A Colorful Bounty

I have been away from my blog for quite some time now.  Although, I have composed so many posts in my mind and have taken the pictures for them, getting it all onto the blog has been a different story!  We have been so busy.  One thing that we have discovered this summer is our local community Farmer's Market!  It is just up the street and they have it every Sunday.  It is on the small side and you can walk it in about 5 minutes!  I really hope that it grows and I would love to see more local growers from within our own city.  I have taken my neighbor and my family.  I hope to have a day when Hubs and I can take our bikes and ride to it...but that would require babysitting for the kids!
I have only purchased the food items there.  I am funny about craft items at markets. My first thought is that I can make that too.  Of course, I never get around to doing that but then I guess it means I never really needed that item.  Maybe near Christmas time I may pick up a few things as gifts.
I thought I would share a few pictures of our latest bounty since it was so beautiful in its coloring!
We are winding down our summer and starting or back-to-school shopping.  Hopefully once the kids are out of the house for a few hours I can give more attention to this blog!!
Hugs!
Le Anne


Love the colors!



So many things to do with these tomatoes!



Buttery, flacky goodness!



Only way I can get farm fresh eggs! (until I get my own hens!)



It's Crunch Time

Sorry I have been here for a bit.  It is busy season here.  Counting down to the last day of school means lots of room mom activities for me.  Planning our vacation.  Diva is still doing her competitions which means twice weekly practices.  Professor is finishing up his first year of cub scouts.  Hubs and I are trying to find time for our own getaways.  We are getting new floors throughout the entire house!  That is a chore!  I am packing and purging and throwing away 9 years of married crap (you know, the stuff people gave us at our wedding that we never used but moved three different times)!  We are planning a fundraiser yard sale for our gardener and his family so it helping to purge for a good cause.  So, we are busy right now.  A good busy but busy none the less.  So if I am not around that is why.
I will leave you with a picture of the Zac Brown Band concert that Hubs and I got to go to just last weekend.  It was so awesome!  They are our favorite band ever!  We were in the 6th row and dead center at the Hollywood Bowl!  I danced and sang the entire night...never sat down!  Oh, it was so amazing!

The picture is from my cell phone so it isn't the best! But I was snapping away all night!

Happy May!  I will probably talk to you all in June!

What Are People Coming To?!?

Today I got a sad phone call. 

It was from the wife of my gardener...the man that mows my lawn, trims my hedges, pulls my weeds, edges the lawn, turns the soil, fertilizes the yards, fixes the sprinklers and will bring in my trash cans from the curb on trash day.  He is a friendly guy that really likes to chat with me about anything and everything when he catches me coming or going.  He works hard and has been hit even harder by the economy.  We can see it from our window...he doesn't use a trailer to tow his equipment anymore.  His truck is a smaller, older model.  He no longer has help but does it all himself.  All of his equipment is now secondhand.  Well, as it turns out that last one, the secondhand equipment, is for a rather awful reason.  Some men stole his good stuff...right out of the back of his truck while he was mowing the side yard of a client.  What is wrong with people.  Manny is a really nice guy.  He is always offering to help with anything he can see that needs to be done.  He is just like everyone else, just trying to keep his head above water and the wolves at bay.
But that is not what the phone call was about.  The phone call that I got today was from his wife calling to tell me in a broken voice that he would not be here today to cut my grass, he was in the ICU.  My first thought was that this has all caught up to him and he had a heart attack.  But she explained that he had an accident on Monday.  Well, being the concerned person (or nosy) that I am, I asked for more specifics.  This is where it truly gets horrific.  This is where I lost my composure.  I lost my faith in human nature!
It seems that while he was on a job this past Monday, some men came along and stole some of his equipment from the back of his truck...AGAIN.  This time he saw it happening and approached the truck to talk to them.  He must have put his hand on the door frame in some way because he was holding onto the truck when the driver accelerated and drove away.  The driver dragged him down the road!  Dragged a man down the road just to steal his lawn equipment!  It still makes me cry to imagine the scene.  Manny came through this with broken ribs, a broken clavicle and a removed spleen.  He remains in the ICU for now and is awake.  This is all that I got from his wife, whom I do not know.  All she wanted to let me know was that he wouldn't be able to cut my lawn today. 
What I want to know is what kind of lowlife drags a man for a weedwacker?  I am hurting for this family.  So, if you can take a moment to say a quick prayer for Manny and his family.  They are going to have a rough road ahead of them.  He will lose so much income while he is in the hospital and during his recovery.  I hope that in the end of this tragic story there will be some sort of goodness.

Spring Time

Spring has been a fickle character around here.  One week she shows up with beautiful temps in the 80s and gets us all outdoors soaking up some vitamin D.  The next week she creeps in with damp foggy skies and barely reaches above 60 and forces us into our jackets.  For Easter she is treating us to some drizzly wet yuck!
We love the warm weather, of course!  I love the chance to put the ipod on the back patio and dance with the kids, get my hands in some dirt and create lovely little planters for my front porch.
So, I thought now that it is gray outside it would be nice to share some of the gorgeous colors that would greet you at my front door!
Happy Spring and Happy Easter!

Welcome!

I love to collect enamel ware.  This piece works perfectly as a planter.

Hello Mr. Ladybug.

Love the bright colors of these pots.

String of pearls hanging in a pitcher.

Mr. Toad is hiding from the sun.

I just love the color orange right now.

Love the ruffles of this mum!

I got blogged about!

Well, I have mentioned her here before, but I must say that Tara Whitney is one special photographer.  Not only can she take amazing photos but she writes so beautifully!  I remember reading her essays in our high school honors classes and just knowing that she had IT.  That special way to capture her readers and draw them in.  If you read her comments you can see that she can still do it, every other one says that tears were involved.  I am often wiping my eyes or my nose after reading her blog!
Today, we were her topic of choice!  I love being her topic of choice!  It is like being a celebrity just because I am featured on her blog.  I mean, Tara has gone to other continents to do her photography!  She has been a guest speaker for her photography.  Back before she was a world renowned photographer she was being published in scrapbook mags for her scrapbooking.  Before that?  Well, she was my high school friend and we rode to prom in a limo with a Jacuzzi in the back.  Ha!  We were something else back then.
Tara is just someone amazing because she is just so grounded.  I am just blessed to be someone that knows her and was photographed by her.
Go look for yourself!

Farther into the darkness

So, in my last post I asked if there was light at the end of the tunnel.  The answer...a giant resounding NO.  We are now a week and a half into illness.  Diva is still suffering from some minor effects of the stomach virus.  We are still doing daily loads of her laundry.  More surprising is the Professor.  He spent this morning hooked to an IV being re-hydrated.  My poor son couldn't take in any fluid yesterday.  He wouldn't even talk to us.  He was hit hard by the stomach virus but also suffered from a double ear infection!  Of course, we didn't know that until today.  Fortunately, Diva already had a doctor's appointment today for her kindergarten registration and I decided to try to get Professor in for a "same day".  I went with my "mommy's instinct".  Last night as I was drifting off to sleep with all of my anxiety, I had an image of Professor hooked to an IV.  So, I think that somewhere deep inside of me, I knew we were into something deep.  I was lucky to get an appointment time just before Diva's so they were seen together.  Hubs was going to pass on the IV re-hydration and see how we could do with an ounce of fluid per hour on our own.  I couldn't sit there without speaking up.  I knew that we needed to do something quicker for Professor.  The doctor told me later that it was the look on my face during that discussion that made him decide to go ahead with the IV.  It was my "mommy's instinct" taking over.  Within 15 minutes Professor began to stir and he pinked up.  By the end he was asking for food and water.  I still want to cry when I think about how brave he was.  He didn't even cry when they put the IV in.  There was quite a bit of blood on his hand and it didn't phase him at all!   The doctor said that both of the kids are way too underweight and need to start gaining some weight.  We are just trying to get the food to stay in them!  I am just thrilled that Professor is talking to us again and moving!  I don't know when we will see the other end of this tunnel.  I asked Hubs what he thinks God is trying to teach us.  Why is this happening to us?   Why are my kids suffering for so long?  Hubs thinks that God is teaching me patience.  I think that God is trying to get my attention regarding our family's diet.  How we can improve our diet and make our diet healthier and fatten our kids up.  I also think that He is teaching me to be thankful for everyday that we are healthy and to stop thinking ahead so much.   I tend to get bogged down in the things to come or in my own health issues and forget to thank God for the health we do have.  Trust me...I am getting the message. 

Is There Light?

As my readers know, haaaa haaaa, "my readers", I crack myself up!  Hi there girls.  Oh and hey, Sue, thanks for the comment...really felt the love!
Anyway, as you know sometimes I use this blog as my outlet for the times when being a stay at home mom gets the best of me.
So this is going to be on of those posts.  A "cleansing" post if I may be so free with that word right now.

Is there light at the end of this tunnel?  Will my kids actually go back to school?  They are pretty much going to miss the entire week.  I had to sit myself down and come to terms with the fact that I could not rush them into health.  I could not Clorox their immune systems clean.  Just when things were looking good the Virus would come up behind me and smack me on the head with a new symptom.
For the last two nights Diva has awaken at 2am to christen her bed with vomit.  Her and I then end up downstairs on the couch.  I would find myself jumping at every noise she made, ready with the basin if she needed me.  Well, last night I awoke at 3am all on my own and rejoiced that Diva was still asleep.  But that is where I cursed myself, because then I was up.  My mind was running and I wasn't going back to sleep.  So, night three...no sleep...equals...MIGRAINE! 
*Poor Hubs, I actually cried on his shoulder this morning that I wanted a Starbucks coffee to be delivered to my doorstep.  I may have been delirious at that point.  Mind you, I have not seen the light of day since Saturday!  Sweet man that he is, he went and bought me a big giant cup of Starbucks before he went to work.
If only the day had gotten better from there!  But alas, the coffee was my high point.  It bolstered my energy and stamina for what came next.  Did you know that a child that lies flat on her back and vomits water looks very much like a geyser?  That was my brief observation before said geyser hit me in the face and chest.  So, after two showers, a Bissell Spotbot treatment for the couch and floor and a good long nap for the Diva, we are doing much better.  The couch cushions are sunning themselves dry in the beautiful weather outside.  The kids are playing a bit.  My migraine is gone although I still have hideous dark circles under my eyes.
Oma and Papa were sweet enough to drop off the Rapunzel doll and DVD for Diva and some trucks for Professor.  Of course, they could only talk to the kids through the window because I refuse to share the Virus with anyone! 
I really hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel!  Next week is our spring break!  I need to get out of here!

*Update* My dear friend, M, who doesn't even read this blog, did drop off a Starbucks coffee for me this afternoon!  I opened my door to find Professor's makeup school work and a coffee for me sitting next to my hyacinths!  She is one special lady!