3 Months

It was near this time last year that I had the scary realization that in only a year, I would have a 3 month old baby... And undoubtedly it's happened - and she's such a sweet thing, I can't complain a bit!


Here's Miss B sporting her new headphones (sound isolation, not for listening to music :) so she can go to concerts with me (and okay, I was dying to take this photo of her... DJ Blossom!)

The boys' Aunt was in town for a few days, and we got to hang out with her and take a beautiful hike today! Reed found plenty of cool mushrooms:
Clay got to practice parkour:
The trails were dusted with rhododendron petals:
And the water was perfectly chilly:

I'm feeling very blessed with my sweet family, and especially getting to love on my lil' 3 month old!

Around the Homestead

Some photos of our ever-evolving urban homestead!
A new row of veggie beds being put in:
Baby trees: plums, cherries, persimmon, almond, butternut
The garden I made while pregnant, to protect B's dogwood tree, will be mostly mostly medicinal herbs and flowers. Now has swiss chard, echinachea, lavender, our Scarlett hosta (the hosta planted on Scarlett's grave 3 houses ago that keeps getting split and spread to each house :) and some irises that were a baby Blossom present
My new garden! B just made this for me - it wraps around a corner of the back patio, and will have kitchen herbs in it. Today I got to plant the first things in it! Rosemary & oregano have found their home :)
B's project for the day was working on the steps of the front porch. The steps were from the side of the porch. The logs are from a few cedar he fell in the Spring.
Lookin good!

Adventure Day

This Friday's "Adventure Day" compliments of the towns of Hendersonville and Fletcher, NC!

Little boys comtemplating a BIG bowl! Hendersonville Skate Park:

Clay catching some air:
Blossom just chilling:

Clam digging and lots of splashing around in Cane Creek in Fletcher:


Hey Mr Dragonfly ~~

And home for dinner including fresh-from-the-garden kale, purslane, salad greens, garlic and some home-brew to round it out ... yum!

More Adorableness

Zion Blossom is cute cute cute! About 12 weeks now (?? I've lost count, but not quite 3 months)



Blossom and her daddy at LEAF:

Party Time!

Clay and Reed decided to have a dual birthday celebration this year! Well, okay, I had to convince them that they could not separately rent out the gym for each of their birthdays :) They had a pretty rockin time, though!

We partied in downtown Asheville, at Asheville Gymnastics:



Mama time ~

Fort-building turned into foam battle:


What a happy little lady !

The birthday boys about to dig into homemade key lime pie and oreo cheesecake ... yummmm!

Adventure Day

We are doing 'Adventure Days' again... taking the kids out of the house on a somewhat regular basis, to go on daytrips somewhere new or that we haven't been in a long time.

For the first one, we tripped out to Hot Springs, NC. We know two lovely families out that way - and got to spend time at both of their houses. Thank you mamas for letting us invade on your houses! The kids got to find swimming holes, catch salamanders, and romp to their hearts delight :)


Checking out the salamander:

Giganti-moth

Okay, so it wasn't gigantic - but it was pretty big ... big enough to get the boys pretty excited about it choosing our house to snooze on :)

Big Summer Storm!!

Crazy storm last night! It hailed for about a half hour! This destroyed most of the garden, also ripped one of the skateramp tarps down, and snapped the framework under the second tarp.... Just when we thought we could take a break from big projects for a minute!




The tomato plants took a serious beating - they all snapped in half:

The beans look like a lawnmower went over them:

Good thing kale and purslane are hardy plants!
Hopefully the banana tree will spring back - it took such a beating!