I had an amazing weekend! On Saturday Kyle and I went to a wedding of one of my old co-workers in Portland. The big plus to this is that I got to see LOTS of old co-workers! I miss them all so much, and hadn't seen most of them in almost a year. I had a blast catching up with everyone, not to mention one of my friends had a baby a few weeks ago that I got to snuggle with!

Baby Hank!

We were gone almost the whole day, Payton spent the day with Grandma Sue. They went to the park, fed the ducks, she took her to gymnastics, they had quite the day! It's been a long time since I left Payton for so long to do something for myself, so although I did feel that twinge of mom guilt, I felt so refreshed and relaxed when I came home that night. It was exactly what I needed!

Sunday was yard day... I actually texted my mother and apologized to her for all the years that I refused to help her in the yard. Kyle and I have never had a yard to take care of, they are a LOT of work! We were both hurting the next day. The weeding, pruning, weed whacking, mowing, all just to make your yard look decent. The nice thing is that Payton is old enough to where she thinks it's fun to "help" us! We got her her own little gardening gloves and shovel (Dora the Explorer themed of course!), and she followed me around with the weed bucket. Every time I dropped a weed in there she said "good job!" It was nice to just be outside, and once you saw the product of all your hard work it was pretty rewarding.

My personal gardener

On a side note, I decided to try my hand at nature photography. I figured if I can take pictures of a walking, talking human, how hard can it be to take a picture of an immobile flower? Turns out, it was WAY harder than I thought it would be! My props to Grandpa Casebolt (nature photographer), it is really difficult to make a flower (or anything) look interesting. Sure, I can just take a picture, but to make it pleasing to the eye actually takes a lot of creativity. I had fun trying though!

My subject. Please look below for my attempts at a decent picture...











My next subject



Ewwww he's hairy...



Not a bad start I guess, but definitely a challenge. Hopefully this summer I will have more opportunities to work on it!

Ah, my sweet Payton girl. Remember how I told you I thought she would be into dress-up? Well I got her a little tinker bell fairy outfit for Easter, and when she put it on she ran around the house screaming "I'm flying! I'm flying!" :)



Fairy princess



"I'm flying!"

This next weekend I'm taking a little bit more "me" time and heading back up to Portland on Saturday night for a party that my friend is throwing with some of my old college friends. I haven't seen them in a long time either, so I'm really looking forward to catching up and seeing what everyone is up to. Other than that, if the weather's nice, we'll probably be spending more time in the yard, at the park... that girl loves to be outside!

No matter how many times I look out my window at my beautiful yard...

...this will always be my favorite view :)

Have a great week!