Busy Times!

We had a busy weekend this past weekend which has turned into a busy week!

Scott and I met up after work on Friday and drove to Dallas to celebrate my sister's birthday, which is June 25 and Father's Day (that's this Sunday for you slackers out there who forgot!). It was fun, but we got home really late. You can see our pictures above.

Saturday Scott and I got up and went to the Growers' Outlet up the street from us where they have really good deals on plants. Not everything does well that I have bought from there, but I have learned how to recognize healthy plants, for the most part. It is a long drive for most people, but if you ever want to do a lot of planting and you are willing to go and buy what looks healthy instead of exactly what you want, this is worth the drive. For example, we purchased 30 hostas and 4 calla lilies for $40. Wow. That's good. I paid over $5 a bulb for some calla lily bulbs 2 years ago at Pike and hostas are about $2.50 for the size we got at Home Depot (maybe more). Last year, Scott and I edged our garden and the sides of our house with scalloped edging bricks. So, this year I thought it would make our house look more desirable if I planted something in our front garden and along the sides of the house. You know that rule that you always end up buying twice as much as you planned? Well, it usually ends up that we need three times as much as we planned. We ended up going back twice for more garden soil. The dirt in our yard is awful, so we had to put a few inches along the sides of the house, and while we worked really hard last summer and the summer before to get our front garden dirt in good shape, I wanted to accent the flowers (we bought lantana for this spot) by mounding the dirt up in the center. SO, we ended up buying about 32 bags of dirt! Scott put most of the dirt out for me. I carried about 3 bags over to the side of the house and realized that I was just not cut out for that king of work! Those things weigh 40 pounds, and they were all wet! So, I planted and Scott moved dirt and we measured to get the hostas evenly spread apart. I did not finish planting on Saturday, but I did one whole side of the house. This past weekend, Scott moved about a half of a ton of dirt twice! The things he'll do for me! (sigh) I took pictures of our work in process. You can see that I got hostas planted all up one side of the house on Saturday (top picture in this section). Then, on Sunday, we got all the dirt piled up like I wanted it (next picture). Then, I just took pictures of all the plants I still had left to plant. Just in case you are wondering the plants with the little yellow flowers in the 3rd picture down in this section are Lantana (they come in many colors). I know that Judy Stringer used to plant these at their old house. I wonder if she still plants them at their new house. I have never been able to grow any as big as hers were. Then, the last picture is of the leftover hostas for the other side of the house and the calla lilies. I never knew they came in multiple colors until my neighbor Nan got some a couple of years ago. Enough about our dirt.

Scott and I had a fun night on Saturday, but we didn't spend it together! Scott and some of the other guys went to a bachelor party for Johnny Oxford. They had a lot of fun! Josh cooked a great meal for them at his house and then they all went to Dave & Busters and played pool and some other game I can't remember the name of. I went out with Lauren, Shana, and Maggie to celebrate Lauren's birthday. It was a lot of fun. We went to eat at this Mexican restaurant with the winnings from the guys' last trivia night (they won house cash), then we went back to Lauren's house and watched Dream Girls. That movie is definitely a chick flick. I was glad that I got to watch it with them because otherwise I don't think that I would have ever seen it. We had a good time. I took some pictures to commemorate the night. The last one is of mine and Shana's toes. We wanted to show how good they still look after several weeks. The sad part is that the day after we went, Lauren's french manicure was already chipped! So sad.

Sunday was a really good day as well. The message was really good. Pastor Lee has started a new sermon series called "Saved by Grace" and it is really interesting. I think that I am going to learn a lot from this series. After church, we all headed over to Roger's Bridge Park for a picnic. It was a lot of fun to fellowship with everyone outside of church. I took a bunch of pictures and they are on the slide show up on the left at the top of the blog.

I have been planting this week too. Monday I planted all but 6 of my 18 Lantana in the front of the garden, as well as 10 lily bulbs that I had purchased back in the spring and never planted. I do not know if they will grow this year if ever. I may have waited too long to plant them. The bulbs didn't look happy. Does anyone know anything about bulbs and how long they can stay in that plastic bag you buy them in? I also planted the 4 calla lilies. They like to be in wet areas and our front gardens are DEFINITELY wet! I got all the rest of the plants I wanted to plant layed out like I wanted them on the other side of the house, but didn't plant them. It had been threatening to rain all night, so I decided it wasn't going to rain. I got out the hose and watered all the stuff I just planted...I know, I am so rebellious. Then, I went inside and 5 minutes later is was pouring! Oh well. Tonight I tried to do some planting again and got half way down the side of the house and it started raining again. Such is life. I am extremely thankful for the rain. Scott checked our rain gauge and we had gotten almost an inch of rain! Yay!

I also talked to Meme this week. I knew that she hadn't really gotten much better since the day I went to see her before our trip from my sister. I feel bad for her. She apparently broke some vertebrae from coughing so much from the pneumonia. She still hasn't completely gotten rid of the pneumonia so she is on antibiotics again and her stomach is still giving her problems, so she is on probiotics. She told me on Tuesday when I spoke with her that she had taken a nap that day. Meme never takes naps. So, I think that she needs a lot of prayer. I know she is tired of being sick.

I am tired and I am glad that this week is coming to a close. This weekend promises to have some fun things in store for us as well. One of Scott's fraternity brothers and his wife, Jeff and Adriene, are expecting twin girls and we are going to a couples' shower for them! Lots of Scott's friends seem to be pregnant or have young children right now. We went to their Founder's Day (kind of like homecoming for the fraternity) over the summer at the zoo and couldn't believe how fruitful the group seemed to be.

Well, that is more than enough for now. I promise to try to make my posts shorter. If I keep making them this long, y'all will get tired of reading and stop visiting our blog. I welcome comments - especially if you know how to make a post look like it does when you are editing it once you post it to the blog. I spend so much time adding spaces here and deleting spaces there that I didn't even put there. Does anyone else have this happen?