First garden post of the season!

Hello!  I am so excited that it is Spring!  We have had gorgeous weather so far!  We've been fishing, boating, getting the garden ready, and raking so many leaves.  Yes, we have huge trees in our yard and are still raking leaves from the fall.  I'm guessing we had 20 bags in the fall and just filled another 15 today.  I'm crossing my fingers, but I think we are done raking for awhile!  Hallelujah!

One of my hobbies is gardening.  And as most of you know, I got this from my dear mother!  She has taught me everything I know!  I still call her for advice each Spring.  And...she is coming to visit Easter weekend!  My dad, mom AND Phil!!  Aaron and I are soooo excited to have them visit for the weekend!  We plan on doing lots of fun things with them!  

Below you will find some old & new pictures of the garden boxes we completed today!  I am very thankful to have a husband that is supportive, hardworking, and enjoys helping me in the yard.  Our yard is huge, which we really enjoy, but definitely takes a lot of effort to maintain.

Casey Boy absolutely LOVES leaves.  He likes to lay in them and roll around and get all dirty in them.  Oh to be a dog!  So that's why he is sitting on the leaves in the garden....this is the before picture!  The garden boxes were made by the previous home owner and were rotting away.  We were in need of a garden face-lift!  

Oh, and I haven't planted a thing this year and I have onions and carrots already growing!  Pretty cool how plants can re-seed!  We already bought lettuce, spinach, and sugar snap peas to plant over Easter weekend with my parents.

Ahh...don't the paths look so clean and weed free?  That crabgrass is a PAIN to pull.  It's long and stringy and is full of sharp roots.  My hands definitely hurt this eve.  Aaron was so sweet and helped A LOT.

More garden pictures to come over the next few months!  

Also, we decided on another home improvement project for this summer....a bigger deck for the back yard!  Maybe even with some corner stairs!  We really enjoy being in the backyard and have such a small deck right now, however, the patio is a nice size.  Aaron is also a pro at building decks, so it's only natural for him to take on this job! (You can see the current deck in the first picture of this blog)  

Alright, enough for now.  

-Maria

Fishing with the new BOAT!

Okay, to continue our Spring Break we came back home to Hesston for the tail end of break.  With such amazing Spring weather we just HAD to take the boat out Friday AND Saturday!  I think we should start sleeping in the truck/camping so that Aaron can get his fill in for the weekend...ha!

My handsome husband is the captain of the boat!  He knows how to load and unload the boat easily and made my first ride out on the boat very fun!  We packed a little cooler of pop and snacks for both afternoons.  

Oh the life of a fisherman... 

This was my view of the boat!

I'm fishing!!  And snacking on a lollipop :)  I will probably do some sun-bathing this summer! 

So far I'm the only one to bring in anything on the line!  I snagged a tiger muscle.....NOT COOL.

I think it was empty.  It sounded hollow.  We do have a fish finder on the boat so we can see if there are fish below us, and it marks the depth.  There are lots of fish, but the water is a bit cold yet for many bites.

Loading the boat!!  The lake is beautiful!

So the lake is located at the Maxwell wildlife reserve about 30 minutes North of Hesston.  I had no clue this place existed!!  To get to the lake you get to drive through pastures of buffalo and elk!!  How cool is that??  We were lucky that they were just crossing the road as we drove by!

So thus ends our Spring break.  I'm positive that we will be taking the boat out every weekend!  The boat only holds a couple people, but come visit so you can see the buffalo!  Okay, now to get ready for the week.  We aren't looking forward to waking up early tomorrow.  

Love, Maria

A Wonderful Spring Break

To begin our much need break from work and school, we got to celebrate our sweet nephew, Logan, at his 3rd birthday party!  The theme was dinosaurs!  He was such a sweet boy the whole time and smiled and laughed a lot!

After opening presents we played outside!  It was a beautiful weekend in Garden City!   Makenah was loving kicking around the soccer ball.

Uncle Bear (Aaron) and Logie!!

Logan's party was Sunday evening, so Monday morning we set off West towards Colorado Springs!  The drive is about 5 hours through flat farm lands and small, small run-down towns.  Then amazingly, right before you're eyes, MOUNTAINS APPEAR!!  But...you have to drive an hour or so before you get very close to them.  The mountain range is beautiful!

Of course we had to start the trip off by stopping at the Garden of the Gods.  We love this place!  Lots of places to hike and take pictures of the beautiful scenery.  On this occasion we saw some rock climbers braving a very steep incline and then gracefully descending down the side.  We took our nice Canon camera and will be framing some of the beautiful shots in our dining room!  Come visit us so you can see them :)

 We did some mini golf that evening, which was conveniently located near our hotel.  This picture is mainly shadow, but I had to capture the cool old western town.  Aaron is actually holding his golf club, but you can't see it.

The next few days we were in CO it was cloudy and cooler weather.  So we enjoyed some shopping!  We stopped for lunch at a great Mediterranean place called Garbanzo.  Salad, pita, and falafel. Yum!

We also enjoyed a great evening hanging out with Aaron's sister, Jenna, and her friend!  Jenna took us out to eat at a great restaurant called Zios.  We always enjoy spending time with her!  Thanks for hosting us a bit in your hometown Jen!  On Thursday morning we headed back to Garden City, KS to pick up Casey Boy.  He was sure happy to see us!  I'm going to finish our Spring Break adventures here, and begin a new blog post all about the BOAT!!   Needless to say, we are fishing people!  

-Maria