I miss our friends!

We've lost some great friends the past couple weeks, and I'm seriously bummed. I feel such a loss, especially for my kids. Not only did we lose good friends, Addie and Max (okay, mostly Addie) are down 4 friends each! Trey and Jada, Matt and Wyatt, Cash and the twins, and Riley and Madison. Even Zander, Allissa and Brody will be gone all summer, and Madeline and Katherine will be going home again soon. Crap! And now that the weather is so great, it's the time that I like to get together with friends. Our house is so small that it's hard for me to enjoy extra bodies in my living room, so I rarely have people over. But we have a huge yard, and Addie loves to have friends come play with her. I shouldn't boob about this too much, we still have some great friends here, but even that doesn't make me feel any better about who we'll miss. I guess this post is just a tribute to all the great friends that we want to send our love out to, and we hope you all are able to find people in your new lives that love and appreciate you as much as we do (someone get me a tissue...)!

Okay, onto brighter subjects... Is there anyone else out there that loves yardwork as much as I do? Now, I'm not talking about the tedious weeding that seems to be like bailing water out of a leaky boat. That's not too fun, unless you get those really long roots. Or the ground is nice and soft so everything comes out with ease. I'm talking about watching the fruits of your labor (not literally, in my case, we only have flowers and a small veggie plot). I get so excited seeing green shoots coming out of the ground, and being to identify them and anticipate their arrival. And the sense of pride, knowing all our hard work is paying off with such rewards. Addie is such a great helper, she even has her own spade and gloves. She is also quick to remind me of all the flowers I mention to her -- showing me again and again that I need to constantly watch what comes out of my mouth. Last week, I was looking at our peonies and I mentioned to her, "these are getting ready to pop!" Ever since then, she talks about our popcorn flowers and to watch out for them popping! I love that funny little mind.

The best part of my week is when I get to mow our lawn! I know that sounds crazy, especially if you know our yard (we're on a half acre, and our house is so small that all that space is mostly yard). I love strapping on my mp3 player and rocking out for an hour of uninterrupted bliss. My poor neighbors are subjected to me singing along to my favorite songs, from Counting Crows to the Bee Gees, and Phish to Five for Fighting. I have no shame! I find it very theraputic... going back and forth, slowly but surely making sure all the grass gets my attention. I love it so much that I only let Corey mow the week after I delivered Max, but then took back the duty because I missed doing it. You should have seen me, 9 months pregnant, holding my belly on the bumpy parts of our lawn :) I'm sure our neighbors just loved watching that! I've even mowed with Max strapped to me (he loved it, it lulled him right to sleep)! My next door neighbor just laughed and laughed when she saw me!

I have to apologize about the lack of pictures on this post, our computer is being repaired at Best Buy. I dropped it off last Friday, and the pimply faced youth at the Geek Squad counter smiled at me when he said to expect it to take 2-3 weeks for repairs. Yikes! Do you know what that's like to a stay-at-home mom?!? Corey took pity on me and is bringing his work laptop home every night so I can at least check my email and do a little surfing and blogging. So, no pictures because no home computer. I'll try to make up for it in the coming posts.