Gotta a Green Thumb?

The kids love to help water the flowers outside our apartment. This past week we took their gardening experiences to a whole new level. The City of Fort Collins opened a Children's Garden last Spring. It is located very close to our apartment. We finally made it over there in the scorching heat last week on our bikes. Luckily the main attraction is water! They have watering cans available to use on site and a huge watering can that dumps water into a pool where the kids can fill up their buckets. It brought so much joy to all of them. Jacob and Hannah loved watering everything in sight! And Luke sat up on the concrete next to the water and splashed.That same afternoon I took the kids down to our garden plot - available through the university. Here is a picture of the kids at our plot. I'll have to take more pictures when I have the sun in the right spot.... The little white shed in the background is stocked with all your gardening needs -- tools, hoses, gardening gloves, etc. -- provided by the university. Up to this point they hadn't spent much time at the garden. Pat prepared the garden and I have spent a lot of evenings after the kids are tucked in bed down at the garden - planting, weeding and watering. They loved helping weed and water (they wanted to be watered too - it was so hot that day -- upper 90s).

Here is Jacob holding his bean plant. We transplanted it -- he had started it as a project at school. Friday we harvested our first head of leaf lettuce for our salad that evening. We made a big deal of the lettuce being sown in our garden and it worked -- the kids actually ate lettuce and liked it! They're normally not very keen on leafy vegetables.
With gardening come worms! Hannah loves to play with worms! She was thrilled to find a 10" long worm one morning as we watered the flowers out front. Unfortunately I didn't get this worm on camera -- but a smaller one she found a few days later.
I'm thankful to have space to garden -- both out front of our apartment and down the hill from our apartment. And I'm glad my kids have fun gardening.

Bike Trail Ettiquette

Jacob, Hannah and I went for a bike ride together yesterday morning to a park about a mile from our apartment. It was the first time Jacob went for a longer ride on the trail. And this ride involved passing some people walking on the trail. I decided it was best if Jacob went first. So as we approached the first walker we had to pass, I reminded Jacob that he should say "passing on the left" before passing. I didn't say much else thinking he had heard me use this phrase when passing walkers/joggers on our bike before. Before I knew it he was right next to the older women walking and he shouts at the top of his lungs "PASSING ON THE LEFT!" The women literally jumped off the trail onto the grass on the side. And I rode by with my head hanging down - totally embarrassed -- and said in a quiet voice "sorry".

I coached Jacob a bit as continued along on our ride -- worried that this would happen again. He then proceeded to practice saying the phrase over and over again in different tones and volumes as we rode along.

He had a chance to practice this skill again as we had to pass an elderly couple walking on the trail. I was nervous as we approached them wondering which style and tone he was going to use. But he used a normal speaking voice and alerted them in advance that he was going to pass. And they thanked him. Phew....

Campfires, Fishing & Good Friends

Last weekend we camped with our friends at a campground just an hour northwest of Ft. Collins on the Poudre River -- Mountain Park Campground -- for two nights. The Dads had fun building the fire each night.. And we all had fun roasting marshmallows and hotdogs over the fire! S'mores! Yummy!!They had a fishing area designated for kids. Hannah observed the boys fish for a while and then decided she wanted to take her first stab at fishing. Pat helped her and she caught a fish with her first cast. It was a decent sized fish. Here is her first catch.... And then she told Pat "I want to catch a bigger one!" And she did....unfortunately I missed the second catch (naptime for Luke). I'll attach a picture once Laurie e-mails me her pictures.

Luke's camping adventures continue....he's a trooper! He watches all the action - as we set up the tent, cook, and build a fire and this time he spent a lot of time playing in the rocks and the dirt....eating some too. ;-) Here he is watching the kids fish at the river.

The kids loved gathering pine cones, sticks, grass and whatever they could find around our site and playing in the dirt. They got dirty! There was a large rock on our site and they spent a lot of time climbing it and hanging out on top.It was a fun weekend together!