Mommy's Little Helper

This past weekend, I enjoyed a rare Saturday outdoors, working on a project that I had been planning for quite some time. It was great being out in the fresh air and sunshine and I loved every minute of it!! It was not without its consequences, though. Manual labor doesn't often find itself on my to-do list, and I suffered quite a bit with stiffness and sore muscles. The project is about 90% complete, but there remains some tweaking and a few more trips to the lawn and garden department at Wal Mart before I'm ready to post pictures. I'm just irritated at myself for not taking "before" pictures. It's not such a huge thing, really, and I doubt HGTV would be interested in my handiwork, but if there had been a "before" picture, I'm sure you would have a greater appreciation for the "after". I'm hoping to complete it this weekend. I work late on Sundays and Mondays, so I had planned to spend the late afternoon on Tuesday working on it. The trees in my yard never get completely bare (as noted in my snow pictures), rather they drop their leaves all through the winter, so it's a challenge to keep them at bay. Needless to say, some major leaf blowing was in order. This presented a problem, since I do not own a leaf blower. And my neighbor Alex has moved away, and that rascal took all his tools with him. So not only is he not here to help me out any more, (translated = do whatever needs doing around here), now I have to go find someone else who might have whatever tool it is that I need to borrow. The nerve of some people! Fortunately, David has a leaf blower, and graciously allowed me to borrow it. After about an hour and a half, I had a pile of leaves the size of a small volcano. I knew that rain was forecast for Tuesday night, so I had planned on bagging the leaves and spreading more pine-nugget mulch on Tuesday afternoon when I finished work. Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans. Whitney's monthly PC meeting was changed from Monday night to Tuesday night, and Dustin is tied up with the band on Tuesdays. She rather forlornly said that she would just miss her meeting. During my apology to her that I really MUST get the leaves raked and bagged before the rains came, I decided that a barter proposition was in order. I would babysit so she could attend the meeting, if she would bag the volcano of leaves. Talk about a win-win!! She'd do the nasty work for me, and I'd suffer through an evening of babysitting (dancing, tickling, mani-pedi, bubble bath and tons of grandbaby snuggles!) Leyland was super excited when she got home from school to learn that she would be spending the afternoon outside helping her mommy while Corey napped. She was so cute with her rake. Here are a few photos I snapped while she worked:

After a ride on DJ and David's golf cart we turned on the music inside and danced. Leyland wanted to "wedding dance" with me. She kept saying "Now do this" and she would bend way over to the right, or way over to the left. I finally figured out she wanted me to "dip" her. Then she had to "dip" me. We waved our arms in a fairy dance, we did the hokey pokey, and had the best hand-clapping, foot-stomping time ever!! Once Corey was all tucked into bed, Leyland gave me a big hug, whispered in my ear and asked if she could have a bubble bath. We don't do that often, simply because it's a pain to rinse off all the bubbles, and too many bubble baths tend to irritate her skin, but what the heck. This was Greemaw's night, so by all means, bring on the bubbles! After bath came the pedicure/manicure session. First I did hers, then she did mine. Oh boy. Those red-carpet movie star divas ain't got nuthin' on Leyland and Greemaw! Now don't laugh at my ugly toes, and my still-healing BigFoot, but here's the result of my mani-pedi compliments of Princess Leyland:

She did a really fine job, I think! The look of concentration on her face as she tried to perfectly paint my stubby nails was just precious. She's Mommy's Little Helper, and Greemaw's little angel!!