Before, after, and a few things in between..

My plants are planted and everything is finally in order! Here are some before and after pictures:

I am so happy to have all this finished. Well.... almost finished. I am still trying to hang some chimes from a bracket that had cheap screws. I ended up stripping the first screw when I finally had the handy-dandy drill charged. After 45 seconds of looking at it, and cussing, I just gave up. I'll come back to it later.

My daughter and I went to visit family in Tennessee last Thursday. What a wonderful trip! The drive down went smoothly and Alyssa even "allowed" me to listen to my new Maroon5 CD... in entirety. It's so nice to be able to travel with her now that she's a little older.

I was able to spend so much time with my brother, his kids, my dad, and my best friend. I didn't get as much time with my sister or dad's girlfriend, but at least we all got together for dinner one night. I got some great pictures of everyone. Here's one of my two besties from high school:

We had dinner at Macaroni Grille, which was awesome. The company, the food, and the coloring on the table. I couldn't believe how good Alyssa was, considering she wasn't the center of attention AND was up past her bedtime. And, oh how these girls make me laugh. I miss 'em, that's for sure.

I have an MRI tomorrow morning and I've hired a babysitter from sittercity.com. She's actually babysitting twice this week while I go to Dr's appointments. It's a big relief to have someone to watch Alyssa so that I can get a couple of hours to myself. If it goes well, I'll be do... excuse me for the interruption, but my daughter just walked up and licked my face... lol, kids... anyway, I'll be hiring a sitter about once a week so I can have about three hours to myself. Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to that!