First soccer practice

Katelyn's first soccer practice was on Tuesday evening. We were all excited. She's been talking about playing soccer for a year and this was the first season that she was old enough to play. She was asking to wear her cleats and shin guards around the house all day. We got all ready and Michael was going go straight to the field from work....
Five minutes before we got to the field this was what I turned around and saw in the backseat. So I let her sleep for 10 more minutes because we were early and I prayed that she wasn't super cranky when I woke her up.

But she woke up ready to go. Her coaches are awesome and so encouraging of all of the kids and all of the girls are so cute out there.

They played a passing game to learn each other's names.

Here's our girl. For the first 45 minutes of practice she was really focused and practiced hard.

And for the last 15 minutes we watched as she began to crash. She slept really good on Tuesday night. So tired.... We can't wait to experience this first soccer season with her!

Time to can

Since the kitchen was being overtaken by a beautiful harvest of tomatoes (not shown here is the colander full of cherry tomatoes that we eat with everything), I decided that it was time to do some canning.

I needed my counter back, so this became...

11 quarts of spaghetti sauce! It turned out really good. I even used the immersion blender to get the perfect consistency...(see mom, I told you I needed it for Christmas...I use it and everything.) I don't think we'll be buying pasta sauce any time soon. Of course I did this middle of last week and I already have half a counter of tomatoes again. I think this week's canning project is going to be tomato jam. I found a cool recipe and it's supposed to be good with crackers or on grilled meat...I think I'll try it and let y'all know.

The little engineer goes to school

Time for a new school year! On Wednesday, Katelyn started her second year of preschool. She's in the big four year old class now! She was really excited to get there!
All she's really worried about is that she has her lunch with her.

The following pictures will show you our little engineer at work. She gravitates toward all the gadgets and gizmos that you have to assemble.

She and Michael played with tinker toys last week for a whole evening. They built a very elaborate monorail and then Katelyn played with that for two days.

Michael has taught Katelyn how to measure things with his tape measure. She can tell you how many inches something is.

Here she is...very proud of herself. :)

As Katelyn and I were heading to the Big Park on Saturday she sang the "Rainbow Song" for me.

Katelyn is showing off her climbing skills at the park.

Here she is riding a motorcycle...or is it a horse...or both?

Later that day Katelyn and Melissa were busy picking tomatoes.

Fun at the Horse Park

There was an event going on out at the Horse Park today and it's the one day a year that admission is free for everyone. I read about it in the paper this morning and nauseous or not, I'm tired of being in the house. So we had a couple of hours of family fun.

Katelyn loved seeing all of the horses.
She loved riding on daddy's shoulders.

And she took her first pony ride!!!

She loved it!!

Here are us girls in front of the Secretariat statue.

We got to ride on a tractor pulled hayride and a golf cart shuttle. Katelyn of course loved them both. It was a fun time for all..and now we're all wiped out.

And by the way...three blog posts in one day means that no one can get on my case again for a while!

To the park!

Michael was super sweet and took Katelyn to the park and out to lunch today so that I could just lay low. She was all excited to tell me of their adventures when she came home.

I haven't been a very active mommy lately, so I know that Katelyn was really excited to get to go play!

Sometimes I look at pictures of this child and just can't believe how big she's getting. Just look at her!

On the swings.

Playing, playing.

Mission accomplished. Look at this sweaty child.

Sometimes you just need some water.

I really am so blessed!

The garden

Well our garden is flourishing and it is certainly not because of anything I've done. We've had so many big storms followed by hot humid days and the tomatoes in particular are loving it!! Unfortunately, I've been feeling so yucky that vegetables of any kind don't really sound very good to me but...we've got em.

At least Michael and Katelyn are loving the tomatoes.

Thanks to the compost that we tilled in with our soil we have some surprise guests in the garden this year. A couple of butternut squash seedlings grew and grew and now they've taken over half the garden...but I did nothing and we've got a great crop of butternut squash growing.

Our other surprise guest was a cantalope plant and we've got a couple of nice melons coming in. Yeah!

Katelyn helped me pick a bowl full of cherry tomatoes today. She loves these things. She says, "They explode in your mouth."

She's such a good helper.

I bought these tomato plants that were on death row at Lowes for 50 cents a plant. I got 4 of them and 2 basil plants for $3, picked off the dead leaves and planted them. I paid $2 for a 4 pack of the cherry tomato plants (3 survived). So for $5 and the surprise guests from the compost we have a good garden going on back there. :) I think I need to be feeling better in the next few days so I can can some tomatoes. I don't think we'll be able to eat all of these this week. And there are lots more coming in! Most of these were off one plant. Good grief.

And the cherry tomatoes are delicious! Just ask Katelyn.