It's Growing Season!

It's growing season all around here at apartment 307.  We decided to go ahead with doing an organic garden this year, just something small since we live on the third floor and have just a small balcony to work with.  With the early spring weather, we were able to start planting about a month and a half early!  And as of yesterday, we've already enjoyed two rounds of lettuce and one round of beans!  Normally down here you wouldn't be planting until after April 15th, so we were spoiled with a warmer than usual winter!  This year we are growing stringless bush beans, zucchini, bell pepper, loose leaf lettuce, herbs (spearmint, basil, cilantro, parsley, thyme, dill), strawberries, green onions, and two avocado trees.  We started everything from seed except the strawberries.  It is so fun to come home and slice off a handful of lettuce and enjoy a fresh salad for dinner.  So worth it!

baby beans after about 2 months of growth from seed

lettuce after about 2 months of growth from seed

first cilantro sprout

Lettuce at 3 months, after our first harvest.

beans and zucchini coming right along, planted in 5 gallon buckets

Our first meal including lettuce from the garden - topped with whole food black bean burger, roasted asparagus, and avocado.  Heaven on a plate!!!

Also growing at an extremely fast rate is our little nugget.  Austin has six teeth now!  Two on the bottom and four on top!  The top set came all together last week.  He has been handling his teething pretty well this time, we barely knew they were coming until the day they cut through.

Grandma Sarah - this turned out to be Austin's favorite new toy.  :)  Coming in a close second is a chip clip he snagged from the fridge door.

naked time on his potty  (Elimination Communication for anyone wondering)

My boys in their polos.  Love!  A's first day in 12 month clothes. (7 months old here)

Austin is also outgrowing all of his clothes.  Well, at least it seems that way!  He weighed in on Tuesday at his check up at 25 pounds!  (I forgot his height measurement, but he was in the 25th percentile for height.)  I'm sure every mom feels this way at some point of their child's life, but I've got to say I feel like I'm upgrading his clothing size every week!  Haha!  What fit last week fits no more!

We had a fabulous Easter, which started off with a gorgeous early morning breakfast and traditional service at a church we visited in South Carolina.  As we left the service, the youth of the church released a few dozen butterflies at the large cross on the lawn just outside the church doors.  It was about 9:00am and the sun was streaming down thick rays through the clouds.  It was a beautiful experience and the perfect way to honor Christ!  We then went to our church for a second breakfast at Christ Lutheran and the contemporary service to follow.  So we had quite the mix of everything on Easter, and we loved it!  Enjoyed a walk on the greenway in the afternoon and Yoforia before heading home.  I think we will always cherish Austin's first Easter and what a perfect day it was.

Austins' first Easter basket!  The cookies are for mom and dad.  ;)

crawling over to his Easter basket

pictures by the cross and lilies in the sanctuary

Couldn't get him to hold still long enough for a solo picture.  He thought it was so funny to grab the flowers.

Walking on the greenway on the beautiful Easter afternoon!

Here are a few videos of the cutie pie growing up!

Oh yes, and I must mention what happened to us two weeks ago.  We had gotten a babysitter for the first time and had her at the apartment set up with Austin.  Now I wish I could say we had a big date planned, however no.  We were in our office room working on the business plan and financial projections for our future business we plan to open soon.  We had four hours carved out with the sitter, and we had just sat down to start plugging numbers when there was a *knock*knock*knock* at the door.  Dave and I were pretty surprised, because we never get a knock at our door.  And I really mean never, like never in the 10 months we have lived here except for the occasional package from UPS.  I hesitantly answered, expecting to find a salesperson of some sort.  But it was our neighbor from across the breezeway.  She accidentally backed into our car!  Thankfully we had pulled in with the back of the car facing outward this time (usually Dave will back in to a spot with the front of the car facing out.  God had our back on this one!).  So Dave spent the next couple hours working out the details with a police office and insurance.  We drove the sitter home an hour early, because there was no way we could focus on our work after that.  And we haven't had the chance to touch our project since.  Ahhhh, parenthood.  :)

The damage.  Just a few scrapes and broke the light cover.  The light fixture was A.Okay!

What's Our Skinny?

First of all, happy MLK Day! Tomorrow we will have the first African-American president in Barack Obama. New times are ahead of us! We make history tomorrow!

And I also want to say THANK YOU to Alanna, Kristin, Levi, Lia & Teija (and Alanna's aunt Trisha and family) for taking the time to visit with Dave and me on Friday night. And HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY to miss Teija Marie Hokenson! Alanna and her mom were down here for a cousin's wedding and even though they were only in town for a little more than a day, they were so nice to work us into their schedules and invite us over to Alanna's aunt's house for dinner, up in New Hope. It just so happened to be Teija's first birthday. It was wonderful to meet even more people who live around here. We had fun visiting with Teija, looking at wedding pictures and playing with ALL of other kids. Hope we can do it again soon!

Now, I've titled this entry as so because so many people have been emailing, calling, and facebooking asking us what we're doing since we got married and moved to the Cities. SO, we decided it's about time to give you the "skinny" on US! Dave's going to post his own life summary in his own post a little later today. (he's at the school right now studying)

For those who have asked, no, I'm not going to culinary school right now. After many discussions, Dave and I decided it's best for us and the future of our practice if I push it off for now. We agreed it's my job to work and keep us financially set while Dave's in school. Even before our wedding, I was applying for countless jobs in the Twin Cities. I've probably applied for close to 150 corporate jobs, and yes I've gotten many interviews from them. But unfortunately this economy is not helping me land my dream job within a Fortune 500 company. I'll get in for the interview and in the end, the interviewer calls to say they chose to hire from within. Companies are doing that more and more because it's a heck of a lot cheaper and easier for them to do. An entry-level employee is way too much time and money for them to bother with now days, sad for me. I did get one job offer out of my rounds, but that story is much too long for today's post. If you want the story, drop me an email...Let me just say that if you ever get called back for a second interview and they tell you to "wear sneakers because heals will kill your feet after the all-day 'interview'," don't take it. That was a very disappointing waste of my time..

After about two solid months of going to interviews, I finally decided to broaden my scope and look for smaller businesses. It turned out that our chiropractor was looking for a new assistant to help around his office doing secretarial work and some help with marketing. I was interviewed, offered the job and worked there for about 3 months. I chose to leave it at the end of December because another chiropractor offered me a similar job at her office. I'll get to do even more marketing work for her as well as be her Chiropractic Assistant. These are two main roles I will play in Dave and my chiro office once we open in about 3 years. Another perk is that this new office has just opened in October, so I'll get to see first hand how start-up works. Can't wait! It's turned out, however, that this doctor doesn't want me to start working until the end of February or mid-March. So, as far as a full-time job goes, I'm unemployed at the moment.

But that doesn't mean I'm just sitting at home every day. I've taken it into my own hands to bring in extra income. After settling into our apartment in September, I immediately began looking for part-time work on top of my regular job in the chiro office. I got online looking for babysitting, housekeeping and any other odd-jobs that I could do for families all over the metro area. I primarily use a website called Care.com, http://www.care.com/, where I'm able to join for free and search for families in need of my services. I highly recommend this site to anyone who's either looking for this type of work or even families who need help with babysitting, house keeping, pet watching, etc. Check it out! (Becky -- this is the site we talked about last weekend! Just type in your zipcode and go from there!)

I now have about 12 families that I regularly babysit/nanny for, including meal prep in most cases. And I usually get a call or email from about one new family a week, so my network is growing. And housekeeping definitely brings in the most money for me. I have 5 homes that I clean for on a weekly basis, mostly on Tuesday and Thursdays. That network is growing for me, too, off of referrals, but it's getting to the point that I need to start turning people down because I don't have enough time in my days to help everyone. Another idea I had was to hire someone else to help me and take on twice the work load, but...eh, it'd just be too much for when I do start my next office job.

Besides all the day-to-day work, I'm still keeping busy cooking at least one new recipe every day. And Dave and I are reading into the winetasting books we got for Christmas (thank you Joel and Matt!!) and have discovered a few bottles that we really like. Sometime we'll do a post about our faves. :) I'm still into scrapbooking and hope to start working on our wedding scrapbook soon. I just need to get all our pictures printed out first! I've got all the papers, inks, glue, etc to make the book with...I just need to get all our pictures printed out!

That's the skinny on Elise. Next up is my husband!


- Elise