Gardening and Foster Care Cluster Group

Our tree is blossoming now like crazy!  Beautiful bells opening daily on the one, the other one (which actually bloomed last year - this one never had!) is starting to get the buds so hoping to see them blossoming soon too!  Seeing that last year the other one never bloomed until it was already in our basement for the winter when it decided to finally bloom, we are happy they are both awakening to when they are supposed to bloom!


Our tomatoes have become like weeds!  They are growing out of control! We have so many tomatoes growing we don't know what to do with them all!  We have tried to keep tying them up as they have grown but when pulled all the way up the plant is taller than we are!  This is all just watering and living in straw bales!  We are going to turn Italian this weekend and make some homemade tomato sauce so hoping that will be yummy and surely an adventure since neither of us have ever made it.



We went to our Foster care cluster group tonight.  Again we had a great informative time.  We love the company there and the first hand experiences we hear are so helpful.  We gain so much insight from the group it is almost unreal.  We also are lucky our home study social worker and as well as resource manager are in attendance each month too!  The other people in the cluster neither know personally either worker or work with them so it is comforting to be able to get answers and have a background relationship with the two woman running the cluster group monthly.  We also got to meet one of our supervisors today who knows us well from going over our home study but can now put our faces to our names.  Odd when someone knows so much about you while you have never met or even seen them before!  We had a great session, ate some pizza, chatted, and even had half the room in tears over one families current grieving.  These individuals are so open and authentic and give us a realistic glimpse into what we signed up for.  Brian was holding one of the families foster babies and was even spit up on....we all agreed he is now fully initiated into the group!  We were told it likely won't be long until we get a call and many were placing bets on when that first call will come! 

Erie Weekend, Quinn College Move-In, Land Visit, Garden Harvest, & Fostering Update All In One!

Quinn is officially moved into college as of Saturday....well it's all fancy since Brian and I graduated and now considered a university!  Move-in day went without a hitch seeing that we've done this now 5 times seeing that she is the 5th child, however the excitement never wears off!  She seems to really be enjoying her new found freedom and sleepless late nights with new friends so can't ask for anything better.


We ended up staying in Erie Friday through Sunday for the whole weekend since it also happened to be a reunion weekend with friends from college.  It was nice that we still have friends in Erie so we were drifters and spent Friday with a friend then Saturday at another friends and saved on the hotel expense.


We frequented our old stomping grounds of bars/clubs.


While also hitting up old time favorite local restaurants!


We stayed out and up way too late considering we live pretty boring lives now of going to bed around 10 p.m.  We stayed out until 2 a.m. dancing the night away and catching up with friends.  We were reminded that we are not 18 years old any more and able to be out and about until wee hours of the morning without repercussions of exhaustion the next entire day however it was worth it for the weekend of fun we had.  We are officially in recovery mode trying to regain our lack of sleep and get back on schedule!


Sunday afternoon to the land for the night into the holiday at the land.  We had to pick our dogs up that were being watched for the weekend there and decided last minute to spend the night. 


We enjoyed our time with the family as usual though it was a short stay for us.  Elise bought GT a Thomas the tank engine smock so we decided to send her a picture of us all enjoying the "train"!


We came home in time to harvest some vegetables that ripened over the weekend.  I picked ready vegetables before I left Friday and just over the weekend we harvested quite a bit!


Growing strong!


Tomatoes are growing like crazy!  I have a ton of tomatoes in our fridge that is becoming tomato sauce come this week.  First tomato sauce making experience so keeping fingers crossed it will be at least edible! 


Just when we thought our strawberries were coming to an end we come back to find countless flowers that will soon become nice ripe strawberries!


Brian my hand model showing off our harvest today.  Looks like green beans for dinner!


We are also excited to see my angel trumpet tree finally has some flowers getting ready to open up and bloom!  I have had this tree that started off as a tiny twig since I was a sophomore in high school so for 9 years now and it is finally getting ready to produce the flowers I've been impatiently waiting for!  We used a cutting from it to grow another tree which produced a few flowers last year except it never did through the summer or fall but only once we put them in our basement for over the winter did we finally see the beautiful flowers.  Better late than never huh?!?!  We are elated to see so many and hoping for them to bloom soon.  I've been in awe at the man who gave me my first tree as his are always blooming like crazy but perhaps this is just a sign that it is finally mature enough!

 
We also had an unofficial update into our whole becoming foster parents journey.  We are near the last leg of our journey until we can have placements and while we have been completely certified and approved for a while now, our county has this one course they insist we need to take before they will start calling with potential placements (not state rules but county preference).  We heard through the grapevine of another family that we did our pre-service training with and have kept in touch with that the course is this upcoming Saturday the 7th.  Did we have any knowledge of this?  Nope!  Last we were told was 4 weeks ago that it was still tentatively the 21st and if it changes that our resource manager would call us and get us registered ahead of time.  So finding this out last Thursday I called our resource manager that early afternoon and left a message and shot her an email.  After not hearing from her Thursday or Friday we find ourselves stuck with today being a day off for the holiday.  I'm giving her until tomorrow at 10 a.m. to return my call before I end up just calling her supervisor to get some answers and clarification.  Seeing that come tomorrow it is only 4 days away from the actual class date we've been told about, we are wondering when our resource manager intended on telling us the class is this Saturday?!?!  The next class is not until December therefore what a shame it would have been to miss this because of an oversight of our resource manager who is in charge of keeping us updated and in the loop.  It's a shame we had to hear about the class via another family instead of by the entity in which we are working with.  So we are keeping our fingers crossed that it is indeed this weekend and that we can be registered and attend the class.  It is our very last thing we need checked off our list before we can start receiving placement calls.  The 21st seemed so far away but now knowing the class is likely 5 days away from now it suddenly became so real! 

Growing!

We are growing a lot of things here lately.  The straw bales have taken off with growth and we seem to always have a steady stream of strawberries.  Looking forward to harvesting as we patiently wait!


We reinforced the tomatoes as they are growing like crazy so turned in our holders for tall rods that we ziptie the tomato plants too and it seems to be working out better. 


Tons of huge tomatoes but all green except these two, I have a feeling they will all ripen all at once and we will have an overloading amount of tomatoes.  Salsa anyone?!?!


First cucumbers emerging


First pepper growing!


Didn't see it?!?!  Here is a close up!

Weekend of Surprises!

We took Mary for the weekend while my parents went to the land.  Little did she know but Friday we surprised her with tickets to The Lion King The Musical!  She thought we were going downtown to sign some paperwork.  We parked in a parking garage around the corner from the theatre.  We walked right down the street and she said, "Oh isn't this where plays are?  I wish I was going to see Lion King".  Well to say she was shocked when we walked right on in the doors would be an understatement! 



Waiting for the show to start!


She loved the show just as much as we did!  Brian nor her had been before so it was their first time, my 2nd. 


We had a surprise this weekend of green beans!  First ones picked for the season all came from one plant. 


Some of our pickings.  We always seem to have at least 5 or more strawberries almost daily ready to be picked!


We have a lot of cucumbers growing!  Only three plants lived that we started from seeds and planted as seedlings.  With so many cucumbers growing on all three I'm sure we will be filled with cucumbers!


First green bean pickings!


Saturday afternoon we intended on surprising Mary by taking her to Geauga Lake Wildwater Kingdom since our Cedar Point Platinum passes get us in for free and free parking, except for it was rainy all morning and afternoon.  We decided to surprise her with Sky Zone instead which is a brand new indoor trampoline park that opened close by.


They got their shoes on and were ready to jump!  Quinn joined us too and played along with the whole surprise saying she was just stopping by and we invited her to join us as we went somewhere quickly.  Mary again was surprised just like last night at the show!


Grasshopper putting her shoes on!


I was dedicated photographer for the day.  Gotta love infertility treatments and all the fun you are out of commission for.  They were the flying trio!!!!




They jumped for a whole hour and while Mary was tired Quinn and Brian agreed a half hour was enough of a workout! haha!


Can you spy Mary?!?!  She's in the far back left!




Jumping into the foam pit!


Brian flying in!


Quinn making a shot!

We all had a great time with a weekend full of surprises, yet we still have Sunday for round out our weekend yet to come!  No surprises planned but never know what we may end up doing!

Quinn's Grad Party & Garden Semi-Success

Saturday we celebrated with Quinn her graduation from high school.  I didn't take very many pictures because to be honest I brought my camera then forgot I had it.  This is my official Quinn was at her grad party photographic proof!


There was lots of food!


Cake photo




Our graduation gift was gladly received!  We have told Quinn that every college student needs a warm snuggie to get through college.  She was adamantly against the thought of owning a snuggie but she could not resist the Gryffindor snuggie, she is now officially ready for college life!


While the grad party was going on our puppies were all partying at our house!  We had 6 dogs in all, our two whippets, my brothers two cane corsos, and my parents two labs were all in the house.  No worries, all were caged while we were gone so no harm to the house was done!


We had our first ripe tomato except for it was squishy and melted looking.  Not sure why but we did get some intense heat rip through our area and we are thinking it got overcooked in the sun!


Our second ripe tomato!


All looked great until.....


The bottom was rotted and soft.  This tomato had that from the start before it was even ripe and from research it looks like it is blossom-end rot.  Known for affecting the first fruit of the season which these were our first.  From reading up it's due to lack of calcium (common of first produce so not too alarming), can develop due to drought (we had a week of high humidity and a heat wave in the 90's this past week), and excessive rainy weather (we had 10 straight days of rain right before the heat wave).  Seeing that we've had two of the three and our other green tomatoes seem to be doing well and not have the soft spot we are not too worried about it.  We can't stop the rain but we are keeping them nice and hydrated during the hot days but we still consider it a success seeing that we had our first two ripe tomatoes! 


We also enjoyed our first ripe blueberry!  Brian and I shared it each with a tiny bite but we both approved!  We didn't expect to get any fruit from the blackberry, raspberry, or blueberry bush but 3 points thus far for blueberry plant which is in the lead for fruition!