The whirlwind of visitors continues.  My folks came out last weekend for a few days.  They let us know beforehand that they weren't coming out to do any sight-seeing.  They were coming out to see us and help us out with some home projects.  We took them up on their generous offer and ended up getting a couple of major projects completed, including getting the garden cleaned up and installing flooring in the rafters of the garage so we could have some more storage.

Zac, enjoying the manual labor of busting apart palettes.

The succulents and cacti across from our driveway.

It looks so nice now that it's cleaned up.  Before it was overrun with weeds and grass.

Dad and Zac, working hard on getting some boards ready for the garage rafters.

 When I haven't been busy playing Hostess With the Most-est, I've found some time to be crafty and have some fun.  Since Zac is obsessed with his garden, I decided that we should have something to identify all of his plants.  The people who sold us the house left a box of white ceramic tiles in the garage that I decided would be kind of cool for the task.  I took out some of my acrylic paints and painted on some of the vegetables that Zac has growing in the garden.  I'm not an artist - I don't pretend to be.  I am someone who finds clip art of vegetables online and tries to replicate them the best I can.  Yes, your six-year-old could probably do better.  

Just finished painting them.

After I was done painting them, I let them dry and then used a Sharpie to write what they were, just in case people couldn't tell what they were.  Because, like I mentioned, I'm not a great artist and honestly, a cucumber looks a lot like a zucchini.  Once I had that done, I used some spray sealant I bought at Michaels to protect them.  Hopefully that will keep them nice for at least one season in the garden.  Zac likes them.  I like them too.

And here are my latest crocheting creations.  When we were in a craft store the other day Zac found a book with all sorts of crocheted critters.  (Yes, Zac found it.  Occasionally he'll accompany me to Michael's or Joann Fabric.  He's a good man.)  I made an elephant as well, but that was given to a friend as a present for their new baby.  I'm particularly obsessed with the hippo at the moment.  After I made the one in this photo, I made another one where I modified the pattern to make the hippo fatter.  Who wants a skinny hippo?  Hippos, while vicious and lethal in real life, are cute and pudgy in Stuffed Animal Land.  So from now on my hippos will be heftier around the middle.  

A seal, a hippo and a gator.  

The other big news around here is that on Saturday Claudia and her husband PCSed to San Diego from Hawaii.  They'll be staying with us for the foreseeable future.  (And their two dogs.)  They would like to buy a house, but that process can take awhile.  Zac and I busted our butts trying to find a house and it took us three months before we had keys in our hands.  (We know how lucky we were to get into something that fast.)  I think Claudia and her husband are considering moving into military housing like we did until they buy a home.  They are welcome to stay with us as long as they want, but I know that it's not always easy living with other people.  They're good friends and, as it goes in the military, we're all in this together and we need to help each other out when we can.  We've offered them our opinions on the house-buying process when they've asked, but we're trying to make sure we don't meddle too much.  It's their journey, their adventure and they will figure out what living situation is right for them.  We just want to be supportive.


It is nice that slowly but surely many of our Hawaii friends are moving to San Diego.  Now if we could only get Bernadette and Ken down here, everything would be perfect.  It's comforting to have our Navy ohana nearby.