Marie Manilla's webpage

Phil here.

My writer friend Marie Manilla just created her webpage www.mariemanilla.com. Check it out. She's an excellent writer whose first novel, Shrapnel, won the 2008 Fred Bonnie Award sponsored by River City Publishing in Montgomery, Alabama.

Way to go Marie!

In outdoor news...

The garden is coming along nicely, thanks to the wikkid hot weather interspersed with rainy days. Julie once again ordered tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings from an online company called www.chileplants.com. The plants are very healthy and the packaging is ingenious!



I got six tomatoes (2 each of Aker's West Virginian, Coyote, and Big Zebra),



four peppers (2 each of Banana Supreme Hybrid and Blushing Beauty Hybrid)

and two eggplants (Ping Tung Long). I also got some cukes, squash and herbs from River's Edge Nursery, a lovely spot just down the street, and some Purple Pod Pole Beans from seed.

We also moved our arbor which previously held a REALLY aggressive wisteria vine. The construction guys plucked that beast out of the ground and the arbor now is waiting to receive two grape vines.

The picture is blurry but those bumps on the vine are now leaves!

Soon the rhubarb, chives and lettuce will have garden companions.

Time for the semi-annual blog post

We are such bad, bad bloggers. For anyone who is still interested, Julie is still knitting:






The kids are still smiling



and Shreck is still trying to kill Quinn


Our house construction is done, Phil is building bookshelves, and we are investigating the possibility of buying a swingset this summer (and the race for who gets stitches first begins!). I'll post more when there are more pictures to display, because what fun is a blog with no pictures?

What to do with all that pesky free time

I, Julie, decided that I needed a hobby. I went to the local vo-tech and took a beginner's knitting class, and I did really well and liked it a lot. First I learned to do this:



Then I learned how to do this:


Then I looked in a book and learned how to do this:



And eventually I got the courage to try this:

Its a blanket but its starting to look a little too camouflage for my style. Those multi-colored yarns look so much better when they're still in a ball.



Don't go putting orders in for sweaters or anything. Phil says the soundtrack to his evening is now "click...click...click..crap!..click...crap!"

Bring on year #3!

The kids turned two this weekend, and our house is overrun with Elmo. Elmo TMX, Singing Pizza Elmo, Elmo cell phone, Elmo books, Elmo balloons, even Elmo cupcakes. I don't know what it is about that red monster who can never refer to himself in the first person, but he's got a choke hold on toddlers. It was a great day nonetheless. Now on to toilet training!

The Carson Kids model this year's pumpkins

So its been a long time since we've posted anything, and for good reason. Two toddlers, Julie's new job, and all other things that happen in life have happened in the last year. The kids are now about to turn 2 years old and here's a recent shot of them. Maybe the pumpkin-on-the-front-steps shot will be our annual thing. It seems to be so far.

Pics

Pics

Had to throw this picture of Thomason up. This was done on the first spoonful, with one swipe of the hand.

It's official, Thomason is an artist.

Pics

Sorry about the pic that isn't working. I uploaded them quickly, found out later that I had hit my web quota, had to delete some junk, but the pics were stuck on the computer at home. I'll put them up when I get back home.

More

More pics

It just goes on.

Head down, cutting wood

I just kept going, working during every spare hour, 2-3 hours after work (my day job that actually pays a salary), and 7-9 hours a day on weekends. All of this was to try to get it all done by our July 4th party.