Growing Things

 William keeps very buy all day long working on the farm. Somehow between building fences, shoveling goat poo, cutting down trees, fixing the tractor and a bunch of other stuff I don't even know about, he managed to build us two garden boxes!

Having a garden was something we really wanted to do this year since it was so impossible for us to do it in Shanghai.

 We have alot of trouble with our seedlings this year for some reason but my mom did manage to get some stuff to come up. We have three tomato plants, two zucchini plants and a pumpkin as well as some peppers and a small forest of basil.

Look how fast it's all growing!


Besides all the wonderful vegetables we are looking forward to, I found some vine guide thingys in the shape of animals and I've really enjoyed watching them grow.

My Rabbit vine is already so tall!

 My Doggie vine had a rough start and I thought we'd lost it but then it came back.

 And my Kitty vine took a while to come up but then all of a sudden all these leaves popped up.

Baby Girl is really enjoying watching everything grow too and loves helping water and take care of the plants. She's such a good little farmer girl.

The Dotson-Brown Band

 On Thursday night Uncle Joe's band was playing at Loretta Lynn's Ranch. Baby Girl loves music but she especially loves Uncle Joe's music.

 She got all dressed up to dance at Joe's concert.

 She loves to dance with her Daddy.

 Or even by her self. She just loves to dance.











 During the show Uncle Joe gave Bonnie Rose a signed drum stick. She was so happy and held on to it the rest of the night, dancing with it and swinging it around. She was a very happy girl.

A Perfect Saturday

 I love Saturdays. Bonnie Rose loves them too. Today when she woke up I told her it was Saturday and Daddy was playing video games with Nana and she smiled and said "DaDa" She loves to watch us play video games.

This Saturday morning I woke up to the smell of Coffee and Bacon. I love waking up to Bacon. And then, just as I was settling down to start playing "Fat Princess" with William the phone rang.

"Hello. This is Lukas from Switzerland calling for my friend Michelle."

We ended up talking on Skype so we could see each other... and more importantly our babies.

 We know Lukas and Heidi from Shanghai. They were some of our closest friends, especially after we both had babies there. Lukas, Heidi and Emil were our family in Shanghai. They celebrated every Holiday with us, including Thanksgiving.

It was so nice to see how much Emil had grown and to see their new life beneath the mountains of Switzerland.  But more importantly it was wonderful to talk to such amazing friends and to be reminded that no matter how far away we are from them they will always be our family.

We love them and miss them very much and we look forward to visiting with them for years to come.   Thank you for calling us Lukas and Heidi. We love you.

Now for another piece of bacon and that game of Fat Princess.

Ice Cream, Vines, Goats and Sunset: It must be Summer 142/365

 I only like to eat ice cream if I'm hot. Sitting on the porch at dusk, watching the plants grow and the sun set is the perfect time for an ice cream treat.

 Speaking of plants growing. I'm pretty excited about this vine we have growing in my rabbit shaped vine guide thingy. I swear  you can see it growing. It grows about 6 or 7 inches every day. Soon I'm going to have a lovely rabbit shaped vine with pretty purple flowers.

 Baby Girl likes to watch the vines grow too. This is my cat shaped vine guide thingy.  These seedlings popped up over night.

 Baby Girl's favorite part of the day is also dusk when she gets to walk out with the goats to the back pastures and watch them eat. She's guarding their water bucket here and making sure they are all drinking plenty of water.

 William calls this time of day "The Golden Hour" I really do love it. The more I'm here the more I fall in love with living in this area.

The beauty of the nature all around us is so peaceful and perfect.

"Fezzes are Cool" 141/365

 Baby Girl loves hats. She likes to wear them and she likes other people to wear them. Her current favorite hat is actually my Giant Cupcake pan. She likes to wear it and dance around the kitchen and help with the dishes. We call it her Fez. Fezzes are Cool.

Questing 140/365

 Yesterday was a day of quests.(That's nerd talk for ... doing stuff)

After a wonderfully lazy day of playing computer games, taking naps and watching bad TV we all decided to walk out to the back fields and look for William's iPod that had somehow disappeared.  That quest was a great success when I found it laying on the ground in some weeds about half a mile from the house.

Since we were all hot and sweaty after that we decided we needed some ice cream. So we went on a quest for ice cream.

 Except we started at the wrong end of the store and ended up with a few extra things...

Like Pop Tarts!
I was horrified when William told me he'd never had Pop Tarts. That's like saying you've never watched Saturday morning cartoons... which he didn't, or that you've never had a twinky!  So I made him buy some because you can't live in America without trying these wonderful little treats sometime.

And yes, William, you have to toast them.

Music in the Square 139/365

The first Music in the Square of the Summer season was tonight. Baby Girl clapped...

And danced to the fun music.

Old Friends 138/365

 A few weeks ago we found this snake skin in the back yard.  Horace the snake left it for us to admire, as he does every year about this time. 

Horace has been living in my mom's yard for a few years now, and every year he gets bigger.  He keeps the rodent and large bug population down and keeps the cats entertained as they try to catch him.

We were starting to worry a little bit this year when we hadn't seen him around the yard. We thought maybe one of the cats finally got him.  But today we were very happy to see Horace out sunning himself and chasing a large beetle.

He's very fast and very beautiful and we're happy to have him around.

Water Baby 137/365

With temperatures now in the 90s (32C) I thought it was time to pull out the kiddy pool.  Baby Girl and I spent our day sitting outside in the pool.

I'm so thankful to live in a place where we can do this outside (with no neighbors to see us) and in a place where the water is safe for baby to drink. She LOVES drinking the pool water. I'm so happy not to have to stress about the safety of the tap water here.


Other Summer activities include spending the whole day naked or in her diaper and trying on everyone's shoes...

And then there's post bath time family tag through the house and then cuddle time.

Life with Baby is never dull.