Hooooooray for Birthday Week!

Saturday kicked off Bugs' birthday week--she will turn six on Saturday, April 4. She celebrated with typical fanfare, that is, more of her parents manipulating and harassing her. We went to the Bellevue Meet and Greet so she could hang with some of her friends.

We came home and John and Sarah Beth had a showing, so John and Annie came to visit. Bugs is suspicious of this baby... she doesn't know what little humans are good for yet.


Finally, we had some bad weather yesterday (although not nearly as bad as Channel 4 made it out to be). We did see a beautiful rainbow in our backyard, though, so that was some consolation for the tornado sirens that interrupted our naptime. Of course, we would have been thankful for them had there actually been a tornado... I think the end of the rainbow looks like it's at Anatolia, El Torero or Sonobana, depending on what mood you're in :)

Annie

Here are some pictures from when we kept Annie Thursday night. Of course, we tried to see if Bugs would like having cargo... she didn't. 

Here we are both having fun with her. She is such a happy baby... and of course we like any opportunity to act silly.



Finally, here are "three faces of Annie"...

While You Were Out

Here's Bugs in an old time lapse video Paul set to Benny Hill music. It's every bit as funny as it sounds.

Spring Weekend

This past weekend was the first day of Spring, and a nice enough weekend to get some serious yardwork done.
Here's the front of the house, complete with the Senetti in the pots. I am thinking it'd look great with this on the door. Donations are being accepted ;) I can dream!

We saw these three helicopters flying in formation Saturday. Just thought it was pretty neat. Guess you had to be there.

A friend of ours (Thanks Mardy!) was gracious enough to let me come dig some forsythia. We are going to try them along the fence in the backyard. Hey, if they don't work or we end up wanting to do something else, they were free! We think they'll do great, though.

This is the new growth on the hydrangea Danya gave us when we moved in last fall. Exciting!

Here is the mulched flower bed out front where I tore out a bunch of monkey grass and straightened up some. It seems like there have been moles in the yard at some time or another and patches of the monkey grass weren't spared. Hopefully when it grows out some more those ugly parts will be covered - but if not, I now know how to separate and replant it! It's amazing that people pay for monkey grass and forsythia and the like in a way, it propogates so readily and it seems to be easy so far. Hey, I'm still young and naive and new at all this!

Speaking of young (and dumb, or just uninformed) these are the black-eyed susan looking plants (coreopsis? who knows) that were out front when we bought the house. They were dead and looked terrible all winter, but lo and behold I cut them back and there's new growth everywhere! We are going to give them a chance before yanking them up for something more hardy. The color will be nice since there is so much green out there...

Which is also why I have this Senetti in pots out front. Senetti is something I never heard of, but is apparently a pretty good little flower, similar to a daisy, that's good for the cool snaps in the beginning of Spring and will last until it gets hot. You can read more about it here. We found it for $10 a pot downtown at the Farmer's Market and Gardens of Babylon, where we also got an Elephant Ear plant (if you're not familiar. a big one) I hope it grows as big as Aunt Frances', but I know we will have to dig it up or mulch over it each year, but it should still grow larger with each passing year. We'll see, though.

And THIS is the highlight of the weekend! ALL the trumpet vine is finally down from the side of the house! We are vindicated! I can't believe that crap was all up the side of our house like it was and we never noticed. Believe me, we will if it ever happens again! If you don't know about the trumpet vine drama, read about it in one of my first blog posts.

We'll keep y'all posted as we're planning on some veggies and sunflowers and other fun stuff after Easter and frost - should be an adventure if nothing else :) Here's hoping Bugs doesn't eat any of it... and that she's able to help keep the rabbits and squirrels away!

Laurel / Laurelwood

We went to visit Grandfather at the nursing home when we were home about three weeks ago. Thankfully, we'd made arrangements ahead of time to bring Bugs - he really enjoyed seeing her. We were glad to see him, and pleased and thankful to know he's making progress day by day. I spoke to him at lunch today and Mother was there with Addy - I know he loves having such wonderful visitors and they mean so much. We also enjoyed meeting some of his "friends" at the nursing home. He has a great roommate and a very sweet WWII bride from England down the hall. She had some amazing stories about being in the Ladies' Auxiliary during the War. I am sure we will be down again soon, and we can't wait to see how much he will have progressed then.

Winter Gathering 2009

The annual GPAN Winter Gathering was, well now, about a month ago. We didn't take many pictures this year and Bugs didn't seem to like it as much as last year. She was kind of "over it", but did still have fun, as evidenced by her race with her friend Noble... which was too close to call according to her. 

We also met Lana's new family and were glad to see her, of course. It was strange, we wondered aloud whether they would be there and we looked up to see Bugs and Lana running together and when I called her name she made a beeline for me. I miss her so much - but I know her "child" (a precious five year old redhead girl) and her new home in the country suits her.

Shiloh / Rowan Oak

I have not updated the blog in a very long time, so forgive the forthcoming slew of posts. This is a follow-up to Bugs at the Super 8 seen below; as many of you know, Paul was recently a victim of layoffs at his former job. We'd planned to go to Laurel a few days after that, so he took the long way down via Shiloh and Oxford (which is why Bugs was pictured at the Super 8!) This was interesting because from some of Aunt Frances' documents that traced our ancestry - turns out, we have a second (or third?) great grandfather who fought and was wounded at Shiloh and is buried at Beauvoir! So now there is special significance to his trip, beyond a head-clearing mini-vacation - and I hope to visit one day, too. These won't really be labeled - I encouraged him to put them on the blog, but he whined that no one would be interested. He's wrong :)

Here's a couple from Rowan Oak, too.