Between myself and Brian, I can honestly say that we have a handful of super useful skills. Among them are Brian’s ability to cook like a gourmet chef and my ability to sew a straight line (super handy if you need a square or other basic shape!). Landscaping, however, is not one of our strong suits! We have planted, dug up and re-planted something, somewhere every spring. Our front bed is, again, practically empty after a bush planting gone bad. We have finally decided to purchase a landscaping plan (soon…I hope).

Included in one of our many attempts was a smattering of tulips. When they came in one spring, we decided they were too sparse and needed better grouping. In the backyard, we planted some around baby lilac bushes that are now down to the ground and completely cover the flowers anyway. When we dug up the errant flowers, we missed a bunch and ignored a bunch (and then never replanted the old bulbs anyway). Now we have 20-some tulips randomly coming up in all different areas of the yard which is, again, a testament to our serious lack of vision on the landscaping front. Last week, I let Aiden use our (surprisingly sharp!) gardening scissors to help me cut the flowers that had bloomed. He was super excited to be given such awesome cutting power. Together, we collected enough to make a cute little arrangement in a mason jar. Another handful of flowers bloomed just the other day. Aiden is already asking when he can cut them down :)

In other news, it was so warm a few days this week that we actually broke out the water toys. Don’t be fooled though. The shot below was taken near the end of the day, when shadows had eclipsed the back yard and it was not, by normal people standards, warm enough to be 1/2 naked running through water. Tell that to these two who begged and begged to play just a little bit longer…

Brady, my only sane child, asked to be brought in because, “I cold”. Here he is, wrapped in a towel, watching our new family favorite show, “zoomy zoomy” (It’s really called Umi Zoomi and it’s a super cute show about math skills, counting, shapes and patterns.)  

I meant to post this picture a couple weeks ago when all the boys in the house, included Brian, got haircuts. They both looked so cute with fresh cuts, I had to take a picture! Little and big BMH: