(not necessarily in that order.)

First I’ll get sidetracked and tell you how proud I am of my own 11 year old. It all started a few weeks ago when she cleaned the house – without prompting or prodding or even poking with a stick. That in itself made me ask the most obvious question, “what do you want?”. Of course she wanted something. A new webkinz. She spent an hour that day cleaning, and I told her that was great -but I’ll only pay her $4 an hour, and they cost $12. She needed to give me two more hours of hard labor, and did she ever. She cleaned the house again, and after an hour she didn’t know what to do. I told her that if she could get on the airclimber and do it for an hour, I’d count that as chore time. Honestly? I didn’t think she could do it. Heck, I can’t even make it through the 20 minute workout (yet).

She did it.

Off to the nearest Hallmark we went, where she immediately picked the webkinz she wanted, a frog. Chickeymonkey present, I couldn’t get out of the store without two – you know how that goes. I wrote the check, our intuitive cashier put them in separate bags, and we were all set.

On the way out of the store, Catybug exclaimed “I can’t wait to give this to H tomorrow at school!”.

Wait. Hold up. Excuse me? What just came out of my childs mouth? “You did all that work so that you could get this for your friend?” She said “yes, she doesn’t have one, and they can’t afford one, and I really want her to be able to play too.”

Wow. ::insert choked up teary eyed mommy moment here::

Of course I gave her a big hug and told her how proud I was of her for being so generous to work so hard just to do something for someone else. Then I quickly had a million flashbacks about how anything I could have possibly done as a parent would have had this kind of effect on her character. I don’t know how it happened. It’s a fluke, I swear it.

End of sidetrack.

H was giddy, of course, and the first several hours of the night were all about each on their own computer online playing webkinz as a team. It was cute, and they had fun. They also had banana splits with the works, and pizza. I try to be a good sleepover mom.

So yesterday was the beginning of the weekend warrior projects. Oh my. Our big project was delayed by rain – but this weekend it’s just gorgeous. I love this weather. I carry around my camera, put it down, grab a shovel, dig, transplant, and get my camera again. Fun stuff, people!

We’re building (and by we I mean my husband, as I stand and point and say “no” and “yeah”, and then I do the making it pretty when he’s all done part) a raised planting bed that’s an “L” shape – about 3 feet deep, 12 feet wide and 18 feet long. Part of this project requires the major undertaking of transplanting everything on our back mound (7th photo), because we need the dirt. This stuff here is being replaced by the planter, so everything needs to be transplanted from those areas, as well.

It was a busy day yesterday. I put three old fashioned thornless rose climbers in the backyard against the fence, they’re new and I am hoping they take off and cover the entire fence area since we have an offensive odor blowing into our house when the windows are open. We’re hoping this curbs that problem and fills our home and yard with something more pleasing to the nose. I also added about a gadgillion seeds to another area in the yard, and if I did well I should be able to show you those in about 2 weeks.

As for the birds, I saw this couple flitting about in our poplar tree lastnight once I settled down with my bottled water and camera and just stopped, watched and listened. They’re really neat birds – they fly high and they have a really interesting wingspan in flight. From this kinda crappy photo, I’ve deduced that they are Tanagers – a bird I’ve never seen before. I can’t determine whether they’re hepatic or scarlet, because the females don’t seem to match. I thought because of the speckled breast on the female that it might be a true purple finch, but the male is much too red. If you can’t tell, I really enjoy birdwatching and identifying them. I heard a lot of neat birds yesterday – our northern flicker is back, and it won’t be long before he makes an appearance on our suet – or at least on the hill of ants by our poplar tree. Hubby spotted a predator swooping through our yard twice yesterday on the hunt, looking to nab a small bird or squirrel. I missed the action, off digging up a plant somewhere, but what a cool thing to have going on in our backyard!

Sidenote: we also rescued 4 baby bunnies last weekend and released them the other night. One had been injured, so we wanted to get the bloody one away from danger and healed. They’re doing fine now, hiding in the brush pile – you can see one of the little cutie pies in my photoblog.

Today we should finish the new raised bed and transplating. I’m not as sore as I was last weekend, I learned my lesson and did bicep and tricep curls on the treadmill while I walked for a few days this week. The airclimber also helped with the leg squatting and digging. Whatever the task – bring it on, I’m ready!