I thought I'd post some pics of the fun we had at the Main Street Festival in Franklin this past weekend. The picture of Chloe is very similar to one I took of her last year at the festival and I thought it would be cool to get the same picture every year to watch how much she grows and so that the she can remember the festival as one of those nostalgic-home town type things that we do every year. And for the first time Halle was able to get into a little bounce house and really had fun. She was a little hesitant at first and seemed content to hang onto the ropes on the side and yell for help (in Spanish which she got from Dora the Explorer). We ended up getting to the festival kind of late but it was nice because it was starting to get cooler outside and most of the families already had their fill of fun and had gone home so it wasn't as crowded as last year and we were pretty happy about that. I think this will be a fun thing for us to do every year. But hopefully next year it won't coincide with a women's conference at church- that made for a super-hectic weekend.

A few weeks ago when all of the trees were in bloom and the "helicopter" seed pods were falling from the maple trees I decided that we might as well plant one. I've also planted lemon seeds several times with no success and had tried again about 4 weeks before I planted the maple seed. I typically dig the lemon seed up and am always disappointed so this time I just thought "forget it I'm not even digging the lemon seed up and I'll just plant the maple seed in the same pot". So I did and about 2 1/2 weeks later a little maple tree sprouted! Chloe and I were so happy. We've watered it and watched it grow pretty quickly. Well about a week after that I noticed that something else was sprouting and I couldn't figure out what it was. Did I somehow plant more than one maple seed? But they didn't look the same. It took several days for me to confirm that it was, in fact, the lemon seed that had sprouted. Gaaa! I didn't want to just pull one of them up, I already had plans for that maple tree. And I'd been trying to get a lemon seed to grow for so long that I wasn't giving that one up either- not intentionally anyway. So I decided to try to separate them and hope for the best. I dug the lemon seedling out, put it in a pot, filled in the soil, watered it and set it in the shade. I read last year that if you transplant something you shouldn't put it in direct sunlight for a couple of days so that it can get over the shock. During the process though- since the two trees were so close together- the maple seedlings root was completely exposed and I filled in around that, watered it, and set it in the shade as well. All day I watched them both to see if there were any signs of wilting and as of yet there hasn't been. I'm hopeful because they're tiny and if they were going to wilt they would have already, wouldn't they? I'll have to keep you posted.

In other great news, I seem to have my happy toddler back! It has been several weeks since she's felt well and been herself. I thought we were on the other side of her illness but last Friday when I took her to the Dr. to check her mouth out we discovered that she had bronchitis as well. *sigh* But this morning she's happy and playing and I'm so excited. Today feels like it will be a productive day so I'm going to work out now (it's kind of early for me to do that), and tackle laundry so that I can take Halle outside to play. I am really looking forward to making a lot of house progress today.