Her future's so bright, she's gotta wear shades

She's a cutie, our girl. And we certainly believe her future will be bright. We just have no idea where that future is going to play out. It's looking unlikely that Matt will find a full-time job in the area we live now. At least not anything anytime soon. Understandably, he's hesitant to take a church position that doesn't feel totally right, so he's already turned down one full-time position that we really felt he was not the guy for.

Maybe he can string together enough part-time stuff for us to get by and not have to move - that would be fine. He's got a job parking cars at the Furniture Market next week. And Matt's really enjoying helping out with the music ministry at the church we've been attending. The pastor would love to have him on staff, but they have very little money to pay.

Matt does however, have some prospects outside the area. He's interviewing this week in Chapel Hill and a church in Washington state would like to fly him out for in-person interviews. (I am not in favor of that. It's very far away.)

I know people are faithfully praying for us. Please continue. We want to make the right decisions.

Easter 2010-pictures of Cadie

Cadence loves the ducks

Seriously, she's become a little obsessed. We visited the park by the lake that's close to our house one day last week. She likes watching the ducks so much, she doesn't really care about the playground with the kids and the swings - which normally would command her attention. It looks like she's feeding the ducks, but she's not. She's just eating her snack while we watch them swim. The city has very strict rules about not feeding the wildlife.

There's a little retention pond in our neighborhood that we've been visiting too. There's some ducks there, but mainly geese. They honk very loudly whenever we visit because there is a mama goose sitting on some eggs by the edge of the pond. So, Cadie calls them the honk-honks, and she really likes to talk about them whenever we are outside.

sprouts!

Today we have radish and tomato sprouts! (The radishes are outside; the tomatoes in.)

Our adventures in growing veggies begins!

Last year I was really excited to have a garden. Really since we bought our house with a biggish backyard that gets good sun, I've been daydreaming about it. But I got really serious last spring, and I read two books that really helped me formulate a plan - Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew (there's also a pretty helpful square foot gardening website) and The 20-Minute Vegetable Gardener by Tom Christopher and Marty Asher . Both books advocate building raised beds with a special mix of soil so you don't have to do lots of digging and weeding to grow veggies. Last spring we just couldn't find the time with a little baby and both working full-time. But this year, with me working at night and Matt unemployed, we could do it!

So last week with Dassa here to help entertain Cadie, Matt dug out a 4 ft by 4 ft patch in our lawn, built me this raised bed, filled it with the prescribed mix of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite, and then made a nice square foot grid with nails and twine. Cute, huh?

Today we got started planting seeds. Don't worry, Mom, I checked the frost date and we only planted the stuff that can tolerate a little cold. Here's the list of what's in the ground now: spinach, broccoli, carrots, radishes, cilantro, lettuce, basil, and cucumber. (The tomatoes and peppers are coming later.)
Here I plant carrot seeds while Cadie plays with the dirt.
She really liked the dirt. I know it looks like she may be eating dirt in this picture, but she wasn't, we promise. We did let her hold the little spade for a minute and she licked it (I guess it looked like a spoon?). We were both right next to her when she licked it and quickly took it away and said "Ew - not for eating." By the look on her face, I don't think she'll try that again.

Tomorrow is supposed to be 65 and partly sunny

So we will be planting the first of our seeds in my brand new square foot garden. Pictures tomorrow - hopefully!

Saturday - just us girls

It was just me and Cadie today and we had a great girls' day. We went to the library and played outside before it started raining. We read books - Cadie apparently likes having 2 going at a time, as demonstrated here. She comes by this honestly. (I talked to my Dado today and he said he had at least 12 books going in his reading nook right now.)

Just a bit later, she was playing with her babies, giving them water, hugging them, etc. Then, for some reason, she got a mop and went to work on the floor, while still carrying her baby. That cracked me up. Multitasking already.

Cadie's been feeling domestic...

Been pretend cooking (sorry the picture is sideways - still having some computer issues and I'm just too busy to take the time to fix it). I am on the lookout for an affordable (very affordable as we're on the unemployed husband budget around here) play kitchen, because I think she would really like it.
And, all on her own, I turned around yesterday to find her pouring tea for her babies. Cute, huh?

An unfortunate update, and, Happy Valentine's Day!

This has been a hard week for the McGee's. On Tuesday, we decided, after a lot of prayer and wisdom-seeking, that Matt needed to resign his position as music minister at our church. The reasons are not really important, but Matt did the right thing and acted with honesty and integrity. Sadly, we'll be leaving behind a lot of wonderful people and great friends. And, unfortunately, it all happened very quickly and Matt doesn't have another job lined up. I'm proud of him, and now we are just waiting for God to show us what God's will is for Matt's career now. We don't know if he'll end up working in a church, or working in a school, or back in school himself. We need much prayer!

Anyway, this all made for kind of a weird Valentine's Day. I made him dinner last night and we just spent time together. It was nice is a low-key, kinda sad way.
I got Cadence all decked out for Valentine's Day this morning - pink bow in her hair, heart jumper, new pink shoes. Unfortunately, she doesn't like to hold still for pictures these days, so this was the best I could do to get a shot of her outfit. I mentioned last post that we were going to work on an art project. She’s holding it in this picture. It was really simple. I cut out a heart from red cardstock and ran all over it with a glue stick, then helped/guided her to stick the tissue paper to the heart. She really wanted to grab the glue stick and play with that, but didn't let her. Not a bad little project for 17 months. That is a disappointment about her not being in daycare anymore - she doesn't come home with the cute projects!

Some of Cadence's activities this week...

Lining up her cars to race...ready, set, go!
We aren't doing much to celebrate Valentine's Day around our house, but Cadie did like arranging these window clings by our front door.
I'm hoping tomorrow we will also do a little art project for Valentine's day.
She's also enjoying being messy. You can see the mess on her tray, which had a plate on it with the food. You can also see all her toys pulled off the shelves and arranged on the floor. Thankfully, she's learning how to pick things up too. And I taught her how to wipe the table with a cloth after her meal, so that's good.
I guess this one could be filed under "generally being cute", but what she's really doing is trying to get out of her high chair to see the "baby" on the back of the digital camera.