Memorial Weekend: The Good, The Bad, and The Clean!

The Good: J and R and RUS and I have had the most lovely long weekend. On Sunday we had a big picnic at a nearby state park with Grammie and Grampie. (Oh, and Marisa, R's doll, who I am holding in the picture above).

It's a big park, with a huge playground and a lake where you can rent paddleboats and kayaks and sailboats and all.
When we were getting ready to go, R wanted to put on a dress. Unfortunately, most of her dresses were in the laundry, except for one dress she refused to wear because "it has a spot!" (a small stain that I've learned to just live with) and two other dresses she wouldn't put on because she wanted a dress without flowers. As it turns out-- I'd never noticed this before, but it's true-- all of her dresses have flowers on them. All, that is, except the one I finally did put her in. It's a yellow dress that was actually mine when I was little. I think my grandmother might have made it for me. My mother saves everything and pulled this out of storage soon after R was born and gave it to me.

Our picnic was so delicious. J made three kinds of salad: white bean salad atop freshly picked romaine from our garden, potato salad, and an easy rice salad. Grammie made blueberry pie. We were at the park from 12:30 until about 4 and it was the most relaxing, decadent time I have had in ages.
We just hung out, watched R run around and enjoy everything there was to see. Of course the girl did not nap. Thankfully, RUS did, at least until he was woken up by some shouting from a spirited basketball game going on.

The Bad: R spent most of today recovering from yesterday. We're not sure if she has asthma or allergies or what, but she was coughing all. day. long. today. J and I had been toying with the idea of taking the kids to a small zoo about half an hour from us this morning but R's cough pretty much ruled out any "going outside" activity. Good thing, too, because it was 90 degrees, really hot, and REALLY humid. Instead, R and I spent the morning watching "Peter Pan" (or, as R calls it, "Tinkerbell!")

And the Clean: J mowed the lawn and weedwhacked the heck out of the yard. Grampie also came over to help J clear out some branches and I spent the afternoon during RUS's nap scrubbing our screened-in back porch. Four buckets of soapy water later, everything on our porch is swept, cleaned, rubbed down, and wiped off. Everything, that is, except the grates on our Weber kettle, which I still need to clean before we can use the grill. Oh, and I did five loads of laundry.