Workin' on his fitness

Chase spent some time in Charlotte with Grammie last week and she caught him doing push-ups. He's got a lot of crawling ahead of him and he apparently wants to be in shape to go as far as possible as quickly as possible when Jenny turns her head for two seconds. Cuz that's every new crawler's diabolical plan, right?


Jenny sent me the next picture. A dog toy and a brick fireplace - how could Chase resist something not meant for him sitting on something potentially dangerous?


We're excited to see Kevin, Jenny, and Chase in a few weeks when they visit over Memorial Day weekend. Guess I better give Tori the heads-up that we've got another crawler coming...

Flowerpalooza '09

As has been our tradition since 2005, my mom spent Mother's Day weekend doing yardwork with us. Some people buy their moms flowers for Mother's Day, I make my mom plant them so I can enjoy them for months to come.

My mom came up on Thursday so we could have a solid two days in the yard. We did some planning that night, then were up early (by my standards, not hers) Friday morning in order to do our shopping. We hit a local nursery, Home Depot, Jersey Mike's for lunch, then went to the Farmer's Market to pick up some sod and my favorite flower for landscaping - vinca.

The McHusband left work a little early on Friday so he was home when we finally got there and we got right to work. His first assignment was to tear out the willow tree in the front yard. It didn't take much to get it out of the ground. In fact, the McHusband literally tore it from the ground with his bare hands. Do I hear a Tim Taylor grunt right about now?

McHusband vs. The Willow Tree:


And the Cleveland pear tree we got to replace the willow, with my mom hard at work at the mailbox:


We got the mailbox done, the new tree in, and a lot of pinestraw up Friday afternoon and evening. I think I'm going to wait until my "after" pictures are more impressive to share what we did at the mailbox so just bear with me and wait about a month so you can oooh and aaah and really mean it.

I was mainly on planting detail on Saturday. Here I am planting my, oh, 467th vinca. At least, it felt like I was up to that many. (Note the position of my right leg.)


See that semi-circle of sod in the background? That was one of the landscape architect's ideas that the McHusband and I really liked and were excited to implement.

Okay, my leg. By the time you've planted 467 vincas with your leg out like that, it's had a LOT of sun exposure. How much? About this much:


Oops. I have a similar line on both my arms where the cuff of my gloves covered my wrists.

The McMom gave me a metal stand to be used with a variety of pots stacked on top of each other that you... You know what? Let me just show you.


Thanks, McMom!

A storm rolled in right as we were finishing up Saturday evening so we were rushing to put things away when the first drops started falling. We were already looking pretty bad before the rain, but we looked especially bad afterward and, of course, I had to document it.


I'm going to do one "after" picture because I'm really proud of all our hard work even though the areas aren't quite finished yet. We need to add mulch and obviously the flower areas will look much better once the flowers grow a little.


You can see our extra sod on both sides of the sidewalk. We took out the natural area along most of the right side and sodded it in and of course there's that arch of sod to the left. I put vinca in along the curves where the sidewalk and driveway meet and also put a section of vinca in on the left before the arch. Further ahead by other curve to the front door, there's more vinca on both sides of the sidewalk.

To give you a better idea of what to expect, here's my vinca at the mailbox at the old house:


I hope to have some really great before and after pictures to share with everyone in about a month.

If either of the dads feel like visiting for Father's Day, we promise to make you feel REAL special that weekend. Just ask Mom how we treated her.

On second thought, you better not.

Tornados

We had some pretty wild weather in the area yesterday, especially in the evening. There were actually tornado sightings, and we're under a Tornado Watch as I type this because we've got more storms today.

The McHusband's coworker took some pictures of the sky at his house in Cary last night.


He said he could see the clouds rotating. Scary!

Surprise! Part III: Monkey Business

My mom was thinking about hiring a stripper, but she went with a man in a monkey suit instead. You can see how she was torn between the two, right?

You know times are tough when your singing gorilla has to bring his daughter along (that's her in the pink to his left). No extra dinero for the babysitter, I guess.

See my hat? He did a trick where he had me tear up some tissue paper. Then he carefully unfolded it INTO A HAT. With a decorative flower and everything. I tell you, my mom made the right decision going with the monkey. But I do have to wonder what tricks a stripper might've had up his...er...removable sleeve?

The man in the monkey suit sang a version of "Hello Dolly" for me. It's not a song you hear very often, but I'll certainly have lots of memories to go along with it when I do hear it.

Boy, you just haven't lived until you've been serenaded by a guy dressed like a monkey. With his young daughter in the background.

"Thanks, Mom! Love ya, mean it!"

A before picture

Due to extreme peer pressure, I was forced to search my archives (a.k.a. Shutterfly) for a before picture of the front of the house. I hope this holds the lynch mob at bay, and I promise to never again post a results picture without also including a before picture.

Here's a before the before picture. Can you believe the sellers' realtor didn't suggest that they trim all the bushes in front of the house before putting the house on the market? We're not too surprised anymore; we've found that they weren't really the "do stuff around the house" type.

Blow-up-stuff-in-the-backyard types, sure, but not really DIYers.

Just the beginning

I planted two shrubs and tore out some more plants near the mailbox and on the other side of the driveway by the cul-de-sac today. My mom will be up next weekend for our traditional weekend-long Mother's Day Planting Marathon so I wanted to be ready.

These new shrubs are called sky pencil hollies and now that I have them in place, I swear those two spots were just begging for them.


The one on the right's a tad fuller and a little taller. My plan is to wait until next weekend to trim it because it's been through enough in the past couple of days - first a ride in the bed of the Sport Track then a rehoming. I'm not sure it's up for a major haircut just yet.


See those urns by the front door? They're actually from our wedding. I spray-painted them a flat black and my plan is to put some Barbecue Rosemary in them. It's a plant that NCSU actually developed and I think it'd be neat to have it at the house.

Did you notice the lone liriope (little green plant on the right) in the first picture? I tore out all but two of those along the sidewalk. They all had grass growing through them and there was no way to get rid of the grass and keep the liriope. I think the McHusband and I are going to go in a different direction with that area anyway.

This next picture's for my mom. She and I fell in love with this delicate-looking white annual called Diamond Frost that we found at a local nursery. I paid waaaaay too much for one last summer and I was so happy to find it at another nursery for less than half as much. Needless to say, I stocked up.


The plants in front of the diamond frost are perennials called phlox and they're going to be purple. I think they're going to go in front of the sky pencil hollies, but we'll see what my mom and I come up with next weekend.

Keep your friends close...

...and your enemies closer.


I'm pretty sure that's what Emma was doing in these pictures.



Tucker's response? "Whut?"