The Green Family: Baby Showers, Pie, and Landscaping

In a nutshell, that is what our weekend consisted of. On Saturday I went to my friend Heidi's Baby shower. It was at Cathy's house, and Cathy, Jessica, and Cassie were the hostesses. As always, they did a wonderful job. The shower was a lot of fun. You can see pictures from it here.
Then on Sunday I decided to be adventurous and bake my first apple pie. I have always wanted to make my own pies from scratch and always used the excuse that I didn't have my Kitchen Aid Mixer so I couldn't make one. These mixers are kind of pricey and with the baby coming, I'm sure our money can be better spent elsewhere. I also thought that people have been baking pies long before Kitchen Aid had their mixer so the search was on for a recipe. Little did I know that every recipe I found gave instructions for making pie crust in the mixer or a food processor. Since I didn't have either, I had to resort to the fact that I was going to by pre-made pie crust.
I got the pie baked and I have to say it looks pretty good. We haven't tried yet so who knows how it tastes. If it turned out, I think I will making more for Thanksgiving. The only thing I didn't like was that my pie-crust was flat. I didn't have a mound of apples for the pie crust to go over. I am thinking my pie dish was a deep dish one, so before I make again, I need to get a regular dish. Here is a picture of it.

And as many of you know, our back yard is the next big house project that we were going to work on. Robert has been working on it all weekend. We soon discovered that it was going to take more time then we thought. I think the problem is, is that for the past couple of years nothing has been done to the yard, so the ground has just gotten harder and harder. And the rock keeps getting buried deeper and deeper. Robert was able to get all the rock moved, (it is now sitting on our patio!) and is working on getting most of the hill leveled out. He is soaking the ground to hopefully help soften it up. I offered to help him yesterday, but he said that moving rock was too heavy for me since I was pregnant. I have to admit, I didn't push too hard to help him!