Monday, June 30, 2014

Out goes June

Good-bye June, Hello July...

Summer is flying :( but we're still busy! Brett had two more baseball games last week and has three this week!

Brett's grandma S had knee surgery on Thursday and is now home recovering (thank you God) with the watch of her kids.

Nicole and I started out our weekend a little early on Thursday by attending a Brewer's baseball game, which they won! Friday night Brett, Dad, and the rest of our Klitzke family attended the races at Madison International Speedway - followed by Fireworks! It's typically the one time a year we make it to the races, Brett also helps out his dad on the safety truck when he can.

Saturday I had my first experience manning a stroller (with a kid in it) at the Dane County Farmers Market. Our friends Lane and Mike are visiting from Florida, and Lane had never been to DCFM. She rocked Everett in the 'Bob' and I took Remi (her niece) in the 'Chicco' while the men golfed in Cottage Grove. We got all sorts of yummies and stopped mid-way for a much needed iced coffee/kid snack/sunscreen reapplication. It was hot out there in the east side of the capitol square.

Afterwards we weeded some garden and watered, then packed up the car to head to Edgerton for camping! Much fun was had AND though we got rained on from 2:30 - ? we stayed dry and even got a fire restarted in the morning. After breaking camp we headed to Rays in Edgerton for some good eats, then headed home to pick up the pup and go to baseball.

This week we look forward to Summerfest to see the Zac Brown Band, yummy eats, family 4th time, tubing, a Mallards game (yes on top of the Merchant games), and whatever else comes our way (spending time with Baxter, a couple hair cuts, and putting up a garden fence to keep out those pesky wabbits).

Baxter turns EIGHT this week! Hard to beleive our little buddy is gonna be eight.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Storms Galore

Starting my week out with Rosemary oil as my Young Living Essential Oil (YLEO).

We were pretty lucky in the Stoughton area to not get much damage *knock on wood* from the storms that we've had. Storms do however affect baseball fields, hence Thursday's game in Monona has been rescheduled to a currently unknown date. We did win at the Fort tournament Friday (taking first) and our game on Sunday though!!

This past weekend marked the one year of Grandma D passing, first official days of summer and helping our freinds R&B move out of Stoughton. We're not glad to see them go, but it does mean that we get to see some different scenery every once in a while!

The joys of gardening ~ the garden is loving the weather, and the rabbit has thouroughly enjoyed eating my spinach and the mosquitos are horrible due to all the rain that we've had. I've planted fresh seeds, gotten metal rabbit fencing that should be up this week, and I'm now looking into organic sprays that I hear the bunnies don't like. They involve cayenne or red pepper! If you have any tips PLEASE feel free to share them with me. Shout out to Kopke's who let me bring Baxter in while I was shopping for more flowering plants last week! We hung another hanging pot in front of our living room windows. It's very nice with the wind chimes and hanging pots out there now.

We did add a new finned family member on this last weekend (thanks to Tanner & his friend Eddy) who won him at the Fort Festival, he's currently doing well in his own tank (Fred was recently upgraded to a larger bowl). If he continues to do well, we'll see about moving them both into the big bowl.

Are you ever asked "What's new?" by someone you don't see very often and it TOTALLY throws you off guard? We've noticed with as busy as we are we don't always remember "what's new" and are going to try and ask ourselves that question before we get into activities where it might be a question that comes up.

Until next time...

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Where does the time go?

How can it be that I last posted at the end of April!?

In the last week (or two) we've seen tons of friends, spent the night in Baraboo, hoola hooped, played baseball, grilled out, walked the dog, gone to a movie (just one I think), watched Fringe (thank you Netflix), gardening (lots and lots), etc.

Summer is finally here, this means travel. Last weekend we put about 150 miles on the car in one day! We took Baxter out to my parents house to run around and pick asparagus, they were camping for the weekend and needed someone to check the house. It seemed to make sense to take a family drive. We finally found a place to hang our wind chimes from Brett's grandparents, and had to pick up another hook to hang them from one the way home... i.e. stop at Farm and Fleet (where I yes, bought more garden seeds). We were able to get the new seeds in the ground, just before it started raining. Hoorah! Believe it or not we called this day, a relaxing day.

Sunday brought sunshine, some clouds and baseball. The Stoughton Merchants took on Waterloo's Firemen and won 5-3! The girls, dogs and I also got in some exercise pregame - that's always fun! Oh and my vacuum died, luckily we have Brett's as backup.

OK - so, the garden. I'm so excited to be doing one this year! We've planted the following: climbing peas, pole beans, bush zucchini and cucumber (zucchini is already huge and we might have to move one set), tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, a chocolate pepper, jalapeno peppers, carrots, basil, kale, spinach, onions, corn, oregano, parsley, rosemary, creeping thyme, blueberries, and a whole bunch of flowers too. We originally just had the 4x8 raised bed, then we tilled another section (about 5x10), we're using the laundry line poles to help the peas and beans climb, and put the cherry tomatoes in a large pot on the front step. I better learn how to can and freeze pretty quick!

As always I try to take Baxter with us/me whenever I can so we walked to music in the park last week. Brett was playing baseball against Milton in the Fort Atkinson tournament series (they won!) and play again this Friday night. Not a bad turnout at the park, we ran into a few people we knew and we stayed for about 20 minutes before getting him home to cool down and rest.

On tap: We've got friends moving, visiting, and making plans. In the works a tubing trip, lots of Merchant baseball, helping move, biking, Brewer's baseball, camping, strawberry picking, more gardening, a trip to the farmers market, road trip to Nashville (pipeline), family time, and of course our trip to Ireland. That's coming up this fall, along with maybe... the purchase of a new car.

We'll see where God takes us in the meantime.

Cool bumper sticker of the week: Imagine Whirled Peas