a "grand" week (part 1)

This past week, my mom came to visit us, and what a wonderful week it was. Besides all of the help she gave us in this transition time, we also just had some very fun days. Let me tell ya about them.

First, there was the strawberry picking, which you've already seen. The strawberries, by the way, turned into strawberry banana cake, some delicious non-dairy ice cream, and little treats in our breakfast Cheerios.

As most two year olds, Lucy has a fondness for all things silly. She has been carrying this little purse around for a few weeks and suddenly discovered that it fits perfectly on her head. She ran around saying, "Box on head!" and giggling. It was a great way to greet Grandma.

Grandma loved being able to finally hold sweet Charlie.

A trip to our church's playground:

Another humorous hands-near-face picture of Charlie.

We took Grandma to the local children's library, which she loved so much she began talking about starting one in St. Louis just like it!

A bath for Charlie in our make-shift bath tub.

Playing in our backyard.

Have I mentioned our garden? I don't think so. This year, we decided to be adventurous and fulfill a dream of ours all at once: we planted our first garden together. We rented a plot of land in our county's community garden and now we are watching our tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, corn, onions, basil, marigolds, daisies and sunflowers grow (well, we look forward to watching them growing... we just planted them a couple weeks ago).

Here, my friends, is our corn (and weeds).

Later in the week, we went to the botanical gardens on a lovely day. We mostly spent our time in the butterfly exhibit, but first, a picture of Lucy, Charlie and me.

Lucy alternated between being scared of the butterflies,

and excitedly running through the exhibit singing, "Wee-o, wee-o, wee-o!"

Look very closely at Lucy's right shoulder (our left).

But mostly, we just bummed around, chatted, read books to Lucy, and held Charlie.

Now, look back at that first picture of Charlie in this post and tell me the boy hasn't grown... he seems to have found his appetite this week in a whole new way. Fine by me!

This post is entitled part 1, because Lucy's other "grands" are coming in a couple weeks. We are very much looking forward to some Stanley fun!