Memorial Day Weekend - Carly's Play - and Brianna's Birthday

I've finally got some pictures to post. It's kinda weird to just post with no pics. Memorial Day weekend was spent working our butts off. We had 15 yards of bark delivered and that was our goal for the weekend. We weeded and barked 6 flower beds. The girls helped all day on Saturday (Aaron was at a friend's house). Monday, Aaron joined and we all continued to work until all the flower beds were barked. We even created a new bed at the front of the driveway.

Our plan of attack was to all weed, edge and bark one bed, then move on to the next. The girls and I would weed, while Paul would edge and prepare for the bark. Then the girls and Paul would fill wheelbarrows with bark, while I spread it. The following are pics of the kids weeding on Monday. They worked so hard and didn't complain nearly as much as they could have...

They liked it when they got driven around behind the lawnmower occassionally. You can see a bit of the bark pile left in the distance below. The mound started much bigger.

The finished product - after the two LONG days of working, we had some beautiful beds around our house. The bed right in the front of the below picture was created this weekend. Put that cool maple tree in the middle and surrounded it with 5 rhododendrons. You can see some of the other beds in the distance if you look hard - to the right, to the left and beyond. And boy we were sore for days after all this hard work.

After we got cleaned up on Monday, we took the kids to see Prince Caspian. On Thursday, Carly had her end of the year program at school. The 3-6 graders did a Treasure Island musical. Carly was part of the chorus - in the middle of the below picture. Not too many good pics of the whole play though.

Then, on Saturday was Brianna's 17th birthday! Can you believe it - my baby's 17! We had a low key day running errands and at home then had cake and presents in the evening. She's going with a few friends to the Cheesecake Factory in a couple weeks to celebrate also.
Brianna has had an amazing school year. She did well in her classes, got a good ACT score and loved her Yearbook experience. She came home with her finished yearbook on Friday and was thrilled to show us all that they had accomplished. Graphic Design is something she really enjoys - we'll see what she does with this interest in the future... regardless, her future looks very bright!