I'm going to brag for a minute, but then I'm going to follow it up with a good, strong dose of reality so nobody gets worked up, alright?

Loving Alina's enthusiasm for softball right now. She is constantly wanting to practice, coach says her hitting is looking good and she wanted to watch older cousin Emily play last night to see if she could get some tips. It is a shame she will miss a couple games this week and next.

Kalyn organized a team run for this morning with her cross country team. Yes! I used the word "organized" in a sentence about Kalyn. About running. In the summertime. In the morning.

Here are some pictures of my yard. This is taken from under our red bud tree in the front yard. Looking good, don't you think?

 Let's get a little closer so we can see my geraniums in the flower boxes.

 A little closer still.....

I went with salmon this year, instead of red. When we came back from Slovenia Troy made these flower boxes for me so I could put red geraniums in them just like we had seen in Europe. But I impulsively grabbed salmon instead of red this year at the nursery. Which started a whole new rebellious trend.

Compare previous years with this year:

previous years:

I have been fond of planting petunias in the space around my patio. But this year I went for kitchen herbs because
a) they smell good  (except my family hates the smell of cilantro, which is planted abundantly there)
b) they are close to my kitchen, can go cut them barefoot
c) according to some gardening magazines, they might just keep mosquitoes away while we are sitting on the patio

I have Cilantro, Traditional Parsley, Italian Parsley, Thyme, Oregano, Basil on one side and Sage, Rosemary, Dill and Peppermint on the other! And one of my projects this summer is to come up with some kind of cute markers for each of these plants. (Come on, pinterest! Help me out with this.)

See those two iron tall planters on the lower left of this  picture, at the entrance of our garden? I call them the twin towers. Anyway, I have always planted green and purple sweet potato plants in them because they take the heat very well (Did you know it gets very hot here in the summertime?) and they cascade down so beautifully.

There they are one year shortly after I planted them.

Well, it will look a little different there this year. Because I couldn't find the sweet potato plants. And I was feeling regret about not planting red geraniums, so I grabbed a couple of them to go here. And then I noticed that they are two completely different colors, one is orange actually.

So things are going very well with the girls and the yard and I even actually got in a pool at Susan's yesterday for a real taste of what a relaxing summer feels like.

Here are the girls in the pool, there will hopefully not ever be a picture of me in a pool on here.

Okay, so here is the scary reality that I promised. It's grim. Because summer isn't just for growing things and playing around and enjoying my girls. It's also about organizing all the junk in the house and trying to put together a yard sale.

 

I don't know about you, but I am hearing the scary suspense shower scene music from Psycho as I look at this picture.

This is what the front room in our house looks like right now. The room that lurks just behind the pretty salmon colored geraniums in the flower boxes. This pile is all leaving our house in some way, except the suitcase, which is going with Alina to North Carolina this week. This is my dreaded summer mission that simply must occupy the rest of my day. So I'll just be starting on that right now.