My daughter is now Catholic

Well, according to the Monty Python song, she was a Catholic the moment she was conceived. But for offiical purposes, My baby girl was baptized yesterday. She was all sorts of fussy and crying while Father was talking, but once he poured the water on her head, she smiled at him and stopped being fussy.

We had a get together back at our house, with some cake and some finger sandwiches, which really was a nice end to the day.

Picutres will be up on the ususal spot when i have time to download them, probably the end of this week.

Branson Family Vacation

My Step-sisters were talking to my step-father about how they had fun in Branson the last time they went, and were talking of going again with Mom & George.
Mom, seeing an opportunity, thought we should bring all the children (hers and his) and have a bit of a family get together. If this pans out, this'll be the first time all of us have been in the same area since 1989.
To boot, i get to go to Branson and see the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, and take my daughter to Silver Dollar City, then let Sara and Nora go home and play at Celebration City. How cool is that?

One WOW and one Meh...

So we'll start with the Meh...

Sunday was predicting terrible storms, possible hail. So I avoided my every so happy chore of mowing the lawn and fertilized the ground, waiting for the rain.

and waiting....
and waiting....
and waiting....
etc.

It didn't show up. Apparently it wanted to go further North. So now I have fertilizer on the ground, whole damn bag full and no water. I'm hearing possible rain tonight/tomorrow, so I'll be lazy and wait till then before I go puling out the sprinklers.

Now for the WOW!

My baby giggled at me this weekend. Sara got to hear it earlier, but this weekend She giggled at me. It's not a full blown belly laugh yet, but it's enough to call all the family and brag... :)

Speaking of bragging. Sara's friend Audrie visited us last year with her then 6 month old baby girl Lily. She was rougly Nora's size and was beginning to crawl. This weekend I got to see Lily at a year old, Much larger and walking..... Holy Crap! when she get that big?

Post Update

Been a couple of weeks so I thought I'd write an update. The cold snap that put SNOW ON THE GROUND IN APRIL seems to be leaving us, as I got to mow the lawn yesterday. My daughter learned how to belly laugh for the first time on Sunday, although Sara got to hear way more of it than me (I'm not sure I got to hear any of it, but I'll hear more later).

That's about it. Short post, nothing more.

When you think your lawn should be bagged rather than mulched

Go with that instinct.

I did not this sunday, and it was an interesting experience. THe front lawn went mostly without incident. The backyard, well at it's largest part the mower sounded like an off-balance washing machine. I found a semi-temp solution to lift the mower up to spit ou tthe wet clumps of grass. This doubled as a good fertilizer for the areas of my lawn that did not survive last year's heat. I performed this task oh, bout 7-8 times before it stopped acting that way and I finished the lawn.

My step-father taught me to wash the mower off afterwards, because it keeps the mower clean and in better running condition. It also showed me the folly of not bagging. Around the interior of the mower, there was a good inch thick circle of hard packed grass clippings. This extended into the exit shoot where the bag normally plugs in. It took probably 15 minutes with a spray hose to get all that grass off the mower, and another 10 to get it out of the street and into the gutter.

Well, the important thing is the lawn's mowed.