Daddy/daughter Road Trip

Maggie and I took a few days and drove to Rome to visit my family while Mama and Lilly stayed home to enjoy some quiet time.

















Maggie & Mimie

















Maggie & Great Grandmama

















Gimme a "C"

















Gimme an "O"

















Gimme an "R"

















Gimme an "N" - What does it spell!!

















What does that spell?

















Maggie & cousin Gage playing "boats"

















Come on little boat - you can do it!

we need more music!

bigleaf magnolia & big garden

I have a bigleaf magnolia that I grew from seed and that is now planted in my backyard, and this year it has it's first flower! I am pretty excited about it, but unfortunately I waited about a day too late to take a picture of it. So, I'm sorry it is all shriveled and yucky looking, but here it is:
Our garden shares a fence with our neighbor's garden, and this year they agreed to let us take down the fence within the garden and use their space as well. So our garden has just tripled in size...to about 20' x 20'. I know this probably seems piddly to you country folk (Roger), but it seems huge to me! So far, I've planted a bunch of tomatoes, both hot & sweet peppers, okra, blackeyed peas, mustard greens, collards, and a little kale.

a busy week

This past week was a busy one for Maggie...some of her weekly highlights included helping Daddy wash the car, an entire day playing with Eli, Jacob, and Samantha (the 3 month old daughter of our friends Victoria & Stephen), going strawberry pickin' with Eli, and a fun evening playing with her friend Evelyn (9 year old daughter of some neighborhood friends).
Maggie & Jacob the babies (Samantha, Lilly, & Jacob) chillin' on the couch taking a pretend nap with Eli
strawberries!
she was very proud of her bucket
Eli preferred to eat right off the plant instead of filling up his bucket
lunchtime afterwards
Maggie & I picked about 6 lbs. of strawberries, most of which I turned into strawberry preserves (the bowl on the right was that day's harvest from my plants in the backyard)

watercolors

First of all, sorry for all of the changing blog formats...I'm trying to settle on an updated template that I'm happy with. Anyways, I got Maggie some watercolors this week, and as you can see she is really enjoying them!

Lilly enjoying a new food, butternut squash.

Lilly is gumming anything she can get her hands on, and her favorite discovery is my velcro watchband. The bottom picture shows her expression when I took the watch away from her.