uh oh!

more notes from our amateur gardening and parenting adventures...look what we found devouring our tomatoes! it's a tomato horn-worm and the glutton has ruined about 6 large tomatoes and lots of foliage before we caught him today. we better get a good science lesson out of this one and will see if he pupates, but the rest will get chopped in half with scissors.

unrelated, but here is how miles "helps" unload the clean utensils.  it won't be long before he obsessively organizes, as he shows hints of his dad's orderly personality:)

we harvested our first squash (thanks katie for the seedlings) and ate it on father's day...yum!

sunflowers stretching to greet our neighbors

it is so fun to wander out in the yard to our little patches of things and for them to discover ripening, flowering, or in today's case munching!

thumb

graham is utterly confused about how many thumbs he has.  sometimes he has 10, sometimes 4, but never 2.  i am told at around the same age adam stubbornly believed that the proper way to count was 12, 13, 14, 14, 15.  apples don't fall far...

one down...

...and one (hopefully only one) more to go! congrats are in order for my favorite doctor, who graduated from the department of internal medicine on Friday. he has a few clinic shifts still, lots of studying for boards, and then emergency starts on July 1st. I'm so thankful and proud of this husband of mine who has completed some of the most intense rotations while still being a tender husband and engaged father.

here we are with our dear friends katie and jeremy.  adam and jeremy have been classmates and friends since day 1 of med school.  jeremey will be chief next year so we are glad to have them around for a bit longer!  (and, despite how this picture looks, i am not currently pregnant:))

these are the Christ community clinic folks adam has loved working with these last 3 years. 

we might throw a party after he finishes his next one. and what does my dear husband want for a graduation gift? a kitten. i'm not one to protest cute, cuddly, purry things so we are thinking about how to make a good match for pax. any tips on helping a dog not eat kitten?

backyard summer days

it feels like time is just passing through my fingers...these sweet, tiring days with the kiddos, the changes in them, the things we are learning. we have tons of pictures and videos of things we keep trying to capture as it flies by and so i stop in here to try to notice a bit before tomorrow speeds by too.

our first try at onions. 

this week's rain has knocked down the last of the glads, so we may as well enjoy them inside

my little farmers

checking the tomatoes

 

we love backyard picnics.  on this particular evening adam was gone and the kids and i relaxed on the blanket and watched the clouds change shape until it was time to get ready for bed.  those kind of slow, happy moments minister to our souls.

graham caught this butterfly for marit and she held it for a good 5 minutes before it fluttered away

Lucy, the underwing moth catapillar marit found

 we looked it up, called papa about proper food-plants, and got instructions here
 

she was so fat that she pupated within a few days

after weeks of waiting and checking daily (and sometimes hourly), she emerged while adam and i were at residency graduation.  we released her the next day. 

this photo does not do it justice, but it was a beautiful double rainbow that graham spotted first and then we chased all over the neighborhood.  a moment of wonder at God's goodness and care in creation.

strong little monkey

dad, these are those lilies that you gave us a while back...so ornate!

graham is pretty much passing marit in size now.