Happy Mother's Day!

We enjoyed a lovely Mother's Day, with shrimp and vegetable kabobs on the grill. We took a walk in the woods. Katie showed off her confident (no-training-wheels) bike riding! It was a lovely day!

Waterfall!

I wonder if this new development will affect our property value. :-) It rained all night and it's still raining! We may soon be able to describe our property as riverfront... (Just kidding!) Well, while the "Rain, rain, rain comes down, down, down..." we will just enjoy the green, green, green of our grass and trees!

Belated news on the Main Event and other stuff...

For Katie's birthday we celebrated "Princess-style" and even Grandpa and Grandma got in on the action and the dressing up! We had a royal ball, royal scavenger hunt and royal banquet. (I think the thing with princess-thinking is that EVERYTHING has to be royal!) All the princesses were given tiaras upon entering the castle! Most of the food was pink! Katie told me today that she liked the scavenger hunt from her birthday--for all the moms out there you know how great it is that after one month she even remembers that she had a special birthday party!

This week I thought it would be fun to tackle an outdoor project that has been on the list since Bret and I had our brainstorming session in January. It seemed manageable to accomplish re-staining the deck in a couple of days. I have heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. This week I think it's possible that I meet this definition! (Every time we do a new home improvement project, its taken more time than expected...why I thought this time would be different!) Well, anyway, I started with pressure washing on Monday. On Sunday afternoon, one week later, Bret and I were putting the finishing touches of the second coat of stain! The project is now done--except I still have to put everything back on the deck that we keep there. I'll take care of that tomorrow. I think we're done with projects for a while!!!

Breaking News!

Breaking news...A young scientist discovers a new and exciting pastime for a special household pet. Base-jumping/sky-diving for hamsters is suddenly all the rage! Every pet hamster in the world will be vying for the thrill of trying this spectacular new sport...Or maybe NOT! :-) The scientist still has to work out a few kinks. But he is definitely on to something!

***No Hamsters were harmed during this experiment***

The "hamster" was sewn and stuffed with beans, his name is Brownie. Brownie held up very well considering that he withstood repeated drops from a height of 195" and 135" while helping us test several different diameter parachutes. August learned that a parachute had to be 33 inches in diameter to save a hamster at that height!

This was primarily a father/son experiment, but I photographed the event and helped August work the stopwatch and record the data. He won a first place ribbon at the school science fair! Yay!