5 Years Ago...

...at 5:54am, my life changed forever. My priorities were shifted around, my life was turned upside-down, and my heart began to grow outside of my body. I gave birth to a beautiful little girl and we named her Katelyn Elizabeth. Katelyn immediately became a wonderful addition to our life. She has spent the last 5 years growing and learning, and getting ready for the biggest step in her life - starting kindergarten!

At Birth

 1st Birthday

2nd Birthday

 3rd Birthday

 4th Birthday

 Recently

I hope that you all enjoyed the photographic walk back down memory lane as much as I did!!! I find it so hard to believe that the little baby in the first picture (the one that I wasn't even sure how to care for!!!) has learned to walk, to talk, her colors, to count, to read, to do math, to love science, to negotiate, to do monkey bars, to make her own PB&J sandwiches, and to bring joy to everyone she comes into contact with. Katelyn has a heart of gold and is always there to give a hug to anyone in need. She and her sister have developed an extremely close bond since Abby was born and Katelyn is always looking out for her sister's best interest. 

I'm going to have to wrap this up now, as we have a birthday celebration to kick off, but I wanted to just take a moment to share with you that my baby girl is now 5 years old!!!!

All my love,

Grow babies, grow!!!

Good evening everyone!!!

The pictures above just provide a quick update to our garden. If you look closely, you'll see some baby veggies and some of the grown vegetables that the girls have harvested. It looks like we are closing in on having daily fresh produce at dinner!!!! YUM YUM!!!


Also, I would like to mention something else that's growing right now and that would be the Lynch Station Pumpkin Patch!!! You can check it out on Facebook at this link or you can follow the progress throughout the summer here on my blog. Here are some of the most recent pictures:

This effort has been a major undertaking for my Dad - he set this patch up while on short-term disability leave from his job after his stroke. Justin and I are both cheering him on with this venture and we hope for BIG pumpkins by fall!!!!

Moving on to the other side of my family, I am trying to help my mom and step-dad sell their 1984 Ford TravelCraft 27' motor home. It has a 460 cubic inch engine, over-sized automatic transmission, cooler for towing, a large awning, and almost new tires. They've given it many upgrades and it's well-kept and clean. This RV will sleep 6. It has new brakes, radiator, water pump, belts, and hoses. Also, it has an over-sized refrigerator, roof A/C, gas furnace, gas hot water, new holding tanks and valves. There is no generator, but wiring in place (they used a portable generator). The engine has 75,536 miles on it. They are asking $7,500 and the vehicle is located in central Virginia. Email me if you're interested in finding out more!

That about wraps it up for this update...I hope that you all have a wonderful week and find many ways to beat the heat!

All my love,

Container Garden Update

Good evening everyone!

I took new pictures of the back porch garden today, and I think you'll be amazed at the growth since my last update! We have harvested a LOT of strawberries already and we have 2 zucchini sprouts growing. I also see some yellow blooms on our grape tomato plant as well as some tiny jalapeno pepper buds on that plant. The girls and I separated the green bell pepper plants this afternoon, and left 3 in the container in the back of the house and moved 6 more to containers in the front of the house (I'm not counting on those making it though - I think the neighborhood stray animals eat my plants in the front...now that I think about it, maybe I should throw some habaneros up there just for fun ;-) ).

Here's what we have now:

Our 2 baby zucchinis

Yellow crookneck squash

Mystery plant (I think it's another yellow squash plant)

Cucumber plant (I can actually see where its vine snapped and then healed! Very cool!)

Green beans (We'll be harvesting these shortly)

These are the green bell pepper plants that we separated late this afternoon.

See the small yellow blooms on our grape tomato plant???

A complete look at our Upsy-Downsy planter

The "scraggly" zucchini plant is finally catching up!

We have the strawberry plant on the left and the jalapeno pepper plant on the right.

The girls and I put Miracle-Gro on all of the plants again this evening and we are very excited to see all of the baby vegetables making appearances!

Thanks for following our plants!!! I hope that you all have a great week; I should be blogging later this week about the Lynch Station Pumpkin Patch!


All my love,