La Vida Fantástica: March 2013

Like February, much of March 2013 was spent getting settled and making our new house into a home. Once again, I’ll let the photos tell the story.

In addition to working inside the house: unpacking boxes, hanging pictures, finding homes for all of our things... etc. there was A LOT of work that needed to be done in the yard. Apparently the previous tenant was not much of a groundskeeper (aka let the grass get 2 feet tall). Not passing judgment, however. If yard work is not your thing, that's okay. But it IS my thing. If I could spend hundreds of dollars on flowers and mulch every year I would, but it's not quite in the budget. Not to mention, we are renters. I love to garden and make our place look nice, but we don't want to invest too much money into something that isn't ours to keep. You have to draw the line at some point. I plan this summer (when things are looking their best) to take a few photos of the gardens now, so you can see how far they've come.

Of course when it comes to any work... Fin is always a big helper :) Tarp rides...

And wheel barrow rides...

If you know me, you know I love to go barefoot, so the ridiculous amount of prickers in the lawn had to go.

In March we bought our first lawn mower. These days, Matt and I like to Rock, Paper, Scissors over who gets to mow and who gets the children. :) I won't tell you which one I am usually pulling for.

Of course once we got Daddy a mower... Fin needed one too. :)

So much work...

Baby steps. Little by little, cleaning it all up.

When Fin wasn't "helping," Gardening usually meant... BUGS! He was always on the look out and left no stones unturned. Literally.

The lucky ones got away... the others... got VIP seats in the shopping cart.

Speaking of unlucky ones, looks like Koda picked a bad spot to lie: near Fin. :)

I love gardening because there is immediate gratification for all your hard work.

Hmmm.... What else happened in March? Let's see...

Fin got to meet his favorite animal, the cow! Matt's friend from work has a beef farm here on the island, so we spent the afternoon checking out the moo moos and tractors too.

I passed my drivers test (yes I had to take it again because my license expired while in Spain). The whole process was obnoxious and my new photo turned out pretty much like everyone else's license pictures: bad.

Fin and I found another great place to meet new friends! The TLC (Toddler Learning Center) right here in Oak Harbor. Playgroup every Friday morning was not something either of us liked to miss.

We visited the Children's museum again. My little construction worker operating the crane. :)

And we found this awesome park only 7 minutes from the house!

We checked out the Penn Cove Mussel Festival! A festival totally dedicated to a bivalve. Such a quaint, fun and delicious event.

I finally caved and cut Fin's beautiful curls.

This is the first picture of him with short hair. At first, it pained me to see him. My little baby suddenly looked like a little boy.

We received our first box of goodies from our dear friends in Spain. We were all VERY excited. Especially for Kinder Bueno and Gusanitos.

All the yard clean up meant we were developing a pretty big pile of sticks. So we had our first burn pile... and our first s'mores. He LOVED them. "ONE MORE," he kept begging.

And then there were the usual misty, winter day activities... like Legos

And baking...

Meanwhile I kept getting bigger...

And bigger...

And it was in March that we found out Fin would be getting a baby brother.

Last, but definitely not least, my very first (of hopefully many to come) blog book arrived in the mail. This hard cover beauty is a compilation of the three years of posts I did while we lived in Spain. If there were a fire in our house tomorrow, this would be the thing I'd grab on the way out the door. It means a lot to me. This is why I'm working SO hard to catch up on all that I missed in 2013. Someday my children, and their children, and maybe even their children will be able to have the stories and images of La Vida Fantastica.