Garden Notes

ith such beautiful weather last week, I headed out to the backyard to wake up my garden. I let it get pretty unruly over the winter, and the wild clover had taken over. (But some people plant clover as a winter cover crop, so that's okay, right? Probably not...) Thanks to our mild winter, some fall greens were still poking up through the clover - spinach, kale, and swiss chard. The green onions are from the community garden bed where I'm trying my hand at onions and garlic this winter.

I cleared out our four backyard beds and planted peas, carrots, spinach, kale, swiss chard, and lettuce. Of course three days after I got everything planted, we got snow. February sucks.

In a couple weeks, I'll plant another bed of greens, and we're going to try potatoes this year.

Eight

On Saturday, Cole was baptized and confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He was baptized along with three other sweet boys from our ward, which made the day extra fun and special. There were about 70 people in attendance and a ton of delicious food for refreshments. We were so happy that Grammy, Gramps, Kellie, and Miriam were able to come!

A few days before the baptism, I told Cole, "I'm just warning you that I'm probably going to cry." Rylan found this information fascinating. "Why would you cry?" he asked, and after I explained that sometimes people cry when they're happy, he spent the next few days telling everyone that he had cried on Cole's birthday because he was so happy that Cole turned eight.

I agree with Rylan - Cole makes a pretty awesome eight-year-old. He's amazingly talented in so many areas, has more confidence than I could ever imagine having, and always tries to do the right thing.

Cole at Eight Years Old

• favorite color: green
• favorite food: pizza
• favorite dessert: chocolate three-layer cake
• favorite thing to do: play on his GameBoy
• favorite video game: Pokemon Ruby Red
• favorite subject in school: computer lab
• favorite book series: Harry Potter
  

Happy Valentine's Day!

In case you're interested, we've started a little book-reading challenge here at the Peters Family Band. I challenged Cole and Eli to read 12 (non-graphic novel, non-comic) chapter books this year and myself to read 50 books. If you have a 6-8 year old boy who devours four or five graphic novels a week but has to be bribed to read a regular book, you might want to check out what they're reading or offer us some book recommendations. Details are in the righthand sidebar.

Overheard

"You can't marry Ericka. I'm going to marry her."



"But I want to."

"Well you can't. I love her."

Running with Donuts

t was during a temporary moment of insanity that I signed up to run the Krispy Kreme Challenge with my sister Kellie, aka "The Runner in the Family."

For those not in the know, the Krispy Kreme Challenge is a race held annually in Raleigh where people try to combine the mutually exclusive tasks of eating and running. There is a lot of puke involved. It's fun.

Kellie signed up as a Challenger, meaning that she would run 2.5 miles, eat a dozen donuts, and run 2.5 miles back in under an hour. The question everyone kept asking her: How do you train for that kind of race? Unless you enjoy throwing up donuts, you don't.

Kellie finished the race in an hour and 10 seconds and managed to keep down all of her donuts. Here she is with her donut sandwich:


I signed up as a Casual Runner, meaning that I would run all 5 miles, but the donut eating was optional. In the end, I ate two donuts, and gave the rest to my cheer section (Michael, Miriam, my parents, and my boys). Even with just two donuts in my belly, I was feeling it toward the end - mostly because the combination of water, donuts, and running was really making me need to pee.

Since I've only been running since last August and don't even like donuts, I am quite pleased that I completed all 5 miles in just over an hour. If you're wondering if this means I've caught the running bug, you can rest easy. I still think running is torture and runners are masochists.


(If you're looking at these photos and thinking to yourself, "Why????", I wondered that myself. It's like Michael waited for the exact moment when Kellie and I looked our worst to snap a photo. But at least I have photographic proof that I really did do it.)

Music Lessons: Blind Pilot

Yesterday when we got in the car, I put on this song and said to Michael, "This is mine and Rylan's favorite song on this album."

Michael said, "Mine too."

Then Eli called from the back of the van, "Mine too!"

BLIND PILOT OFFICIAL

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Boys and Brands

his youtube video about kids and brand recognition appeared in a Grist article earlier this week. It got me thinking about the brands my own kids can recognize, so I had them watch it on mute with the words covered up.


I watched it first with Rylan alone. His answers can basically be summarized as, "Circle, circle, circle, rectangle, Target, circle, circle, tiger." Um, we might go to Target a little too often...He did not identify McDonalds or Disney, but the second time he watched it, he saw the BP logo and said, "Gas."

Cole and Eli watched it together, so Eli's answers are probably skewed because of Cole's quick recall skills. (The kid will kick butt on the academic team someday.) Cole knew "Coke,"* KFC, Starbucks, Disney, Apple, "American Bank," Chili's**, and McDonalds. Eli echoed Disney and McDonalds and also knew Monster Drinks. You can blame his dad for that one.

When the XBox logo came on, Cole yelled, "I know that one! I know that one! It's...." And both boys thought the Bell Systems logo was Taco Bell.

*It was actually Pepsi. Cole's defense: "But Pepsi is a type of coke."

**We have never been to Chili's as a family. I don't think we've even talked about going to Chili's. Maybe he's really observant?

***If the subject of advertising to children interests you, one of the first posts I wrote over at the Conscious Shopper was about kids and consumerism, and this is a really good book.