Flower bed project - success?

The top three pics are from the day Gabriel and I got everything planted.  We planted Mexican sage, (the tall ones with the purple cone flower clusters), another type of sage (the tiny pink flowers), what I think is yet another type of sage with the big red cone flowers, and purple lantana.  The big plant in the middle is my spindly rose bush, made more spindly than ever by Tucker chewing on it when we first brought him home.  The whole reason I created this garden space is because I wanted to move it from out from under my Turk's Cap.  I'm proud that everything I actually purchased is a perennial.

The bottom two pics were taken last weekend.  Look how some things have grown!  I'm going to have to cut the Mexican sage back so the red ones will still still get plenty of sun.  I'm thinking of transplanting the lantana, which hasn't done much of anything yet, to another bed in the back corner of the yard.  I know if it gets established and comes back neck year it will need more room anyway.  

But I'm so happy with how it turned out.  And with all of the red, pink and purple flowers, we should get more butterflies and hummingbirds!  

More Elmo genius

I'm not as fond of Ricky Gervais as I used to be after his Golden Globe hosting stints.  But this is funny and the boys love it.

Scottish Festival!

As I've written before, we love all things Scottish.  We're not sure why, we just do.  We try to go the Scottish Festival every year, but in years past it's always been the first weekend in June, and really hot.  Imagine our excitement when we found out it was moved to the first weekend in May, which happens to be close to our anniversary.  And since we spent our honeymoon in Scotland, it seemed like the perfect weekend.   

There were fewer people this year, maybe because of having to compete with Mayfest.  But we loved watching The Highland Games (especially Gabriel), enjoyed the food and wonderful music, and good beers from across the pond.  Oh, and the people watching can't be beat.  OK, maybe the crazies that show up for Scarborough Fair are even more entertaining.  Maybe.  

 You can't believe how many people wear kilts...

... and various other strange getups.  A tail?  Really?

This was a new feature for kids this year.  These huge balls float in a shallow pool of water, and if the kid can stand up he will be "Running on Water" (the name of the activity).  They looked like giant hamsters to me.  But Gabriel all of a sudden wanted to try it.  Gabriel does not normally jump at things like this, and we were sort of, well, delighted that he wanted to try something new.

Here he is getting his bubble blown up around him.

And this is what he looked like for the entire 8-10 minutes he was on the water.  Not much Running on Water.  Just a whole bunch of Falling Down on Water.  We were so proud of him, and he had a blast doing it.  We won't go into how much his neck hurt the next day.  Oops - silly parents!  We were so delighted we didn't think about possible bodily injury.

This was one of the better costumes we saw on this day.  I told the guy so, and after we walked off Jav thought I probably insulted him for saying he had on a "costume". Honey, do you really think that HE thinks he's a pirate?  I don't think he was that much into character.

This little guy seems to have fun wherever he goes.

My handsome guys.  It was a really fun day, that I hope we'll get to do again next year.

A Day Out With Thomas!

Gabriel started bugging us to do this when the ads kept running in between his favorite PBS shows.  He even kept pointing out that if you put in the code KERA when purchasing the tickets, you get $3 off each one!  We looked into it and decided to do it.

I need to give kudos to the city of Grapevine for putting on such a well organized event.  They had volunteers everywhere to make our trip run smoothly, and there was never a question of where to go.

The train ride itself was only 25 minutes long.  That's one of the reasons we decided to go because we thought Joel could handle that length.

Conductor!

Both boys really loved the whole day.  I wish we could have bottled Joel's gigantic smile he had during the entire train trip.

Always fun to cap off the day with a bounce house visit.  We laughed when we saw this. Jav didn't know I was on the opposite side taking pictures with my phone, and I had no idea he was taking pics with our new camera.

Hooray for Thomas!