Noah's Second B'day

We drove to Salem, Illinois to help celebrate Noah's 2nd birthday.  We had planned on leaving on Friday, but the threat of snow here saw us leaving on Thursday instead.  Then came the threat of much snow in St. Louis on Sunday, the day we had intended on coming home.  So we came home late Saturday night.  I think it was around 11:30 before we got here.  It turned out to be a good decision.  I'm told they got lots of snow there and we really didn't want to have to drive through it.

Noah had a really good time on his birthday.  He is a real train buff; yes, even at 2 he loves trains.  He may look like a Beasley, but there is definitely some Barnard blood in the boy.  His birthday was planned around a train theme.  Jeanette made a really cute cake, he got some train-type gifts and she decorated the hallway like a train track for his little train riding toy to follow.  Mix that up with some multi-colored balloons and he was in heaven.

He loved chasing around the balloons.

Toot, toot; here comes the Noah Express!

It was hard to keep up with the cute Hungry Caterpillar cake she made last year, but this train cake was really creative.

I didn't get a good one of him "blowing out" his candles, but here he is checking out the cake.

Weather

I don't know if you saw my post from last week.  There Alan is outside in his shirt sleeves getting the window boxes placed on the "deck".  It was so nice that even I was outside without a coat.  And that's saying something.  It started snowing this morning around the time that we left for church.  We didn't really get a lot of snow compared to some of you.  These pictures were when we got back home from church.  I just thought the comparison was interesting.  I meant to get a picture of our perky little daffodils when they first bloomed out.  They were so pretty.  Unfortunately I only got one of them looking definitely droopy and sad.

Doesn't this just want to make you blow a warm breeze over them?

I don't guess we will be planting anything in these tomorrow.

 

The Beginning of our Square Foot Gardening

It's time to do some sort of a post.  We've been into a couple of things lately.  One is preparedness.  We've worked on getting good 72 hour kits put together.  The other is square foot gardening.  Alan has been building the frames for our little gardens.  Since our window boxes have been weathering quite a lot, he built new ones in the form of square foot frames.  They are 3'x1'.  Here they are -- not yet installed.  The one in the front yard will be a little more traditional.  I'll make another post when we get them installed and have something growing in them.  There will also be some frames on the ground.

Here he is with his new creations.  Yes, they are both the same size.  The one that is up close looks oh, so much bigger.  You can see our "new" little car in the background.

Here's a little closer view.  They'll look great with flowers and maybe even some veggies growing in them.