Field Day

What's the end of school without a field day?

What was FFM's favorite part?  His new hat that he picked out.  He looks like a little old retired man in all plaid.

Dance, Dance, Dance

Last week we were gone for about a week to visit family and attend a wedding in Kansas City.  I have to admit, I was unprepared to have as much fun as I did.

We were able to spend a couple of days visiting with my grandparents who live in a smaller town about an hour outside of KC.  Who knew FFM's first camel ride would be in Kansas?

There was a visiting "Educational Petting Zoo" in town, complete with exotic animals like kangaroo (he was not impressed), zebra, goats, and a porcupine (he was impressed).  I found out my only grown up girl cousin (my only other girl cousin is in grade school still) is going to have a baby.  And to top it all off we got to attend the wedding of my cousin Matt and Lindsey.  What a great week!

Mr. Man was so proud to be Matt and Lindsey's Ringbearer.  He's turning into a real pro.  If he wasn't already my kiddo I might have just stolen him right out the church he was so cute.  As it was I had to tackle the Father the Bride to get him out of the reception, FOTB was pretty sure FFM needed to stay in KC and hang out for a while.

Aren't they just a stunning couple?  I am so lucky to have a such lovely family, and these two are just the cutest, sweetest pair you've ever met.

The wedding was probably the most FUN wedding I've ever been to.  FFM definitely had a blast and had to be dragged from the dance floor, sweat and bridesmaids dripping off of him, when it was many, many hours past his bedtime.

 I learned a new thing about our child that night.  He is a DANCING MACHINE.  He has some dancing gene that skipped his Dad and I and he's got moves that no nearly five year old should have. Toss in no fear of girls and endless energy and you're all set up for a rowdy night on the dance floor.

 Yes, he really is dancing with all three of those bridesmaids at once.  I attempted to extricate him so they could dance with men their own age and they kept dragging FFM back in.

 Showing off his fancy moves with Granny Annie.

FFM had been dancing with that group of girls on the left and the bridesmaids snagged him back up again.  When we left several young men teased us and commented that now they would actually have a chance to dance with the ladies.

When we finally left his hair was wet like he'd just stepped out of a shower and his shirt clung to his back.  I'm just not sure where to take a young man out dancing, anyone have any weddings we can take him to anytime soon?  

Waiting for Tomatoes

The rule of thumb my Mom tells me is that we have to have nights consistently above 50F for tomato plants to thrive here. We haven't had that yet despite a couple hot days. I'm ready to plant some tomatoes!

The Soul Becomes Dyed With The Color of Its Thoughts

--Marcus Aurelius

My soul must be rainbow tie dyed with sparkly iridescent glitter.  I've had color on the brain.  Color is trendy and hot right now, but I've loved color my whole life.  When I lived overseas I bucked the trend of black, gray, and grey spiced up with white, and I wore Color.  I was so obviously not a local.

I am SO HAPPY!  Color is everywhere!  I can find cool colors of nail polish!  And colored pants!  And colored shoes!  and, and, colored colors for my HAIR!

OK, I did discuss this with my stylist before jumping in.  I did it the appointment AFTER we talked about it.  I did not want to look like that old lady trying to pull of a tween style.  Then I went to California on vacation (after I'd had said color in my hair for a month) and saw all stripes of life with fun color.

Purple highlights!  My pint sized photographer, and biggest fan of purple hair, did the best he could. Cutting out the top of my head was the best of the worst of his shots.

The Big Tree

This isn't new news, but three weeks of back and forth across the country have left me feeling, well, actually a little bit jet lagged to tell the truth.  It's not actual jet lag, but the effect of packing, unpacking, repacking, finding tuxedo, reordering tuxedo, dress shopping with Mom, gearing up car for 10 hour car trip, shuffling plane tickets/hotels/business trips two days before departure, family visits, and a GIANT SUPER FUN WEDDING all set to the unending background chatter of a 4 year old kind of jet lag.

Back to the old news.  We got some new landscaping.  Notice I said we GOT new landscaping not we DID new landscaping. Yes indeed.  Putting in a good sized tree is something I'm happy to pay someone else to do.  Frankly, it's just a pain in the patootie to drag a big tree home from the nursery and then to dig a big fat hole.

We picked out a purple leafed plum tree that won't get too big and shouldn't take over our house or driveway like some other unnamed trees in our yard (hint hint, giant spruce tree we have to pay large sums of money to have trimmed back every year because it's too tall to do ourselves).

That poor old tree looked kind of lonely over there in that lovely rock bed all by himself, so we added on a little DIY planting/transplanting.

The poor transplanted shrub is a little smaller than the new ones.  I hope it catches up.  We also expanded the bed by the front door by taking out one of the last antique junpers last fall.  New shrubs and plants went in this spring.  Since the hard labor was done last fall all we had to do was amend soil and plant this spring, all the fun stuff!

We still have bunnies ravaging our vegetation, so even though I only buy rabbit "resistant" plants I have to cage off ones that aren't as rabbit proof as they claim.  I do a check about every other morning to make sure they aren't chewed down to nubs.  Doing better this year than last.