the grass scraped off and moved to the burn pile, it was Buddy's turn to drive.

He helped till the soil so we could plant. It wasn't quite as dark as it is in the picture, but pretty close!  WB is always getting the last little bit of sunlight out of the day. I can't even tell y'all the number of times we finished up jobs by flashlight. We planted the rest of the garden with pole lights. And the rows still turned out pretty straight. We have sunflowers, watermelon, okra, squash, sweet corn, tomatoes, banana peppers, and in June we are going to plant our pumpkins.

Sister wanted to take a picture of us...so here it is.

The next morning, we went back to water it all in and take a picture. I want to take one each week to show how our little 'crop' has grown. I hope something grows!!

Here is a little evidence that there is a boy in the family.  There are 3 phrases I know I will be saying a million times this summer. I have already lost count of the number of times I have said them this week alone.

"Buddy, don't pull up the flags!"

"Buddy, get out of the mud, son!"

"Buddy, don't step on the plants!"

On another note, Happy Birthday to Uncle Bub! He dropped in the other day while he was in town for a meeting. He and Sister have a special bond. Since he has 3 boys, he doesn't get to love on a little girl...so he loves on Sissy when he sees her. I told him I will be glad to send her on over when she turns 13.

Love you Bub!

Quick Trips for Mother's Day

We have been more than a little busy around here over the past month. I don't see it letting up anytime soon. I am blogging late because I had to clean my house today. It had been a LONG while since my last cleaning. I kept hoping a cleaning lady might hear about how bad my house was and stop in to clean it...but that didn't happen. So, I sucked it up and did it myself.  It was worse than it had been in a while. I even had people over during my little cleaning hiatus. Something I would have normally NEVER done. I just told them that the 5 second rule could not apply on that night. If something dropped-it would be safer for them to leave it. Luckily they were my really good friends, the ones who don't care about the cleanliness of my house. I do feel a 10 pound weight lifted from my back since the house is finally clean. I would have rather those 10 pounds come from my stomach. I am hoping to be caught up by the end of the week with posts. So check back this week. Lotsa fun stuff to talk about...

I'll start with Mother's Day weekend...

The kids and I took off to Tennessee with my mom to see my grandmother. She moved to my uncle's house a few months ago and I hadn't been up there yet. Sister was so ready to get there and yell 'Kaprize!'

We hung out most of the morning and ate lunch with them. Sister loved Uncle Kenny's swing set and Buddy loved the puppies, of course. Here he is with Bear. Bear would fetch his ball and only bring it back to Buddy. They have a bond. A bond that will have to be long distance. I don't do dogs.

Once we wore out the kids and the dogs, we headed back to the lake for the rest of the weekend for fishing and relaxing. It was so unusually cold that when we got on the boat, we were all wrapped up like eskimos. The water was too choppy for fishing, so we mostly fished from the boat dock.

Buddy~shaking and poking the crickets.

Sister couldn't keep her hands off the 'crook-its' either. She kept getting them out of the box, dropping them, and then running all over the boat to catch them. She held this little cricket by the legs for about thirty minutes. She would say "why does this crook-it keep trying to bite me?" Umm...I think I would try to bite you too if you were holding me upside down by 2 legs! He made it into her bug box where she fed him some potato peels and named him Jay Jay. I think she will be disappointed when we go back and he's dead.

WB got to come on Saturday afternoon and helped Buddy fish.

Here's one Mimae caught. I think I heard the score was Mimae-2 and WB-1.

Ok, I gotta be honest with y'all...I don't like fishing. I cannot sit and wait for something to bite, it's not productive enough for me. If I had sat down there as long as WB and momma did and only caught 3-I think I would be so frustrated about the amount of time wasted. There are so many other things that could have been accomplished in that time.

But, if you catch a bunch of fish and need them cleaned, count me in! I LOVE to nail a fish to a pole and skin it! That use to be my job when we were little. I would cry when we would go fishing on the weekend, but once we were home with all the fish...that's when the real fun started! Kinda weird, I guess now that it's all typed out in a blog. Oh well.

All of the grandkids gave Mimae and Papa this horse swing for Christmas. Papa hung it for the kids and they loved it. Sister wanted to know when they were going to hang regular swings down there too. She thinks there should be swings everywhere we go! 

There are some people in the family that think once you are at the lake, there are no rules. Everyone can stay up late and act all willy-nilly with no consequences. Some of those people are below. And the others are named Mimae and Papa. This is why these pictures were possible.

Sunday, we headed back to real life and real rules, also known as HOME.

We stopped by MeeMee and PopPa Honey's to plant their white dogwood for Buddy. We gave them a pink one when Sister was 2, so this year was Buddy's turn. The kids went on a hunt for a new baby calf that was born just a few days before, but the momma had already moved it. Buddy was a little sad, I think.

It was a fun weekend and a nice break! More to come...

(Please excuse this picture in a random spot...it was suppose to be at the top, but I can't get it back up there. )