Fruit Trees!

We have debated the best time to plant our fruit trees, but we happened into a 10% off deal at Orscheln's, so we went for it. Today Josh planted two pear trees, two gala apple trees, a Jonathan apple and a golden delicious on both sides of the driveway. We already have a lone peach tree and we need to get another to allow for pollination so we can have fruit. The trees we planted are third year, so in the next couple we will hopefully have our first fruit!

We joked about what a commitment fruit trees are, but it will be so worth it the first time we take a bite of apples we grew ourselves. I feel the same way about all of the time and effort we are putting into the poultry and garden.

Ben's surgery has been postponed until Thursday because the anesthesiologist is attending a funeral tomorrow. The waiting is killing us, but we are making the best of nice weather to keep our minds occupied.

This afternoon Ben and I went to the Dickerson Park Zoo with a good friend of mine. It was such a beautiful afternoon, I believe everyone else in Springfield had the same idea. It was pretty crowded, but still fun. Ben slept through the whole thing, and I was worried about the bright sun, so he spent most of the time cocooned in the stroller like this:


The bartering has been going well. So far I've traded this:

3 of my mom's shirts (that she doesn't want anymore)
new package of eyeshadow (from couponing)
30 prefolds and a snappi (I'm not using prefolds anymore)
a wool diaper cover that felt too scratchy for me
a changing pad cover
the other half of the fabric from the wrap I made a few weeks back
and $30

for this:

10 Bum Genius diapers (my favorite kind)
4 all in one diapers, one yellow, one blue, one green, and one with lemons print fabric
2 wool home-made dryer balls (supposed to be great with preventing static and reducing dryer time)
a new pair of Robeez baby shoes and socks

The Bum Genius diapers cost about $20 new, so that alone made the trading go well. It takes a ridiculous time to wade through all of the listings, but I absolutely love the idea of mailing stuff away that I don't need and getting stuff in the mail that I want, without exchanging much money at all. The $30 I did spend was out of my Paypal / ebay earnings, so I'm still not dipping into our bank account or anything. In the next few weeks I'll get a Paypal debit card and I will pay for all of the shipping out of that account too.

Bartering is awesome.