This weekend we committed ourselves to working in the yard - which is not something we normally do and, unfortunately, it's starting to show. We got up early, threw on clothes and pinned up Emily's morning fro, and headed off to Panera for breakfast - one of our favorites this side of Joseph's in Charleston. After a delicious bagel and several scorching cups of coffee, we cruised to Lowe's to pick up some gardening essentials like Dora work gloves and knee pads, Dora trowels and cultivators, Dora purple plastic buckets, and any number of pink and purple bedding plants. Emily is so interested in working in the yard that we're hopeful she will take over this task for us as she gets bigger. After we got home, Donald headed out to pull up some unfortunately placed azaleas while Emily and I stayed inside to pot some new houseplants. We pulled the old plant out of my favorite white elephant planter (which I discovered later was a gift to my Mom from my Dad on the day I was born - how do I not know these things?) and then we replanted it with a beautiful pink plant that Emily picked out. We also planted some cuttings of the old plant in two smaller pots. Emily did a great job shoveling in the potting soil and made sure that the plants were well watered when we finished. Then she decided that the plants needed names. She named the smaller ones Mary and the Little Lamb and I chose Bertha for the elephant. We also scrapbooked some little name tags for the plants so that any visitors would also know their names - her idea, seriously. She is such a funny thing! After that it was time for a good, long rollup. We did outside gardening in the evening after waking up. She helped me trim back the marauding border grass that's threatening to take over our yard. You can tell that yard work is not our priority by the tools we used to do the job - I couldn't locate my little grass snippers, so Emily and I attacked the grass with her little kid scissors. Don't laugh - it worked and it looks much better! Don't you just love springtime?
Following in a grand family tradition, Abby failed her school vision test and had to go to the optometrist for an official visit. The verdict: nearsightedness, with a prescription for glasses. Fortunately for all of us, Abby was really excited about getting classes - and so was Emily. She told me that she hopes that she'll get glasses one day, too. I told her not to worry because if genetics are any indication, she'll probably be needing glasses some time next week. Abby came by to model her two new pairs of specs this week and Emily was so entranced that she put on glasses of her own (purple, of course - a Valentine's present from Mim) to follow Abby around the house. I found them looking at the laptop together and noticed Emily's getup just in time to snap a picture. And as a sidenote - Abby is lucky because glasses are WAY cooler than they were when I was her age. I remember one disastrous pair of glasses that had orange tinted lenses. Why would we choose those? It also didn't help that one of the lenses was so thick that it enabled me to see back in time. Abby just looks like a trendy version of Velma from Scooby Doo. That's a compliment, by the way.
