Tired of the rain, but oh what a great yard

So it seems to have been raining nonstop this entire Spring. We've grumbled a lot being stuck inside the house so much with the kids (or them getting mud-covered feet when they head outside), but my flower beds are going gangbusters with all the watering. So I thought for a change I'd show off some photos of something other than my kids. We were enjoying the front porch yesterday after the storm that blew through in the morning cut the humidity, and I felt the need to document some of these beautiful plants.

The balloon flowers are popping open all over the place. Mine grow freakishly tall - at least 3 feet - probably because they are striving to get sunlight in the middle of this shady bed.


Not a really great shot of the lantana, but this is one of our biggest butterfly draws in the front yard. This particular one with the pink and yellow flowers gets enormous.


I didn't have any good daylilies to get a photo of, but of course at least four of these buds opened up today.


The wandering jew that comes back each year next to the porch. The little pink flowers on the ends look great, especially when there are water droplets on the plant. You can see one of our new pots in the background of the picture.


One of my two pots of marigolds. I like these with the blended orange and yellow colors.


Here's a better shot of the new pot (one of two). I just planted these this weekend, so they should fill out as the plants grow a little.


Our awesome front porch. Jim picked up these chairs this weekend and had just put them together. We still want to add a coffee table and maybe some more plants. Plus I'd like for us to add a ceiling fan at some point to help blow away the mosquitos. But it is a great spot to sit and watch the neighbors go by.


Our house in it's wonderfully green Spring setting. We really do like our 91-year old house, with all the problems (challenges?) that entails.


I tried to get a shot that showed all my flowers, but they don't really show up from this distance too well.


Ahhh...what was waiting for me once I finished taking all the photos. I sat on the other porch chair next to Jim and watched the kids play together in the yard. A little bit of heaven on a Sunday afternoon.

End of school year pics

Well, I'm stealing the blog posting idea from my sister and showing off first and last days of school for Grace (Alex is still too young to participate in this one - he gets too cranky at times for pictures on demand).

Here is sweet little Gracie with Miss Andrea and Miss Bettina on her first day of school.


And with apologies to her teachers for taking the picture after the class swim party, here she is showing off her forced "trying-too-hard" smile on the last day. I couldn't have asked for a better class for her to finish preschool with. The most kids they ever had in this class was 10, so they were able to do some really wonderful things with very individualized attention. And Bettina and Andrea were just amazing teachers; very creative and always thinking up great things for the class to do.


Now for some graduation pictures. Here's a great one of Grace with Andy.


Grace with Aidan and Andy - two of her favorite boys. Of course, by the end of the year - especially once the only other girl had moved up north and was attending maybe once a week - ALL the boys had become her favorites.


Grace and Brayden were very insistent I take their picture while they were making these faces. I'm not sure what they were aiming for. They looked a little like chipmunks.


Some very excited soon-to-be graduates.


The entire graduating class. All eight of them.


Me and Grace watching the after-ceremony slide show.


To try to give a little space to Alex, here are two of his favorite classmates this year: twins Kate and Mike. I actually came upon him a few times lying on the floor with Kate reading books looking so sweet.


Alex VERY excited to be standing next to his best friend Donovan. Every day was gauged as being "good" if it was a day he saw Donovan, or "not good" if he didn't. And I couldn't get Alex to take a picture this final day of school until I said "let's take one with Donovan", and as you can see he was all smiles after that.


Giving Donovan a big hug goodbye.

Back again

So I know I haven't posted for two weeks, but what a two weeks it has been. I'm hoping I can finally take a breather and sit back and get my life back to a manageable speed. After my birthday, Grace's birthday, Grace's party, end of year school activities, visit from Kathy, Max & Joey, Grace's "graduation", swim parties, swim classes, the dance recital today, we are finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

For those that haven't heard yet, we did get approval for the transfer for Grace to the public elementary school we wanted her to go to, so it looks like she will NOT end up being a Catholic school girl, which also means our pocketbook will get some relief. Of course, now I need to try to get some signatures from various school administrators on Tuesday and Wednesday to make the transfer final, so I'm not out of the woods yet.

Now I'll try to catch up with a few pictures. Here's some from our family trip to the Ranger game on my birthday.

Ahh, the view from our seats at the game. They were just at the other end of the row from the season tickets Kim and I share with my parents, so this is the view I normally have. It is high (300 level), but it is directly behind home plate so you have a great angle on everything except high pop ups, which look like they are home runs until they land behind the 2nd baseman. You do get great breezes up here.


Alex enjoys his first baseball game. He did really well - we lasted until about the 6th inning in our seats. All you need are hotdogs, french fries, cotton candy and fun music to keep a 2-year old's attention.


Grace in her new pink Rangers hat that matches her pink Rangers shirt. Her butterfly face paint is left over from the school carnival that morning (oh yeah, one other thing to add to the list of activities from the last two weeks).


The kids like to hit the Coca Cola Sports Park behind centerfield before we leave. There's only a couple of the games that they can do. This t-ball one is the first one they hit. They also tried a ring toss, but of course didn't get anything out of it. But the best were the temporary tattoos they got there - my kids kept those things on for a week.


Alex takes his turn a the t-ball game. I think Jim had to finally step in to help him hit the ball in the right direction.


My kids playing at the feet of Nolan. It was a wonderful evening.

Aaahhh

That's what Jim and I sighed upon finally crawling into bed this evening. We had Gracie's "Outer Space" birthday party today, and I think it ended up going over pretty well. The weather gods smiled down on us (for the most part). We got a big shower - 3/4 of an inch in about 15 minutes - but it was close to the end of the party. We had just finished cake and ice cream, so we scooted the kids inside. After 5 minutes or so we realized Grace could open her presents (we were originally going to just do that after everyone left), and everyone was happy.

We had a big ol' bounce house, that excited Alex to no end when the guy set it up today. And kept about 14 kids happily occupied for a couple hours.

I realized that I had the same feeling after this party that I did after having a wedding. I know it happened, but I was so busy the entire time I'm not exactly sure what all happened. Maybe that is why I actually enjoy (to a point) other kid's birthday parties I go to. For the most part I can sit back and watch someone else run around, even if I pitch in and help.

Hopefully pictures to come tomorrow.

My big birthday girl

Happy birthday to my sweet girl. She said it was her "best birthday ever." Probably due to the plethora of Disney Princess dolls she received (result of mom going nutty on Ebay for characters no longer in production). I love my 5-year old girl.

Please pray...

...for NO RAIN on Saturday. I've got probably 17 kids and an equal number of adults coming over for Grace's birthday party. It's raining outside right now, and rain is scheduled through Friday. I don't know what I'll do with all those kids inside my house, since the main activity at the party is a bounce house outside. Yikes!

Happy Birthday to Me

40 - oh my!

And happy birthday to my dear sister.

Easter pics (finally!)

Two kids with their haul on a cold Easter morning. The big coat unfortunately hid the beautiful dress we got from cousin Emma - Grace couldn't wait for the chance to finally wear it. And Alex is as dressed up as he can get - tennis shoes, khakis and untucked button-down is the best we can do with him.


Grace excited about the money in her Easter egg.


Alex excited about his "clock-clock" (chocolate). Much more valuable to a 2-year old than money.

License plate I saw

My guess is that if your plate reads "CLSSY 1", chances are you aren't.

More kid pics

Well, lazy me hasn't yet downloaded any pictures from Easter, but I know Grace will be very happy to see that I finally posted pictures from her latest field trip. We took the class to the Arboretum for Dallas Blooms. Beautiful flowers and neat "treehouses" (still left from the Autumn Blooms celebration, I think). But my friend Karen and I were trying to figure out why we were exhausted after 3 or 4 hours, not walking any more than we normally do when we go there. We realized that it probably had something to do with four of us watching eight 4/5-year olds. You'd think that ratio would be easy, but those kids move nonstop, and usually in at least four different directions.


They had these neat beds set up where the flowers were planted in the shape of butterfly wings with a mat to lay down between them. Unfortunately with the angle of the ground it was hard to get a good picture of the wings. Grace was very excited to take a picture of her like this between her wings - I'm not sure why.


With Brayden's wing picture you could get a better view of the wings.


Grace wanted to be sure I included boyfriend Aidan's picture here.


Cute picture of Grace and Aidan.


The class early on in the day, too excited to pay much attention to picture-taking.


Grace's new "other" boyfriend, Andy.


The kids exploring one of the treehouses. Bit of a misnomer - they are all playhouses build around trees (rather than in them). But very cool variety of styles.


Another treehouse - either a butterfly or dragonfly shape (I can't remember which one). I wish I'd gotten pictures of the rest of the treehouses. Maybe we'll make it back and do just that someday soon before the temperature reaches triple digits.


We thought about just avoiding the frog fountains all together. But then their teacher just sat them down before heading over there and said "You make your own choices. We have no towels and no extra clothes, so if you get wet you have to live with the consequences." Hmm...wonder how that will end up.


Kids playing in the fountain.


A VERY wet class photo. One boy didn't get wet, the rest were drenched. We had to strip off shirts to wring them out before walking on. But the kids sure had fun.


One last photo before we left for the day. I thought it was cute how they naturally posed themselves when I told them to say cheese. A great bunch of kids. Exhausting, but great.

(Rolling eyes here)

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw THIS on the road today:


Jim and I have joked about trucks getting bigger and bigger, and that it wouldn't be long before someone started driving an 18-wheeler as a truck. Well, it has actually happened, at least on a small scale. I saw this stupid thing rounding the corner on Mockingbird as I was coming out of the grocery store parking lot, and wondered what this small 18-wheeler cab was doing turning off of Abrams. Then I realized it was a TRUCK. Most likely some idiot Dallasite trying to one-up his neighbor's Hummer.

I always wonder if the driver of big behemoth vehicles like this convince themselves that I am gazing in admiration at them when they drive by. When in reality I'm usually staring in disbelief, trying to not greet them with a single-finger salute (mainly so my kids won't pick that little bad habit).

NOBODY needs this ridiculous auto. I don't care how much stuff you tell me you need to haul. Maybe they will add some big old gas tax, which will hopefully hit this moron in the pocketbook. Sheesh.

A Little Spring Color

So the Spring rains have finally come, bringing a little bit of color to the yard. Of course, I need to do some shopping at the garden center to add a little more color. Maybe once this freaky cold front passes through this weekend I'll get around to a little yard work.


My irises FINALLY started blooming. Seems like it was at least a week or two later than everyone else's irises in the neighborhood.


A lot more about to bloom within the next week.


Other than my four blue Dutch irises (which I didn't get a picture of), all the irises that have bloomed are yellow ones. Except for this one amazing white one. I love it. I guess my purple ones are gone - I haven't seen them bloom for a couple of years.


Neat blue berries on the leatherleaf mahonia. The poor birds don't have much of a chance at getting these; the kids have too much fun picking them off for whatever imaginary games go on in the back yard.


Neat little birdhouse Jim made and painted with Grace.


Grace next to the rosemary that is ready to be finally planted in the ground. This was originally the little rosemary Christmas tree we had on the table year before last. I can't wait to see how it takes off once it is actually in the ground. Don't know about this pose Grace is doing. Showing off the little super soaker Jim bought her. Kind of like a weird NRA-lite photo.