We Have a Walker

We got a lot of small things accomplished this week.  They are not all worth writing about so I'll just give you the list.

1.  Moved both 1000+ lb planters into place
2.  Planted peas
3.  Cleaned up part of back yard
4.  Cut down ornamental grasses
5.  Cleaned up part of garden
6.  Added drywall compound to basement stairwell
7.  Made homemade applesauce
8.  Finished taxes
9.  Made grow lights

This last one is worth at least a picture.  We put together four lights total to help our garden seedlings grow.  To make them, we used some cheap light fixtures, Y-bulb sockets, a plug, and some scrap material that we had on hand. 

For the past couple years we had put our seeds in my office window at work.  They always got plenty of sun but ended up tall and "leggy."  So we decided to rig this to hopefully get some thicker plants this year.  Under the grow lights now are our tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts.  We'll keep our fingers crossed and our grow lights on (during the day at least!).

The big house news for this upcoming week is that we're getting our solar panels installed!  We are going with Solar City and doing the pay-as-you-go plan.  It will end up costing us about the same as we pay for our current utilities. 

Solar City's representative was rather surprised that they were able to increase the number of panels by 32% on our house - I guess it's pretty rare to get an increase (particularly one that big).  I guess it was beneficial to remove those large trees for more than one reason.  The panels will cover a significant portion of the back side of the roof. 

I'm sure I'll write more next week when they are all installed!

The big news on the Samantha front is that she walked for the first time this week.  She took five steps to get from Chris to me.  Of course we couldn't get any of this on video (although it wasn't for lack of trying!).  She still doesn't seem interested in walking on her own.  She will take a couple steps sometimes but it'll be awhile before she's walking all the time (thankfully!).

She still really enjoys food - I think it's her favorite time of day. 

 We've gotten into the habit of having a little snack in the den after her afternoon nap.  She really likes those pretzels!

I made some finger paint for her this week out of flour, sugar, salt, and water.  She didn't understand the painting aspect much but she really liked squishing it between her fingers - and the nice bath afterwards.

That's it for this week - next week we should have plenty of fun solar panel pictures!