Never trust a rudbeckia

After dreaming and scheming about it ever since we moved into this house, I finally chose and planted perennial flowers to grow alongside the path to our gazebo.  Brian was critical to the success of this project, which occurred about three weeks before Solomon was born.

To mark the ends of the flower bed, I decided to plant some rudbeckia (the plant family from which black-eyed susans come).  I bought four identical plants... or so I thought.

 Plant #1: This is how I expected them to look.  So far so good.

 Plant #2: ...what the... half the plant is producing double flowers?

 Plant #3: Oh come on.

(OK, this turned out to be my fault, I grabbed a dwarf variety by mistake.) 

That's what I get for trying to plant according to a plan.  And now I present the purple potatoes I grew for my oldest boy, who loves the color purple.  Their sheen is almost metallic.

Solomon Sebastian Dostal (a belated introduction)

Solomon Sebastian Dostal was born on Saturday, June 1 at 2:32 p.m.  He was 21 inches long and weighed 10 lbs. (!!)  As of this posting, he is two months old, and yes, I am running way behind with the pictures here. 

 Welcome to the world, Solomon.  

 The kids were beyond excited. Eve had been hoping for a baby sister, but any cute baby would do.

 For all his wild, sometimes violent energy, Isaiah adores babies and had been longing for us to have a baby of our own. 

 It took Samuel a little while to get up to speed, but he has now embraced big-brotherhood.

 There's the money shot.

 Solomon, newly de-heathenized, with his godmother Aunt Janet.

 Say what?

 Awwwwww....

                .......geez!

(Power to the people! says Solomon)

 Yay for those first baby grins!

OK that's enough thank you all goodnight.

Not dead, just gestating

Boy, nothing takes a girl's mind off blogging like growing a baby in her tummy.  Or at least that's the effect it has on me.  Now that the arrival of Dostal #4 is imminent (my due date is less than a week away) my nesting impulses have spurred me to get caught up on a number of things, including the backlog of miscellaneous photos I've been meaning to post here for months.   Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) pregnancy has also diminished my interest in snapping photographs, so I should be able to cover this in one post.

 Eve's 7th birthday party (my shirt reads "Loading...please wait")

 Isaiah's 5th birthday (and first real party with non-family guests)

 Apparently, everything met with his approval.

 Easter breakfast, and my first homemade butter lamb. (The lamb cake turned out well too.)

 Isaiah all dressed up for Easter and rarin' to go.

 My beloved kerria (japanese rose) plant.  I saw one for the first time two years ago and knew immediately I must have one.

This was me a couple of weeks ago.  I'm even more... protuberant... now, if you can believe it. 

Christmas 2012

OK, back to regularly scheduled programming, that is to say, pictures of the kids.  Also, I have a cold, and I'm not feeling chatty.  :-p

 This probably deserved its own post, but Eve has glasses now.  Welcome to the world of myopia, kiddo.  Don't worry, you can still be Santa Lucia wearing glasses.

Christmas morning, stockings, and checking out Santa's bite marks.

 Christmas finery

 I swear, our tree gets bigger every year.

 Oh this lady, she cracks me up.

That is one excited football fan.  He wanted to sleep in his helmet that night.

We got a dusting of snow on Dec. 31.  It's nice to see what the Christmas lights look like with snow!

"And when you want to go explore...

...the number you should have is four."  -Sandra Boynton

I'll let Eve tell this story:

In case the kid-writing is hard to decipher, here's the text:

"Dear, Mommy
I hop you hav a good day. I am ver ecsited abowt the noborn baby. I love you Mommy!
wat? wen is the baby going to be born?"

The answer to her final question is May 28, give or take a couple of weeks.  :-)

Fall pictorial roundup

Aaaaand we're back.  A lot has been happening, so I will try to sum up with photos.

 Grandma Bernadine came out to visit us for two weeks in early October.  It was the first time she'd visited us! It was very exciting.  At one point we and two of Brian's sisters took her on a day trip to Astoria, and thence to the beach.  It was the first time she had ever really seen the ocean, and lamely, I did not take any pictures of that momentous occasion.

Eve with Daddy on top of the Astoria Column.

On to Halloween.  Eve had been requesting for a full year that she go as a lamb, and I go as Little Bo Peep.  For once, I was happy to indulge her costume fantasies.

Thanksgiving!  Isaiah is in preschool three mornings a week, and boy, do they crank out some great crafts!  This turkey hat was one of their best pieces of work:

Also in honor of Thanksgiving, there is a tradition at Eve's school that the first-graders put on a simple Thanksgiving play.  The most challenging role is that of the narrator, who has to read about three times as much text as rest of the group combined.  Guess who got picked?

Eve, narrating while in pilgrim woman costume.  She rocked it. 

And that sums up our autumn, except for one other item I'll cover in my next post.

A handful of belated summer pictures

Brian took these pictures with his phone, which is why they weren't included previously.  I hear that Grandma Kluge in particular has been wanting to see the photos of Samuel doing his Samuel thing with Grandpa's birthday Mississippi Mud Cake.

 Face painting at the school carnival

Eeeep. Eeeep. Eeeep. Unauthorized intruder alert.

 Who needs forks when you've got a spatula?

He does this sort of thing a lot.  Last week he carefully carried the remnants of a pear crisp over to the table, where he sat down and proceeded to dig in before being busted by Mommy.  You'd think he'd just eat wherever he found the food, but no, one must maintain *standards*.