Our little project...

Sometime in early May, right before the end of the school year, Joshua's class went to a farm on a field trip.  During the trip, one of the kids' activities was to plant two little tiny pumpkin seeds into a cup to bring home.  I thought this was a cute exercise, but honestly believed we'd kill said pumpkin plants before we made it off the bus from the field trip.  That's just usually how things go with me and plants.

Our little cup got lots of sunshine and water, but not much in the way of high hopes from me.  Trust me when I say I was as shocked as Joshua was when we came downstairs a few weeks later and found two sprouting seedlings.  They continued to grow until we had to bring them outside around the Fourth of July, just as the farmer had told us.  We planted them in one of my planters of spring flowers that I had already managed to kill since they were planted in May.  (Have I mentioned that my "green thumb" track record isn't very good?)  It wasn't long until the pumpkin plant was overflowing the planter and obviously needed more room to grow.  So we planted it in the ground under the deck where I probably should have planted a whole bunch of pretty flowers in the spring, but hadn't for fear that it would be very public to all passersby that I am not much of a gardener.

As of yesterday, here is our little pumpkin project.



It spans the entire length of the deck and has lots of yellow flowers on it.  For whatever reason, the middle part looks to be dead, although I don't have a good reason for that.  The ends are certainly faring well.  Joshua is so excited to see if we're going to get some pumpkins on our plant, and at this point, I'm hopeful.

If even half of these flowers turn into pumpkins, we're going to fun the children's educations by having a little pumpkin business on the side.  Not much room for hayrides in our back yard, but we could certainly entice people with hot cider and apple dumplings when the fall air hits.


And, just for good measure, I leave you with a picture of two clean, relatively happy kiddos last evening before bed.  I love how Lauren's beloved Monkey is tucked in her lap and that Joshua's Bear is right in his hands, with his big Bear friend (named Mary Jane for Mary Jane Watson on Spiderman) closeby.

We're on major beach countdown now as we're preparing to get ready for our first real family vacation in quite some time.  I probably should be more together about this than I am, but I'm figuring that I'll have the weekend to get things ready and packed up.  Right now my mission is to buy the things we need to take along and get all of the laundry in the house clean and put away so that I know where to find what I need when it comes time to actually pack the suitcases.  We load up on Sunday for a week of fun in the sun.  We all can't wait!