No Thank You, Ribbly!

We had a pretty good weekend. On Saturday, Sarah wasn't feeling well and needed to rest, so it was Daddy and Asher day. We went for a nice 8-mile walk on the Neal Smith Trail. It is a 24-mile paved trail that curves through the woods above the shore of Saylorville Lake, which is still very frozen. The trail is really well built and maintained, and it crosses several deep ravines on some pretty impressive bridges. Thank you, Army Corps of Engineers! It was a cold, blustery day, but the very earliest signs of spring were in the air. No, there are no green sprouts or leaves yet, but the snow is melting fast and birds are everywhere! We saw cardinals, bluejays, robins, hawks, and vultures. There were also thousands of geese flying North up the river. Asher was really excited about the birds, and wanted to know what each kind was eating. "Daddy, robins eating worms in the grass!" He also tried to imitate each bird's different call. He loved it. We also drove past a John Deere factory, and even drove around the back where they were testing several planters on a big, muddy field. Asher was psyched! Asher has become kind of polite lately. He used to scream "No!" all the time. He still does, but now he yells "No thank you!!" He is always saying "No thank you Ribbly!" (when he thinks the Libby the dog wants to eat his food), or "no thank you daddy!" (when he doesn't want to do something). This morning, we went to church, then ate a big salad meal at the Hy-Vee (grocery store) salad bar. I should say now that we are doing the South Beach diet. It has worked well in the past, so we'll see. I have put on a good bit of weight since we moved here, which is frustrating, because I had lost quite a bit during all the exertion of physically moving all of our stuff here. Anyway, we'll see how it goes. We are one week into the strict Phase 1 part of the diet now. Stay tuned... This afternoon, we went to a garden show at the Iowa state fairgrounds. It was very dissapointing, with all the same cheesy booths we saw at the state fair and the home show. We did get to see lots of cool lawnmowers, and we bought some unidentified herb plants from the 4H kids. I must say that the Iowa state fairgrounds are a pretty interesting place, even when the fair isn't going on. The garden show inspired me to do some actual yard work, the first in 5 months that didn't involve shoveling snow or breaking ice. I fertilized the lawn (or the partially-thawed tundra where the lawn will soon emerge). I also put in three new porch lights on the front of the house. They look pretty cool and totally changed the look of the house.