Flowers, Foliage, Laughing

Memorial Weekend... the start of summer, which is ironic because it typically rains over the weekend. We got a bit ahead of it and only had one day of rain. We had an absolutely beautiful day on Saturday and we made good use of it by finally getting the garden and garden items prepared. We took a family trip to Lowe's and Runnings to get plants and then took the afternoon to get everything in the ground. Was a little harder than anticipated because of all the "help" that we had but it was fun to see them excited about the plants too. If only we could figure out how to get them to quit pulling on them.

We also celebrated the blooms finally coming out on the trees. They usually make their appearance over E's birthday but they were a bit late to show up - I blame the cool spring, it was a bit late to make an appearance as well.

Ainsley and I have one week left of maternity leave to savor... I took the whole month of May on a part time basis to ease into motherhood and having a clan of 5. I've needed it. This maternity leave has been different than my past - I took a long time, I didn't work or take things home or plan a 500 person conference, and I held a baby - sometimes for hours. Sometimes because I wanted to and sometimes because she insisted. I'm sad our time is coming to an end. This week I got my last first baby laugh... she's not too generous with them yet so even though I worked for it, I'm glad I was able to capture it.

On Monday, we headed out to the farm to check out Granma and Granpa's kitties. Longhair had them in the garage, under the stairs while they weren't looking and they are so dang cute. E fell in love immediately. G just yelled and pointed at them the whole time - calling them Lolas. That afternoon, we had E's three year old pictures at the capitol. I'm excited to see what she captured - I feel like she had some good smiles versus just the scary cheese face so I'm hopeful.

Getting ready in the morning.

ALR: I don't usually wake up before you.

MJR: I was tired.

ALR: I get it.

MJR: Your son was up a lot last night.

ALR: I know... I was up with him 3 times.

MJR: AND that damn balloon.

ALR: What?

MJR: At 11:00 last night the string started floating across my face and I thought bugs were crawling all over my face. 

ALR laughing

MJR: It's not funny.

ALR: How'd you figure out it wasn't bugs?

MJR: I grabbed across my face and felt the string and realized it was one of Eleanor's birthday balloons.

ALR still laughing.

MJR: It is not that funny.

ALR: I had wondered where that went off too.