Progress...

How in the world did we get from here (April 08 - she won't let go of his hands or get more than her ponytail wet) to....

here? I can't believe my little flippin' daredevil! God bless her!

Hark...

We have fence! It's all the way around the house now which means - 1. we can begin bringing more of our horses over to the house now and 2. Lexie can longer feast on my plants and use my porches as her ladies room. I cannot tell you how thrilled my husband is with the latter - and actually I'm a little excited, too, about being able to put real plans in action for a landscaped backyard. It will make our pool outings even nicer!

Not to say that I don't miss these big eyelashes staring through my bedrrom french doors...

That little girl - she's growing up - she's 10 months old and can be quite frisky...

here she comes now...to get ME!

Anyway, I know she'll be fine - her sister will take care of her...

Pal & Grace before tacking up -

Hmmm...just my size...

What's more interesting...my sister or the big red shoe?

Hmph...who needs a shoe when you can get an ear?

Winning at Red Light/Green Light again - such a champ!

Mr. Eddie teasing Grace and Ms. Robin about going through the sprinklers while doing ditches -

Pal's taking a pee - she's wilting in the heat -

we're almost done - soooo hot!

cooling off and chasing the kitties...

Then, "Egg Man" aka Mr. Eddie, let her get today's harvest...

We passed here while going to feed and I made Jack make the block so that I could take a picture of these wall planter thingies - aren't they pretty? If you guys spot any of these anywhere, give me a heads up, please...these would look great in several places around the house, don't you think?

When we fed, Jack picked up his trailer of lumber...this means work. Last weekend, he and I set all of the remaining posts going acropss the back of the house. Now, we need to put in the three boards between each post.

See??? Told you. WORK.

The latest in the saga of the *@!<^!!! pool contractor - well, when they sprayed gunite all over our wrought iron fence a couple of months ago, Jack told them they needed to fix that when they completed our pool. Fix it? We should have known - this crew doesn't know their heiney from a hole in the ground... ARGGGGHH! They tried acid washing the fence (even though Jack told them it wouldn't work) and - yep - killed all my plants around the fenceline. This one in particular is a bouganvillea that I thought the snow had gotten last December, but I babied back this Spring and now - well, now - I want to cry. Those people (close your ears) suck.

Oh, how nice of them, they only killed half of this one...

This is my dwarf bottle brush - PaPa liked these, too.

As not to end on a sour note, here's our girl's latest preschool photo op - isn't she a cutie patootie? :) Kindergarten is 37 days away...

Happy 4th!

Houston...we have water! She can't wait to get in later, but there's no shade right now and even with 50 SPF, I'm still scared she'll burn, so we've just been waiting until around 4 to get in. She absolutely loves it - she also loves that she can just play. We still have her practice what she has learned from her lessons, as this past Thursday was the last of those, but mostly, she enjoys taking rides on her Daddy!

Yesterday, her preshool was closed for the holiday, so came with me to my nail appt. and couldn't wait to share in the fun! Doesn't she look like a big girl?

This morning, we took her to her riding lesson and they have two new barn kitties. They are so precious!

They played and played - I had a hard time focusing on Gracie for all of their antics!

Gracie practiced her steering and trotting today - the kitties even played "follow the leader" while she was trotting -

Hallelujah!

These guys woke us up yesterday morning at 6 am...not so happy about that, but they were here to plaster our pool...this bright blue color doesn't look too appealing, but I had been warned to not be too alarmed... Then they spray these pebbles into it and it looks like this - you can see the very first of the water going in to the right...Mom wanted the orange fish - I think she named him and everything...the starfish in the distance...

and this little guy are what I wanted...we had a turtle and some big fish at our house on the bayou and I think it offers just a bit of whimsy to the pool -

anticipation...her Daddy told her the water had to be at the halfway mark on the tiles before she could swim...almost there, jellybean...

I didn't get a picture of the water at the halfway mark on the tile because....we were IN THE POOL! Hallelujah! We swam today and it was glorious on this hot and humid day -

Grace also had her riding lesson yesterday morning - Pal had an eye infection, but he and Grace did great together!

so hot!!!

airplane girl -

Pal's relieving himself, so Grace decided to practice her jump position while she waited - not a moment to be lost, ya know!?!

Learning to adjust her own stirrups from the saddle -

Playing "Red light, Green light" with the older students -

Smiles all around - she has so much fun...

This is Lauren's first horse, Sonny - he has a disease that doesn't allow him to sweat (can you imagine???in this heat???), so he does what he can to stay cool - he's quite the little show-off!

Another miraculous point from this weekend that you couldn't probably care less about (but I have to say anyway)is that after almost 2 years of living in our home, I finally got my husband to sit down with me and we went through his clothes and got rid of two bags of stuff! Can I get another "Hallelujah!"? We've also started putting the hardware on our cabinets...I know, I know...pretty productive weekend! Hope you had one, too!

Ice cold drinks, more rain showers and cool breezes to you all -

P.S. Today, Grace and I made sugar cookies and put a pink glaze and different sprinkles on each and then I made Jack and I snickerdoodles (with cinnamon and sugar on top)...it was the first time that I've made sugar cookies that weren't for PaPa. Golly Bob, that man loved sugar cookies and I loved making them for him. Miss you, PaPa.