That strong Deshazer genetic code

My mother in law was kind enough to scan a few pictures of Jeremy as a baby.

Here is my father-in-law Dave with Jeremy in the backpack (jer is about 8 months old).

Here is Chase at one years old. Any resemblance?

Here is Jeremy as a brand new baby (held by his grandmother, Grandma Corlett). Check out the long dark brown hair.

And then meet baby Lane and check out that resemblance.

By the way...any future potential suitors to Lane...you are going to have to get through a very thick throng of overprotective males in order to get to her. Blake already says he is going to spray paint, "BOYFRIEND BUSTER" on his car. Be warned.

Baby is here!

For all my fellow bloggers - I'll give you the quick update.

BABY GIRL made it here safe and sound.

Lane Ashley was born 5/26 - 7lbs 8oz. She has a full head of long DARK BROWN hair and darker skin - her father's genetic code wins again. Very alert baby when awake and very sound sleeper when not awake.

All the men in her life are in love with her and she doesn't even realize how she already has them all wrapped around her finger (seriously, I can't believe how much they adore her).

I'll post pics as we get them - still working out the camera situation. My labor was great, recovery has been a little rough but that is because of little minor surgery I had postpartum (we won't go into details about that).

It's a beautiful sunny day here in Oregon today and I think I'll take Lane outside to introduce her to the garden.

Thank you all for all your prayers and comments of support!

It's looking like it's about that time

Currently it's about a quarter past midnight on May 26th. I've been having very irregular contractions since about six 'o clock this evening. They just started getting a little more regular and not even my garden blogs are distracting me from them. I think I'm going to wake up hubby in about ten minutes and head out to see if this is really the real thing.
I'll let you all know - although you really won't know until I actually have the baby since I dont' have a laptop or anything portable to take with me. Send me your prayers!

My little athletes

Baseball Season has been in full swing in a little over a month now. With two players we have the fortunate experience of being at the ball park 4-5 nights a week!

Little League baseball runs like this: you start with T-ball (5-6 yr olds), then AA ball (7-8 yrs), then AAA ball (9-10).

After this point, you have to "try out" and you are selected to be on different 'Majors' teams. The age range is 10-12 yrs old.

This year Jackson tried out and made the higher level Majors team. At first you may say - "yeah", but really it has been kind of a disadvantage as he is the youngest player on the team and also the second smallest. You should see the size of some of these 12 yr olds! The kids are pitching at this level and it takes some getting used to for him to hit off of wild 11 & 12 yr old pitchers than the safe pitching machine in the lower levels.

Overall, Jackson definitely holds his own. He has his father's amazing athletic ability and he has the body and physique of a baseball player. His father has worked with him for years on his swing and it shows - he looks fantastic when he swings the bat. And when he goes infield and plays second base, his practice taking grounders takes over and he can make some amazing plays.

Despite being the youngest, he is really holding his own. I love watching him play ball!

His coach made this banner - I love seeing his name and number on this banner at games.

Blake is playing in AA ball and is one of the biggest kids on his team! He has spent his whole life watching is older brother play ball and being coached by his father. Because of this - when Blake plays any position on his team, he looks like a minor league baseball player - not some kid who just began to play ball. In fact, the other day he was playing catcher and with all of his gear on, I swear I was looking at a college level athlete (okay not really, but I am a biased mother!). He squats like a regular catcher and his stance and positioning is so good.

It is so fun to watch my little guy.

Jer set up a makeshift batting cage on the side of our house. He sets up a tee and has the boys practice their batting form hitting the ball off the tee.

Chase is only two years old, but for two years he has watched his father and older brothers practice their hitting and baseball skills. Nothing is lost on this toddler. Check out his form (then check out Jackson's form - coincidence?)

It has been a really good thing that we've had baseball season in my final months of pregnancy - I'm so busy I don't know what to do!!

Tuesday Garden Party

Several family members have offered to lend/give us their old cameras, so until then, you get some garden posts from the archives.

If you are new to Traveling Memories, this was our backyard last year at this time.

We live in a suburban Oregon neighborhood  and our backyard is actually pretty small. We have a small area of grass that I often referred to the "bowling lane" of grass - just a narrow strip of grass in the middle and I reserved a few beds on the side of the house for vegetable gardening. Enough grass for a toddler to run on, but also enough for two large retriever dogs to poop and pee on all day long!

I had enough of that.

So this year, we dug up all that grass - Jer built five new raised garden beds in an afternoon (out of cedar wood) - we trucked in 6 yards of compost/topsoil - and then trucked in another five yards of crushed gravel to make paths.

And this is what we have this year. A victory garden!

We currently have all plants installed in all garden beds and it looks absolutely glorious! I have to say - for a small garden space like I have, we really made the most of what we have.

Another thing I wanted to share - these are my essential gardening books.

I own all of these and refer to them daily/weekly/monthly. They give detailed advice on how to grow any fruit, vegetable, and flower/tree.

Thank you Tuesday Gardening Party at Oregon Cottage for hooking us all up with one another!

It's hard to believe

This was the baby that joined our family two years ago. I can't believe how much the big brothers have grown. I can't believe how much Chase has grown. I can't believe that I'm going to be giving birth in two weeks! I can't believe that I still don't have a camera to document real life events (curse the debt-free program!! If it was our old life we would have whipped out the Amex and just bought a new one already - but nope, cash only and if there is no cash in the envelope, then you can't go buy!)

Oh - how I love my boys. Wow, what a new amazing chapter will start in our lives soon.

The Ants Go Marching - An Urban Myth de-Bunked

(I'm figuring out this new Blogger compose template, so bear with me and NO - we haven't found our camera yet, sniff, sniff)

So here is my broccoli patch. Right before it died. Dead and Gone. Right in front of my face. We planted 12 plants! I thought for sure that we would have a week or two of luscious organic sweet broccoli on our plates, but about three weeks after I planted the veggie starts, they began to wilt and turn a reddish color. One plant died, then another one died.

(right before they expired for good)

So Jeremy digs up one Broccoli plant and sees that the stem and roots are teaming with little black ants. ANTS! He goes in and googles "black ants killing plant roots" and we come up a few lists of garden blogs and websites. All of which say that it is highly unlikely that little piddly ants could kill off veggie plants. It must be something else - they declare. But we know what we saw - black ants obliterating all the stems and roots of our broccoli. Buried in some of the search results were a few posts where random gardeners said they had the same problem with black ants. And then someone else would post and say, "Oh no, I'm sure it isn't ants that killed your broccoli - I'm sure it was something else". Like ants destroying plants are some weird urban myth for gardeners.

But I'm here to say - Black ANTS do kill off Broccoli!

They keep away from other plants, but for some reason - they love broccoli. They will eat up all the roots and stems if given the chance.

Today we're planting out all our warm season plants and I'm taking a HUGE leap of faith in planting our herb garden in the box that formerly housed our broccoli patch. I'm hoping the ants don't kill off my basil, thyme, and parsley. If that happens - oh - it's on, ants.

 

If you are so inclined - check out the Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage for more inspiration, ideas, and information about gardening. I love it!

All new Chapters in our book of life

Now if that isn't a profound title, I don't know what is.

3 weeks to go and now I'm feeling the weird pressure/anxiety you feel when you realize that your life is about to change forever. No matter what happens, my life is going to be profoundly different very soon and that is a very heavy thought.

Daily, things continue to break down and/or get lost and I keep asking myself, - is this normal? Did it always seem like everything was falling apart around me? It was our beloved coffee/espresso machine that broke down yesterday and I can't find my camera any where. The last time I saw it, it was perched on the back tailgate of my minivan and Jeremy drove off with it - who knows if it made it off of the van before he drove off.

The thing that has been driving me to insanity is the fact that we're going to have to give up one of our dogs this week. Remember Bear, our little rehomed dog? Well he has this really bad habit of pooping in our house. He'll go a few weeks with no accidents and then something will happen in the house that upsets him and he'll have an accident. It's almost always on the carpet - not on the new hardwood floors. He never indicates that he has to go outside and well, I finally told Jer that I can't take it any more. I just can't have a dog that soils my nest. The boys are understandably very sad, but every day that passes they get more used to the idea that we have to do this for our family's sanity sake. Yes, they'll blame me for the rest of their lives that I gave up their dog, but blog family and friends out there, I just can't take an untrained dog and have four children. I'm not that much of a martyr.

I'm going to go in the garage this afternoon and try to find my camera. Let's hope I do find it - otherwise the new baby will have disposable camera pictures taken of her.

Send me good thoughts and prayers - I'm feeling a little crumbled.

I want a Kazoo!

This middle child keeps my life so interesting. With his arrival, I had a set of brothers. Together they can be pretty rowdy, pretty loud, and a pretty good tag team.
By himself, he is a charmer, a salesman, a smarty pants, a think-outside-of-the-box kind of guy.
So it shouldn't surprise me when he has made the announcement that he wants - no, NEEDS - a kazoo. When I told my husband, he said, "What's a kazoo?"

Every day when Blake comes home from school, he asks, "can we get that kazoo now?"
Truth is, between me and you, the last thing I need to hear around this house is a kazoo playing. Okay, there are a lot of things I don't want to hear and I believe 'kazoo' is on that list.
But he shall not be deterred.
He will employ most of his charming antics to somehow get a kazoo in this house.
Seriously - a kazoo?

Let the Gardening begin!

Well here we go - the beginning of May and it's time to switch to full garden mode.


First off - just because - Jer cleared half of the dog's poop patch and made me a little pumpkin patch. Hopefully the measly fence will send the hint to the dogs to not poop in the pumpkins.

This year, I didn't want to do the whole indoor light source in which to grow seedlings. So a few weeks ago, I threw some seeds in some pots I had left over from last year and they sit in a sunny south-facing window. Pumpkin. Cucumbers. Butternut Squash. and a few Heirloom tomatoes although I don't expect a whole lot from them because of the shotty growing conditions in which I started them. What-eva.

Just because I'm pregnant and due any second (well, in four weeks) I gave myself permission to buy veggie starts this year. Six pepper plants. Six tomato plants. Basil and Thyme. Can't wait to get them in the ground. They were $1.40 each at our local nursery (which I think is a pretty good deal). They spend their days outside on our back patio table and we bring them inside every night - it's still dropping to 36-37 degrees at night here in Salem - too cold for hot weather plants!

The hottest spot in the yard - against our white house in the south-facing backyard - is reserved for peppers and tomatoes. Now that I read An Oregon Cottage's cheap way to start tomato plants early - our tomato plants may go into the ground next week.

Salad garden. We planted three rows of a Mesclun salad mix - three successive weeks in a row. Meaning, I planted one row of seeds three weeks ago, the next week another row, then the third week another row. We harvested the first row this week for our nightly dinner salad and it was so tasty!

Spinach rows planted two weeks successively - next time I'll plant the rows closer so I can get more produce.

The pea patch.

Once again, I planted the peas in three successive weeks to (hopefully) give us a longer harvesting period. I planted them a little later than I wanted, but I guess in my tired forgetful pregnant state, they were lucky to get planted at all.

The Broccoli Patch. You are never going to guess what happened here. I'll document soon what it is.

I Do NOT - repeat - Do Not regret for one second pulling up our entire backyard grass and installing the new raised planting beds. The smartest move we've made! Can't wait for warmer weather and warm weather crops.





Our strawberry plants got a nice top dressing of composted dairy manure and compost in March. Now look. They are tall, vigorous and have a bazillion flowers. We have Hood and Quinault strawberries in our patch.

Wanna come over for strawberry shortcake and/or jam in June?

Stay tuned to more gardening adventures!

Me and Dishwashers don't mix

After a weekend of bright sunshine mixed with periods of extreme rain, we woke up today to a wet world. That's okay - I need to get some indoor things done today anyway.

The view from my office isn't so bad - especially when I get to look at the gorgeous rail planters my mom did for me a few weeks ago.

So I officially lost my lap a few weeks ago. If I look down, here is the bubble that occupies it - much to the two-year old's dismay.
Trust me - he tries every single day to hoist himself into the centimeters of lap I have left and proceeds to JAB me in the stomach with his elbow - as evidenced by the below photo. Regression has officially started.

Last week as I complained of extreme fatigue I determined that it is time to proceed to the last phase of this pregnancy and that is - ONLY THE BASICS GET DONE. Caring for three children, a home, two large dogs, and baseball season is enough for my huge pregnant frame. I determined that everything extra must be temporarily put away. I only have enough time and energy for dishes, laundry, transportation to baseball games, cheering for baseball games, sitting at Bible study on Thursdays, and maybe fixing dinner at the end of the day. Oh and taking a daily nap. That's all I can do right now.

So today I have three hours to do the dinner dishes from last night, the breakfast dishes from this morning, cleanup the kitchen, and try to declutter the front rooms. The dishwasher repair guy comes in three hours so that is why I gave myself all morning to complete these tasks. I'll need the time - trust me.

Oh -dishwasher repair guy - you ask. Yes, our brand new dishwasher had a bad day last week. The lower washer wand popped off mid-cycle and then melted on the heating element. check out below photos.

I've been dishwasher-less four days now. What rotten luck we've had with dishwashers this year!