Jim's TV debut

Here's a picture of Jim on TV! He's the 3rd person from the left in the gray shirt. He joined a committee that advises the city council on airport relations and they actually televise the meetings on public access. Pretty exciting and the beginning of a huge career, I'm guessing.

Didn't want to forget

Here are a few notes that I wrote on the family's blog that I wanted to make sure I remembered:

Jim deleted our history the other day and that is how I usually get to this website. I knew I was forgetting to check something for the last few days! Our garden is just so-so. I definitely got a little wound up about the few nice days we had here and there and put out seedling too early. The peas, potatoes, onions, and swiss chard look small, but healthy. Probably about right for this time of year and considering how long the coolness has stayed around. The rhubarb is HUGE and 2 of the 4 asparagus plants seem to have made it through the winter. Everything else, I put out way too early. I have a kabocha,a pumpkin, and a butternut squash and they all look very sad, but the rabbits aren't eating them, at least. Maybe it will warm up and give them a kick. The tomatoes are still there, but aren't growing too fast too soon, and the peppers were just tiny and sad so I bought one today from Gertens that is nice and big and beautiful. No sign yet of the beans, edemame, parsnips, or various flowers I planted as seeds last week. We also bought a dogwood shrub for the front corner yard. It has yellow leaves and the sticks should be red in the winter, so it will add some color out there. The lilac is about to bloom out there too. And I bought a few pansies for a hanging basket today too. Our daylilies, echinechea, peonies, and some other flowers I don't know the name of are pretty green, but no open blooms yet. The tulips just finished and only 2 of the daffodils (from Anthony's sale) actually bloomed (I think I really hurt them when I pulled back the mulch early and then tried to carefully replace it around them). So that's my garden story. It turned out to be long!

We had a fun day today. Jim and Laura woke up before me and had pancakes ready by the time I came down. Yum! Then we went on a hike at a local nature park and rented a canoe for a little while. Laura enjoyed both. We had a picnic lunch on the beach, even though it was way too cold for a swim. Jim cleaned out the garage while Laura and I napped and then we went to Gertens and Ruby Tuesdays for dinner. Its supposed to rain tomorrow, so I'm glad we got our outside fun taken care of today! We may go clothes shopping at the megamall tomorrow since we're all in need of a few things and it Memorial Day sale time. But it will be crazy, so we'll see.

Baby or blob? Look closely and you'll see the baby in there

Here's baby's first picture. He/she was really wiggly today, so I only got a few glimpses of fingers and toes and cute things like that. And its too early to see if its a girl or a boy (that's just a leg). But all seems to be going very well. Heartbeat is great and everything seems to be about the right size for the age. She declared my due date to be November 21st. Yay baby!

Our big news

OK, most of you probably already know our big news, but just to make it official I wanted to announce that we're expecting a new baby. We think the due date is November, but that will be confirmed by the ultrasound next week. So far, I'm feeling pretty good, just tired. And we have a few pictures of my tummy that you can ALREADY see (holy cow its too early for that!), but none that I'm willing to share on here. We'll try to get a better picture soon.
We're really excited about the new addition!

Garden

OK, no one is probably going to be very excited about these pictures of my garden, but I'm excited enough for all of us. Here's my first asparagus this year.

And these onions already look better than last year's!

Funny Bunny

A pan of uncooked beans turned out to be a great toy. Who knew?

Talk about bed head!

Lounging.

We put in a new clothesline last weekend (OK, Jim actually put it in). Perfect opportunity to immortalize Laura. And I love the new clothesline! Actually, I just love that its nice enough outside to actually use it!

L's haircut

This isn't technically Laura's first haircut, but its the first one we took pictures of. Notice the fancy scissors I used.

Picture Dump

April 26th is WAY too late for our patio to look like this. Notice that we were already ready for spring with the patio set taken out of the garage and the water barrel set up to collect the spring rains (not snow melt) We had actually already had dinner outside on 2 beautiful evenings before this picture was taken:

Grandma Ann recently came to visit us. We had a really great time. She and Laura seemed to really click and I loved having my own mom around. Here are two of the pictures. I didn't remember to take pictures near as often as I would have liked. The first one looks staged, but they really were having that much fun.

And the weather that week was really gorgeous. The snow in the top picture didn't come until after Mom's visit, thankfully.

Here's Laura going for a ride on her "Hummer" from Aunt Rosemary:

And Jim is starting Laura early on learning to wash the car. Sounds like a good plan to me! She actually did pretty well with the spray wand. Check out the cool gardening gloves from Aunt Kim.

Laura and Jim looking ready for a nap.

Oh, and the other day at a restaurant, Laura leaned on my shoulder and said "I love my mommy". What a great moment.

aack! she's growing up

Here's a picture from our nightly routine: bath, brushing teeth (the whole family), potty break (not necessarily the whole family), put on pajamas, say goodnight to Dad, snuggle in the chair with a stuffed animal and Grandma M's blanket, and then to bed. And the order of the blankets in bed is ALWAYS Grandma M's blanket, Uncle Bob's blanket, then Mrs. P's blanket.And we can finally fashion real ponytails that will stay in all day. The only problem is, they make her look so darn old!