Birthday and Garden Stuff

Kenan bought me a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, a beautiful necklace and took me out to dinner for my birthday. Here is what the flowers looked like:

I also got another great birthday present - a new pair of shoes arrived! I used my gift card to Zappos (thank you Mom and Dad!) and they arrived, all gorgeous and everything, on my birthday. Here's what they look like:

Also, the garden is coming along very nicely. Kenan installed an automated drip line watering system and we've already got a couple of seedlings poking their heads up:

Here are the drip lines

Valve system

Our potatoes are taking off!!

First corn plant - I'm officially a corn farmer!

Squash came up first - we have several of those plants

And last but most certainly not least, we are very happy that our ducks came back this year! They seem to like the fence that wasn't there last year :)

Turkeys!!

You would expect that we would see the Easter bunny this weekend, but not so. We had wild turkeys instead! They showed up in the backyard around 4 PM Saturday making a huge racket and didn't seem to care that there were plenty of people around. We saw four; here is a picture of the two Kenan was able to zoom in on:

Happy Birthday, Madison!

Today my little girl is eleven years old. She is the best dog any human being could ever possibly ask for and we love her very, very much. Here's a Madison montage from over the years:

2003 - right after I first became her Mommy

2006 - playing in the Guadalupe River

World's best nap-taker

Possibilities

When Kenan first started talking about planting a garden this year, I was more than a little bit skeptical. I figured it would be an expensive and time-consuming project for two people with already busy lives and hectic careers. Not until today, when we planted the garden ("we" is an exaggeration; I believe I provided drinks and moral support) I started to understand. Gardens are the essence of faith. You plant seeds or small sprouts in the ground, water and tend them carefully, and hope that they will grow and thrive. Now I'm getting slightly philosophical, but perhaps that is the reason so many farmers are devoutly religious: no one understands faith better than a farmer. Anyway, I was also the official photographer, so here are lots and lots of pictures. Also, thank you a hundred times over to Mom and Dad for showing us what to do and being right there to do it with us.

This was just me trying out my photography skills

Making rows

We are just looking cute, not really helping :)

Row #2

It was such a beautiful day - look at all the wildflowers that popped up in our yard

Drink break

We planted potatoes using sprouts from my Grandma's garden (all the way from Iowa!), so I gave them a special name :)

Our first garden!

Planting

See? I planted a couple of plants

Harry the turtle, our garden mascot

Madison was very curious and could not resist getting involved in the planting - at one point she dug up a potato sprout that Kenan had just finished planting!

The final step - watering

Texas Aggie Baseball

We went to College Station this weekend to catch some Texas Aggie baseball and had such a good time! We weren't able to make Saturday's game due to the freak weather we had, but Friday's game was great and of course the Aggies beat Texas Tech. 

Ahhh, Olsen Field

I got to soak in the game and score it - my favorite part

I love being able to share something I love so much with someone I love so much

Daddy's 1954 Ford Tractor

Saturday's weather was very cold and nasty, but Madison didn't mind

Stuff

Daddy, that post title is just for you :)

This weekend Kurt, Mandy and Cade came for a visit. Kurt helped Kenan put up the remaining fence wire he needed, and now the garden fence is complete! That means we are ready to plant!

3D Is Hip

3D movies are all the rage now! We went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D IMAX Thursday night with Erin and Brad - it was great! Here are a couple of pictures of exactly how cool we looked in our glasses:

We're stylin'.

Side note: our goal to see every movie nominated for Best Picture in 2009 turned out to be a bad project. If you haven't seen the movie Precious, I strongly urge you not to. I had to watch a Disney movie before I even went to sleep, it was so disturbing. So x-nay on that one. We're trying out The Hurt Locker soon because I'm pretty anxious to see a movie that managed to beat both Avatar and District 9 (which, in my opinion, should have won). Peace out!