The Matheson Fam: Our Garden & Castle Day

Our garden is in full bloom. We have tomatoes (Early Girl), bell pepper (which were supposed to be orange but are decidedly green), cantaloupe, a huge crookneck squash plant, some herbs (which I'm not too good at using), and of course grape vines. We were overeager to pick our first cantaloupe and it wasn't quite ripe -- what a bummer. There are several more growing though so we're still in hopes of enjoying one or two. I love having a garden but it seems that we made it inviting enough that every bug within a two mile radius moved in. We're fighting squash beetles on the squash plant, green caterpillars munch my petunias and leaf hoppers are having a heyday with the grapevines. The other day I noticed that one of our cantaloupe vines was dying. I couldn't find anything wrong but then yesterday saw that there is a fresh gopher hole on the other side of the garden. I'm thinking it may have made a snack of its roots.

Our theme day for this week was originally 'Family Day' but the boys came to me and said they wanted to change it to Princess Day "because Lydia was so nice and did Pirate Day with us". They finally settled on calling it Castle, Princess, Knight, Dragon Day. Our Stephenson cousins happened to visit the same day so we made dragon costumes for Brad & Carter and crowns for everyone else. Lydia did a great job decorating all the tiaras by herself. Carter and Brad both designed & colored their own wings. It's fun to see them get creative.

We play-acted some 'fairy stories'. Coming up with a plot was a little difficult because nobody wanted to be the bad king/princess/dragon. Finally Grandma Matheson had to step in as the wicked fairy. We also played pin the kiss on the frog and the Princess & the Pea. For that game we hid a golf ball under a pillow and the kids had to figure out which one it was under. We ended the fun with a dip in the pool & icecream.

Friday night, Alex and I went on a date to a Diamondbacks game. It was my kind of a game, fun action, winning score and short, short, short. : ) The girls fell asleep before we left -- exhausted from the activities of the day.

Eve, Carter & Bradley show our first (unripe unfortunately) cantaloupe pick

Carter, Lydia & the harvest

Lydia & the Bell Peppers (her fashion sense is unparalleled)

Carter can cross his eyes on cue -- he's amazing

The hulk is no match for Carter's cantaloupe moves

Eve demonstrates that balance in life is a hard thing to acheive --

I couldn't agree more heartily

After gumming her way into the tomato and smearing it all over her shirt, Eve decided to offer the rest to Dev. He tried to pretend to not want it (because he knows he's not supposed to steal food from the kids) but when he thought I wasn't looking he snatched it on the sly. He was very disappointed to find out it was a tomato.