KinderGardens 2011 {week 17.}

Well folks, we finally have a REAL mammoth sunflower.  

Not a stunted, wussy one from Week 13.  

Nope, a survivor who grew tall despite our drought and heat.

Miles is pumped.  

And Ella is too, but she refused to go on the other side of the fence and take a picture to prove it.

So I tried to get them to kiss through the fence, like they do sometimes when Ella's in her crib, and this is what I got...

Uncooperative little nerds.

{Cue the bugle playing Taps for these next photos...}

Even taking photos in pretty lighting (per last weeks assignment) can't help this reality.  

But, just so you don't feel too sorry for us, please join me in welcoming to the great state of Oklahoma...

a "strong cold front".  

Please excuse me while I got watch for it out the window.  

And plan a party.

swimming lessons.

M has taken swim lessons this summer and done AWESOME!

He can float. -  ✔

Jump off the diving board and kick back up to the top of the water. -  ✔

Swim across the shallow end. -  ✔

And fly. -  ✔ ✔

His Aunt Rachel has done a great job teaching him this summer and while this isn't the greatest picture, it pretty much sums up how much fun they have.  

{Flying lessons courtesy of the day Uncle Drew and Daddy came to watch swim lessons.}

KinderGardens 2011 {week 16.}

I think if our garden had a mascot, it would be our cute little red shopping cart.  

Purchased at a garage sale by my mom last summer for $5, it's brought many a "begetable" from the garden to the house.  Ella took some of her first steps pushing it last summer.

Last weekend, my mom and I drove to Arkansas for Bargains Galore on 64.  It's an annual event that spans over 150 miles of garage sales.  It's pure heaven.  

Guess what we found?

An identical $5 shopping cart.  How can you pass a thing like that up?

Too bad we don't have more to put in it.  These watermelon are the last little harvest from our summer garden.  

I let them each have 2 for their basket.

But E wanted all of them. 

She's a mess.

I think the old one needs a fresh coat of spray paint.  

Oh, we also have these two pitiful bell peppers.  

I might mention that we tied a 30+ year old record over the weekend.  

Fifty days of 100+ temps.  

Yay us. 

And it ain't over baby.

The garden is toast.  But I am going to try a fall crop. Hope that goes better than summer!  

Speaking of shopping carts, I can't believe I've gone all summer without mentioning that my mom also bought ME a shopping cart!!  

See it?  It's the cutest little garden decoration there ever was.  Rusty, old and cute.  

I love our shopping carts.

dog hair.

The heat is making me do crazy things.  

Our normally outside dogs have been let in for a bit of relief.  Normally this wouldn't be an option.  But extreme temps have called for extreme measures.  

Mostly, the dogs drive me bonkers running around, wanting outside, not staying on their bed, begging for food and shedding.  

I've watched Marley & Me twice.  

When I want to shoot them, I think of the end of that movie.  

 Did I mention my vacuum has been in the shop for over a week and will stay there until the 25th? Makes the dog hair WORSE.

Luckily I've been able to borrow a shop vac from my in-laws.  

It's not the Dyson though.  

I MISS the Dyson.

You should see me crawling around on the floor with the shop vac hose in tow trying to get all the dog hair three times a day.

But then, in the middle of all my whining, there's this...

And I just go back to shop vac-ing with a smile on my face.   

UPDATE: About 2 seconds after this posted, Sears called.  

THE DYSON IS BACK EARLY!!!  HOORAY!!!!!!

hooray.  hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. hooray. 

cowboys.

Some cowboys came to visit recently.  

Dancing cowboys.

Pretty cowboys.  

(She says cowboy... not cowgirl.  Wants to be like brother.)

Cheesy cowboys.

Silly cowboys.

Copycat cowboys.

Cowboys sitting on my nice new hardwood floors.  

Beautiful, no?

(Don't mind that there's no base board.)

The best cowboy photo of all came after I put the fancy camera away.  

This one's courtesy the iPhone in my pocket...

cookies for dessert

We made a batch of sugar cookies on Monday.  

So after dinner the last couple of nights, the kids have each decorated a cookie for dessert.

Ella can hardly be bothered to put a drop of icing on her cookie.  She just shovels it into her mouth at the fastest rate possible...

Miles, however, is an artiste.  

He's careful about color selection and design...

"That cookie was a little difficult but it looks good." - M

His thumbs up has a little green icing.  

And please notice sister licking the red she'd just squirted on her fingers because her cookie was long gone.

KinderGardens 2011 {week 14.}

Week 14 brought not much more than extreme temps (44 days of 100+ degrees for us!) and this giant horn worm. 

YUCK!

He was at least a foot 4 inches long and dis-gus-ting!

I knew he needed to go but I couldn't bare to squish him myself.  So I broke off the stem of the plant where he was and threw him in the road in front of our house.  A few short seconds later a car drove by.  

Bye-bye Mr. Hornworm.  You cannot have what is left of my tomato plants.  

We picked 3 (THREE! - that beautiful vine and only 3!) cucumbers this week.  

And we admired our teeny tiny mammoth sunflowers.

And sniffed them...

 

If I didn't know better I would think I planted the wrong kind of seeds.  These were supposed to be mammoth.  There is one giant one in the bunch, but the rest are barely taller than 2 year old Ella.  HA!

I forgot about the Rainbow Assignment in all the craziness of our days.  But I can tell you this.
When I planted the garden this year, I dreamed of a rainbow.  I planted all colors of peppers next to each other in hopes of having red, green, and yellow all together for beautiful produce and photos.

Well, I have a whole other kind of rainbow going on.  The confusing kind.  Where my eggplant are turing yellow instead of purple...

And jalapenos are turning red instead of green. 

I'm kinda scared to eat a red jalapeno.  Might burn my little lips off!

I've read that the color changes are due to the heat.  Anybody ever experienced this?

The one last glimpse of hope for our garden rests with these (still green) watermelons.  

I was SHOCKED to see them on the vine this week.  

And so EXCITED too.  We live to see another week of gardening in Oklahoma!!

 Be sure to check out the other KinderGardens this week at The Inadvertent Farmer.