A looong weekend.

I don't think I've ever been so happy for a weekend to come to an end.  It was absolutely beautiful here this weekend, so I decided to tackle yard work and halfway through realized I was in over my head. 

Let's see, for a brief recap. . .

• Mike bought sod early Saturday morning and we laid 60 or so in part of our front flower bed. 
• Saturday afternoon, I bought 7 azaleas to replace some shrubs in my remaining flower bed.
• Saturday night I dropped our laptop computer and it stopped working. 
• Sunday morning I dug out 13 shrubs.
• Early Sunday afternoon, we all ventured out to buy a new hard drive for the laptop, compost to amend the clay soil for the azaleas, and a cake for Claire's birthday (nothing like waiting until the last minute).  And Claire, who never naps anymore, actually fell asleep in the car!
• Later Sunday afternoon, I decided to transplant 4 of the shrubs I removed from the front flower bed to the side of the house. A real pain because of having to amend the clay soil with top soil.
• Finally, time to celebrate Claire's birthday!

Claire turned 3 on Sunday!  As Mike and I both said, we should have only tackled the sod this weekend. So unfortunately, Claire's birthday celebration at our house did not happen until right before dinner, and I was quickly throwing everything together, including wrapping her gifts, right beforehand.  I've never been one for doing a lot to celebrate birthdays, but I do feel guilty for doing so much outside on Claire's birthday and not focusing as much on her!  She did get cake and had fun opening her birthday gifts, so I guess that was the most important part for her.  But I may have to do a little more this week to make myself feel better.

There are pictures from Claire's birthday, but those will have to come a little later since I need to get Photoshop reinstalled.  Fortunately, our laptop is back up and running with a new hard drive and I only lost edited pictures from the last month.  All the original pictures were thankfully preserved on memory cards or DVDs.