Wednesday, May 25, 2011

A burning ring of fire

Tony's latest home-improvement project... a fire pit in our backyard...




He's been talking about wanting to buy one, and I figured he meant a stand-alone one that we could put on our back patio or something. But this worked out even better. We had a spot in our yard where a tree had been removed, and no grass was growing there. So he dug it out a little, leveled off the ground, did some other stuff that I wasn't really paying attention to, and then bought this metal frame to enclose it. It really does look nice.


First order of business, of course, was to buy ingredients to make s'mores...




Ari doesn't like marshmallows... she just likes to roast them and then make other people eat them. I don't like them either, so Tony ended up eating several before he finally made her stop.


I tried taking a picture at night, but my phone takes crappy pictures in the dark. Oh well.


Wednesday, May 11, 2011

That's it?

Tony and Ari went to the Home Depot Kids' Workshop on Saturday morning, and since it was a Mother's Day project, I stayed home. I took advantage of the alone time to go for an extra-long walk... and even though I left before they did, I was home for more than an hour before they got back. Yes, Ari completed the project (which I totally forgot to take a picture of, oops), but they also came home with all this...




That's not even all of it, though. Tony's been talking for a while about wanting to get various plants for the yard, so I'm not really surprised that he took advantage of being at Home Depot without me.


He spent the afternoon transplanting the flowers--some in the front yard, some in the back, and a few for Sasha and Ivan's grave. We've been saying for a while that, come springtime, we'd replace the fake flowers with some real ones. We also took care of another project that was waiting for spring--making stone markers for their grave.








I'm glad to have that done... it was often in the back of my mind, and it's kind of a good feeling to have that completed. Call it "closure" or something, I guess.


Tony and Ari both got me very sweet cards for Mother's Day. I was especially amused by Ari's card... rather than one of those cutesy cartoony cards that are typically designed for kids, she selected a "grown-up" kind of card.




Tony said he read her several cards, but she turned them all down. Then she grabbed this one, and as he read it to her, she kept picking up on certain phrases, saying stuff like, "Oh, Mommy is always there for me!" and decided that this was the one she wanted.




On the left, she drew our house, a heart, and I think she said the brown circle was the sun. When I asked her what the V's were (thinking maybe they were meant to be birds), she said, "Those are checks." Well of course.


Tony brought home dinner the other night--a rotisserie chicken, corn on the cob, and twice-baked potatoes. Ari was fascinated by the corn on the cob... I don't know if it's the first time she had it, but it's definitely been a while at least, so if she's had it, she doesn't remember. She just thought it was the coolest thing to eat it that way. Also, she kept calling it "corn chops" and it was too cute for me to correct.


After supper, Ari saw me and Tony hugging in the kitchen, and said, "I want you guys to kiss the way you did when you got married." So we chuckled, and obliged her. Her response: "That's it?"


At bedtime, she said, "Mama, you're my little koala bear" and then proceeded to crack up. I have no explanation for her sometimes.