Thursday, May 14, 2009

Spring time

I Love the Spring in Kentucky. I love the rain, the green grass, the beautiful weather, playing outside, the smell of humidity, gardening, garage selling... the list could go on and on. Here's a little update on how we have been enjoying our spring.

We went to the Bluegrass Classic Stock dog Trial....


If you've seen the movie "Babe" then you know exactly what a Stock dog trial is, minus the pig of course. We later learned a little more about the sport. The handler and their dog have 12 minutes to get 3 sheep from a point across the field, through the first pair of gates, into a circle, through the second pair of gates and back into the circle where one sheep is separated from the herd and run out of the circle and then into the pen where the handler closes the gate. All without touching the sheep.

We were there for an hour and only saw one dog close to completing it. It was amazing on how the dog responded to the handler's whistling. For a competition this size, a herd of 600 sheep were needed. You cannot get sheep from different herds, or they will not stay together.
Cheryl and Nancy are always coming up with fun/weird events to go to. Thanks for letting me tag along.

Did I mention Annie is living with us for the summer? It's fantastic!

It started pouring rain, the kids found shelter under the tent.

I enjoyed a lovely Mother's Day. Mac made me this in Nursery. It made me tear up. My first Mother's day card from Mac! I Love it.

There are few things I like more than gardening. Last year, because of planting late in the season and the lack of knowledge of Kentucky gardening, we didn't get too much produce. This year we built garden beds, hauled in top soil and I have been studying up on gardening tips, so hopefully we will have more success. We planted 3 pepper plants, 9 tomato plants,1 cucumber, 2 squash, 4 zucchini, 1 basil, 1 parsley and our front yard is full of flowers. Wish us luck!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

the Last day...

These were the fastest 10 days ever. I felt like everyone had just arrived and yet it was the last day before they flew out. Since it was a beautiful day we decided to spend Monday up at Shaker Ville.

We saw two frisky cows.


Uncle Jed threw the boys up in the air.

We ate lots of taffy and caramels.


We enjoyed walking around the village.

We got photographed for The Midwest Living Magazine. Look for us in the Spring 2010 edition.
Thanks for visiting. We loved every minute you were with us! Can't wait to see you in two weeks.

New Fireplace

When I said we put them to work I really meant it. We haven't liked our fireplace and we knew it would be expensive to pay someone to replace it, so we waited until Beej came to visit and totally used his expertise. Here's the before picture(black, square, marble tiles)...

The project ended up being a bigger mess than expected but isn't it usually:)

the after...

We love it!!! we just need to do one more layer of paint on the mantle and it will be perfect. Thanks beej and jed for working so hard on it. We owe you guys!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

the Wirigs join in the fun

Tuesday night Katie, Beej and Little Emma flew in. The first two days were a little crazy. Wednesday the boys and Annie went to Keeneland's breakfast then later met up with Me and Katie at Darley ( Sheikh Mohammed's farm).
The tour was beautiful and as always, educational.



Thursday we went up to Louisville, our first stop was the Louisville Slugger Museum. We went on a tour of the bat factory. It was actually really fascinating. At the end we all got swords, I mean mini bats. Here's Beej with Mickey Mantle's bat. Pretty cool!
While the older boys hit the batting cages (where they hit with pro baseball players' retired bats) Mac hit the children center. It was hard getting him out of there.
Gray has been army crawling for a month now and has just decided to do the real thing.
Ms. Emma and AnnieNext, our awkward picture in front of Churchill Downs and off to the races.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Annie and Jed come to visit

Ok, so get ready for multiple posts with tons of pictures. From the moment Jed and Annie stepped off the plane we put them to work and ran them all over the state, seeing and doing as much as possible. Not really, but that's what it felt like.
Sunday we did a lot of this. It's no secret that Gray LOVES his uncle Jed. Even when Gray was at his fussiest Jed could get him to smile.
Mac took advantage of having them around. He got read to a lot.
Monday night we headed up to Cincinnati to the Great American Ball Park to see the Reds play the Astros. We ended up parking in Kentucky and walking over to Ohio.


Drew's cousins who live in Columbus met us at the game as well. Mac loved little Reesa.

Earlier that day this is what Jed and Mac did. Like I said, we put them to work:) Thanks for putting together the bookcases we love them.