Tumbling in a bus

This weekend was my niece Sydney's 4th birthday. 



Isn't she cute?  For the occasion, Steve and I, along with his mom, drove down to Corpus Christi so we could attend her birthday party.  When we got there Friday, as usual, the girls (Sydney has an older sister named Emily) were acting very shy and did not speak to us much.  I hate that we don't see them much because it always takes a day or so for them to open up to us.  Saturday, while we were preparing the house for the party they came around.  Sydney was really excited about her party and kept asking me when the Tumblebus would get there.  I kept asking the girls what the Tumblebus was because I could not fathom what it could possibly be.  I couldn't imagine a school bus holding gymnastic equipment and have enough room for kids to use the equipment.  A few kids started showing up and finally the bus arrived.  The party was on.  The kids ran inside and I followed so I could check this thing out.  Turns out it is perfect for kids 3-6 years old.  They started on the right hand side of the bus.  They would flip on the rings then run to the wall and climb up it.  On the other side of the wall was a trampoline for them to jump on then the would cross to the left side of the bus where they would swing from bar to bar on the monkey bars and then slide down the slide.  Once they did the slide they had their choice of hopscotch or a balance beam and then it would start all over again.   I was amazed.

The party lasted 2 hours but the bus was only there for an hour.  The people that owned it live across the street from my sister-in-law and said that once they were down with their other party they would bring it back and park it in their driveway.  Once it was back our nieces and the neighborhood kids played in that thing until the sun went down.  Sydney didn't even care about any of her presents!  That night we just hung out.

 

The next morning the girls were a little cranky from having such an eventful day Saturday so it was back to not really talking to us.  As we were leaving we were trying to get hugs from them.  Emily hugged us without much of a fight but Syd wasn't giving Steve or his mom one for anything.  When I walked over to where she lying on the couch and bent down she reached up and grabbed me around the neck and squeezed.  That's my girl!!  She totally made my weekend with that hug.

Trying it out

I am trying out the new feature on Blogger that lets you e-mail posts to your blog. Forgive me if it comes out weird. Two things that I think will be good about this feature:

1. When I am posting at work it will look like I am actually working
2. Spell check will always be on

So another birthday has come and gone. Nothing major happened but I think a good time was had by all. Tuesday night Steph, Jarrod, Carrie, and Matt came to the house for some BBQ. We made fajitas and sausage. It was delicious! Steph provided the cake - chocolate cake with cookies and cream icing with vanilla ice cream on the side. YU-UM!!! Wednesday night my PPD friends treated me to happy hour at Baby A's. I was pretty toasty by the end of the night and woke up Thursday (my actual birthday) to my first hang over ever, yes I am that lame. It was my birthday present to myself. I pretty much felt like I was going to vomit all day and greasy pizza at lunch didn't help. Steve had made us reservations at III Forks but we had to cancel because there was no way I was going to be able to eat. Instead, we went shopping for our niece's birthday present.

This weekend we are headed to Corpus for Sydney's birthday party. She is turning 4 and they have rented a gymnastics bus. I don't really know what it is but she and her sister are waaaaay excited about it. I'll try to get some good pictures to show y'all. Hope everyone else has a fabulous weekend!

Update: This worked but it had the confidentiality statement at the bottom that goes with all of my e-mails so I had delete the post and re-post it.

We finally finished the yard! Yay!!

Friday I went to Lowes and got the rest of the flowers and got some for the backyard too. A couple of days ago Elaine would not stop barking no matter how much Steve told her to stop. He gave up and brought her inside and put her in her kennel. The next morning when he let her and Gizmo out he found the hibiscus plant that I had gotten for the deck had been knocked over and eaten. We are thinking that Elaine was barking at some critter and keeping it off the deck. When he brought her inside, the animal must have gotten on the deck and eaten my plant. I was really upset because 1) it was kinda expensive and 2) it had 5 blooms on it that were about to come out. I bought a huge terra cotta pot to put it in so that it can’t be knocked over anymore and that will hopefully keep this from happening again. After repotting the hibiscus, I planted a rose bush next to the deck and a jasmine bush in the back corner of the yard. I am super excited about the jasmine. Once it blooms it should make the backyard smell really nice! After working on the backyard I moved to the front. I only got through planting the geraniums before the sun went down.

Saturday morning Steve and I got up early and got back on it. I finished planting the rest of the begonias, spread the left over dirt and then spread the mulch. Steve collected a bunch of stones while the house was being built. We used them as decorations in the flower bed. After we were done it seemed like something was missing; we decided that a birdbath would look good and some solar lawn lights. Off to Wal-mart, Lowes and Home Depot again! We got the birdbath from Home Depot and just one light from Wal-mart so we could see how it looked before we decided on them. Here is finished product:



The begonias are the ones in the front with no flowers. We had to prune them right away because they were wilting from sitting in the garage for so long before being planted. They should come back pretty quickly though. Other than that I am really happy with the finished product and so long as everything lives it was totally worth all the work!

Owning a home is hard

I have been working in the yard for the past 3 days and am so tired! We are re-doing the landscaping out front. It is times like these that I think maybe our apartment wasn't so bad after all.

Friday I had the afternoon off so I decided that I would get a jump start on things and get all of the flowers. I went to Lowes and got Knock-Out Rose bushes and Begonias in various shades of pink along with some lawn edging to keep the grass from growing into the flowerbed. As I was looking around I saw that the Hibiscus trees were on sale so I got one of those for the deck. I also found some window boxes that could be hung on the railing of the deck so I got those and some Annuals (Feather is what their tag said) in a bunch of different colors to go in the boxes. I was so excited about the plants for the deck that I started working on those as soon as I got home. While I was working I realized that I didn’t have enough potting soil so I ran up to Home Depot and got some more. While I was there I found some super cute pillows too. The deck is really starting to look fun!





Saturday we woke up later than we wanted to so we tired to hurry through the last few errands we need to run before getting to work. We let the grass grow way too far into the flowerbed that the builders created so we went bought an extension to Steve's weedeater that would make it a tiller and then went to Geo Growers for some organic soil. We got home around noon and got busy. First we pulled some bushes from the flowerbed that the builder put in. We decided to pull the ugly bushes that were around our utility box and put these ones in. Then, while Steve was tilling the flowerbed I was moving some Lillies that have really sprouted away to each side of the garage. When I first planted them, there were only 3 flowers so I put them on the left side of the garage; now I have over 10 so I moved some to the right side of the garage to even things out. As Steve was finishing his first pass of tilling, the tiller stopped working. He had hit a piece of brick buried in the soil and it had logged itself in-between the blades and we think that caused the gears to burn out. Ugh! We had to pull the rest of the grass by hand. This took the rest of the day. Around 6 we started getting really tired so we planted the rose bushes because they seemed to be drooping, cleaned up all of our tools and called it a day.

Sunday morning we got up at 8 and head back outside. It was freezing!!! I continued to pull grass while Steve started digging the trench for the lawn edging. At about 10 I was an icicle so I came inside and made us breakfast. Steve finished the edging and then came in as well. After breakfast we read the paper and got ready for Shawna and Oliver’s wedding reception. It was so pretty! It was exactly what I pictured an afternoon wedding to look like. After the wedding we headed back to Home Depot for more lawn edging and it was back to work for us. As I was planting the begonias I realized that we had made the new flowerbed bigger than the old one and needed more flowers. I decided to line the front of the flowerbed with them and then find something else to put between them and the rose bushes. I got through almost all of them before it got dark.

Last night I went out to finish the begonias up but it was windy and cold again so I didn’t. Hopefully tonight the weather will be nicer so I can finish up. Friday I am going to buy geraniums to fill in the rest of the flowerbed. I am not going to take pictures until we are done so keep your fingers crossed that it will be Friday!