Lemonade, Llamas & Landscaping

My little man turned six this past weekend.  As many of my friends know, I'm not a kid-birthday-party-kind-of-gal.  It always seems too indulgent to me and I don't get the invention of the goodie bag and think a bounce house is an accident waiting to happen.    Now I'm usually one for a party, so it's ironic to me that I have been so against having one for Grady.  Well, this year we had a mini-party.  A compromise, if you will.  G wanted a llama pinata, pool-time in his St. Vincent de Paul $5 plastic pool, hot dogs, a pink cake, homemade lemonade and his God-sisters and another friend to attend.  It was perfect.

G made the lemonade the night before and loved the new kitchen utensil that facilitated this process.  He helped me decorate the homemade banner (I could not bring myself to go into a party store, but that's another story).  He drew a mama cow with udders and a baby cow on the banner.  I'm assuming I'm the cow in this scenario?  He helped me decorate the ugliest cake I've ever made...I can't even put a picture up of same.  Trust me, it was UGLY.  He didn't care and I knew the others wouldn't care either.

The kids ate watermelon, got wet in the wee pool, bashed the heck out of a donkey-come-llama pinata, ran around with the baby chicks, ate more watermelon, had aluminum foil crowns made for them, looked for bugs with the big magnifying glasses, ate cake and ice cream and just had a great time.  Best anti-party I've ever thrown and no melt-downs.  Plus, Grady was so happy and that made me happy.  I'm still gun-shy on the kid party thing, but I realized I can do it my way and kids don't really care about the goodie bags or bounce houses - they just want to have a good time and celebrate the day they were born.  I can get behind that.
Look at those faces is the little pool.  Four of them fit in this pool and they had a blast.
The llamas are back.  Last year the llamas returned to the pasture near our house on Grady's birthday.  He thought this was just for him.   This year, our neighbors did it again and it brought tears to Grady's eyes.  He bounced out of his room and shrieked with excitement.  You must understand that the llamas are very much a part of why we moved here.  A symbol of country life where my little boy could be a little boy and roam, run, imagine, enjoy nature, climb a tree, know our neighbors, raise animals, camp in our yard and establish these wonderful childhood memories.  The llamas and the pink playhouse sealed the deal for us and we're so glad they're back.
We have been working on creating an outdoor eating area in our yard and above is a pic of the before...

...and here is the after.  I think it's beautiful and I can't wait to finish phase one of this project.  We have a lot of carpet to pull up (the previous owners used it as a weed block, but it's more like a carpet of weeds now), mulch to order, trees to trim, flower beds to plant and hunting for an outside dining table at recycle town.  I can't wait to make a margarita and enjoy this space all Summer long.