Around Here

Here's a glimpse of what's been happening around here!

The peonies continue to show off.  Each stem has so many blooms on it that they are now drooping over and laying on the ground because the stem can't support the weight of so many blooms.  I've been trying to cut them and bring them inside so they don't lay on the ground and rot.

Baby Cassidy took her first tractor ride with The Farmer and could not have been more unimpressed.  She fell asleep within the first five minutes we were in the tractor and slept the entire time we rode.

She actually got so deeply asleep that she didn't even wake up when we left the field or drove home.  Once we were home, she stayed asleep in her car seat for two more hours.  She is a light sleeper, so this was very unusual for her.  I told The Farmer that whenever she's fighting her nap (which is often), I'm going to send her out with him on the tractor. :)

Harlee and Cassidy are becoming good friends.  I have a mat that Cassidy lays on with toys that hang over it, and one day I laid her on it to entertain her while I was cooking.  I looked over a couple minutes later and Harlee had gone and laid right beside her. 

A couple of minutes after I took this picture, I looked over again and Harlee was licking Cassidy's hand.  Haha!  I made her stop and washed Cassidy's hand, because I know what that dog licks/eats when she's outside and that's just gross, but it was sweet too. I hope they always like each other so well!

I don't have pictures, but I've been working on the yard and garden when Cassidy naps.  I've got 3 tomato plants, a pepper plant, two hills of cucumbers, and onions in the garden.  I just bought green bean seeds and hope to get them planted soon.  I also bought some more perennials for my perennial flower bed, and lots of zinnias for the other flower bed.  I bought some annuals as well for the flower pots by our door, but ran out of potting soil.  I hope to make it to town soon to get more potting soil so I can get the rest of them planted.

The Peonies!

It has finally happened.  I've been checking the peony bush every day for the past two weeks, waiting for the blossoms to open.  The past couple of days there were some that looked soooo close to opening, but they were being stubborn.  Then finally today I went out to look again, and the first ones were open!

Goodness, I wish I had a whole garden full of them.

I couldn't resist cutting the first open bloom to bring inside and enjoy, even though that means the two buds on either side of it won't open.

Besides the peonies, the excitement around here this week is trees.  We have rows of evergreen trees on three sides of our yard, but the trees have been there for quite a while and some are dying.  Because they provide us protection from the wind, we don't want to wait until they completely die to pull them all out and plant new ones.  The new ones are little bitty and won't give much protection for a few years until they grow, so The Farmer ordered a bunch of new trees to plant.  Hopefully these will grow quickly and be ready to take over the wind-blocking duties when the existing trees have to be removed someday.

With our purchase of the evergreen trees, we were given some free oak trees as well.  We decided to plant a few in a line next to our driveway.  I've always liked the look of a tree-lined driveway.  There are already evergreens on the south side of the driveway, so we planted the free oak trees on the north side.  They don't look like much right now!

Those little sticks poking out of the ground are the trees.  Haha!  It's going to be a few years before they are very big.

Don't they look pathetic?!  Some of them don't have any leaves on them at all, and the ones that do have leaves look really withered and sick.  I'm not sure if that's what they're supposed to look like when they're this small, or if they're all going to die, but at least they were free.  If they all die, we're not out any money.  And if they live, I will get my tree-lined driveway in about two million years when they get big enough!  Haha!

The other excitement around here lately has been rain.  I don't think I ever considered rain to be exciting before I married The Farmer, but I guess things have changed.  We had a very dry winter and early spring, and the crops were really needing water.  The past two weekends we have finally had rain, and lots of it!  Last weekend I happened to catch this rainbow just after a shower drenched us.  Of course my phone didn't do it justice, but it was one of the brightest rainbows I've ever seen.

I Heart Spring

Spring is in full swing around here now.  The first sprigs of lily of the valley started blooming this week!

It smells amazing.  There are a lot of blooms that haven't opened yet, so I'll be enjoying them as they open over the next several days.  I couldn't resist cutting this first bloom and bringing it inside to enjoy.

The peonies are getting closer to blooming, too.  We've had 2 1/2 inches of rain in the past 5 days (after a very dry winter and early spring) and are getting lots of sunshine today, so I think they will do great.

Come on, bloom already!  I'm impatiently waiting to drool over you! :)

Not to be left out of the spring excitement, Harlee got herself a haircut today.

In the winter, when we don't shave her, her whole body is the color of her head.  But once we shave her long fur off, her undercoat is much lighter.  In the past, she has not been such a fan of getting shaved and would sit there and shake while I did it.  But today she seemed to enjoy it and even rolled over onto her back to let me shave her belly.  I think she liked the way it felt?!  Silly dog.

I don't know if shaving her helps her feel cooler (it probably does, since we get rid of all the dark fur) but it makes finding ticks on her a lot easier, and it keeps her from shedding so much when she's inside, and it makes bathing her easier when she gets all muddy, so that's reason enough for me.

Several people have asked how Harlee and Cassidy are adjusting to each other.  Actually, they've both done much better than I anticipated.  I was not at all worried that Harlee would try to hurt Cassidy in any way, but I was worried because Harlee does not like loud noises and tends to get really scared by them.  I figured when we brought the baby home and she cried, Harlee would get scared and run.  Instead, Harlee usually wants to stay pretty close, and if Cassidy really gets to wailing she will look a bit annoyed, but not scared.  Sometimes if I leave the room and Cassidy starts crying, Harlee will come find me and look at me as if to say, "Will you come do something about the tiny human causing all this noise?!"  

I was also worried that Cassidy would wake or startle when Harlee barked (which she does any time the mailman, FedEx man, UPS man, or any piece of farm machinery drives in our yard).  Instead, Cassidy usually sleeps right through Harlee's barking.  I'm not sure how, because she is a really light sleeper, but for some reason she seems to be able to totally tune Harlee out.

So overall I would say they are doing much better with each other than I thought they would!  I hope they'll become friends when Cassidy gets a bit older. :)

New Life

Every year at this time I remember exactly why spring is my favorite time of the year.  And spring on the farm is extra wonderful!  Here's a peek at everything coming back to life in our yard.

The lilac bush is starting to bloom.  I think a few cold nights have kept it from blooming as much as it would have otherwise, but I'm happy to still have blooms.

The peonies are up and growing and LOADED with blooms that haven't opened yet.  I can't wait for them to open, and unless we get more cold weather that damages the blooms, I think we are going to have a lot of them!

The lily of the valley is coming up too, although it seems a bit slow.  I need to go pull all the dead stuff from last year out, that would probably help it grow faster.  But there is a pretty good reason I'm not getting much yard work done these days (see last picture below).

And by far, our favorite new life on the farm this spring is sweet baby Cassidy, who joined our family on March 19th.  She's a very good baby and is rarely fussy, but we are still a bit sleep-deprived. :)  Hopefully in the next few weeks we will get into more of a routine, but for now we are taking frequent naps (when she lets us) and enjoying lots of baby cuddles.

Spring

It's been an early spring on the farm this year, which means the wheat has started growing like crazy.  The other day I took Harlee out for a walk on our road, and it didn't take long for her to make her way into the wheat field.  I'm not sure if she likes the fact that it's cool there (compared to the pavement), or softer, or just the right height for her to bound through, but it's quite obvious when you watch her that she is at her happiest when she gets to run in the wheat.  Here's a video I took on my phone:

I went digging in the dead foliage of last year's day lilies and found new growth sprouting!  I pulled out all of last year's dead foliage and this is what I found:

And our lilac bush has started to return to life too:

I cannot wait until it starts blooming!  Although last night we had to cover it because it got down to freezing, and a couple of even colder nights are supposed to be on the way this weekend.  I really hope we can protect it during these chilly nights so it will bloom.

All in all, I'd say we're happy that it's spring! 

Getting Ready

It's hard to believe it, but Baby Girl is due in one week from today!  My last day of work was January 15th, and I have had the past two months to prepare for her, which has been so amazing.  I have not been sleeping well at night, so it has been really nice not to have to get up early for work.  I usually manage to sneak in a nap at some point during the day too.  

Besides sleeping, I've had time to get the nursery ready.  Painting the nursery turned out to be quite the ordeal.  I had originally wanted gray walls with yellow and mint green accents.  I knew I didn't want to have to repaint or redecorate before future babies use this nursery, so I wanted to stay with something gender neutral instead of going crazy with the pink for this girl.  

Because I knew gray paint can be a bit tricky, we bought the little sample jars of two gray paint colors I liked and painted them both on one wall of the nursery.  One of the grays looked blue to me once it was on the wall, which is what I was trying to avoid.  But the other one looked like it stayed a true gray once it was painted on the wall, so we bough a gallon of that color and jumped in.

Luckily The Farmer had the great idea to start by painting the closets.  Neither of us have done a ton of painting, so he figured it would be good if we started in the closets and made our mistakes/got some experience there, where it's less visible.  There are actually two closets in the room, and after we got the second one painted I knew I did not like it.  The gray looked blue!  I don't know what made the difference, but it was a very blue gray that would have been perfect for a little boy's room, but not for this Baby Girl!  The Farmer was very patient with me and agreed to get different paint.  Rather than try my luck with gray again, I decided to go with a mint green for the walls and use gray and yellow accents in the decorating.  I like how the mint paint turned out MUCH better.

Here is her crib:

(Ignore the tag hanging off the front that we haven't cut off yet, haha.)  

The artwork above the crib is a set of prints I bought on Etsy and is 3 verses from Psalm 139.

Instead of a changing table, we bought an old dresser we found for sale and The Farmer put a LOT of time and work into stripping the horrible paint job that it had when we bought it, sanding it down to bare wood, applying MANY coats of primer, and finally repainting it.  It turned out so cute!  I wish I had taken some before pictures of it, because it was quite rough before all his work.

See that little bit of pink on top of the dresser?  It's a tutu I made for Baby Girl, I'm hoping to use it as a prop for some of her newborn pictures.  Here's a close up:

For the baby shower that my aunt and cousins threw for me, they asked people to bring a favorite children's book instead of a card.  It was such a cute idea, and Baby Girl now has quite the library started!  I hope she will love to read.

I have one more order on the way from Target with a few more last-minute things we need, but all in all I think we're ready for Baby Girl to make her arrival any time!  

Better Late Than Never

Well this post is like a year late in happening, but oh well.  I recently found my digital camera that's been lost for a year.  (It was in a bag with extra lighters from our wedding...I had stocked up to make sure we had plenty to get all the candles lit before the ceremony.  Not sure why I threw the camera in there as I was packing for the move to the farm?!)  All the pictures I had taken on our honeymoon in Cancun were on the camera, and it was so fun to go back and look at them today!

We stayed at the Valentin Imperial Maya in Cancun, Mexico.  Neither of us had ever been to an all-inclusive resort like that before, so we didn't have anything to compare it to, but I thought it was great. 

There were two huge pools at the resort.  The  main pool was full of people all day, there were tons of activities scheduled there (water volleyball, dunk contests, aqua Zumba, etc.) and music blasting and all the entertainment you could ever ask for.  I didn't take this photo (it's on their website), but here's a shot of the main pool:

There was another, quieter pool that was equally as gorgeous.  This one was for people who didn't want all the noise and activity and just wanted to lay out and soak up the sun, or sit by the water and read, or just float lazily.  This pool ran right past our room.  We literally walked out our patio door and in 10 steps we were in the pool.  I stole this photo off their website; it's taken from the far side of the quiet pool looking back towards the building where we stayed:

The beach was just a few steps further from the main pool.  It was gorgeous and everything you think of when you think about a beach in the Caribbean, but I didn't take any pictures there during the day because it was always full of people.  

One morning, we had booked an off-site excursion for the day and had to be ready for the shuttle to pick us up early in the morning, so I talked The Farmer into getting up a little bit early so we could walk down to the beach and watch the sunrise before we caught our shuttle.  It was beautiful, even though it was pretty overcast that morning.

Our excursion that day included a stop in the jungle to go repelling and zip lining, snorkeling through an underground cave, then on to some Mayan ruins at Tulum.  Here we are in our repelling/zip lining gear:

The Mayan ruins were beautiful, as was the beach they overlook:

The grounds at the resort were so beautiful!

And the beach view wasn't bad either!

Especially since I got to experience it with this guy! :)

It was a great trip.  Probably not one we'll repeat any time soon, but a very welcome sunny and warm getaway in the middle of a cold, dreary Kansas winter.