Josiah Loves Solids!

Among other exciting world events this past week, Josiah started eating solid foods! I was in no rush to start feeding Josiah solids for several reasons.

1. I don't mind changing the purely-breastfed-baby diapers at all, but the solid-eating-variety really stinks!
2. Introducing solids takes time--time to prepare the food and time to spoon-feed it to the baby. Time is something that's hard to come by these days!
3. I really want to hold on to this final baby-stage as long as possible!  Seriously, why does this little guy have to grow up?

My girls, on the other hand, were eager for Josiah to start eating "real food". So, I finally relinquished my hold on babyhood this past week.  I really expected that Josiah wouldn't like solids at all.  Boy, was I wrong!  This kid loves to eat and he's a pretty adorable spectacle!

  

 

A Backyard We Can Enjoy!

I really liked having a backyard consisting of mounds of dirt for a little while. The relationship turned sour, however, the moment Matthew and Jonathan began to partake of said dirt as a delicacy. Because we are frugally-minded, or, to put it more bluntly, cheap, we really wanted to landscape the backyard ourselves. To help us generate some ideas, though, we had a few companies come out and give us estimates, which, by the way, are FREE! I was astounded at the price tag on a backyard the size of a postage stamp: $20,000! Seriously??? That was all the gusto we needed to plunge head-first into the do-it-yourself-landscaping-project! Now that the backyard project is completed, I kind of understand why they wanted to charge so much. This project was so much more involved than I ever imagined it to be: 9 cubic yards of road base, 2 cubic yards of sand, 6 cubic yards of top soil, 120 retaining wall blocks, 650 square feet of pavers.  That's a lot of manual labor with only one wheelbarrow and two shovels.  We went through five pairs of work gloves combined and three cases of gatorade.  David made new friends at Home Depot's tool rental shop and the local dump (we hauled out FIVE loads of dirt from the backyard).

I am so thankful for my renaissance of a man husband, David.  He worked so hard designing the yard, researching how to build retaining walls and lay pavers, and executing the plan, which, you can see from the pictures below, required a LOT of manual labor and painstaking attention to detail.  In addition to one week of vacation, he dedicated mornings, evenings, and weekends to this project.  The backyard turned out beautifully because of him.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.  Colossians 3:23

This is a picture of the pavers and retaining wall blocks.

A big pile of road base.

Sand and topsoil.

This is a picture of the retaining wall on the left side of the patio.  We are using each of these beds for vegetables.

This is a picture of the retaining wall in the middle of the patio.

This is a picture of the retaining wall on the right side of the patio.

This is a picture of one the in-ground planters between the retaining walls.  Somehow, I forgot to take a picture of the other one.  We opted to purchase all of the plants from a local nursery that only sells plants native to this region of California.

This is a picture of the in-ground planter and pavers next to the house and opposite the retaining walls.

David laid pavers all along the side of the house and planted citrus trees next to the wall.

This is the other side of the house where we planted grapes and lemonade berry.

Mobley Art

I really have zero creative genes in my body, so art has never been a source of enjoyment for me. When I was a kid, we used to do art projects in class and then the teacher would hang everyone's creation, no matter what it looked like, up on the wall. Once, a classmate asked me which one was mine, but I refused to tell him because mine was seriously so bad. Then, he pointed to one and said, "Well, it can't be as bad as that one!" Embarrassed, I admitted, "Ummm...that one is mine." Understandably, I feel so ill-equipped to educate my children in anything artistic, but I also refuse to pay for art lessons.  I also refuse to place them in a classroom setting to fumble around on their own like me, for that certainly did nothing for me but to turn me off of art entirely. This year, however, I used some of our instructional funds to purchase a DVD-based art curriculum, Atelier Art. Now, every Thursday afternoon, we sit at the school table and watch an art lesson on the computer, pausing as necessary to keep up with the instructor. Much to my surprise, what was once drudgery is now a delight!  It is so much fun learning and growing alongside my children!

We learned about different lines.

We mixed primary colors to make secondary colors.

This was a lesson in textures.  We each made an animal with an oval-shaped piece of felt.

This past week, we explored patterns drew clowns.