We had a wonderful and sort-of-quiet 4th of July celebration this year. Stan’s cousin Leona and her husband Rob came over to hang out with us in the afternoon and evening, and kids just loved spending time with them! Edward started out with reciting some history facts that he remembered about the Revolutionary War, the first Independence Day, the signing of the Declaration of Independence and some other stuff, that we’ve covered in our theme unit just a week prior. After that a game of Sorry was played and then everyone moved outside for some fun in the sun and for grilling of the dinner.

Rob and Leona took turns throwing the ball to Edward in this makeshift baseball game. He was all too happy to count his Grand Slams and Home Runs

We had a very yummy dinner to celebrate the Independence Day, even though you can’t see it in this picture.

Rob and Leona needed to head out before 8 pm, so we decided to do some sparklers and fireworks, even though it wasn’t dark yet.

Connor’s first sparkler (last year he was too little for those).

Dropping the flames

Boys were mesmerized by this fountain firework Rob and Leona brought with them.

Stan and Connor

Festive mailbox

Some red daylilies have opened up adding to the festivities of the day

Blue hydrangeas

Edward posing by the hydrangeas

Connor petting our kitty-cat

Did you all have a fun-filled 4th of July?

The pickling cucumbers hardly made it to this picture – everyone wanted to eat them so fast! Needless to say, they never did make it to dinner time Rather, they were consumed right away Summer squash and zucchini smelled so fresh, I decided to make my yummy and summery pasta primavera. I usually stick in whatever summer veggies I have on hand there, plus vidalia onion, fresh garlic and basil (from the garden, of course!), and sometimes black olives. This time I also had a little grilled chicken leftover from the 4th, so in it went with the veggies. I also added some kale for extra greens.

I wish you could all smell it! As it was cooking it smelled delicious, and after I shut the veggies off and added fresh garlic and basil, it was heavenly Boys just came running from the basement asking what smelled so nice

Topped with fresh asiago cheese and fresh garden basil, this was a hit!

Our hydrangeas are in full bloom right now in the garden, so we’ve been enjoying freshly-cut blooms in the kitchen (this vase) and in the bedroom. They look and smell so nice, it just feels very summery!

This past Sunday 2 years ago, my sweet little blue-eyed wonder entered this world to make me a mommy for the second time. This year we celebrated his precious second birthday. I cannot believe how fast this time flew by, my precious little boy, and how much you have grown. You are out of the baby stage now and are prodly referring to yourself as a “big boy”, and you are all ready to become a big brother soon!

Mommy loves you and is so proud of you my sweet little one. Keep on smiling and staying as happy as you are, my love! Happy Birthday, Connor-boy!

Beautiful Rose after the abundant rain…

Enjoy the beauty of God’s creation today.

I just wanted to share a couple of beautiful summer flowers with all of you. These are all from our garden/yard.

Beautiful Azaleas

Cheerful gerbera daisies

Bright orange daylilies

Delicate hydrangea

What is blooming in your garden today?

Russian Borsch

by the way, there’s no “T” at the end of that word

Ingredients

homemade or low-sodium chicken or beef Stock – 3 quarts
boneless, skinless chicken or beef, cut into small cubes – 1 lb
onion (shredded very small) – 3/4 lb
carrots (cut into small narrow strips) – 1/2 lb
beets (cut into small narrow strips) – 1/2 lb
bell pepper (cut into short narrow strips) – 1/2 lb
tomato sauce – 1 14 oz can
potatoes (peeled and cubed ) – 3 lbs
cabbage (shredded thinly) – 1 1/2 lbs
vegetable oil – 3 tbsp
salt, pepper, garlic, parsley and dill (shredded very small) to taste, 2 bay leaves

Directions

In a large sauteing pan pre-heat the oil, then saute the carrots until they are just starting to turn golden brown, add beats and cook until they are tender. Add onions and bell pepper, and saute everything together for about 3-4 minutes. Add the tomato sauce and a little water (if necessary to be able to stir easily). Cover with a lid and let saute for about 3-5 minutes (on medium heat). Turn off and set aside.

In a large stock pot bring chicken or beef stock to a rapid boil. Add cut-up pieces of meat, and let it boil for about 20 minutes. Add potatoes and bring to boil again. Add the vegetable mix from the pan, bring everything to boil. Let it boil for a few minutes, then add shredded cabbage. Add salt and pepper to taste and cook until the potatoes, cabbage, and meat are ready. Add 2 bay leaves and let sit for a few minutes. Remove the bay leaves before serving. Serve with sour cream, garlic slices, parsley and dill on the side, and fresh bread.

Serves 12.

I promised to share some pictures of the current state of the garden. Here’s where we are about 1 month after planting, even though most all of the plants got damaged during this month in one way or the other. They are bouncing back, I think

Boys’ planter – check out those enormous pumpkin leaves on the left  – Edward planted those from seeds and this is how huge they’ve gotten in the 1.5 months since.

Tomatoes are all caged up and supported finally.

Eggplants, herbs, squash and cantaloupes

More tomatoes and pepper plants. Even though pepper plants hardly got attacked by the woodchucks they are not growing as fast as they should – they are still pretty small…

Tiny tomatoes still have little raindrops on them

Garden overview

Happy summer squash plant has little squashes on it already It makes me smile

Edward by his huge pumpkin plant

Herbs – rosemary, mint, parsley, and basil

Zucchini plant with baby zucchinis on it

Edward weeding in his planter

Connor weeding in the main garden bed. He did an excellent job!

Happy helper

And this is where we are at this stage. As the garden grows and progresses more (God willing!) I’ll be sharing more pictures with all of you. Come back tomorrow to see some photos of my favorite summer flowers here on Simple Motherhood Blog.

Challenge #1: The Woodchucks.

These were the worst (still are, actually). Even though we put up the fence around the garden right on the day when we planted everything, they would still get in multiple times a day. Stan then went around the garden and put a second (chicken wire) fence around it too. Then we bought overpriced repellent pellets at Home Depot that were supposed to keep woodchucks and the likes of them away from the tiny plants. Imagine our disappointment when we discovered that those mindless creatures actually liked the powder! We were appalled, but every day (and sometimes multiple times a day) we would look in the garden, and something new would be missing (as in entire plant would be eaten down practically to the ground). One day we got back and found every single one of our tomato plants missing a top and some of them missing a large chunk of a plant. That was literally the straw that broke the camels’ back, and Stan since then dealt with the creatures much more severely than just sprinkling repellent powder. We’ve had at least a dozen of them, and now we are down to just a few (maybe 4 or so), but even those don’t come out as often as before, as they’ve gotten to be more skittish. They have ruined almost all the plants we had, and some of those plants never recovered, although some are slowly coming back to life.

Challenge #2: Moles, chipmunks, rabbits, and other little critters.

Realistically, woodchucks should have just gone into this category as well, but since they’ve been the biggest pain, I had to single them out as the biggest challenge. Here again, we’ve sprinkled repellent powder that’s designed specifically against those species, but I’m not sure how much it helped. Just a few days ago, we saw a rabbit right inside the garden happily nibbling on baby cauliflower. I was so mad, I wanted to go back to Home Depot and return the rest of those repellent powders right then and tell them that those do absolutely no good, and how can they charge $20 a bottle for it… But alas, those bottles were more than half empty, and I’m sure Home Depot people would have looked at me funny trying to return something that has been opened and used

Challenge #3: Some kind of bugs.

Some kind of bugs are attacking out tomatoes, eggplants, and pepper plants, as well as some of the cantaloupe plants. I’m not sure what they are, but everyday I see new holes in the leaves of those poor plants and start wondering what we need to do to keep those alive. We didn’t want to spray those plants with any harsh chemicals, as we are trying to keep the food (if anything ever grows that is) as close to natural as possible, but we might need to look for some sort of solution to prevent those bugs from spreading.

There are lots of other challenges  that I won’t cover in detail, but regardless I am still glad we put in the garden. The kids get so much enjoyment out of it, and it’s a joy for us as parents as well to show them where the real food comes from, and to watch them take care of those plants and help them grow.

Tomorrow I will share some pictures of the current state of our garden, that is still growing despite all the obstacles. If you want to see all the progress we’ve had so far, be sure to come back and check it out.

After a long bloggy break, I am finally back and ready to blog again. We’ve been busy this past spring, and the summer is not promising to be any less busy, but I wanted to share our raised garden bed gardening adventures with all of you. Like I mentioned in this post, in the past we’ve tried every single year, albeight unsuccessfully, to put in a regular garden, and sadly nothing would grow. And not for the lack of trying. Just something about the soil here, being all clay and rocks, as well as lack of sunshine in the spots we’ve picked out for the garden before, and of course, unfriendly little critters, would not allow any produce to grow, even if it would happen to sprout.

This year we decided to put in the raised garden bed. We knew that this would be quite an expense, and all upfront too, but decided that if we are going to bother wasting our time putting the garden in at all, we might as well do it correctly. In the second half of May my sweet husband (with the help of 2 little helpers) assembled and installed our new garden beds. I drew up the charts to scale, planning out what should go where. Both little boys were super excited to get their own little garden bed. We told them they could plant anything they wanted in it, but they would have to be the ones taking care of it, weeding it, watering it, etc. Even those “harsh” conditions couldn’t dampen their spirits

We went to one of the local nurseries and bought a lot of small plants (more than we were planning to). I could say, we got a little excited and carried away. And then… we had to find space to put it all. Some of the plants had to even go into our Topsy Turvy Upside down planters (of which I didn’t even get a picture yet).

Here are some pictures of the garden as it was being put in about a month ago:

 Tomorrow I will share a bit about the challenges we’ve encountered during this past month, so be sure to come back and check out my new post! How has your summer been?

After he finished his cookie he piped up again: ”I need another calorie! I need lots of calories!”  No kidding son. You DO need to grow, you know

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Later tonight, Edward, our 4-year-old,  decided to be a bit philosophical too:
 ”You know what’s interesting? Connor is only one, and he talks so well! That’s very amazing!”

These two boys never stop to amaze me with their pearls of wisdom

1. The used car market is incredibly tight these days. The time we missed 2009 Toyota Sienna in New York (100 miles away from us) was the most depressing time. Basically on Friday afternoon I called to inquire about a new minivan a dealership just listed on their website, asked him to hold it for us until we can get down there, then checked the carfax on it, checked KBB value, talked to my husband, and after 20 minutes (!!!) called back with my credit card in hand to put down a deposit. We have never even seen that car, it was way above our target price range, and we were ready to put down a deposit on it, as it seemed like a very good deal, being listed at about 30% below the book value. Imagine my surprise when the sales guy told me “Sorry, that car just sold 10 minutes ago”. I was so frustrated and angry! I couldn’t believe that making a multi-thousand dollar decision like that, site unseen, in a mere 20 minutes was TOO slow! But we moved on and kept looking…

2. Dealerships don’t haggle on the prices of their cars today. When we were buying our previous 2 cars about 5 years ago, this was a completely different story and we got an excellent deal on both. Now, with every car being listed online and sold in a matter of minutes (see point 1), they just list at their rock-bottom price to seem more competitive and do not negotiate down by a single dollar. Out of all the dealerships we visited, only two on the phone mentioned that “yes, we would work with you on the price” (whatever that means), but when we got there, they didn’t negotiate at all, which was really frustrating and a waste of everyone’s time.

3. Dealer’s conveyance fee is a complete rip-off and there’s nothing you can do about it! It’s pure profit to them, on top of all the other mark-up they are getting, except it’s not regulated at all. I checked my contract from 5 years ago, and on my Ford back then we paid a dealer fee of $179 (plus all the DMV fees and sales taxes), this time as we were looking I was surprised to see the fees listed all upwards of $400! The dealership we ended up getting the Honda from, actually charged $600!!! That seems like a lot of money for nothing, considering they already built in their profit into the price of the car, which they weren’t willing to negotiate on…

4.  A lot of used cars today (at least a lot of the ones we happened to look at) have some sort of water damage. A lot came from the south (as I would see, after I checked the titles on them), but didn’t have flood damage or water damage listed on the titles. Clear titles and carfax, but when you look at them – it’s a different story. Some of them had wet carpets and even rust inside! So be careful, especially if you are buying online from someplace down south (or even from here, as a lot of cars were transported from the auctions down in the south up to New England).

5. Trying to stay on a tight budget while buying a used car is hard: we had to choose between getting a more reliable brand of a minivan, with nicer features, versus a basic model of any less reliable brand, but perhaps newer and fewer miles. After talking it over with quite a lot of people we went for Honda, because we kept hearing ”Hondas or Toyotas last well past 200K miles” whereas in a lot of other vans you start dealing with issues like transmission and engine problems, sometimes even before they hit 100K miles.

Now on to a couple of pictures and the list of features that I like the most about our new van:

Features that I like the most (and have come to really appreciate in a mere few days that we’ve had this car)

I bet you thought I’d be mentioning things like navigation system or rear-DVD players, but we don’t have either in this van.  It wasn’t essential to us (considering we have a GPS and and a portable DVD player, but kids rarely watch anything anyway).

1. Sliding power doors (nice-nice-nice to have when your kid wants to get into the car while you are still locking up the house, and it’s raining :)
2. Heated driver and passenger seats (I didn’t really care for leather in both of our previous cars, although I must say it was easier for cleaning up after kids. But it was always too cold to sit on in the winter, and too hot in the summer! Now at least the winter part is taken care of.)
3. All the space, especially when the third row is stowed in the floor. My little guy Connor loves to run around in all that space!
4. The fact that middle captain seats fold completely forward to let people get to the back row even with the car seats installed in the captain chairs.
5.  Adjustable power seats are nice too
And a whole array of other nice little features that Honda thoughtfully implemented in their minivans.

Can you tell I like our new van? I know a lot of mothers dread getting a “mom-car”, but that wouldn’t be me  I like the way it drives, and all the space it gives