happy mother's day!

i love you mom!

my chair!!

When Scott and I moved into Southdowns, my mom and step-dad gave us this wonderful rocking chair. They told us to seal it, but we never did... and eventually it ended up looking like this spotted gray beat-up chair. We knew it had potential, still, and a couple of weeks ago we spent a few hours taking it apart and sanding away all of the weather damage. The next day it stormed all day and we never got around to sealing it.

My wonderful husband decided to surprise me by finishing it today, and three hours later, look how wonderful it is!

so proud of our plants

We haven't quite decided where we want our garden, so for now, we're growing out of containers.

I am constantly amazed by watching things grow, especially from seed or cutting. One of my favorite things to do is taking care of my plants :)

Here are a few of my favorites:

This is our red bell pepper plant. There are Mexican marigolds planted alongside the pepper... a natural way to manage pesky pepper-eating pests!



Here is my birthday hibiscus. The last time I counted, it had over 20 buds! It's going to be blooming all spring and summer... and with our weather here, probably in the fall too!


This is my hibiscus from last year. It had some horrible death fungus on it, so we had to spray it down and prune it to half of it's size. It's just starting to bloom again, and it's so beautiful!


Here are our plumerias. We fell in love with these flowers on our honeymoon, and we purchased a cutting from our favorite nursery in Lahaina and planted them. According to the insert, these won't bloom for up to four years, but we think it's well worth the wait!


Scott found this pitcher plant on ebay and has taken care of it for over a year. It has doubled in size and is uniquely beautiful! Pitcher plants are natural ways of combating mosquitoes and other pests. It has an appetizing serum that attracts bugs... when they go in for a bite, the plant eats the bugs! Very Little Shop of Horrors, I know!


I am so proud of Scott's thai peppers. Last year, Scott bought some pepper seeds from ebay and grew a large pepper plant that yielded over 100 peppers. He then dried some of the pepper seeds from last year and planted them this year... and they grew! Amazing how that happens, huh? So we're looking forward to hundreds more of them this year. Let me know if you need any :)

birthday tree

Yesterday was Arbor Day, which is a great reason to plant a tree...

but it was also my birthday!

We bought a red maple from Louisiana Nursery and Scott was so kind to dig the big hole! Check it out!

new nephew!!!!

Meet Preston James Bennett, born April 23, 2009 to my wonderful sister-in-law and brother!

I can't wait to meet him!!

april showers

bring beautiful flowers!

i know it's not quite may, but i put these cute flowers in our bed in the back yard.

check them out :)

passports are in!

we applied for our passports almost 8 weeks ago, and were so surprised to get an envelope from the government 3 weeks later. i was confused, though, when scott's passport was the only one in the envelope. our check processed! it obviously only took scott's passport 3 weeks to process. where was mine?

i waited a week longer and finally found a website that has a link to check the status of my passport. i entered my name, etc... and there was nothing! didn't they get my check? wasn't my application sent with my husband's? where was mine? i called their 800 number at 6pm on a weeknight and was told that their customer representatives (that accept calls until 10pm) were overwhelmed with calls. i thought i would be put on hold, but the message said, "please call back at another time" and hung up! the government can't even afford to put me in a queue? had they not processed my $200 check? surely that afforded to put me on hold!

there was a way to send an email through the website, so i submitted my question. where is my passport? three days later, i got a call while i was in a meeting. "ms stead, we're trying to verify your travel date" -- no "call me back at this number" or anything, just a message teasing me, letting me know that they called, and there was obviously a problem.

i broke down and called them again. this time i waited 25 minutes on hold. i spoke to someone that said there was no problem -- my passport was being processed. i asked why we received my husband's so much sooner than mine and the representative could not give me an answer.

finally i received an email stating that they needed me to send in my old passport. why had no one told me this before? i asked the lady at the post office if i needed to provide anything else. she verified that i did not need to send in my old passport, which was damaged (and included my maiden name). looks like she was wrong, as was the woman who i waited 25 minutes to speak to. i mailed my passport to the passport processing center with a letter. i did not receive anything back for over a week, so i replied to the email asking again, "WHERE IS MY PASSPORT????"

sunday night we checked the mail from the weekend. my passport was finally here! i can't imagine how this would have worked if i expected to travel in the last two months. i guess scott would have just gone without me!