Look what I found . . .

In the tree in our front yard!

A robin's nest with cute little baby birds in it! I couldn't get too close because Mama Robin was glaring at me from the telephone wire and I didn't want to upset her. 

Anyway, a few days later, I found some baby wrens in a birdhouse in our back yard. I actually just went to straighten out the house when I saw this cute little guy.

 

 

 Later, one of the babies was out! I thought he might be getting ready to take his first leap, so I kept watching and watching...

 

 

 Vin saw the little bird too... 

Anyway, I watched for a loooong time. Then, when I wasn't paying attention- he was gone! I was scared that he was stuck on the fence, like maybe he got up there, but then couldn't get back down to his house. So, I went to the other side of the fence to look for any signs of an injured baby bird, but I didn't see one. The mama bird kept flying over by him. I'm going to assume he made his journey safely and flew off! Today, all of the babies are out of the house.

Wedding Update!

Alright! Everyone keeps asking, so I FINALLY began my wedding countdown.
I am getting married in
 59 days
or 1,418 hours
or 85,104 minutes
or 5,106,284 seconds at the exact time I looked this up, via timeanddate.com.

This past week, I mailed invitations. To keep everything small, we only invited a few family members and four friends. I've been putting this off for weeks. Even though there were only a few invitations... I'm soooo lazy. Or busy. Maybe I'll choose 'busy' so I feel better about myself.

Over the weekend, Gary and I got our engagement photos taken with Sofi Seck of Sofi Seck Photography. It was a blast and we're both really excited to see how they turned out. After the photos, Sofi took Gary and I to a Nicaraguan restaurant in St. Louis. Neither of us have ever had Nicaraguan food, but we both really liked our meals. Gary usually likes his food, but I'm a little harder to please.

Let's see. The big stuff has been done for months. We have an officiant, beach house, photographer, bride, groom...

That's it for now.

At My House...

There are a lot of really pretty birds at my house. The other day, I got this amazing photo of a bluebird emerging from a birdhouse. It.was.great. Then, I realized that I didn't have a card in my camera. Seriously? I was bummed. Even worse, I think I scared the bluebirds and they left the house, because I don't see them around anymore. Despite that, I still captured a few bird photos. Lately, I haven't taken any non-work photos. I've been exhausted. So enjoy these. :D

   

 I love this one. I can't get very close to this guy, but I love how he is hopping from one feeder to another.

 

Orange lilies are in bloom.

 

 

 Potted plants. Pretty soon the sweet potato vine will droop out of the chiminea.

   

 I thought it would be genius to get some photos from the roof. So I made G climb up there and grab a few. As it turns out... it wasn't that awesome. We need to get on a neighbor's roof to get what I was thinking. Oh well. He took the trouble of taking them, so I will share. 

 See? Here he is: 

 I wish the knockout roses still were in bloom. I'll have to get another photo when they bloom again. 

 

 We have a cactus flower!

 

 

 Garden Phlox and Lamb's ear. 

 

 Coneflowers.

   

 Pink lilies.

   

 Gray owl juniper.

 

That's it for now. I hope you have a lovely Tuesday.

Mother's Day

I know I'm really behind with this post, but I still wanted to post something.

This is a picture hanging up in my son's room:

 

 I made it when I was in kindergarten. If you can't read it, it says "When I gro up I want to be a mom." Just a few years after I made this picture, my family went through a house fire. We lost pretty much everything, but somehow this survived. I love this picture (even though I misspelled grow) because even though I grew up and made new goals for myself, I accomplished the one thing the 6-year-old version of me wanted to accomplish. 

I know what you guys are thinking: "It doesn't take much to be a mom." In a sense, sure. But I think my younger self would have wanted not just to be a mom, but to be a loving, caring, compassionate mom. A mom who would give up anything in the world for her child(ren) and strives to be a better mom each passing day and year. Young Karen would want herself to be a mom who gives her child everything, but teaches them the value of hard work, independence, education, friends and most importantly- family. 

 I'm not perfect, but I try to do those things. I love my son more than anything in the entire world. I think the love a mother has for a child can't be explained with words. I think I can be a good mom because I had a good momma growing up. My dad wasn't in his children's lives. My mom worked hard to be both a mother and a father to myself, my sister and my brother. She worked hard and taught us to work hard. She loved and taught us to love. 

And while she's not perfect either, she can say she did her absolute best. If you read this, thanks mom. . . for all of that. 

 Enough being sappy.

 I know I've said on here before I don't put a lot of stock into Mother's Day. Every day is Mother's Day because every day I'm a mother and I have the love of my child. What more could I want? 

 This year, Vincent made me a really awesome scrapbook card at school and a butterfly picture using his feel as wings. At his preschool they make a ton of stuff with painted hands and feet. I love it. 

Gary and Vincent picked me up a sweet old video camera.  

It still had the guarantee with it.
 

 New, the video camera cost $140.
 

 

 The best part? It goes perfectly with my grandpa's old typewriter and an old adding machine I have. 

 Please excuse all the shadows.

I don't know a ton else about it. I need to do some research, or just enjoy it-which I already will.

I hope that however you spent Mother's Day, that you enjoyed your day.

My niece, brother, mom, sister, son and myself.

 

Teeny Tiny Friends

We were pretty excited when we first saw that we had tadpoles in our pond! Vincent and I immediately went to the library and got books about the life cycle of a frog. We learned that it takes 12 weeks for them to grow, get front legs, lose their tails and eventually become a froglet.

We had TONS of tadpoles. We also have some goldfish in the pond. Finally, the little guys got some front legs. Eek! Almost froglets! Then...they all disappeared! We thought maybe the fish figured out how to eat them. We still have a million tadpoles in our other pond with no fish, but I was still sad.

Nothing happened to our little tadpoles... as it turns out, we have a thousand tiny froglets! Vincent and his little friend had a ton of fun finding them and caching them. Don't freak out, we didn't put any in jars or anything.

See? 

 

 Vincent thought it was awesome to put them on lily pads...  

 I didn't crop this photo so you can see how little they really are.  

 The search is on. 

 

Anyway, I hope you guys are having a lovely week so far. 

Bike-A-Thon

Some local girls were planning a bike-a-thon to donate toward building an all-abilities playground last Saturday (May 12). I thought it would be fun to get involved. The event was several hours, but you could come ride your bike on the trail whenever and for however long you felt like it, and of course it was all ages. Vincent was so excited to collect money. First, he called my sister and went through the whole spiel, then he asked her to send $2. Next, he called G's mom and asked her to send $5. Then, my mom stopped by and he asked her for $10 (notice it just keeps going up?). Then, he called memaw back and told her to make sure poppa also sent $5. He had reached his $20 goal in...oh... 5 minutes.

Two days after he started collecting money, he lost a tooth. The tooth fairy brought him $2.

"What are you going to do with $2?" said Dada (who thought Tooth Fairy overpaid).

"I'm going to donate it to the bike-a-thon!" he said. My heart almost melted. He's been waiting for this tooth to fall out for weeks and when it finally did, he didn't think an instant before donating it to a cause.

In all, he ended up raising $30, completely by himself. On the day of the bike-a-thon, he had a blast. Man, moms are too freakin' lucky.

Getting ready to start.

  

Vincent has the dinosaur helmet on.

 

 Gary had to run to catch up to him.

 

Headed back.

Lots to Post

...but no time to post it. Sorry guys. I'll have some updates in the next few days.