Welcome to the jungle!!

This is what my house looked like after 4 weeks of weed growth in my flower beds. The weeds to the left of the door were taller than me! There was some kind of ivy (that I didn't plant) coming up onto the porch. There were also weeds coming up through the stairs. Crazy! A wonderful man from our church, Derrick, came with his daughter, Marie, to mow and weed eat while I was gone, but they couldn't get in the back yard to cut that heap of a mess; I ended up paying someone to come over and tackle that! Thank you thank you to Derrick and Marie even though you broke one of my horribly expensive solar lights, Marie!!! HA! (They came in a pkg of 6 for $20 or something silly like that.) No, I really do appreciate what both of you did, thank you! And thanks to Kim, Derrick's wife, for taking care of our pitiful dogs for a whole month. I really appreciate it. I will be posting "after" pictures tomorrow, so S. doesn't think that I haven't done anything with this mess. By the way...we are up for neighbor of the year. We are in the top 5 for barking dogs in the middle of the night and the highest growth in the yard!

A couple of the canna lilies pictured above were only roots when I planted them...and none were taller than 12" before I left! When I saw them in the dark, I thought they were trees! They are going on the side of the house this fall. I didn't know they got that tall. Ms. Kathy, the garden stone you gave us is in the middle of all of them! Kinda pointless right now!

This picture doesn't look too horrible if you don't know how my flower bed started out.

This sunflower was only about two inches tall before I left and didn't have a bloom, so there is beauty in all of this! :)

This is the back yard about half complete. They went at it with TWO riding mowers at once! Mrs. Virginia ran over the monster metal tie down that we have for the dogs and Mr. Carl ran over a dog rope. My dad said that I was supposed to pick all of that up before they started....they are lucky I found the dogs to bring them in!!

This one one of the areas that was a little shorter than the rest! There were times when I couldn't see the front of the mower!

Hangin' out in Mimi's kitchen

Mom had a couple of things to do and thought it would be convenient to put A. in a box of clothes. She loved it...why spend money on toys?!

Mom...it's too small!

I found an outfit of mine in mom and dad's garage. Mom said that I could take it and A.could wear it.....I don't know if she'll let me put her in it again! She's a little too tall for it; my sister had to kinda shake her down into it.

"You can't be serious. You really are going to take my picture in this?"

Might as well show a little love to the camera!

Church in the Park

We went to the Sweet Pea Festival in Bozeman this year. Every Sunday of the Festival they have church in the park. This is A. listening to the band do a sound check.

Yum! Rice cereal....maybe not.

I was hoping that S. would be able to feed A. her first bowl of rice cereal. We didn't get around to feeding her before we both left. Mom and I thought we would try to give her some the other day. With S.'s hypochondria, I'm thinking it's a good idea that he not give it to her. I'm sure he would think just like I did: something is not right! I guess it takes babies a little while to get used to the texture of something other than milk. She gagged quite a bit and even threw up a little. icky!

Alright!

Mimi, what on Earth is this?

Umm...no, thanks.

Sorry, maybe you didn't hear me...I said, "no, thank you."

Really, stop!

Montana Pictures

Must have a floatation device on all the kiddos!

Playing at the park.

Sleeping at the park.

Spending time with auntie Kisti at mom and dad's anniversary/birthday party.

Sitting pretty at Mimi's house.

Out at the lake

Wearing uncle Lonny's hat

Getting ready for a dip in the swimming pool with the cousins.

One splash to the face and she was over the pool.

Happy Anniversary/4th of July!

S. and my 2nd wedding anniversary was on the 2nd of this month. S. planned a trip down to C*hattanooga for the weekend. We had a great time and all three of us are exhausted! We stayed in a hotel that said on their website that they were walking distance to everything downtown. Well....that just depends on how much you would like to walk.

Out on the pier overlooking the Tenn. River

All smiles for the walk back to the hotel, just because her feet never touched the ground!

Sucking on a lemon at dinner, didn't even phase her...she liked it!

The first night we were there we walked down to get some pizza and walked along the river and out on the pier. And got icecream at ColdStone! yummy! We walked back to the hotel and on the way they had "Pop in the Park." There was a band of sorts, but we couldn't really figure out what they were doing. Everyone had been drinking so they thought it was great, but S. and I didn't see the excitement in it and went on our way. When we got back to the hotel, I put the baby to sleep and went down to the lounge and relaxed listening to a live jazz band. So nice!









The next day we hit the ground running! We went to breakfast and checked out of our room. We headed down to the T*ennessee A*quarium. I really enjoyed it! We didn't get but one picture there because the batteries had died, so we got some at the end and went back in quickly to snap a picture of the baby and me. Before she fell asleep and before we bought batteries, she really liked looking at the penguins. They had a butterfly exhibit. I'm not sure what I liked more, all of the flowers or some of the crazy looking butterflies. We looked at so many fish and sea life that S. just had to go to L*ong J*ohn S*ilvers for lunch. Then we remembered why we never eat there!! We both had a little bit of a belly ache when we finally arrived at R*ock C*ity!! No matter what happened, I was told that I could not stop to help anyone, we were going in! (The story behind that is another post in itself!) We weren't sure what to make of all the little gnomes that they had...they were kinda creapy, but the rest of it was gorgeous. I'm sure my mother would have had a panic attack walking through some of the tight spaces we went through. ;) It was beautiful being able to look off of L*ookout M*ountain. They had a waterfall and all sort of flowers throughout. After finally seeing R*ock C*ity, we went on to see where the battle for C*hattanooga had taken place. It was neat to see where the confederate and union soldiers took one another on. S. said that fighting on the side of that mountain would have been rough and he would have said he would cover his buddies from where he was at! They made ladders out of materials that they had right there to get up some pretty tough spots. They had men out there that were dressed in all of the stuff the guys wore back then...many layers! Yuck! Too hot for me! After seeing that, S. dragged me onto the incline. Didn't like it at all! I survived though. I didn't like the way down the most and S. didn't like the way up, but now we can say we did it! After the incline we were going to hit R*uby F*alls, but we overheard someone at the incline say that they had to stop doing tours....the elevator broke!! AAAHHH!! I'm so glad we didn't go there first thing. I have no idea what I would have done being stuck down in those caves and really no idea had we been the people on the elevator that they had to tell it was broken!!! S. says we'll go back some other time and see R*uby F*alls, however, I'm not sure I'll go with him on the elevator! After all of that excitement, we went back into town, had dinner and headed for home. It was a great trip and it has also been nice to do nothing today and just recover from a great trip.





Oh, I almost forgot. The pink bag! S. had to end up wearing it most of the time, because I had sixteen pounds of baby hanging from my front. He kept asking why I didn't get a more neutral color. I kept telling him the whole weekend, that no one even noticed. Then there was a guy standing behind us that said something about our little "boy" and his wife was quick to tell him she was a girl. She said, "don't you see the pink bag?" To which he replied, "I just thought that was his (S.'s), I wasn't gonna say anything." S. turns to me, "SEE, I told you!!" Oops! :)

See my curls?

This isn't the greatest of pictures, there is a little patch of curls right on the top of her head. (and I thought I'd share!)

Daddy Snappin' Pictures