Daisy did her own hair and was so proud!
Brinlee, Kimball and Sawyer with their pre-k teacher.
Caisen’s preschool teacher. He loves Mrs. Jensen. LOVES HER. He used to put his shirt on backwards all the time. for the most part we let them dress themselves (One time I asked the boys why they wore their underwear backward, and they responded in unison, “So we can see the picture!” Sound logic. Can’t argue with that). So if he liked his shirt backward, it was his prerogative. But one day I offered to help him fix it, if he wanted. He replied with, “No thanks mom. I like it when MRS. JENSEN fixes my shirt.” Oh, I see.
All three of my boys were enamored of her, and Kimball and Sawyer were never even in her class. I can’t blame them. She is unbelievably kind and sweet and being so pretty surely doesn’t hurt. One day they got on the topic of who they were going to marry. Sawyer piped up, “I’m going to marry a girl with long, straight, silky hair.” Uh, I have short, red, curly hair. Where is he getting this? So I asked him who had hair like that. With a sheepish grin he replied, “Mrs. Jensen.”
Brinlee, Kimball and Sawyer graduated from preschool. Don’t even get me started on preschool graduations. I think they are absurd. If you want to do a program to show what they have learned during the year, great! But graduation is for high school and college.
Brinlee’s first recital.
How stinkin cute is my little ballerina?
And this is the garden I built. I moved 10,000 pounds of 60-80 pound rocks. Three times. I designed the layout myself, but I let someone convince me to change it. And I didn’t like it. So I moved them all again to the way I originally planned. And then I filled them with compost and topped them with wood chips and planted what I could and left for Tennessee. Then when I got back there were weeds knee high growing up around and in between my rocks and in the walkway, so I lifted each one and put in landscape fabric. And then I covered that with more wood chips. It. Was. Brutally. Hard. Work. But I love how it turned out. Is it the most effective use of space? No, but we have space to spare. I wanted something functional and beautiful. I’ve added some rocks to the top row in certain places to add height and interest. This picture is right after I finished the walkways. You can see I stopped before I got to the chicken yard. I built that chicken yard too. We have since replaced those coops. Behind it you can see where I also did the fabric and wood chips in the orchard. That is just a small corner of it showing. I shoveled at least 40 cubic yards of wood chips that summer. Dirty, hard work.
Next to it you can see where our grass was NOT coming in. We had paid a landscaper the year before to put in the sprinklers, curbing and grass. You’ll notice there is no grass, just weeds. It was finally rectified. Kind of. We have grass now. I spent the whole summer working on the landscaping. It isn’t something I had ever given much thought to. Our last house had landscaping when we moved in, and I never really paid any attention to it. I spent a lot of time deciding what I wanted and finally figured out that what I like is French cottage style. So once I got the garden in, I started working on the flower beds around the house. I planted in August, which was HOT, but if I waited until the weather cooled off, the nurseries would have been empty. I spent the whole summer covered in dirt, digging and shoveling, and I loved it.