Iris I love gardening. You just can't beat the taste and nutrition you get from growing your own produce or the beauty of growing ...

Food Not Lawns

Iris
I love gardening. You just can't beat the taste and nutrition you get from growing your own produce or the beauty of growing your own flowers. It just makes so much more sense, too. Instead of wasting precious resources (water, land, time) growing lawns, we should be growing food! Grass makes little sense. If you live somewhere dry, like Nevada, it requires a ton of water. And even here in the Northwest where we have tons of water, it gets completely overrun with weeds, crab grass, clover, vines, blackberry bushes, pretty much everything except the grass you want. The only way to keep it nice is to spend hours pulling weeds or spraying it with toxic crap. I'd much rather spend time, money, and water on a garden.

Mini Calla Lily
For years we've done what we could with container gardening. We've done okay but still had the urge to grow more. This year we got approval from the landlord to build a raised bed in the front yard. It turned out to be a very easy and cheap project. We read a few tutorials, but I think this one helped the most. We spent about $25 on wood and had them cut it to size at the store. We spent maybe $20 on several bags of organic soil and mixed it with soil we found for free off Craigslist.

The finished bed
May 9th

This weekend we added a drip system to save water and make our lives much easier. Figuring out what to buy took a bit since there are a ton of options, but we went with the simplest and cheapest and it turned out really good. If we hadn't done this in the heat of the day it would've been easy!

Drip line through the bed
A dripper for each plant

Homemade trellis for pumpkin plants... made out of sticks... because we're cool ;)
June 29th... grow baby grow
I just love coming home to see my garden instead of a tiny patch of weed overrun grass!  So next time, think twice before you buy sod or grass seed, and make sure your lawn wouldn't actually be better off as a garden!
Nasturtium

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A few weeks ago I was chatting on the phone with my dad. "You both are doing such a great job with the boys," Dad said ha...

Love is Enough


A few weeks ago I was chatting on the phone with my dad.

"You both are doing such a great job with the boys," Dad said happily.

"Brian is, not sure about me. Most of the time I feel like I'm a bitch to them. I don't have Brian's patience, ya know," I admitted.

"No you're not. You're doing a great job and I'll tell you why. You love them. Some days that's all I did right with you girls, was love you," Dad said.

Wow! I've said more than once that I might write a book of all the (mostly crazy) things my dad says, but that one tops them all, and not for being crazy. It really hit home and reminded me of the most important thing you do as a parent: loving your children.

In today's world, (or maybe it's always been this way), parenting has been turned into some twisted competition. Let's see who can do everything for their children and have them turn out perfect! Give me a break. NOBODY! That's who. Parenting shouldn't be treated as a contest to see who can do it the best. Some of the shittiest parents in the world end up with amazing children, and vice versa. Parents love to take all the credit for their children's accomplishments but also all of the blame for their failures. You know what I think? What we do as parents matters, it does. But it's not everything. Our children are their own, unique human beings with free will and the ability to use it! Every mistake we make as parents will not necessarily ruin them as people. They're here for their own reasons, their own journey, and they make their own choices, even as children, that shape who they are and who they will be someday. That's something we parents need to keep in mind when we want to blame ourselves for every little mistake they make or take credit for all the awesome things they do. Some of those things may be our doing, but many are not.

Sometimes we feel like a shitty parent for nagging too much, missing a school event or milestone because we had to work, or missing dinner because we stole an hour to ourselves to go to yoga. All things that currently make me feel like an imperfect mother. But when I'm feeling less somehow, if I remember to flip that around I instantly feel better. I do all those things because I love them with all of my being. I nag because I want them to learn what I'm trying to teach them! I work because I want to feed them healthy food and give them a safe place to live. And I steal time for myself because I want them to have a sane and happy mother. I love them and put them first in everything I do, even when it might look like I'm doing something selfish or being a bitch. Don't get me wrong, I'm still working hard on getting them to listen without being a bitch, but it would be nice to feel less guilt during the learning process.

The other thing this reminded me of is the importance of love over everything else. New toys, the latest technology, glamorous vacations, and expensive higher education... parents feel like this is all our responsibility and we worry if our kids don't have the best of everything. But I can think of so many other things that are much more important. Spending time with them. Teaching them what's really important in life. Letting them be a real part of your life, and not something you're always too busy for. If you love your children, really love them, and take the time to show them that, that is worth more than anything you could ever buy them.

So some days, loving your children is all you do right. But that's ok, because it is definitely the most important thing you will ever do as a parent.

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I have been seriously slacking on blog posts lately, but for a good reason. I've been working on another post for The Mighty about de...

Depression After Your Child's Diagnosis


I have been seriously slacking on blog posts lately, but for a good reason. I've been working on another post for The Mighty about dealing with depression after your child receives a diagnosis, not just for NF, but any medical condition. Parents don't often like to talk about the depression they might experience over their children, but like all mental illness, I think it's important we all start discussing these things. So give it a read and let me know your thoughts!

http://themighty.com/2016/06/experiencing-depression-after-your-childs-diagnosis/

Last day of Kindergarten

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