Biking weekend with the boys
This past weekend was a big one! We biked 5.5 miles in Greensboro on some greenways we hadn’t been on before and 18 miles in Winston! A greenway is connected to Salem Lake that is paved and pretty straight–very nice for racing Evan! When we got to Salem Lake we spotted: 70 turtles, 2 blue herons and 4 skinks! We stopped at a super nice water area at the half way point to give everyone time to rest up.
Enjoying break time. I think there is a skink in this picture.
Evan spotted this heron. Nice day for wildlife!
Evan can get quite insulted when we want him to ride behind one of us. Surely he is supposed to always be the leader!
Ben with Grayson on the tag-a-long
Two wheelin’
Grayson decided Saturday morning that he wanted to ride without his training wheels. Yeah! The first step was to get him practicing on two-wheeled balance. This picture was our favorite. Check out that expression!
First days
Well, it finally happened. We drove to school yesterday morning and left BOTH boys there. Wow. They were so excited with their lunch boxes and back packs. In fact, Evan was so excited packing his lunch Tuesday morning, that he pretty much packed his lunch as well as Ben’s and Grayson’s! Wednesday morning, Grayson packed his own, thank you very much. 
They came home clamboring to be the first to tell me about their day. Evan said, “This was the best day of school ever!” Grayson couldn’t really tell me much about what they did, but he was feeling good and ready to go again the next day.
They decided on matching shirts at the last minute.
All loaded down and feeling good!
We tried to catch the expression, but couldn’t quite. Here we are almost to Grayson’s classroom and he was so excited!
Crepe Myrtle
The boys and I have been noticing the blossoming crepe myrtle trees around town and the different colors they display. After seeing some in a parking lot that were a beautiful shade of red, I said, “I think the dark red ones are my favorites!”
Grayson: I know which ones you should like the best.
Andrea: Which ones?
Grayson: The ones growing in your yard!
Andrea: You are so right.
A green lawn mower
About a month ago, I got a new lawn mower. I hadn’t really thought much about electric mowers, perhaps believing they wouldn’t have enough power or a long battery life. But really, I just didn’t know much about them. But I got interested, and checked models available online. I read that an Earthwise model has a strong 24Volt battery (lasts an hour), and so does a WORX model. It takes me about an hour to mow the yard, so it began to seem plausible that an electric mower could work for me.
I didn’t want to get something like this online if possible; I wanted to find someone who would sell it from their shop and, more importantly, would stand behind it with service if I needed that later. I called through a list of W-S and Triad garden centers, then I called Sedgefield Lawn & Garden Center in Jamestown (map). They do sell electric mowers. They had models in their shop for me to look at, from Earthwise and from WORX. They have a local distributor for both brands. I chose the WORX mower because it is lighter and I felt better about its quality and the ease of getting it serviced as needed. They kept the mower to assemble it and charged the battery, and the boys and I picked it up the following Saturday. Sedgefield even mailed me a card that week thanking me for my business!
Now for the best part: in the past, I generally had headaches, burning eyes and sneezing fits whenever I mowed, no matter the season. Maybe it’s not so surprising. But since using this mower which doesn’t spew exhaust in front of me for the hour it takes to mow the yard, I haven’t had any of those symptoms and it’s also much much quieter. And it has plenty of power and more than enough charge to last for my yard-mowing. The removable battery charges easily overnight. It makes mowing a pleasure!
Blueberries!
This past weekend, we drove up to Ashe County to our favorite patch to pick blueberries. It is a good drive from Winston, but also a good excuse to visit with family. My granny lives about five minutes away and we picnic with her after getting the berries and before driving home.
First picks
This year, we set up three square foot gardens. Two are 4X4 and one is 3X3. We planted some early seeds about a month ago: spinach, lettuce, carrots, chard and peas. This past Sunday night, we harvested our first baby spinach!!
Grayson has been keeping a close watch on these leaves and was convinced it was time to bring some in. We showed him how to pinch off the leaves, and he went right to work.
I was very excited that we would have such fresh leaves for our green breakfast smoothie the next morning.
Aren’t they beautiful? 
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