Our new family member!

Yesterday, Laura (Kaimin) arrived from Southern China. She'll be in 10th grade at a local private high school. We are so glad to have her here with us this year. She loves our kids and likes to play games with them. She'll call me "mom" which I'm excited about :)

Camping June 2014

We went to the KOA in Canandaigua, NY

 They had a "Kafe" so I didn't cook!

Our nice, wooded site

The kids were cozy, right in between us

Was a little cold for swimming, but they braved it.

The "art of roasting marshmallows 101"

We rented a bike, we went on a hayride, zip lined, played in a tree house, low ropes course, jumped on a huge balloon pillow, played in the arcade... was great for our family! And had perfect weather.

First and Last Day of School

It's hard to believe she's done with Kindergarten! 

Sept. 4th, 2013                June 24th, 2014

Olivia and her teacher, 2nd to last day at class party 

Ice cream!

More of our Yard

A family picture

Gotta get these in the ground...

Going to leave this clematis in the middle of the vegetable garden

Only 4 plants left to give away/transplant. Going to leave the plants along the shed there.

The next few pics are views around the outside of our home. Thanks to Bill's hard work, and some friends who hauled mulch for us, all the beds around our house are done! Only a few areas left to do, but we're satisfied with how it looks around the house.

And, if you can look past the weeds, you'll see a few strawberry plants.

Olivia's room

We are doing a major re-do of Olivia's room. Here are a couple before pics, at least of the walls. It was 2-3 layers of wallpaper, and then a nice thick blue paint on top of that. Took Bill about 20 hours to remove it.

The kids couldn't help themselves from picking at the peeling painted wallpaper.

We'll be redoing the floor as well, using a lot of what is there and only getting a little section of "new, old" floor.

Yard

Gabe helped me plant seeds in April. 

We did tomatoes, cilantro, chives, basil and lavender. The lavender did not make it. (I bought thyme, parsley and lavender from the nursery, one plant each)

About 5 weeks later...

I bought rhubarb and asparagus to plant. 

A run through the sprinkler on a hot spring day

It's nice the kids can play here while we work in the gardens right around the deck.

This, whatever it is, has the most amazing smell. It was our favorite this spring.

We had lots of poppies

Herbs and tomatoes after I potted them. They are now much bigger and will go in the ground soon.

This is on the left side of our shed. We're working on transplanting the pretty plants so I can plant more in the garden. The rhubarb and asparagus are in already.