Siblings

I am amazed how much London seems to love Adelaide. Really, she is the invasion to his perfectly happy, only child life. He has taken to her better than I imagined. When she's not around he asks for her. When she cries he immediately tries to comfort her (either by rocking her or giving her kisses or telling her it's okay). Today Addie was chilling in her bouncy seat, sucking her pacifier. It fell out and London stopped what he was doing and put it back in her mouth. That was sweet. Now I know there will soon come a time when I will hear "Addie stop crying" and "Stop looking at me" and "Stop touching me". And there may even be assaults and wrestling matches. And the sharing... Once Adelaide is mobile and touching London's toys, well, I just don't think he's going to like that. But maybe by that point he'll be a little better at sharing.

Above all, one of our biggest hopes for our children is that they grow up to be the best of friends. And that they are always there for each other, no strings (or judgements) attached. That is one of the things we will teach them. To always love and respect and watch out for each other. Family is the most important thing.

I think they're off to a good start.

FREEDOM

This is the vine, ripped from its lifeline. It can no longer hurt anyone.




I fought the vine... And I won. Though the tree did suffer a loss.




The fallen comrades. A moment of silence, please.

In the beginning

This is a before shot of our front yard. And so the evolution begins.

What once was a picture of beauty

This is the plant that was planning to take over our front yard, back in its glory days of beautiful flowers. They didn't last too long. I should've known better....





Here it is in all its death grip glory. This is actually a combination of 3 things. A tree, the vine and another grass type plant that was also accosted by the vine.

And so it begins

Gabe and I have officially started the landscape renovation on our yard this morning. We had done little plant killings here and there, but this morning was some hard core, sweat filled ripping out of plants in the front yard. I wrestled with a particular vine that we didn't realize was alive and thriving and suffocating a poor defenseless tree. At one time, this alleged vine boasted beautiful purple flowers. It brought a very welcomed burst of color to our yard. Little did we know it was just luring us in, waiting to unleash its fury. It was so subtle we didn't even realize what was happening. I couldn't even believe how big and crazy that thing had gotten. The tree it was planted near is a good 8 feet tall... And this little plant, it vined its way all the way to the top of the tree. It even entangled a weed (as tall as me) that was growing nearby. This thing showed no mercy. As I hacked away at it (Gabe helped me free the tree from its grasp) I realized this plant had also grown over some sort of grass plant. As I started to remove the grass plant, I realized it had become a home, a haven, to many gross and disgusting creatures. The only good thing is the ladybugs it harbored (no doubt because of the nasty creatures). I tell you, there were white spiders, tiny spider-looking bugs (maybe aphids?), rolie polie bugs, and the nastiest of all plant dwelling creatures.. The Nasty Catepillar (as we explained to London so he wouldn't think it was a kindly bug). I want to say it was maybe a centipede, but I am not 100% sure. All I know is it was about 3 inches long, had oh so many legs, and was the spawn of Satan. Oh the horror. They were everywhere. I kept my cool (on the outside) so that I wouldn't completely freak London out (he's just learning about bugs and I don't want him to be scared of them). But on the inside I was SCREAMING BLOODY MURDER and my skin was crawling. I knew my life would end if one of those things touched me. I tried to get a picture of one, but it isn't too visible. Being the spawn of Satan, they kept burrowing deeper into the ground when I finally ripped the plant out. *As a side note, London let a ladybug crawl on him for the very first time today. He loved it. The ladybug had only 1 wing and it couldn't fly. I felt bad. But then it excreted some orange liquid on London's hand and I immediately flicked it into the tree. I'm not sure what orange excrement out of a ladybug means....

I have quite a passion for this gardening thing (I'm no Bob Villa of the gardening world), but I am learning and I love getting my hands dirty. So I have been chomping at the bit to get the MASSIVE project going (the 100 degree weather has been quite a hinderance). The previous homeowner had the entire yard landscaped just 3 years ago.. There are a ton of plants, bushes and trees to take out.... They are not to my liking. It is now my yard, and I want to plant my favorite flowers and trees in my yard. I want it to look exactly how I want it to look. Now we know this project will most likely take us until next summer as we don't have a ton of time to devote to it (what with jobs, kids, lives) and we have the front and back to do. But I am okay with that now that we are underway. I am going to post some pictures of us this morning. Some before shots... And then, if you stay with me, you will eventually see the after photos. Alluring isn't it?