Ahhhh.

Peace. Quiet. No kids in sight.

...

I've just dropped the kids off at church for VBS this week. They are so excited - the theme for this year is 'The Serengeti Trek,' and most of the decorations include all of the characters from the movie Madagascar. I swear, A.J. thinks the church has chosen this theme *just* because he also chose it for his birthday in August. ;-)

Registration began this morning at 8:30. We were there, but I had already pre-registered and paid for both of the kids almost 2 months ago, so it was a fairly quick process. I wonder how many children are attending this year - it seems like I saw at least 200 in the time I was there.

Though Jack is still technically 3 years old, he is enrolled in the 4-year old class. His birthday is in 3 weeks anyway, and all of his fellow classmates from last year are in that class. He was so excited to see them all again, having only had playdates with just a few of them over the summer.

So I have 3 quiet hours to myself every morning this week. I plan to use them well. This morning will consist of, I hope, many updates. I have so many things to write about, and what better time than the present!

Garden goodness.

Well, so.

I got all ready to make my Chicago trip post, but I can't access my pictures at just this very moment. They're all already uploaded to my photohost, but there's a diagnosic error, so I'll just check back in a bit.

In the meantime, I wanted to mention the garden's progress as of late. I haven't taken official 'progress pictures' in a while now, so I'm not updating my little table for this post - however, I have still been AMAZED at the glorious things that have come out of the garden, this my first attempt at growing anything (of course, I've had lots of help from AnnieMcFranniePants). We've had 17 zucchinis now, four of which were MONSTROUS! We've had 13 carrots come up and we have 19 ears of corn growing under the silks at the moment. There are over 50 pumpkins growing on the two plants, and the largest one is now almost lime-sized (I know, I know - we'll have to cut them way down... but right now, we just can't bring ourselves to commit pumpkin-icide). We've picked 6 green peppers so far, and there's about 15 more that'll be ready within the week. We've had 5 cherry tomatoes ripen, and they were so good they brought tears to our eyes. (Unfortunately, we've lost probably over 25 or so to ants or some other critter. We'll have to lay down some scent or something next year to prevent that.) The beans are getting nibbled as well, but Annie did get a small handful of them today. The two marigolds (different varieties) have no less than a dozen blooms on them at all times - they are so pretty in the middle of the garden!

It's been so much fun watching the garden grow this year. I really don't think the boys will ever let me NOT do one again.