While the baby slept

The outside front of my house is a wreck. Maybe not so much a wreck as neglected and boring. It was so hot this summer I did not want to be out messing with a garden. If my porch was air conditioned, well maybe then but its not. The front right corner and most of the right side of my house face east and get that hot direct morning sun. That hot sun that you do not want to be in when the tempatures are all ready in the upper 90's early in the morning. I let the gardens go.

On the right side I have a sunflower garden. It was never planted this year. I have a lavender garden that pretty much took care of itself but could use weeding tall grass from the lavender. My bedroom is right above the lavender garden and I am often able to smell that relaxing fragrance from my room. I have a rose garden that is over grown. It needs a trim so badly but it has to be fall before that is done.

The front of my house has two spring gardens. What I mean by that is every spring I plant them full of Flowers. Usually with some weeding through and the start of my mums it last through out summer as well. This year I did not planted started flowers. Instead I tried seed packets. I sprinkled the beds full of all sorts of beautiful flower seeds. None of the took? And I did nothing else with the garden this year.

Looking out at the front of my house I am surprised the neighbors did not move. Ugh it just looked so bad, so unkept, so (gasp!!!) ghetto. I have to change that! I want to change it but I do not have a green thumb. So today once I laid the baby down for his nap I headed outside.

Today is not very hot thankfully. There was even a slight breeze. So it wasn't to bad. I started weeding the gardens. First steps first.



On the left side all I have is a big mum, purple cone flower, and a few miniature roses. But now it is weeded out. Next step trim down the existing plants and go from there. The plants in here are so hodge podge. The purple cone plant is a spring plant, and the mum fall, I will see about doing something else.



The right side just has a single extra large mum. A lot of weeds and now a lot of dirt. This mum has got to be cut back. The top is dead due to an early bloom but the base is vibrant and ready for fall. There is room for many possibilities here.

It did not take to long to weed. Even though there were many weed the gardens are not to big. My son let me use his dump truck for the weeding.



So what next for the gardens? I am not really sure. Like I said I do not have a green thumb. Any ideas would be appreciated. I will go to the Amish greenhouses. They have beautiful but expensive flowers. I will go to LOWE'S they have cheap flowers with a return guarantee. That's my kind of gardening.

I have a ton of cute Halloween items for outside and in the gardens. Is it too early for that? With the way I procrastinate maybe I will fall just in time.

Evan

Evan is something else. The best word to describe him is wonderful! He is the greatest. He is loving, caring, sweet, cuddly, and he is a robot. At least this day. He makes us laugh all the time. I love 5 years old and what they say. For whatever imaginative reason he pulled out all this gear and dressed in lizard camo.

Mama I am a robot.



See my shooter eye? I will get the bad guys and Gregory. I have a blaster mama.



Yes, you are tough my cutie pie go, and I love you!

Amish around town

For over 8 years now I have been living in rural Pennsylvania. Where I live two worlds collide. You have modern country life and old Amish tradition. At first, for us, it was a sight to see. Moving form Washington D.C. to here could not be more different. We had to get used to this new life, a slow life, a country life.

I live in a small borough. It has 4 churches, no bars, no stop lights, a post office with the most random hours I have ever seen and still can't ever manage to catch it open. However we also have a state University, Penn State Mont Alto, go figure.

But if you turn off on some of the streets just outside the main neighborhood it is a jolt back to older days. Not simpler by any means just bygone. I suppose they aren't bygone if they still happen now and still happen next to us.

All around us you find many sects of the Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren. All very conservative Christian groups. Plain people.

I remember visiting Lancaster County when I was in grade school. We took and over night trip to see and learn about the Amish. Fast forward 20 years and who would believe this city girl is now living with them?!

We interact and see them everyday. We go to their markets to buy their delicious over priced food. You almost will always find their buggies tied up out front.



They go to our markets as well. However they do not bring their buggies there but their black vans. (Well not always I 1 time saw to younger ones in a black Audi tt.) At least when they drive their always black boring cars they don't leave a mess in the road.



My boys are so used to seeing the buggies they don't even think twice about it. They are more in awe when we take them to the city. They think the metro is something amazing. Poor little country boys.

We have covered bridges. Pennsylvania has more covered bridges (over 200) than any other state. A covered bridge is a bridge with enclosed sides and a roof, often accommodating only a single lane of traffic. They have typically been wooden, although some newer ones are concrete or metal with glass sides. Mainly associated with the nineteenth century, covered bridges often serve as prominent local landmarks and have long attracted the attention of historic preservationists.





This one is on Covered Bridge Road, go figure. I wonder which one came first. I don't understand the purpose of them as you are protected for only a matter of feet of the journey.

You might think of the Amish as using no power and no ammonites of modern life. For the most part you would be right. They do however use some and certainly use us to make money. It is the Mennonites that you most commonly see because they are plentiful. They use modern life luxuries like doctors, cars, plumbing, electricity and others. They just limit their involvement. For instance as I mentioned above the cars. They are allowed to drive but they drive plain back cars to stand out. The cars do not have luxury options or even standard options like radios. They are just a means of transportation.

When I was learning about the Amish in grade school one of the things we learned about was barn raising. How they would all come together and quickly build barns for each other. The other day we pulled over to snap some pictures of a barn raising party. However, it was not a barn but a house they were putting up.



You can see the men scattered across the roof building and the women by the cars with drinks and food. They do not live in different types of housing. As you can see this is going to be a normal rancher. Up and down the streets you could not tell their houses from ours. You might be able to guess by the car in the driveway though.

Can you see all the black cars lined up?



Living out here is different. It is not for me. I am ready to move to the beach.

Getting bigger but not by baby

I can't stop eating, snacking. I have took up eating all three meals a day and heavily snacking in between. I don't remember eating this much with the other babies. Although some of the eating is to settle my stomach, it seems to hurt if I do not or make me feel nauseous. So you can imagine on my new million calorie diet I am putting on the weight. And it is no baby bump. My everything is getting big.



I have moved to lose clothes. Bigger clothes but no maternity clothes. Would you believe that I have maternity clothes from my last pregnancy that I wore the first half of it that I never got back down to that size after and between these two pregnancies. Not fitting into maternity clothes ouch. I held on to my even smaller than that clothes waiting till I lost the weight to wear them again.

In the meantime I bought some bigger clothes that fit me during that temporary time. Now these clothes still fit but are getting tight. The yummy calories are turning in to pounds. The pounds are adding up and I am at week 9!!!

My belly is tighter and that is because of baby. My belly is getting bigger and that is because of ice cream. But like a reassuring friend told me "your pregnant it is okay and you will lose the weight when its over."

Soothing words, but if I can't control my eating I can change what I eat. Lets see how that works.

Gregory's favorite part

Actually it was all of our favorite part, I believe. While camping we went to there totally awesome super cool pool. It was fantastic. The whole thing was a kids pool.



It had a large area where water came up from the ground in many fountains.



All the boys played in these fountains. One would stand on some and make the others bigger. Or jump on and off them to surprise their brother.



Smiley thought it tickled. He laughed and played for the longest time.



Yes he is in his safety floaty. You never know when all the fountains will go off at once and there might be an inch or two.

It also had water that would drop down on you rings that shot water side ways at you. Evan was the leader. He ran through first. Then in Smiley's attempt to be like his big brother followed.





There was such a big pretty water fountain that had many up shooting streams all coming back down. There were three rings inside each other. I should have got a further away picture of it. Gregory and Evan ran through it. Smiley would not follow on this one.





There were also water slides there so of course that is where Gregory spent the majority of his time.



It is next to impossible to get him off the slides. You know what they say, if you can't beat them join them. So we did!





Evan unable to go on the slides yet had just as much fun jumping in. He perfected his cannonball.



He jumped in backwards, forwards, spinning, any which way you can fall into the water he did.



Yea, Evan!! We sure do love you.



It was not as hot as in Virginia. In fact it was only in the upper 80's. But the day was beautiful and the pool was so much fun.





It was a nice way to cool off. To be clean for a while. To avoid the bugs that were ever. But all just for a short time. Because at the end of the day we were still camping.

Back home again!

As summer is coming to an end we decided to go for one last summer hurrah. I would like to say we spent it on a tropical island.



Or diving in coral reefs.





That is not at all something I would do. Especially after seeing shark week. But don't they look so cute as they look scared the shark will eat them.

Nope we did not go anywhere exotic or beachy :( My boys love camping so we loaded up the truck and went. We have been camping for years. We often go to new places to see more of what is around us. We headed just a little more than an hour north to Little Buffalo State Park. We had never been here before so we thought why not try it. It was close to home, had a great pool, and a stocked lake.



They were so happy to go. They had it circled on the calendar when we were leaving but that still did not stop them from asking every morning is it time yet? We left Tuesday morning and came back Friday afternoon. Just a short trip because after all we would be camping with the worlds cutest 1 year old and who knows how that would go. Plus 4 days 3 nights is long enough for me. I love being with my family, but I love being clean and camping is anything but that. Plus even though we have an air mattress I do not like sleeping outside and especially on the ground. I won't even bring up the bugs.



We got to do some hiking on our trip.



The boys were old enough they could do about a mile worth of walking. Smiley had it easy.



We hiked along the lake.



It was an easy path that for the most part was smooth walking. It had two mooring points and a few docks we stopped at. Each one making the kids more persistent about lets go out in a boat.



I asked Gregory what was your favorite part about camping?
1. The swimming pool!!!
2. Going on the boat. But he also said he would have liked it better if his Dad would have took him super speed.
3. Playing with his friends.

Jay and the big boys went out in a little motorized row boat for the reasonable price of $22 an hour! They brought along their fishing equipment in hopes to catch some of the large fish this like is stocked with. The day before a guy had caught a fish larger than the kids. So the motored the little boat all over looking for the best spot.



They got out to the middle and realized they forgot the bait! Instead they hooked fake wiggly things and colorful looking worms that came with the tackle box on the lines and casted them out.



Twenty minutes in and no bites the boys were bored.

Smiley was to little to be on a boat. So he and I stayed a shore. But boy did he want to go. He kept peering through the railing watching his brothers, screaming for them, and crying because he could not go. It was a pretty dramatic time for him. He flopped through his head into his hands and sobbed. It broke my heart but it is just not safe for baby on a boat. I took him to the playground and that seemed to help.



Evan cutie pie what are you looking at?



The trees. What is up in the trees? Is it a bear? No, it is a monkey boy! Gregory! To high for comfort. Gregory get down. Get down before you fall down.





Jay loves to cook. So we did a lot of eating while on our trip.



Sometimes we devoured healthy snacks.



We spent a great deal of time cooking and eating and waiting. It takes great making food out there but it does take a bit longer.



Jay made a tripod for cooking with the dutch oven or he has a grill that can be attached. He is proud of it and used it to make a Neeley's meal for us.



After all that eating, even a day of hiking will not take care of all the calories we took in. Oh well it was good.

Of course we had to do S'mores. The children asked as soon as we got there. Every time we made a fire. We did, a few times. Even once for breakfast!



I would often find Smiley relaxing along the side of the tent. He thought it was just so cool. He would fall back the tent would catch him and he woul be sitting all relaxed with the biggest smile cackling. Evan joined him and he thought this was even better. His big brother to love and play with.



But as much as they loved they also fought. We had to bring the light sabers because you just can't leave home with out them. You never know when you might have to battle the dark side or a brother.




It was a good time and a great last trip of the summer. The boys enjoyed it and even with not even 24 hours home are asking to go back. I on the other hand think 4 days was plenty. Smiley is just to much work out there at this age. I am going to take a hiatus on camping for a while. I will tend to my babies for the next couple of years and let camping be a fun father and son activity.