In case you haven't heard, Nick has a new hobby.  He loves to garden and has quite the green thumb.  My parents have always had a large garden and Nick loved to help out and watch things grow, especially when we were living in their basement.  So it wasn't a big surprise when he started this project.  It was really an undertaking.  Back in early April we started seeds indoors for a family home evening activity.  Like 13 different kinds!  On warm days, Nick would bring the seedlings outside to have some sun during his lunch break.  He ended up buying a light for them also.  Here he is tending to them.

So the building of the garden took four Saturdays in a row for Nick.  The first Saturday he built the boxes.

The next Saturday he had some special soil dropped off.  He put down weed barrier and filled the boxes.

The third Saturday he set the posts for the fence.

And because of all the wildlife here in Northern Idaho, he spent the fourth Saturday building the fence to protect his garden.

 I have to say, the man is sure handy!  He built a beautiful garden.  I went out today to take some current photos.  The bed on the far left is full of only strawberries.  There are nearly 40 plants, 2 varieties.  Half from Nick's coworker that had too many, and the rest we bought from a local nursery for 50 cents a plant.

 In the middle bed we have 2 kinds of tomatoes, peas, carrots, onions, peppers, kale, lettuce and cucumbers.

The far right bed we have corn, green beans, zucchini, and banana squash.  We had to special order the banana squash seeds because no one was selling them and we both wanted that kind.

Here are some pretty closeups of the peas,

 carrots,

 kale,

 green beans,

strawberries,

 and corn.

 It is kinda an experimental garden this year, trying to figure out what will really thrive here in this climate, and how much of what kind of veggies we would really use.  It will be fun!

But that's not all.  I grew up enjoying the bounty of an orchard of over 20 trees of 7 different kinds of fruits.  Nick loved it too and we have looked forward to starting one of our own, so here we are on a much smaller scale in our backyard.  This spring we planted 5 fruit trees.  2 kinds of pear, a peach, an apple combo and a cherry combo.  A couple of the trees will have fruit this year.  We are actually on our second peach tree.  The first one died so Nick dug it up and took it back and got a new one.  

We love berries and are excited that they do so well here!  I bought 3 blueberry plants from a local berry farm.  They are 4 year old plants and will produce a bit this year.  They have grown so much this spring already!

We will have fresh backyard blueberries before we know it!  Can you see??

Nick bought 4 raspberry plants from a patient last fall, and they are looking good!

And today I noticed these mushrooms in our lawn.  We didn't plant them, and they might be crazy shrooms so we will let the mower take care of those.

Oh, and we have herbs!  I use a lot of basil and cilantro, especially in the summer.  It's a shame spending so much money on fresh herbs when they grow so easily.  Here I have planted rosemary, thyme and basil.

And here is the dill and cilantro.  I planted mint but it never grew, the seeds must have been bad.  We bought a mint plant and put in the back of the garden by Teslyn's flower bed.

  Teslyn loves picking bouquets of flowers to put in cups of water, so we bought a wildflower seed packet and saved a space of ground for her flowers.  I will get a picture of that when they are blooming.  And since Teslyn got to grow something, Owen had to also.  He picked a blackberry plant, but since it's so small I didn't even bother get a picture of that!  I will have to update on the garden later this summer when everything is huge.

This garden has become a fun family activity.  I am grateful Nick had the desire and made it happen because I never could have done it justice, and to the magnitude he has.  He really has done most of the work himself because somebody has to be the babysitter! ;) 

 Hey look!  It's May and I am blogging about May.  What do you know, I caught up.  It's been an eventful month and it's not over yet!  Mia is 8 months old this month!

I love my tiny babies, but this is when they begin to be really cute and fun so I enjoy it the most.

She is starting just now to want to eat solid foods.  She does best when she can feed herself.  Just like her older siblings were.  Right now she is loving black beans, kidney beans, oatmeal, yogurt and frozen peas and blueberries the most.  Yes, she enjoys eating them frozen like her sister.

And then there's Teslyn.  Dear little Tessie.  She fell while she was riding Owen's scooter last week and broke her left arm.  Just a small fracture.  I knew it was broken the minute I heard her cry because she is usually such a tough girl, she handles her tumbles pretty well.  Her bumps and bruises all over her body attest to that.  2 more weeks of this cast, and she is handling it pretty well.

 

Owen is playing soccer again this spring.  He is doing really well and enjoys it a lot.  He is wearing the maroon shirt.

 We are going out of town and will miss a game, and he is heartbroken about it.

After soccer last Saturday he even helped us stain the fence.  He did a really good job!  Owen is an awesome kid.  He is really into reading lately. He also really enjoys nature shows that we watch as a family on Sundays, and cruising around the neighborhood on his bike.

Last weekend was also "Lost in the 50's" which is a big deal in this small town.   With a friends help (ok, she did most of it) we made this poodle skirt for Teslyn.  It turned out really cute and the kids both dressed the part.

We watched the parade with a bunch of friends from church.  The parade consisted of over an hour of old time cars, which was really more entertaining than it sounds.  I loved seeing the old guys and the pride they take in their old rides, and imagining them driving those as teenagers.  

 The best had to be this one.  It's a guy from our church, and his car shoots flames out the back!

 Here's Mia again.  Just so she can't say that I didn't take as many pictures of her as I did the older two.  She also likes this "green" smoothie I make which usually has kale and/or spinach in it.

 And she really enjoyed sucking on this mango seed the other night.

 Mother's day was a special day, as usual.  I was telling Nick that Mother's day is like Christmas for moms.  We get all the love and none of the stress!   Nick made a delicious breakfast and dinner and surprised me with a gift certificate to a fancy spa.  And I didn't have to do any dishes!  It was such a beautiful day we decided to take a walk by the lake.  Nick and Owen are skipping rocks here.

I thought it was a really beautiful shot of the lake and sky right as a train was crossing the bridge.

 Me and my bosses.

They are cute bosses though.  Usually.

Owen brought home a potted marigold, a story and this poem for me.  So fun, it made me laugh!

 

Teslyn has taught Mia how to make a stink face.  This is the best I could catch on camera.

Teslyn has had some really great prayers lately.  The other night she said, "bless Mia to grow up and play with me.  Bless her to be a nice girl."  Nick and I have to hold in our laughs pretty often when Teslyn is praying.

 

 The weather has been perfect lately!  Everything has turned so lush and green.  The kids spend lots of time outside.  We live in a great neighborhood, the kind where all the neighbor kids run and bike and play outside after school almost daily.  We are sure blessed.

 

 Here is the little girl watching the big girl and wishing she could run and play with her.

 Soon enough, little one.

Here we are in April.  The weather was starting to warm up enough to bring me and baby Mia out of hibernation.  We spent a couple of nice days at the park and went on a few little hikes during the day while Owen was at school.

Teslyn in quite a little hiker.  This is a fun little hike with a nice view of the lake and town.  The higher up the mountain you go the better it gets.

I ordered the kids rain jackets just in time for rainy spring weather!  They love to play in the rain and we get quite a bit of it here.

It's common for new craftsman style homes here to have a chain instead of a downspout in front.  I had no idea our home was getting one until I saw it, and I didn't love it.  But it's grown on me.  In the winter it turns into a huge icicle which is pretty cool.  It's neat to watch melt as it drips and water cascades down the ice.  Here is Teslyn getting splashed on from it.

April was also Easter!  There was lots I wanted to do to make the holiday feel special so we spread it over 2 days.  Saturday we woke up to Easter baskets which was really exciting for the kids because they didn't expect them a day early!

Their baskets had cute little gifts and toys.

Mia with some of her loot.

Then they realized there were eggs hidden in the backyard!  It's fun to watch kids hunt for Easter eggs, especially when the bunny does a good job hiding them.  We have a great yard for it.

On Easter Sunday we kept it more Christ centered.  We had a yummy brunch before church and I did a little activity/story with the kids.  They found 12 hidden Easter eggs and inside each one there was a symbol of Christ's life leading up to his resurrection.  It was fun and a new tradition we will keep.  After church we enjoyed Easter dinner together as well.  Here is the best shot I could manage of the 3 kids as we were heading out to church, all dolled up for the holiday.

A few days later my parents stopped by for a while.  We are always so excited to have them come!  I didn't take many pictures, but they did.  I still need to get them!  Nick works in Bonner's Ferry on Fridays so I took Owen out of school to join us for lunch up there with Nick and my parents.  We are quite fond of a little pizza buffet there, and eat there any excuse we get.  After lunch we went to check out the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge.  We were hoping to see some cool wildlife but it just ended up being lots of birds, ducks and geese that day.

We did go on a pretty little nature walk to a beautiful river.  Owen is trying to count the rings on a tree there. 

Here is a sneak peek of the beginnings of Nick's garden.  It has been a labor of love and is deserving of a post of its own from start to finish.  This garden is his baby, I tell you.  I tease him about it but I am grateful that he does most of the legwork for it because it's something we both really want but I usually have my hands too full of baby to do a whole lot for it.  He will usually go straight to his garden after work before he even says hi to any of us.  He will spend a good amount of his lunch break meandering the yard and admiring the fruit trees and plants.  I give him a hard time about it but I have to admit that it is really fun to watch things grow because they change and grow so fast.  And it is really amazing what a tiny seed can bring forth.  It's a good hobby for Nick, and very therapeutic.