Happy Birthday Dad and Grandma!

The blueberries have been afflicted by shade for the past month or two. They have produced fewer and fewer actual berries since being put into the ground. Finally I got off my butt and rescued them by moving them to the very sunny area by the fig tree.

The very sunny area by the fig tree is also the very rocky area by the fig tree. It was also a fairly brambly area. This is the side of the blackberry and raspberry patch. So step one was clearing the brush and deciding which blackberry bushes would stay and which would go. After that there was a great deal of raking and weeding and an attempt at pick axing a desirable layout. The bushes should be lined up like bowling pins. The piles of rocks on either side represents the soon to be strawberry pyramids. 

There is still some brush behind but sooner or later I will clear that out too and maybe try for some grape vines along the fence. I am looking for something edible and easy and tallish to go behind the blueberry and strawberry patch.

Once I got the first few in I felt better. I hope they live! If they do they should be much happier with all that light. I comforted myself in thinking about all the wild blueberries I see clinging to rocky mountain sides. 

Before you congratulate me on my massive accomplishment let me dissuade you by illustrating the size of the berry area.

See the little clear prat by moms car? That is the blueberry patch.

The plan is to make a good deal of space behind the easily accessible blackberries and raspberries for some fruit trees. There is plenty of room up there and the bushes are so dense right now that we can only get at 1/3rd of the fruit. 

A great deal of hacking and whacking is about to happen over here.

Friday we drove down to Fredericksburg VA. this is a halfway point for most of my dads family. We were celebrating my cousin Andrew's birthday from the end of July, my Grandmothers birthday from a few days ago, my Dads birthday from the day before and my cousin DJ's birthday on the day of.

I have never driven to Fredericksburg without encountering this amount of traffic.

The kids were fairly miserable on the drive.

But they got to jump into the pool when we got there so they were over all happy with the hotel idea.

As soon as I snapped this shot Megan jumped into the water in front of her. She was completely submerged and vertically hovering about 4 inches under the water.

I jumped in and dragged her out while Kiernan laughed uproariously at his sisters crazy antics.

UUUggg

After coughing up half the pool she looked at me...all splotchy and red faced and said "Wheeee".

Oh gracious that girl is insane!

After swimming and a hearty mac and cheese supper we went for a walk with my wonderful grandparents. I was hoping to talk to them. To hear about their lives and their genealogy travels and about their expansion of their driveway... about anything really I just wanted to hear them talk. 

The kids were having none of it. I said hi and then herded cats for the next 24 hours. 

Still it was wonderful to be near them.

Megan had a very hard night. As we were in the same room we all therefore had a very hard night. She isn't quite ready for hotel life. Kiernan is consummately ready for hotel life. He ate well slept well and was really quite well behaved. He spazed out with all the excitement a bit and he was quickly overwhelmed by all the new people and noise but he was very happy.

The next day we went with 5 billion of my relatives to a Mexican restaurant. They had lots of non-lard veggie food. Huzzah!

After the Mexican food we went (all 30ish of us!) to get root-beer floats.

Good Stuff.

Megan finally fell to sleep right at lunch time, so we did the musical chairs version of eating and baby watching. Poor little bean she was really tired. 

We were going to go to my dads friend house for some horseback riding but Megan was still a bit cranky and Kiernan was over stimulated and I had a headache so we just drove home.

When we got there we were greeted by some beautiful tomatoes (and one hot pepper) fresh from the deck. 

One disappointing thing about the heirlooms is their comparatively small yield. Still yet, the tomatoes are beautiful and delicious.

Megan has decided to potty train. She keeps running over to the potty claiming the need to pee. So we undress her and let her sit there and listen to a story. 

So far no joy on the actual peeing front but its a good impulse.

We ate a big breakfast (featuring grilled tomatoes) and went to the park. While there a birthday party group offered us their leftover cupcakes and a tray of garden tomatoes!

So now we have the best of both tomato worlds. Yay.

We were going to be virtuous and mow the lawn and go to the Re-store and do laundry.

Instead we did crafts and made Kiernan a balance board.

Click to embiggen this picture to truly admire the line up of that colorful duct tape.

Oh well we can mow later.