The zucchini are in–in a major way.  We’ve picked 2-3 every day, and so far have had zucchini with parmesan, zucchini gratin, marinated zucchini, grilled zucchini with ricotta, and just plain zucchini.  Next stop:  zucchini bread.  This last week we had 3 or 4 days of rain and didn’t make it into the garden to check or pick.  So when I went out yesterday I was greeted by biggest monster zucchini I’ve ever seen.  I was tempted to leave them a little longer just to see how big they’d get.  Here’s a picture of Rocky holding the biggest one–it’s almost as tall as him.

and it feels so good.

Marissa and the kids got back this weekend.  I’m glad that they were able to go and spend so much time with Marissa’s family, but I’m glad they’re back.  And my long nightmare of singledom is over (ok, so I didn’t mind getting a good, full night sleep or being able to read without interruption, but even that gets old). This has actually been one of the easiest transitions of them coming home.

I was out there for one week, and from that alone there are like 150 pictures, so we’ll putting up pictures from the trip in the next week.

Welcome back! 

We picked our first vegetables from the garden: radishes. I’m not a huge fan of radishes, but they’re one of the first things to grow, and they’re easing to pick. Plus with a little bit of salt, they’re actually pretty tasty. Leo helped me pick some, and we had them with herbed butter and bread (herbs from the garden!) before dinner with Grandma and Grandpa.

The first picture is of the radish plants, the second is of arugula, which we also ate for dinner. Then there’s some more shots of the garden. We’re on about day 35 since planting; most of the vegetables are doing pretty well–there are a few that aren’t exactly thriving. But we’ll keep you posted on what’s fresh and ready for picking.

Fischer is now potty trained.  He went in the toilet twice like 6 months ago, but has not been interested since.  Until he went to the doctor yesterday.  She said he’s plenty ready as far as his skills–just that it might be a power struggle thing (hard to imagine that with one of our kids, right?).  But he came home and went in the toilet and has been going since.  It’s been amazingly easy, but I guess I shouldn’t jinx it.  Anyway, above are some picture to document this momentous occasion (these are for you, dad – I know you much you like toilet talk).  

He’s had plenty of encouragement from Leo (too much, actually–we’ve had to institute a privacy rule) and from his toys.  We’ve had him just in his underwear so as not to slow him down when the time comes, and as you can see in the last picture, he likes to put the pole of his horse down through his underwear so he doesn’t have to hold it.  Makes sense. He also likes to put his underwear on backwards so you can see the picture of Lightning McQueen/Mac/Mater in the front, but I spared you a picture of that.

We’re back on the chain gang now, but last week we vacationed (I don’t really use this word, but it’s better than ‘holidayed’ – Marissa would say ‘partied’) in Duck, NC (The Outer Banks, also known as OBX) with the whole Romans crew.  Eleven adults and ten children, all under one (fairly large) roof.  The kids were very excited to be at the beach and with their cousins.  Fischer wants to know when we can go back to the swimhouse. 

I took a million pictures and narrowed them down to post some, but still had 50.  So for now, I’ll post the ones of our family at the beach, pool and Wright Brothers Memorial.  More to come later with cousins and at the house.

We planted our garden this weekend.  We’re doing the Square Foot Gardening method. Each box is 4 feet by 4 feet and divided into 16 square foot sections. Depending on the what you’re planting, you can do 1, 4, 9 or 16 plants in each square foot. Here is my layout for this year. The ones in pink are Leo’s and in blue are Fischer’s. I bought the tomato and bell pepper plants and some basil; everything else is from seeds. As you can see in the pictures above, a few are already coming up. The neat thing about square foot gardening is that the soil is a mixture of pete moss, compost and vermiculite–no actual dirt (fewer weeds!).  You can read more about it at the link above, but it’s supposed to grow more in a smaller space.

We planted the kids’ sections for FHE (with a little lesson on faith is like a seed).  I forgot to take pictures, so I staged some last night (wasn’t going to tell you, but they looked staged, so what the heck). The kids were excited, but got a little tired of dropping seeds into holes after awhile. They picked out what they planted by themselves – not sure how well watermelon and cantaloupe are going to grow, but we’ll see. Can’t wait to try some garden-fresh vegetables! Next project: learn how to can.

OK, so i have to tell my side now (if you don’t like cheese, skip this post).  We first met because my roommate was dating her roommate.  I went over to her apartment and here was this LOUD and PROUD woman saying crazy stuff and laughing hysterically with her other roommate (Gina–they feed off each other).  I’ll admit, I thought it was a little strange, but it was funny.

The next semester, we end up in the same accounting class and sit by each other.  The class was awful, but I was actually so excited to go to accounting, because we would have such a good time: discussions about the trivial, the serious, the mundane, the hilarious.  Marissa has this–I don’t know what else to call it (but once you’ve been around her, you know what I’m talking about)–love of life, that is magnetic and infectious and hilarious.  Accounting 210 brought us together as friends. 

There was always a little something more there, but it went unspoken.  After the semester was over, I hadn’t seen Marissa for almost a month, and she called me up and chewed me out.  I think that was when I first recognized it.  She took a little longer.  In fact, it wasn’t until after we had a fight (I like to think it was all the romantic tension), had emailed back and forth, and I apologized and took her out to dinner.  That was our first date.  And a month and half later, we were engaged.

The first time we met with our Bishop in Ohio, for tithing settlement, he had never met us, but he told us that with two strong-willed people, you’ll have more fights and worse fights in the beginning, but in the long-term it will be worth it.  That’s been true for us.  I mean, a fight is what brought us together.

Marissa is amazing in many ways–not least her statuesque body–but the best thing about her is how she makes it fun and exciting (and occasionally a little bit scary) to be around her.  She makes you comfortable to be yourself.  She celebrates life every day.  I can’t imagine it any other way.

I wish I had taken a picture of it, but yesterday I came home after a long day of meetings at church about a half an hour before my parents and sister and family were coming over for dinner to what looked like a crime scene.  Two diaper bags were completely dumped out right in front of the door, all of the cushions were thrown off the couches, and toys were everywhere.  Marissa’s car was gone, so at first I thought she’d just decided to take the kids to the park or something to get out of the house real quick.  But when I tried to call her cell phone, I realized that it was on the floor by the front door with everything else dumped out of her bags. 

That’s when I started to get worried.  You wouldn’t believe the scenarios I was coming up with in my mind – armed robbery, rush to the emergency room, etc.  So I called my mom to see if she had talked to Marissa; she hadn’t, but she called about every other person from our church to try to find out anything.  No luck.  I was about to have her start calling hospitals when Marissa pulled up.  Turns out she couldn’t find any of Rocky’s pacifiers and everyone was crying, so she took a “quick” trip to get one. 

So, I suppose I overreacted, but you can’t blame me.  I’m glad that everyone’s alive and that there were no guns or injuries involved.  I’m sure Marissa’s embarrassed that I’m posting this, but it’s too good a story (in retrospect) not to.  And like I told her, at least I was worried!

Leo had her first soccer game yesterday.  After some initial confusion about the direction of the goal for her team, she did awesome.  They don’t keep score, but she had at least three goals.  We had the whole fam plus grandma and her friend beth there cheering her on (and Marissa on the sidelines trash-talking the other team).  Check out the pictures below (Leo’s #8) – I was there with both of my cameras (one video) looking like every over-wraught parent – all so you could see her in action. 

Leo’s team is the Leopards — they’re fast and fierce. Leo even caused one injury (accidently–I think).

I know all parents think this about their own kids, and I’m not even supposed to say this, but aren’t our kids the cutest?

Normally I have to threaten them to smile and look at the camera OR ELSE . . . , but this time was a piece of cake, and Rocky just smiled automatically every time he saw the red light on the camera.

While I’m already bragging, I might as well mention that last night as I was tucking Leo in to bed, she asked how much three plus four was.  So we practiced some addition – all the way up to sums of 20 – and even some subtraction.  She used her fingers on a few of them, but most she did without – I think she’s going to be a math girl.