Could it be........SPRING???

Maybe, just maybe...

When I walked out the door to take the boys to school this morning, I was greeted with this.

Within just a few hours, they had morphed into this.

At that point, I knew that it was time to get outside and start working on that flowerbed. However, because Mother Nature is evil, I knew that I couldn't do too much - because you know, it's supposed to freeze again.

Anyway, I started to clean up the area between the porch and the garage, dug the "gate" out from under the leaves and repaired that and rehung it, cleaned out the gutters (all 2 of them), put up a little trellis for this really annoying ivy-vine-thing-that-I-can't-seem-to-kill and did a little bit of weeding.

The rest of it can wait until after this next round of freezing weather - hopefully the leaves and crap around the rest of the tulips will keep them from freezing too much - but with my luck I'm sure that I've seen the last of the tulips in this flowerbed this year.

As for the backyard....that looks more and more ghetto every time I go back there...the naked ladies look good. I don't think they bloomed last year, so I'll be anxious to see what happens with them this year. I want to mark where they are since they'll totally disappear again - and I want to take them with us when we move.

And just in case you think I'm kidding about the weather around here....seriously, it's just about midnight right now. And it's 66 degrees outside. Tomorrow night at this time, it'll be 31 degrees.

So I got this new camera....

In case you missed it, I suffered the devastating loss of my new-to-me camera about a month or so ago. It got *ahem* dropped onto the hardwood floor, and although it still sort of worked, it wouldn't focus right and it was really having attitude issues.

So I went shopping the other night. Amazon is now my friend - especially since they gave me a nice little credit limit and I can comparison shop until my heart is content while drinking wine in my jammies ......

....anyway.....

I found what would basically be considered an upgrade to my broken camera. Don't get me wrong - I loved that camera. But, if I had to replace it, I might as well go a little better, right? I went one step up on it and found a refurbished one (with a factory warranty) for about half price, so I ordered it.

Within 3 hours, I had the email that it had already been shipped (this was all on Monday night, by the way). It arrived this morning. And I swear that I didn't tackle the mailman as he approached - although I might have startled him as I ran out the front door in all of my early morning lack-of-sleep-induced-glory.

And whaddya know? The battery was fully charged when I took it out of the box. So I had fun with it.

All. day. long.

Enjoy.

It's here! It's here! I must tear into the package immediately,
even before making my bed!!!

Could it be...... spring???
Aunt Doris's peonies say so.

Heading to a track meet.

Things are starting to turn green - luckily yesterday's snow
went away.

The boys had a little bit of room to play during the
"boring" track meet.

She amazes me. 4th place in high jump this time.

That's my girl.

Look at her go!

Checking out the track meet from above?

Heading home.

So long, spring break.

It's kind of funny. I had this big, long, heavy, deep post started tonight. I have a lot of stuff going through my mind right now, and I know that I need to get it out of there before I go crazy. But I just couldn't get it out in a way that made any sense at all. So I deleted it.

And instead, you get pictures of snow. 

This is what we had for the kids' official last day of Spring Break. It wasn't much - maybe a couple of inches - but it was enough to just totally annoy me, especially considering that the kids wore shorts to school on the last day BEFORE Spring Break.

Daniel and I went out to play in it after church, and I was able to teach him the fine art of building a snowman. He thought that it was pretty cool, but after posing for a couple of pictures he decided that he was done and it was time to go inside. 

For the record, he did have gloves on while we were playing. But he wanted to take them off for the picture.

Hey, those look familiar...

The snow is already pretty much gone from the yard. The snowman has already fallen over and started to melt so while waking up to this crap was annoying, at least it was short lived.

And the rest of the week doesn't look that bad...

Maybe I'll be able to get the rest of the garbage out of my head in the next couple of days. We'll just have to wait and see on that one.

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While you're here, make sure you read this one and share it everywhere you can. It's way more important than anything else that I've written. Seriously.

Spring has sprung....already?

It seems a little early to be getting out to do yardwork, but honestly, I'm not complaining.

The peonies are starting to poke through the dirt, which makes me extremely happy. Some of these initially came from my aunt's house, and were transplanted to my parents' house, and then were transported from Pennsylvania to Kansas and were transplanted at my old house, and then were transplanted to this house. They have a lot of miles on them, and I don't want to lose them. My aunt died in 2000, so even if I kill off every other plant that I own (highly likely), I don't want to kill the peonies. Aunt Doris would probably roll over in her grave and pop me upside the head if I killed them - I'm not taking any chances. Just sayin'.

OK, yeah, they're pretty and all that. But do they really have to grow everywhere? Seriously - they're in the middle of the yard. Not in the flowerbed. I've tried to dig them up and they're impossible to get rid of - trust me, I've tried. I don't even really like them in the flowerbed because they just seem to take over everything. If they'd just stay in one happy little patch, they wouldn't annoy me so much.

And of course, what would springtime be without these? Unlike most people, I really don't mind them. I think it's because our yard was full of dandelions when I was growing up, and seeing them just reminds me of a time when things were so much simpler than they are now.

But anyway, I got out there today and just started clearing out the flowerbeds. They were full of leaves and garbage and dead sticks and whatnot. I didn't really weed, except for the one bed of irises, which had been totally overtaken by some horrendous weed - but luckily it was pretty easy to pull. I didn't do a stellar job on any of it - just basically enough to make a difference and to make it look a little less ugly.

So, it looks better out there. Tomorrow's mission is going to be to bag up the 87 bags' worth of leaves in the area where our picnic table is and get those out to the landfill - that's going to be a fun, dirty, nasty, itchy job. But, for the most part, once it's done, it's done. Any leftovers after tomorrow can get raked out into the yard and chopped up with the mower when it's finally time to bust that bad boy out of the garage. That's assuming that we actually get rain this year - I think I mowed a grand total of 3 times last year. Maybe 4.

I did actually finally bust out the sewing machine tonight too and got some work done on a couple of projects. I have way too many projects and ideas either in my head, started, or almost finished, and I just need to get to work on all of them and get them done, one way or another.

I also have a couple of parts that I need to get for the van to fix a couple of annoying things - started getting prices on those today, but found out that I can get the one online for about half of the price of the place here in town - so next time I get money I get to do that. Woohoo.

I'll just keep making lists and working on them in my spare time. Ha. Glad I got so much sleep over the past few days!