Hello?

I've been MIA for quite a while.  Just been far too lazy to sit down and write blog posts.  I've made some tweaks around the house which I will hopefully get around to documenting soon.  In the meantime here's a summary of the past 9 months ...

In September we celebrated our five year anniversary (half a decade flew by way too fast!) with a weekend trip to Missoula, Montana.  We went for a Pearl Jam concert but also checked out some of the local attractions.


Tired faces (6am flight = 3am wakeup)


Looking a little more awake post nap.

We were pretty excited about seeing bison at the National Bison Range.


Our first stop was looking at the map to figure out the best driving route to take.  I was wearing flip flops and a little mouse ran right over my foot resulting in much screaming from me and hysterical laughter from Josh.  With a start like that we should have known the outing wasn't going to go as planned.


We drove and drove and didn't see a single bison.  I saw some brown dots far away on a hill and jokingly said to Josh "I bet those are the bison way over there in that fenced in area."


At the end of the drive we stopped by the visitors center and guess what?  Two days a year the bison are rounded up for herd maintenance or something and we happened to come on one of the 2 days.  Those "brown dots" I saw were the bison!


Luckily they had a stuffed bison at the visitors' center so we still got to see one.  Not quite as good as seeing one in the wild but better than nothing I guess.


They had all these animal heads mounted to the wall and I thought the bison head was pretty cute.  Josh's favorite was the guy next to the bison head.


They had this massive pile of antlers outside the visitors' center.  I was scared to get too close in case I had another run in with a mouse.


After that I got a little lazy and didn't take many photos.  Missoula is a really cool little town and I would love to live somewhere like that.  Very eco conscious and dog friendly, with a beautiful river running through the downtown area.


Josh had to pose with this guy at the airport.


And then we flew off into the pretty sunset ...


In October I got really sick one day.  I had a pain unlike any I'd ever experienced in my upper abdomen which was so bad I could barely breathe.  Then I started vomiting.  Oh the vomiting.  That went on all night and I resisted going to the ER but was at Urgent Care as soon as they opened.  The doctor insisted I had food poisoning, but I knew it was something else.  I didn't feel well all week and finally went back to the doctor 5 days later and was sent for an ultrasound.  Guess who was full of gallstones??  This girl.  Over the next week I started to feel better so like a dummy I decided to postpone having surgery.  My gallbladder behaved for a good month or so but then I started getting really sick again in December so I scheduled my surgery (which wasn't until January).  The 2 weeks prior to surgery were so bad but I really wanted to hold out and have outpatient surgery vs going to ER during an attack, being admitted, and having to stay a couple of days.  That pain is no joke though - I hope I don't have to go through anything like that again.

These are the little (big) troublemakers.


The dog-children turned a year older.

We would be lost without these two :-)


Since then life has been pretty quiet.  We went to Philly in April for Josh's best friend's wedding but besides that we haven't done anything exciting.  You'd think I would have more to report after 9 months of silence, huh?!

2012 Vegetable Garden

I am a little late in writing about our garden seeing as our squash plants have produced a ton of zucchini and yellow squash and are now almost dead, and the tomato plants are getting crispy in the relentless end of summer sun.  I seem to be saying this a lot lately, but better late than never, right?!

I was so proud of my big 6 ft by 6 ft raised cedar beds that we built last year.  Turns out they were too big for me to reach into and I had to practically climb in to get to the plants in the middle.  So for this year's veggie garden we decided to cut them in half and make four 3 ft by 6 ft beds.

The photo below was the scene at the end of winter.  Josh just pointed out that its so ugly it looks like we purposely made it look bad so it would be a good 'before' photo.  Sadly that is actually what our side yard looked like for a good 5 to 6 months.  Embarrassing!

It was quite a bit of work to move the gravel (have I mentioned before how much we loathe the previous owners for dumping a million tons of gravel all over the back yard?!), move the soil, cut the wood sides in half, add new wood, refill with soil, and then put the gravel back.  There may or may not have been an embarrassing incident where one of us tripped while stepping out of a bed and face planted into the gravel.  There may have been multiple cuts and bruises and a mouth full of dirt and gravel.  And there may have been a husband trying to be concerned while stifling hysterical laughter.

Despite all the hard work we were pretty happy with end result.



The smaller size was much easier to work with.  We planted our garden towards the end of April.  Usually we plant earlier but with our trip to England and having to reconfigure the beds we got a bit of a late start.



We used chicken wire again to deter neighborhood cats from using the garden as a little box but apparently it makes a comfortable bed!  Those are baby zucchini plants she's sleeping next to.



We make our own compost and there must have been some tomato seeds in it because a bunch of volunteer tomato plants sprung up.



I hated to pull them out but realistically we didn't need 100 tomato plants.  I did throw them in the compost bin so at least they will add some nutrients to next year's compost.



This is about a month after we planted the seedlings.  You can see how the squash plants really took off!  Its funny because last year our squash plants looked sickly all season and produced maybe 3 squashes.  It was really pathetic and sad.

We decided to make pathways around the beds to make it look neater and also to make it easier to walk in all that gravel.  We used the 98 cent pavers from Home Depot and picked up 10 every time we went so it took a while to do all the pathways.



Yellow squash trying to keep up with the zucchini.



The first zucchini.  We picked this about a month after we planted the seedlings.  From this point on we were over-run with zucchini and couldn't eat them or give them away fast enough.



This might sound like an exaggeration but we got around 60 zucchinis from our three plants - pretty amazing!  The yellow squash didn't do quite as well but we definitely had more than enough of them too.



This is about two and a half months in and you can see that we were almost done with our pathways.



I love how the pathways look and I think the dogs appreciate them too - I've noticed that they try to keep their feet on the pavers and off the gravel.



The tomato plants always grow fast but it seems like the fruit takes forever to ripen. The waiting is the hardest part!



This is about three and a half months in and you can see how the squash plants are starting to look a bit raggedy.  They started producing less at that point and slowly started dying.  We noticed that they rotted at the roots.  I'm not sure if that's a normal part of the life cycle - I need to look into it.



The tomato plants always seem to outgrow our staking system and become an overgrown mess.  Those wooden stakes are 6 feet tall!



Whenever we pick tomatoes Zeke and Zoey expectantly wait for their portion - I think they are convinced we grow the tomatoes for them!

We are thinking of trying some new veggies next year.  Any suggestions?

England part 3

My parents both turned 60 this spring so we had a nice dinner at my mom's house to celebrate. Don't they both look great for 60?!

My mom has a cute little Jack Russell named Oscar (but pronounced Oscah since he's English!).

He really liked Josh :-)

  

My mom lives close to Bath so we went in a couple of times and did some sight seeing and eating (we had an amazing sausage sandwich the first day and one of the best meat pies I've ever tasted the second day). In all the times I've been to Bath I'd never gone inside Bath Abbey so I wanted to check it out. The Abbey has been around since the 1500s and is really beautiful - unfortunately my pictures don't really capture it very well.
 

 The Abbey is still actively used - can you imagine attending church in such a gorgeous building?!

 

The ceiling is very intricate - its amazing how detailed these old buildings are considering how long ago they were built and without any modern machinery.

 
The walls are lined with burial plaques - some grander than others.
 
I was kind of disgusted by how many people had carved their names into this one.
 

A beautiful building inside and out.

 

Bath was originally settled by the Romans who built a spa around the hot springs sometime in the 1st century AD so its a pretty old city! We didn't visit the Roman Baths because it was getting late and we wanted to eat but I did take a photos of the entrance (below). Yet another cool looking building!

We walked over to Sally Lunn's house, which is supposed to be the oldest house in Bath. Its probably too small to see in the photo but that black circle to the right of the second story windows says "The oldest house in Bath 1482, Sally Lunn lived here 1680".

 

Shaun talked me into climbing into that red box for a photo op.

Then he returned the favour by posing with this ice cream cone. What is it about hanging out with siblings that makes you act childish? Or is just us Whitmore kids?

 

I can't remember if it was the same day but we walked around some of the neighborhoods and looked at the homes. Many of them had these courtyards below street level and I loved the simplicity of this one. I definitely wouldn't mind owning one of these homes!

 

On the day we left my mom's house we went down to the stables with her. She goes down morning and night to take care of her horses. Quite a lot of work for 1 person!
This is Tango on the left and Lacey on the right.

 

Merlin belongs to my mom's friend and is still a foal (under a year old). He's going to be a stunner when he grows up!

 

I don't remember taking this photo but I'm so glad I did hahaha!

 

I'd love to have my own chickens so I was a little obsessed with these free range chickens and their coop. Maybe if we ever move out into the country we can build a coop just like this.


A restful place to spend the day ...

 
This old house is privately owned but used to be the Bishop of Salisbury's summer home in the 1500s. The house next door is owned by my mom's friend (who was on vacation so we couldn't go in) and has the same low ceilings, crooked walls etc. Because they are so old there are only certain renovations that can be done in order to keep the home's original architecture intact. 

The last day of our England trip was spent walking around London with Shaun, Lizzy and Mark and I decided not to lug my big camera around with me so there are no photos :-( At the time it seemed like a good idea because we walked A LOT but now I kind of regret it. Oh well there's always next time.

And that concludes our quick trip to England!