Hear Nathan and Keith LIVE!

Helloooo all! I'm proud to announce that I've learned a new trick. There's something called "Audioblog" available with bloger.com now, where you can use your phone to record anything you want, and it automatically posts it on your blog -- for FREE! Pretty neat trick! So here's a rough copy of one of the live songs that Nathan and Keith played at the coffee house last night. It's not the best quality, but you can at least hear part of it! I'm hoping to get better at this audioblogging stuff! Think of it ... when Asher finally spits out his first word, I can post it for all to hear! Yahoo!!

Highland Grog and a musical evening

Nathan and Keith performed at the Upper Room, a Christian coffee house here in Sheboygan, last night. They did an acoustic set that lasted for about an hour and a half. About 40 people showed up to watch and listen, and it was really neat to see the Harrmann brothers use their musical talents to praise God together! It was especially bittersweet, as Keith just graduated from Concordia, Mequon and is about to leave Wisconsin for the wilds of Wyoming to train for a new job. So it was a great chance for the boys to do some male bonding -- before saying goodbye for awhile. Ash slept through most of the event, but there were so many eager arms to hold him (a great many friends and family being present) that I was actually able to sit back with a cup of Highland Grog and enjoy watching my sweetie play the guitar I bought him for his 30th birthday. An enjoyable evening!

hot dogs and bananas

Look at how pretty my new garden fence is!! Nathan even surprised me by making a fancy gate. While I was busy planting tomatoes, zuchinni, strawberries, lettuce, red cabbage, eggplants, corn, beans, pumpkins, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower ... (what DIDN'T I plant this year!!) he was busy in the garage making the pretty gate that you see in the photo!! I was very surprised!
Gabe was excited to get our garden in. When I asked him what he wanted to plant, in his own special area, he said "Bananas and hot dogs." Well, why not! :) For a 4-year-old, this would make perfect sense! It was pretty cute!
So we had fun planting seeds together. He would count them out very carefully and then pat a little bit of dirt overtop. His section of the garden includes the pumpkins, corn, beans and strawberry's. We can hardly wait for things to get growing!

Sitting up

Well, Asher is officially sitting up! Well, perhaps I should clarify ... He's not pulling himself up into a sitting position, but when we put him on the floor in a sitting position, he usually lasts for a few minutes now, before toppling over in slow motion onto his side. It's very exciting for all of us -- especially Gabriel, who seems to think that now Asher is one step closer to being a real playmate.
On a separate note, Gabriel delivered his first marriage proposal in school last week, and got shot down! He came home from school very dejected, with stooped shoulders and a sad little face, letting me know that he had "asked Samantha to marry me ... but she said no." So I tried to tell him, in a very serious manner, (hiding my smile) that he has plenty of time to find a wife -- but he still seems somewhat bothered by the fact that he doesn't have a wife yet. After all, there are a lot of "fish" in the sea, but he is closing in on 4 and a half!! :)

Everything's Growing!

Okay, so I'm one of those weirdo's who actually, seriously enjoys yard work. Really. There's nothing quite so satisfying as a yard that has been freshly mowed and now looks like a golf course, it's so perfect! (Yeah, I'm crazy I know.) We're in the process of putting up a really pretty lattice fence and gate up around my garden, which I'll hopefully be planting this coming weekend. I'll post photos as soon as we're done with it! It should look marvelous, and I can't wait to get some kind of vine or climbing rose to put over the arbor. It's going to be just beautiful! Anyway, here's a shot of Roxy, taken 5 minutes ago, as she wanders through our raspberry bushes. I think she's eagerly awaiting July, when they will be full of berries!

I love the smell of fresh cut grass in the morning...

Well folks, my hubby gets the 'Man of the year' award today, that's for sure! Nathan took both boys with him to praise band practice this morning at church. What did this mean for me? Only that I had the most relaxing morning I've had in MONTHS. I slept till 11:30 a.m. That's right! 11:30! I woke up on my own too -- I'm sure you all know that delicious feeling of opening your eyes wrapped in a cozy cocoon of blankets, perfectly caught up on all your sleep -- and when you stretch out, you can feel it all the way to your toes. Ahhhhh! Bliss! Then I quickly burrowed under my blankets to the foot of my bed and laid there, soaking up the breeze coming in through the open window, as the smell of fresh cut grass from next door came wafting through. Now, that's the smell of spring!
On a completely different topic, I must relate a highly unusual thing that happened to me yesterday, while walking down the street from the Press, to Legend Larry's, to pick up my dinner. (They have the best chicken wings in the world...)
Okay ladies, perhaps this won't sound strange, as I'm sure it has happened many times to each of you, but wonder of wonders, I got whistled at by a car full of boys in their late teens. Now, for those of you who are married with kids, perhaps you can relate to my feelings here -- I've spent a large portion of the past six months ... (or more like four years) being a mom, and therefore being covered in bleff, (that's our nice word for baby vomit) spitup, formula etc. or up to my elbows in poopy diapers. So needless to say, it felt quite STRANGE to get whistled at. My husband laughed when I told him that my initial reaction was to check my rear end to see if I had something stuck to it, or check my shoes for toilet paper comets. It simply seemed too weird to get honked and whistled at. I'm hardly a college girl on campus anymore. But to make a long story short -- it was a surreal sort of Friday experience.

Dead duck.

Ahh, it's a sad day in the newsroom. I'm not trying to be maudlin ... but I just found out that my favorite ducks, who often greet me in the Press parking lot (see previous blog entry which equates the arrival of spring with 'ducks in my parking space...') are no more. According to staff reports, feathers and other various duck paraphenalia were found scattered about in glorious disarray outside the front door of the Press yesterday morning. (where the nest is located). Unfortunately, that also means the eggs in the nest will go unhatched. Now that really does make me sad. Because the only thing better than ducks puddling about the parking lot, is of course ... baby ducks -- likewise engaged. The hope is that one of the male ducks survived the attack. (we have yet to apprehend the "attacker" but it is believed to have been a wild animal of the racoon or skunk persuasion) I'll let you know if there's a sighting of the survivor anytime soon.... :)

Sleepy Baby

This is my sleepy baby Ash, this afternoon. I love the second photo of him in his crib, because you can see his little bald spot, which REFUSES to fill in! We call it his Martin Luther spot, because it makes him look like a little monk. Too cute! Ash sure is getting big! Just yesterday, he held his bottle through an entire feeding, and even batted my hand away when I attempted to help him out! What a stinker! But he sure is cute when he's sleeping! Usually, he flings his left hand up over his eyes and suck his right thumb. What a doll! Today, he discovered he could make clicking noises with his tongue. So we spent the better part of an hour, as I folded laundry, clicking back and forth at each other. I think we may have invented a brand new, undiscovered Swahili-type language of our very own!

War of the Weeds

Nathan and I declared war on our front lawn today.
The enemy: Dandelions. Massive amounts of dandelions. Copious, thriving, yellow dots from satan, scattered all over our entire front lawn. Now let me assure you -- we dealt with this problem last year, and managed to get the required turf builder/weed killer junk on our lawn this spring. But the darn things just aren't dying like they're supposed to. Check out the masive dandelion I pulled out of the backyard this afternoon! The root on this puppy was over a foot long! Nathan and I joked that if we hadn't pulled it when we did, in a few days, it would've walked into our house demanding a cup of coffee or a steak. Either that or it would have eaten Roxy one afternoon in the backyard. YIKES. So we spent several hours this afternoon pulling every stinking dandelion plant out of our front yard by the roots, and then watering the lawn, hoping that NOW at least, the fertilizer/weed killer will start to work.
The other photo is of Gabe's new shoes. Roxy's newest form of entertainment is eating Gabe's sneakers and sandals. She ate two pairs this week alone! So poor Gabe, bewildered at the rate at which he is loosing footwear, needed new shoes this week. He had a blast picking out these shoes himself, and is very excited by the fact that he can get them on and off by himself. Yay Gabe!