I can already feel the busy-ness of this week; laundry from the boys being at the cabin this past weekend, friends visiting, packing for another weekend at the cabin, all within just three days.

Monday: Sadly, we had McDonald’s last night. We were headed back from getting groceries, starving, and add in the fact that it was hot and humid, the last thing we wanted to do was turn on the stove or oven and cook something that wouldn’t be ready for awhile. That’s probably the first time I’ve had McDonalds in over two or three months though, so I’m not punishing myself too much for that.

Tuesday: Pasta with Ricotta, Herbs and Lemon Something simple but good. Crossing my fingers that a Beau doesn’t hate it (since it doesn’t contain any meat).

Wednesday: Chicken-Vegetable Kabobs Yum. Tasha tried this last week and said it was pretty good. Beau will eat the mushrooms, I’ll eat the peppers and tomatoes, and Ephram… well, I’ll cross my fingers that Ephram will at least eat the chicken.

Thursday: Chicken Basil Stir Fry This has turned into one of our favorite meals lately. I think I’ve made it once a week for the past month or so. But it’s so delicious.

Friday: Headed to the cabin (all three of us this time)! Crossing my fingers we can make it to a fish fry.

Ephram and Beau are up at the cabin for the weekend. So it figures that a tornado warned storm would set up perfectly for me. (note: if Beau goes to the cabin, you can almost always guarantee a tornado warned storm close to home). Fortunately (and unfortunately), the base looked unimpressive for the most part. But seeing a decent storm was a nice Memorial Day Treat for me, since I’m stuck working all weekend.

Planting – I have to back up a bit with this post.  Ever since Beau and I moved in together, a tiny apartment during college, Beau has grown plants. Like I mentioned before, the tropical ones are his favorite; Hibiscus specifically. And in the three years since we bought our house, we’ve added bushes and trees and flowers and vegetables gardens to our yard, but it didn’t feel complete.

Last year, Beau experimented with several hardy hibiscus plants.  Plants that can be planted here in Minnesota, produce humongous flowers (the size of paper plates!), and return the following year. In the late Summer, he gathered the seedpods and saved them over the winter. A recent trip to Florida resulted in even more gathered seeds, and when we returned, he began to grow them in trays under growing lights in our basement.

Beau is officially the planter of this household. I’m the weeder (and photographer, of course). We’re a good team. Ephram was in bed for this part of the project.  The baby plants above (early-March) are the same ones Beau is planting around the patio in the photos below (mid-May). He has assured me that the hearty hibiscus hybrids will look crazy awesome once they grow taller later this Summer. And we’ve added Cannas around the patio as well.

And the veggie gardens (the rectangles to the right of Beau) have officially been planted as well.  Including peppers, tomatoes of all kinds, beans, peas, etc. Oh, and see the new fence behind our patio area? Yay for a bit of privacy and not in our expense.

Starting to feel a little more complete. Don’t you think?

If you ‘re a frequent blog reader, twitter follower, or live in my house, you’re well aware that I’ve become a little smoothie obsessed.  Nearly any day we have fresh fruit in the house, I make a smoothie.  And I’ve even started buying extra fruit and freezing it so it doesn’t go bad by the end of the week, so that I have a stock of fruit for smoothies even when we haven’t been the grocery store in a week.

Ephram is a lover of smoothies as well.  But when it comes to eating solids, he’s become very picky.  (Yes, I realize this is just payback for the many years I was a picky eater for my parents, but come on, I wasn’t extremely picky until age 3 or so.)  I had noticed that Ephram ALWAYS ate the cherry chunks in his mixed fruit cans, so I recently decided to buy a jar of regular cherries for him. To my chagrin, they gave him horrible diaper rash. The worst diaper rash I’ve ever seen. He was screaming the hardest I’ve ever seen him scream as I wipe his butt that night. Poor guy…

Anyways, lunchtime didn’t go well yesterday.  Not surprisingly.  The only thing he didn’t shake his head to was bread.  Even the raspberries took some forced-feeding for him to remember they didn’t taste horrible.  But even then he only ate a few on his own. And though he is a cheese lover, I have decided to only offer cheese if he eats the rest of his lunch. Otherwise, he eats the cheese and absolutely nothing else.

So after a two hour nap, he was hungry again.  So instead of reaching for the fish crackers or teddy grahams, I decided to take his lunch leftovers and make them into a smoothie.  Brilliant!

The recipe:

1/2 can of peas
1 fruit cup of peaches
1/2 cup of yogurt
4 large strawberries

It doesn’t sound the best, but he absolutely loved it!  And then he asked to sit in my lap while he unknowingly enjoyed his lunch leftovers.

The smoothie trick might not work forever. It might not even work next week. But it works for now. And that’s all that matters to me.

The Hard Part: We debated back and forth in our heads for a couple of weeks on what we would use to create the patio and finally decided upon crushed rock for a number of reasons.  Money and ease being two of them.  Though it still definitely wasn’t easy.  At least for Beau.  While Ephram and I enjoyed snack time in the sun, Beau shoveled the heavy (and wet from recent rain) crushed rock from the driveway to the backyard.  Next time, I think we’d be a little less concerned with the lawn and would have had them back up right to the back yard and dump the rock there, instead of on the driveway.

This part of the project, and these photos, are back from mid-April when Ephram wasn’t quite a pro at walking through the slanted grassy area next to our house.  But he also didn’t want to miss out watching daddy haul the rock back and forth from the front yard to the back yard.  So E and I would hold hands, and toddle along to watch.

But after a few days of shoveling, and moving it around, we had a relatively flat surface to put the above ground firepit and chairs.

Of course, anything adult sized that Beau and I use, Ephram develops an obsession with.  So he helped out as well.

And the house behind Ephram in the photos below is now blocked by a brand new fence our neighbor had installed last week.  No, she doesn’t hate us.  She just acquired two new dogs and wanted an area for them to run free without needing a leash.  But it’s nice for a little privacy as well.