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Sometimes when Ned wakes up on Saturdays she asks "Mama go work today?" and when I say "No, not today" she'll usually ask, "Weekend?" She understands that weekends are two days long and so, after a Saturday with Mama at home, she'll sometimes wake up on Sunday and say, "Go Grandma Grandpa's and Nana Papa's today?" The girl knows a Sunday when it rolls around!We spend most every Sunday morning at Grandma and Grandpa's and the afternoon at Nana and Papa's. We call Sunday "Visiting Day". I love this little tradition. Ned has 4 of the most amazing, doting, loving grandparents on the planet. And she knows it. (And so do her Mama and Baba.) :)
Because Sundays are, well, self-declared lazy days for us, I don't take photos nearly as often as I should. So, I'm gonna work on that. But I do have a few photos from a morning at Grandma and Grandpa's house a few weeks ago--good times. :)
Overheard this morning:Baba: Hey Nedy, whatcha wanna have to drink with breakfast?
Nedy: Ahhhhh...hmmmm...yeah, a beer.
A beer?!?! Boulshit?! What is happening to my baby?!?!?
Maybe I'm biased, but I'm pretty sure that the people who bring the Shorewood Criterium to our little village every year should contact me about using this photo in their promotional materials:
Ned, her buddy Zhi and lap after lap of "willy fast wace bikes"--ahhhhh, a perfect night.
Ned loves dominoes. And I love the way Ned says dominoes--'domiyoyos'. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? 
So yesterday my Mom, my Aunt, Dan and I are sitting around my Mom's kitchen table talking to Nedy. She's so much fun to chat with these days--its always such a treat to see what comes out of her mouth. We like to test her on words, too. We're always amazed by her ability to hear words once--even big words--and then use them later in perfect context. Well, usually.So back to yesterday. Ahem. :)Nedy's been learning the different words for types of roadways. For some reason, she finds it interesting to organize roads by type: avenue, street, road, freeway, highway, etc. Earlier in the week Nedy and Baba were on a bike ride and she learned a new kind of road type: boulevard. And Dan was telling us about this as we sat around the table. Baba: Nedy, what's that kind of road that has grass or gardens dividing it?
Nedy: Ummmm...hmmmm...ummmmmmmm...
Mama: Boul...
Nedy: BOULSHIT!
Good times. (And, for the record, I have no idea where she learned that particular 'big word'.)
Consider yourself warned. This post is kind of sad. But it ends with new life, so that's good. But it's still sad.We had two huge spruce trees in our backyard. They were big. Gorgeous. Lush. Really, really lovely old trees. We loved them. The squirrels loved them. The birds, too.But they were huge. And our yard is small. And they covered the backyard in needles all the time, such that sitting down in the yard would give a painful poking. And sappy pine cones were forever falling down...actually, it'd be more accurate to say that sappy pine cones were forever being thrown at us by a duo of nasty, albeit adorable, red squirrels. And they'd drip sap, too. (The trees, that is, not the red squirrels. Although, if red squirrels knew just how annoying dripping sap is, they might figure out how to do it.) Sap is sticky. Sap is avoidable (mostly) by adults, but sap and toddlers? That's another story. Needles and pokes, sap and sticky hands...getting the picture?So here they are on the morning of their demise. Aren't they lovely? 
Nedy was pretty alarmed at first by the attack on her trees.
But my little photo journalist quickly went to work.
This is the point at which we realized that our neighbors actually had roofs...and that they were close to us. :)
6 hours into the day, the trees were down. 80 years to grow and 6 hours to come down. 
Their ashes. :( (God, I am so dramatic. I'm actually a little teary here writing this.)
(Just a thought, but I wouldn't mess with this stump grinder dude. I just wouldn't.) 
Nedy and Baba visited the garden center for weeks researching trees and decided on a Katsura and an Eastern Redbud. Notice the root balls in comparison to Ned's body. (Needless to say, we paid for our first garden center delivery.)
Nedy's really a very skilled supervisor. :) 
It took help from 3 neighbors to get these "baby trees" into the ground.
And now they're leafing out and growing beautifully already. The yard, however, remains a construction site. We've got our summer work cut out for us. Fortunately, Ned loves nothing more than an afternoon spent with her wheelbarrow, shovel and a pile of dirt. ("Mama, YOOK! Worm crawl out dirt pile!")
I mean, how cute are they?!
It was all going so well...until Ned spotted these fancy roosters...and ran away from them yelling "Yion Dancers! Yook yike Yion Dancers!" (Think we scarred her for life with that Lion Dancer performance in San Francisco?!) 
A new addition to the yard in the form of a DIY water park. (This is the kind of water park that I can handle!) It didn't have water today, but next time we're for sure going for a dip!
Nana and Vivian--she is getting to be such a big gal! (Vivian, not Nana. Just wanted to clarify that.)
And a cute gal, at that! I just love this shot. 
Lys gave Johnny specific component-by-component instructions concerning the construction of her entirely from scratch strawberry shortcake. Jokingly, my Mom said it seemed like a job for Dan, but Johnny insisted, "I got it, I got it." Looks like he did it just right, eh? 
Except that the seemingly straight-forward first instruction to "cut the cake in half" is not quite so straight-forward after all... No matter, it tasted fabulous. And the entire exchange was majorly entertaining. 
Happy Baba's Day!
