Weekend Wrap Up

No Tales from the Trenches today. I don't want to start my week bellyaching, even though they have efficiency experts coming into work this week. I don't see this going so well. Artists are not the most efficient folks. We know that. My bosses are far from the most efficient folks. It will be interesting to see how this one turns out. (Though my husband did play a few scenes of Office Space that he insisted that I watch.)

Anyhow! We started our Friday by going to the nursery. I had a gift certificate that was burning a hole in my pocket. We go to a really nice Mom and Pop nursery just down the road. Sure, we could go and buy our flowers at the big box stores, but we really want to keep these folks in business. Now mind you, I don't buy quite enough to keep them in business, but we certainly love supporting them. They are a wonderful German family and the same folks are in there every. single. year. We started shopping there because of a goofy promotional postcard that they sent years ago offering a free wave petunia. Yes, we did get our free petunia and we've been loyal customers ever since. I swear that I could go in blindfolded and easily find everything I wanted.

We came home, puddle-putzed around a bit and as I got a few containers planted, I wasn't successful in planting everything. K- and E- were running between houses and I thought it was more important to keep up with the little people. We did end the day with the monthly run to Sam's. Of course, I didn't realize that we could use another case of toilet paper. Bummer.

Saturday brought Lowe's Day. They had the building clinic outside, which was lovely! We build a Ready to Go box, which is for child safety and whatnot. We carted my brother and nephew back home and zoomed out to my sister's house. When we got there, we discovered that my sister failed to tell me that the birthday party was a pool party. Drat. I had no bathing suit for K-. Both of her girls are absolute twigs, so their suits didn't fit, but somehow they had a dance leotard that fit my average build child just fine. Since we were there before the party (wedding later at the same time as the party), K- scored on getting a ride in the little trailer on back of the 4 wheeler.All the rest of the party photos are of girls in swim suits and since icky predator people cruise the internet, I don't care to add to their collection of photos. But trust me, they were all cutie patootie! They went with a Hawaiian theme. My sister scored some cool plastic Hawaiian goblets from the dollar store, little swizzle sticks, made the girls foamy party punch (the sherbet-y floaty stuff), sliced a strawberry to decorate the top of the glass and gave them a straw. You would have thought that these girls were in HEAVEN!

So we left the party and trotted home to get changed for the wedding. The wedding? Oh my heavens! It was gorgeous. White, black and lime green with damask in black on white as a running pattern on everything. Drop. dead. gorgeous. I was just short of drooling. Since it was an adult reception and Hubs had to work, I dropped K- off at the in-law's and went to the reception stag. Half of the church was there, so I wasn't worried about not having someone to talk to. Turns out that I was assigned to the table with our good friends, Butch (our fantastic plumber!) and Carolyn (his wonderful wife that follows the same digestive mysteries as Hubs), the youth pastor (who performed the ceremony), his wife, his parents (part of our congregation) and our Pastor, who was flying solo that evening as well. Though we got ditched by the senior pastor for a better table (don't worry, the youth pastor stole the chocolate box from the empty place at our table), all of us had a great time. The food was stupendous. Now I have to tell you, I love to eat, but I'm kind of picky. (I'm better than I was.) They had Italian Wedding Soup (fab!), a lovely tossed salad, broccoli/mandarin salad (not my thing, lost me with the mandarins), tomato and cucumber salad (don't like raw tomatoes or cucumbers), Potatoes Anna (sounded so wrong but were absolutely delicious!), Penne with sausage (the Italian big link kind), green beans almondine (real, live from the garden yesterday beans!), and sirloin cut by an official guy. Now, I saved room on my plate for the beef sirloin (beef not my thing but I thought why not) and it was very medium. Oh, it wasn't moo-ing, but it was very pink. Everyone loved it and raved about how great it was, but I like my meat completely dead before I eat it. I passed on it and had wished that I filled up more on the green beans and Potatoes Anna. No worries! They had a 20 foot table filled with cookies and another table with fresh fruit and a chocolate fountain. My heavens!

A side note, I apologize for my liberal use of parentheses in the above paragraph.

Moving onward. Sunday we went to church. A fun thing was that on Friday I found my bible that has been lost for two months. Where was it? Under my nightstand. I had gone through a streak of finding all kinds of good reads at the thrift store. I have two stacks of books under my nightstand. The one with the bible got pushed back. Gosh I was glad to have it back! For me, using someone else's bible (Hubs') is like wearing someone else's shoes. I mean, sure they are the right size and all but it wasn't mine. I write in my bible. Hubs does not. (I think it is the residual Catholic in him.) I grew up with my mom writing in her bible and find that if I write notes on sheets of paper, I don't keep them. Write it in the margins and whatnot? I find that my pen stays there permanently.

(I'm a bit tangential today, yes? Sorry about that.)

So we had lunch and started on the gardens. I had flowers to finish planting and transplanting from Friday, we needed to uncover the garden (from the solarizing) and get it planted. Hubs decided to mow. K- and E- had been playing together, so I ran back and forth to keep tabs on them while he did.

He got the yard work completed and I finished my flower planting. K- helped me to plant Sunflower seeds (a pack was part of the party favors from C-'s birthday the day previous) and some Hollyhocks. I didn't plant either one last year and kind of felt sad without them.

Right now, here are our back beds. The first one is the lily bed. We had to cut our butterfly bushes back to about a foot from the ground, but they are coming back nicely. Our milkweed is popping up all over. So much so that we had to do a bit of a select pull. Our next bed was the original butterfly garden. We put the lily bed in about a year later. We had such success with this one, we figured why not? As I was planting the garden, K- was mixing old seeds and leftover onion sets for some mysterious concoction. I don't know exactly where she dumped it after she was done, but if I find onions mid yard, then I will know. Don't worry about the garden planting, though, she did help with the beans, chives, collards and carrots. Here is Hubs putting the final details on attaching the fence. See the wounded left pointer finger? Oh, he caught it in the lawn mower as he was collapsing it down to put it in our shed. He found it none too amusing when all I could do was laugh (and share the spray of the hose.) I didn't think it was funny that he injured himself, but that earlier I had gotten so excited about a hummingbird at our bush that I popped up to run for my camera and stabbed myself in the toe with a trellis that was laying flat on the ground. I bled and K- had to go get me a paper towel and a band aid. (Tinkerbell, if you were wondering.) So, as I shared the water with Hubs, I sent K- in for the first aid kit. Hubs was initially a bit dramatic, which made me laugh harder. Later, K- asked what we would be doing after planting and my response was, "Taking daddy to the hospital for an amputation." "ARE YOU SERIOUS?" was his reply. It took him about an hour and a half or so, but then he laughed at our weird injuries. But in the end, look at what we accomplished!As we were out working, Hubs realized that what we had nesting in our box on the back fence were Chickadees. Now, I have to tell you that I built that box at a park building workshop probably 6 + years ago. That box has never housed anything. Hubs was impressed. He said that normally they nest in the woods. Since we are on a 40' x 120' plot, with our backyard probably measuring 40' x 50' or so, we consider that habitat success! While out, we also had an adult hummingbird hang out, dragonflies zoom through (we always have a pair that lives here), a Downy woodpecker above our heads, the Chickadees caring for their young (both mom and dad) and a black swallowtail flutter by. Well, we had the usual cast of characters, but these were a little different than most.Chickadee-dee-dee! Flying for food for my baby-be-be-be's!

Monday started with a cranky K- who lost TV privileges for the day because of her refusal to make her bed. We did make it to the thrift store, but you would seriously think that they were completely giving the store away. There were people parked in aisles stripping down to their tight bike shorts, trying things on and modeling to the mirrors. Wow. I did score some Brain Quest flip books for K-, a kid's art book on Da Vinci (we have the Warhol book like this that we bought at the Warhol museum a few years ago), a purse for my niece, a changing table cover for Leland, a pair pants for Hubs, a book for me and a desk paper organizer for our newly acquired desk from our lovely neighbor.

After the thrift store, we went home to get ready for our afternoon of boating. Hubs readied the boat, K- played in the backyard and I prepared lunch. I packed a tuna noodle salad for all of us, fruit salad for K- (partially for me), cherry tomatoes and short cut carrots for snacking. While out, K- played with the load of toys she brought. I read my book for hours. I can't tell you the last time I've been able to read for hours and it didn't involve a college assignment. (I'm reading The Devil Wears Prada. No, I haven't seen the movie.) We did get stopped by an ODNR Watercraft officer to check to see if we are in compliance with state law. We always get nailed on something dumb. (I swear, they all must have just a little different spin.) At any rate, this time we were supposed to have the boat registration IN THE BOAT with us, but it was in the truck. We weren't cited. Initially, K- was asleep but woke up while he was there checking us out. He kept commenting about how proud he was of her wearing her life jacket. Even while sleeping, she had it on which was probably not a typical find for him.

Look! Hubs caught some fish! Two fish, actually. This was his biggest. It was about 16 1/2 inches long. It wasn't too bad! (BTW, we are catch and release people.)
K- was fishing, too. Not me. I was reading. Here is my comfy place. Hubs hooked an umbrella up for me and one for K-. I read here for hours. Every now and then I had to sit up. My back would develop a lovely crink. Here are my people. What was funny is that when they pulled up to shore, K- hopped out and onto land, grabbed the rope and started pulling on the boat to keep it on shore. I tried to get out, the boat floated and I started to get that split leg between land and boat thing happening. How is it that my child can successfully bail out to run with the rope and her mama can't even get out? I did get out, eventually.

Which brings me to yet another point. It's been a few years since I've been out on the boat. I guess that I hadn't realized that, but it is true. Word of caution, when you haven't backed the boat trailer up in a few years-- it is NOT like getting back on a bike. In fact, it is downright embarrassing and I finally called Hubs to do it. At that point, people were waiting for the launch and people get cranky when they have to wait for the single launch while a non-coordinated female keeps doing the forwards/backsies in the lot.

I hope that all of you had a great weekend!