Last Saturday morning, St Partick's Day, Audrey, Paula and I went to Findlay Market while John ran 20 miles in Mt Airy. This was his long run for a trail race he is running next month. The picture above is Paula and Audrey in Sadeau Bakery where we bought Irish soda bread and breakfast.
Miss A posing in front of Madison's with the broom Paula bought her from the Saigon market. It is a much more effective broom than her old one.
Fresh Table is a new vendor that sells prepared meals. I bought stuffed mushrooms which were fantastic. A is eating some sample from the market.
That afternoon we worked in the garden. She wore these gloves briefly as they are too big. I can't find any that fit her.
Posing with the Donald Duck statue in our garden. This was in the garden when I bought our home in 2000.
And we walked up to UDF after dinner for ice cream with Baba Saturday.
Monday was the first time Miss A wore shorts this season. In this picture she is eating what she calls "smoothie", a treat we were introduced to by our Texas friends. Not only does Miss A love but also provides an easy portable and healthy way to feed her. I'm just hoping this love continues this fall when she starts toddler enrichment classes which will mean an earlier start to our very casual lifestyle.
Monday night we went to The Next Chapter for dinner with Paula and Helen and ate on their patio. 
This new restaurant does not have highchairs, booster seats or really kid friendly food but Miss A was able to cope.
As long as she is getting attention it's all good.
Patti and Boo were on a walk and stopped by to chat.
Tuesday we finally got the water table out to play with in the patio for the first time..
Our neighbors gave us this table last year and Miss A thinks it is great.
I love this Ohio t-shirt (Cincinnati in red) that Paula gave her.
She now constantly does the one eye wink when I'm taking pictures of her. It is somewhat of a challenge not getting this look.
Removing the weeds from the side of our house hosta bed. She understands and enthusiastically says "bye weeds... roots and all".
We had to run to Lowe's for a trash can for tenants and Miss A rather enjoyed this toddler garden bench with zoo animal motifs on the back rest. It is only $44. But still have to wonder will she use it enough? I didn't buy it ... just something to think about for now.
And putting leaves (green tissue paper) on the tree at the library after class.
So the first tenant issue of the day Wednesday was an A/C one in this apartment. Some day hopefully soon ie. when current tenant moves out this apartment will become an expansion of our home. This bedroom will become John's office. 
This living room will become a library/ media room. We will probably do the same thing with a flat screen above the fireplace and then bookshelves on most of the walls and then a smaller couch.
And this kitchen will become John and my bedroom. Our plans are to keep the red floor and use an Asian design. We also plan to enclose the deck off this room to make a small 3 season room. Although if winters continue like this last one it could be a 4 season room.
A playing with her water table while we waited for the next tech to call us re: tenant problem resolution. This other problem was relative to flooding in a bedroom caused by the sudden storms last week and a clogged outside drain. Costly but at least we avoided mold, etc issues. The picture I took of A with the tech who resolved this tenant issue was adorable however b/c it showed too much personal information (ie check) I can't post here.
Audrey pretending this solar measurer is a microphone. She kept repeating " Hi, it's Mama" and putting this in front of my face. I would just comment on what I was doing in the garden and then send it back to her.
Thursday in the garden again with mama. We have added 18 (2 cubic feet) bags of black mulch to our garden in the past week.
Not a great picture, but she is pointing out a tulip to me with her stick.
And here she is smelling the viburnum which is heavenly right now. The scent this shrub produces doesn't last very long unfortunately. Just like everywhere else our backyard is blooming much earlier than usual due to the warm winter. 
Also this morning I noticed for the first time that the leucochum bloomed. Strangely enough this seems late even for our backyard which is always late.. I explained to Audrey that I like this plant because it is so dainty and looks like it has painted green fingernails. She calls it "rain drops".
When we got home today at around 11 am we found out we had lost power. The whole block had too. So I decided we would go out for lunch but drove down St Gregory just to check how far the power outage went. UDF had power so we had lunch there. 
I found out from Duke that the outage affected about 850 homes or about 70% of our neighborhood. The expected time for connectivity was 3:30 pm. 
So we took our time at lunch and then visited the bank, who offered their conference room for Miss A to take her nap. I love the "village' we live in.
We also walked up to the dry cleaners to drop off a quilt. Megan at the cleaners told us she heard the outage was caused by a cement truck who took out a telephone pole.
As it turned out, power was restored afround 1PM so Audrey was able to take a nap at home! 
