Trouble

Something is telling me that the easy, honeymoon phase is about to be over...

and I'm about to be in big trouble.

Seriously... she's only 7 months old!

5 Things

about THIS cute 5 year old! (And, by the way, how did THAT happen? I must have blinked...)

1). She is a girly girl. Allison loves skirts and dresses and pink... and all the other colors of the rainbow too.

2). She is pretty sure she's in charge... and lets the rest of us know.

3). She enjoys taking ballet class and is excited to try cheer-leading the in fall (did I mention she's a girly girl?)

4). She is a super reader, loves books and is so excited to go to Kindergarten in the fall.

5). She is happy, wild, a little crazy, a lot silly, sometimes snuggly and oh-so-lovable. :) 

We sure love our big girl!

New Landscaping

Our big house project the last few months have been redoing the landscaping in our front yard. Neither Brian nor I are big yard people, so this has been slow, dreaded, and not very fun. We're calling ourselves done until Spring at this point.

This spring/summer we tore out and replanted a big 14'x14' planting bed and a smaller bed thats maybe 6x6 right next to it in our front yard. When we moved in, nothing in the landscaping was pretty. No color, no flowers, except for a sad lilac bush in the back yard and lots of ugly bushes. So over the last few months we've ripped out 5 or 6 evergreen bushes, screened hundreds of pounds of landscaping rocks from the soil (I say we, but that was all Brian... the previous owner used rocks instead of mulch and we HATED it. And it was so old that there was bunches of rock integrated into the first 6 or so inches of soil), and replanted the bed.

I don't have a good before picture of the front of our house, but you could see in the the video I did when we first moved in. And here's the after:

 Please ignore the hose/watering can/ mulch bag... Wide view including the cute little tree we planted. The tree will get tulip and daffodil bulbs in the fall.

In the corner by the garage wall and the evergreen tree thing we planted a climbing rose, in front of it are iris (the tall spikes) and evening primrose (pretty pink little flowers). Behind the iris right by the roses (and in the back corner by the porch) we planted bleeding heart bushes, which will flower in spring. In the front porch corner are day lilies and Asiatic lilies. We also planted balloon flowers and something I forget the name of that reminds me of lavender. By the path to the swing we planted creeping phlox that will get teeny white flowers in the spring. Everything needs to fill in a bunch, obviously, but so far we're happy. Its pretty and colorful and we'll wait until spring before we decide if we need to make changes. Although I will probably plant a few bearded iris bulbs on both sides because I love them (and the iris we put in aren't bearded).

Now, we are not landscape designers, but I think we're happy for now. I hope it looks nice when it fills in. :)

Next spring we'll tackle transplanting the azaleas that aren't doing so well to the sunny side of the house (they're on the other side of the porch), put something new where the azaleas are (I'm thinking Hydrangeas, because I love them) and create a proper bed on the side of the house to plant. Brian's thinking roses... I'm thinking lilacs.  But next spring... because we've lost our will to work outside (read: Brian doesn't want to dig out anymore rock and I don't blame him!).

Validation

Allison left me this little note the other day when she was having some quiet reading time:

And for those who can't read preschooler phonetics, it says "Mommy, I am so happy you stay home (hoem) everyday (evreday). Love (she drew a heart) Allison."

If that's not validation, I'm not sure what is.