May, So Far

The rose bushes in front of our house are blooming again. We can take absolutely no credit here - they are part of the pre-installed shrubbery and are maintained by all the busy bee law mower and landscaping people. In fact, every March these guys come through with one of those chain-saw-style pruners and whack this huge rose bush practically to the ground, and ever year it responds with even more vigorous growth and blooms. All. Summer. Long. So much for a delicate touch when pruning roses.

Here's a picture from our pool opening last weekend. This started out as a hugely cranky morning for Amy and me. Most of the crank came from spending a very hot and sticky Sunday morning at Walmart with everyone else in town - buying vegetable plants, and this pool, only to get out to the car and realize that the Subaru was not going to be quite as accommodating of awkward cargo as the Explorer is and consequently driving home not being able to see out my rear window.

THEN thinking it would be a great idea to get all my plants to the backyard in one trip by loading them in the pool. Then having Amy do nothing but get in my way and make the walk around the house the most sweaty, annoying, pool-bending 50 yards I have ever experienced. This is the sort of thing that happens when Don works on the weekend. Anyway, we recovered, and later in the afternoon Amy had a lot of fun scooping things out of the new pool with her butterfly net. Day salvaged.

Last week Amy had her first "real" haircut at the salon. She's had little trims before, on her bangs and to even up some ends, but she's never had enough length to really get a style going. Above is a before picture - if I could get her to keep pigtails or barrettes in it wouldn't matter so much, but as much as she likes wearing "pony hair" she can't resist pulling them out inside of an hour.

So I made her her very own appointment where I get my hair cut and she made it through the experience without any meltdowns. The lollipop won her over from the beginning. She got some better bangs, and a nice amount off the back so now she has less of the "baby hair" look and a little more going-on-3-year-old style. Oh, and we capped off that experience with a special mother-daughter lunch at Panera Bread. She and I can pretty much have a real conversation over a meal now, and being out at a restaurant with her, just chatting over lunch was a huge flash into the future and how much more fun such outings are going to be with every little bit that she grows up.

And what general update would be complete without a shot of a cat in the middle of something?

Still to come, some pictures of this quilt, all finished at last. In the meantime I've got to put on my bookkeeper hat for a bit, then get to bed at a decent hour. Happy Month of May!