family

so i've finally caught up on posting about our whirlwind week with my family in town. it was so great having them in our home, and they made so many awesome improvements to it. at one point i was planting the last of the herbs in our garden as the sun was going down, and i looked toward the house to see it completely lit up with light and people i love and laughter. my grandparents, parents, husband, and son all happy inside. it made me so incredibly happy.

of course, right before this group left, we had them take some family photos with us. here's a few of my favorites from our mini session.

a garden!

we were so excited to start a garden while my grandparents and parents were in town. we picked spot in the backyard and my grandpa prepared and tilled the soil.

pre-planting:

post-planting:

my grandma helped me figure out the layout and plant everything. we have 2 rows of tomato plants in the back, an herb corner with rosemary, cilantro, basil, oregano, chives and parsley in the front left corner, and a row of lettuce and 2 hot peppers on the right.

the box above was created and planted for us by our neighborhood youth center. they did it while mateo was being born, so it was a fun little surprise when we got home with him. later they helped us plant a tomato, cucumber, hot pepper and sweet pepper in it. we planted mint in the middle.

a few days after our garden was created, our neighbor who works at the msu organic farm brought these calendula and borage herbs over. she said they are great for everyone, but especially lactating mothers. i attempted to extend and till our garden and planted them too.

it's been a week or so since taking these photos and everything seems happy and is growing strong. and just this morning we actually harvested our first hot pepper and some cilantro for some breakfast burritos. :)

our farmer's market

the allen st. farmers market happens every wednesday afternoon. each week it has been getting bigger and better. it's only 2 streets away from our house, and we are totally loving it.

i took my mom and mateo last week and we bought these amazing strawberries. i can't explain how incredible they were. maybe the best we've ever had.

my mom also bought me a pot of greens (below) that we could plant in our garden. we've already been using them in salads and sandwiches.

michigan pasty

my mom made michigan pasties while she was here. they are popular in the upper peninsula of michigan, and you can't really find them anywhere else in the us. the official definition of a pasty can be found here, but to me they have always meant that family is around and we are celebrating something.

my family's version usually has ground beef, rutabaga, carrots, and potatoes in pie crust. this time she taught me how to make them so i hope now luke and i can carry on the tradition.

our new porch

the greatest transformation of the week had to be our porch.
when we moved in, the porch was covered in pieces of dirty, wet, old carpet. we pulled it up right away and this is what the floor has looked like since:

obviously, not ideal. so my dad, grandpa and luke began tearing it up right away.

there was nicer wood underneath the unfinished slabs of boards above. but these were old and rotting too, so they took them off. we were all interested to see what was underneath the floor. (pretty much nothing).

they went to a lumberyard for new planks of of wood, and we picked out a red stain for them.

the floor looks amazing, and the entire porch feels different. to top it off, my grandparents bought luke a swing (we'd been talking about getting one all week) for his birthday. check out the finished porch, with swing, below:

it totally feels like an outdoor livable space now. we've been spending as much time as possible out there. and we knew a swing would be nice, but we didn't realize how nice until we had it. even mateo enjoys it.

thank you family!

on a stick

it was my night to cook and i had great plans: veggie and chicken kabobs on the grill, and later, chocolate fondue. of course, around preparation time, mateo was hungry too and i wasn't able to cook anything. luke, my mom, and grandma took over and made these amazing, colorful kabobs.

(isn't my mama so beautiful?)
somehow, after 10 years of living on my own and with luke we still don't own a platter. they worked it out though.

marinated chicken, mushrooms, onion, green pepper, red pepper, pineapple. over rice.
so simple. and so yummy.

so, on to the fondue. for dipping we had angel food cake, pineapple, marshmallows, raspberries, strawberries and graham crackers.


we also made little plates of crushed almonds to dip in like ann had done the week before. (apparently we are now having fondue once a week).

i can't explain how good it is - the hot chocolate and the dipping and the group-involved-dessert. we were totally on a fondue-high.

shots from the week

like i mentioned earlier, my dad and grandpa are super talented and worked with luke on our house almost the entire week they were here. they started and completed things we we hoping to work on with them, other things that we didn't know needed work, and things that i'm still not aware of. they were everywhere!

just off the top of my head, they:
fixed our slamming doors, updated our light fixtures, replaced all of our bulbs, made the water in our sink flow smoothly, fixed our backyard floodlight we never knew existed, leveled our washer and dryer so they now will live longer, made our dining room light switch into a dimmer switch, made our dishwasher door easier to open, replaced our broken garage window, made our garage door open-able, installed a lock so we can keep things in it, got rid of the ants in this tree, cleaned out our rain gutters, installed these tube-things to the bottom of the gutters and buried them underground flowing away from the house so that our basement no longer leaks, fixed our hot water heater to not scald us & save money, cleared out vines that were attacking our house and trees, pulled and killed weeds... i could go on and on and i haven't even talked about our porch they remodeled or back garden they created... they were amazing! they even left us with tools and bought us new tools. and luke learned so much from them.

did i mention they also bought us a lawnmower?

and a weed-eater? i'd never used one before.

here's my grandpa & mom, taking a rare break:

dad, on top of the roof. he made us a custom gutter here:

here is the tube thing they buried:

and unica, doing her part with my grandpa pulling weeds in the background:

the garage, with a door that can be opened now instead of stuck, with a pile of branches and leaves they pulled that we will burn, and a super heavy and huge cement laundry sink that was in our basement. they had to break it into pieces to carry it up.

dad & grandpa: we can't thank you enough!

more free bread

every tuesday we still look forward to the free panera bread at our neighborhood center. this time, i walked over with my mom. i was a little nervous since the week before we'd taken luke's mom and it had a been a little... different. i'm happy to say that this time went well! we left one giant heavy loaf of asiago bread and two orange scones.

the flowers in our garden

one of the first projects my grandma, mom and i started on was our garden. it was bare and rocky and full of weeds. we cleaned it up and pulled weeds and then my grandpa tilled the soil. here it is before any work had been done:

it was so nice working out in the sun and dirt. the sun is still such a luxury to us after our second 7 month michigan winter.

then came the really fun part. we went shopping for flowers at a local greenhouse, van attas. it was a bit more expensive than a big-mart store, but we really wanted to support our local guy. plus there were miles and miles of plants to choose from. we wanted a random assortment, so we all picked a few (or more than a few) and ended up with a cart full of flowers. i wish i had brought my camera - mateo was in the cart surrounded by so many blossoms.

we planted them that evening and they've already been blossoming. i've been watering them twice a day and i think they are happy here. we still have to figure out something for a border.

i love how it looks, but especially how it came about so organically. no plan. just parts from my grandma, parts from my mom, and parts from me.

the grandmas and the grandpas

the day after luke's mom left, my parents and grandparents arrived! we were so excited for them to be here after driving all the way from texas and ohio. so excited for them to meet mateo and see our new house.

my dad and grandpa are super-handy-men. they built an entire 2nd floor on top of our house when i was little, among a gazillion other things. so they were looking forward (as were we) to seeing what projects they could help us with. they ended up doing SO MUCH. dad, grandpa and luke worked the entire 5 days they were here - and you can totally tell. we'll post more about that later.

but when they weren't working, of course, they were enjoying mateo. and mateo loved listening to their voices.

mateo totally loved my mama and grandma. they were pretty into him as well. the three of us did a lot of cooking and some major gardening. but we especially spent time with mateo.

i loved seeing them all together. and seeing them all in our house.

luke and my grandpa sort of have a michigan state/ohio state rivalry going. we should have guessed what grandpa would bring mateo...

we have a lot more to remember and to share about their week here - we did so much! but for now, here is grandma with her first great-grandchild. i love his smile here. :)