Four!

For those who were confused by the title of a similar post last year--I am NOT pregnant. Shannon just turned 4! Here she is with her Sailor Moon cake (a stupid, slightly obscure Japanese cartoon that she adores).I tried my hardest, and though I don't really think it looks much like Sailor Moon, Shannon was excited and knew exactly who it was.Here she is opening one of her presents:

Here she is with her "pinoculars." The pajamas are hand-me-downs. Don't worry, she has never seen "High School Musical" and won't ever see it if I have anything to do about it. And here is a short video of her opening her Ariel Barbie. She had a great birthday!

Flora and Fauna

Here is one of my little friends. We have more mourning doves in our neighborhood than I have ever seen anywhere else. In the evening there are usually 4 or 5 on our front lawn.I love how many birds we have here! Ok, so I could do without the starlings, but whatever. They like to line up on our fence like this.This is called a circumhorizon arc. I have seen them before, of course, but this one was very bright and pretty. The birdfeeder in the picture usually has at least 4 birds on it. They clean out all of the seeds in about 3 days.We had a fabulous thunderstorm come through when Shannon was in bed one night. She came running out of her room yelling, "Mom! There's a rainbow outside my window!" I took her out on the porch so that she could see it better and we watched the lightening for a while. You would have thought it was the 4th of July!My miniature wax plant recently bloomed like crazy. There was a cluster of flowers on almost every single vine. Here is a close-up of the flowers. They look like porcelain and glass and they have a very light perfume. Fun!Here is the bane of my gardening experience so far this year. Looks harmless, right? And it even makes pretty little yellow flowers.Now take a closer look. This is called a puncture vine. It makes all of these little burrs (they are the seeds) that dry up and become as hard and sharp as tacks. I spent several days going very carefully over my yard removing these, and I pulled enough to fill half of a black garbage bag. Crazy! Here is what my leg looked like after a wheelbarrow full of sod tipped over on it. The bruise actually got even darker a few days later. It was pretty cool.

Here's a video just for fun. The girls were making each other laugh and I wanted to catch it on camera. I especially love the last few seconds when Shannon tackles Leah.