Sunday, July 27, 2014

Emily's 7th Birthday!

Wow! I can't believe my first little grandbaby is turning 7!  She is turning into such a beautiful little girl....inside and out!

Last year we took her to Canobie Lake park for her birthday, which was a fantastic day.  She's been a few times since, and is now willing to go on bigger and scarier rides.  Since Pepere and I are not into going on rides, we thought a more sedate activity would be better this year.

I found that the Palace Theater in Manchester NH has a children's series......7 different plays they do over the summer for children.  And one of the plays included in the series is Cinderella!!  Perfect!

We picked Emily up on Thursday evening.   Mom was putting the finishing touches on her outfit.


Outside for a couple of pictures of her beautiful dress.


Mom asked for a pose....a hand on the hip works!


Pepere grabbed a photo of us going into the theater.  Sadly, I never thought to take the camera and get a photo of Emily with her Pepere!



Waiting for the show to begin. The theater was packed with parents and kids...lots of little girls in Cinderella dresses!


Is the show going to start now?  now? now? now?


The play was pretty funny.  It was over-the-top silly since it was geared toward the children.   Emily loved it!

After the show I suggested that we should get a little something to eat, and Emily immediately requested Papa Gino's.  Not a surprise!

We discussed how she could use the tails of her hair for paint brushes.


Sauce on the chin!


LOVE the Papa Gino's pizza!  It was so much fun to sit and chat with her and 
enjoy her silliness and humor.


We had a great time, as we usually do when we spend time with Emily.  I hope these outings with us will stick in her brain and become life-long memories.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

I'm a Dirty Girl!!!

After the exhilaration of doing the Spartan Race last year, I signed up for the "Dirty Girl Mud Run".   Since they offered a BOGO, I asked my daughter Jamie to do it with me.

Our day turned out to be sunny and warm....perfect to get all muddied up.   For those who don't know, the Dirty Girl is not a race, just a mud challenge.  It's for women only and a donation is made to breast cancer awareness.

Basically, the goal is to get as muddy as possible.  There were fourteen obstacles and each got us muddier than the next.  It was a 5K race, but not very difficult.    Most of the obstacles were placed so Hubby couldn't take pictures.......but here are a few:

Jamie's friend came up with the slogan for our shirts.  And since there was a donation being made to breast cancer awareness, we included a tribute to my Mom......gone now four years.



It was a hike up the hill to the starting point!


The first obstacle could be seen from the bottom of the hill.  Hubby assures me that at this point he couldn't tell who was who....so this is not us!  But it was a big, blowup slide that you climbed up and bounced down on the other side.  I thought there'd be a big puddle of mud at the bottom but there wasn't!


Instead the next obstacle was a cargo net over a big trough of mud.  You had to go under the cargo net, and it was high enough at the beginning to just bend over and walk under.  Then the cargo net got lower and lower until you had to army crawl at the end!   There was no choice but to get completely covered in mud!

The rest of the obstacles along the way were similar.  Lots of crawling under......sometimes it was a banner, sometimes a tube...but always through a bunch of mud! At one point there was a young man with a bucket of mud, and if he didn't think you were muddy enough he'd douse you with a bucketful!

And Jamie got caught throwing mud at me!!! Imagine that??!!




We also climbed over a cargo net, over an "A" frame wooden structure, and over a wall.   The wall was much easier than the one at the Spartan race....there were wooden hand-holds!  

We went up and over a big A-frame cargo net and rang the bell at the top. 



And luckily there was a big blow-up slide with a big mud puddle at the bottom!  Jamie and I went down with Moose Antlers to see if they'd take our picture...and they did!




Towards the end, we went down a hill.....where there were ropes so you could ease your way down standing up.....but I chose to slide down on my butt, and Jamie chose to log-roll down!  




At this point we looked like warriors coming off the battle fields!



Through a rope maze and finally we got to the final trough at the end!  We had a great time throwing more mud at each other and making sure there wasn't an inch of our bodies that weren't covered.


Hubby made sure to take our "after" photo:


The venue had a "rinse station"  (basically a whole bunch of hoses) where we could get the biggest chunks of mud off us ......although there were plenty of spots on my body that did not get clean!   Then they  had a changing tent so we could put on dry clothes.

Each participant got a t-shirt and celebratory beer.


They also had food and stuff you could buy and beer was for sale for the non-participants.  We sat and relaxed for a little while.

Hubby was a great photographer and a pretty darn good roadie as well! And....a great big smooch and a thank you to him for putting up with my insanity!






We headed home....where a took a very very very long shower!

We had a wonderful time.  It was loads of fun....and I thank my daughter Jamie who, as always, was supportive and loving and so much fun!   I wouldn't have wanted to do this with anyone but you, Jamie!










Saturday, July 5, 2014

Watching the Garden Grow

Phew!   A bit of a "hurricane" for Fourth of July yesterday.....and then I wake up this morning to brilliant blue skies, sunshine and a gorgeous breeze! Perfect day to go out and assess the gardens and snap a few photos.

The flower gardens are looking pretty damn good.  The front garden has been slow to produce any flowers...it only gets morning sun and then a lot of shade.  But I finally got some Tiger Lilies including this dark-colored one that is so unusually pretty:


Since I just planted most of these perennials last fall, I've been hesitant to pull out anything that looks to me like a weed, because it might be a nice flower!   So thankfully I didn't pull out these plants, although the flower is a mystery to me.  Anyone know what it is?

There are lots of other blossoms in this garden so another week or two and I should know what the stuff I planted is going to look like!

For some reason, the Hydrangea in the front yard, which was covered in blossoms last year, only produced one blossom this year:


Bummer!

The other front English Garden is doing spectacularly well, as it should since it has the sunniest spot in the whole yard:


Despite the fact that the woman who I got these flowers from assured me they were Day Lilies, they ended out being Tiger Lilies.....which I didn't really want along the stone wall.  I have a whole mess of Tiger Lilies in the backyard and really wanted the shorter Day Lilies out front.  I'm still trolling for Day Lilies if anyone needs to get rid of any this fall.



Lamb's Ear turned out to be beautiful.  Last year they stayed very short and didn't flower at all.  I was quite surprised that this year they grew to 3 feet tall and produced these spectacularly colored blossoms.





On to the vegetable garden, which is even more exciting than the flower gardens!  Who knew I would love gardening so much!


The garden is looking fantastic! Everything is growing at an amazing rate.   This year we put up a 5 1/2 foot fence so as to avoid the Great Deer Debacle of 2013.    I also have some garlic-smelling stakes to put in the ground (courtesy of my daughter-in-law Kara) and I'm sure I still have some Wolf Urine from last year to hang on the fences!!


Last year we had beautiful zucchini plants and no zucchini!   So I determined it was a lack of bees and pollination, and geared myself up to go out and hand-pollinate the flowers when they began to blossom.   When I checked the garden this morning and saw both male and female flowers, I ran inside and got a Q-tip to hand-pollinate them. Much to my surprise, each female flower already had a small zucchini growing behind it!  Hallelujiah!   There are three zucchini on  this one plant.  I have about 7 more plants all covered with dozens of buds....I might regret my wish for more zucchini this year!



My first time growing carrots....the plants look big and healthy....how do I know when to pull out the carrots?


Time to harvest some lettuce!



Pea Pods!  Again, my first time growing peas.   They look like they might be ready to harvest......but maybe I'll wait another week or so?



Now that's a Peppah!!!!!  I'm ready to pluck it....Hubby says to wait..........*tap tap tap goes my foot*

The tomato plants have gone jungle!!!  



The most promising looking tomatoes so far.....they are not as big as they appear in the photo!



It's very exciting to see all our vegetables growing like crazy.   I'm dying to taste all the yumminess in our future!