Parts of today and last night could have been much better, but it's also been a good day in many ways. Last night Cole went to be early - before 7 p.m. - so I knew he'd probably be waking up early. I went to bed at 10:30 after Cory and I watched Robin Williams Live on Broadway (pretty funny!). About 11:30 Cole decided he was ready to be up. Aargh! You know when you reach that point where you've just fallen into nice, deep, relaxing sleep and don't want to get up for anything? Well, that's where I was. So I stomped downstairs with Cole and sat there until close to 1 a.m. when he finally went back to sleep.

This morning Cole was ready to be up at 6:30. I was not. Came downstairs to discover a vase of flowers and a card waiting for me. Today is our sixth wedding anniversary :) For each anniversary, we don't buy each other gifts (although Cory usually sneaks in flowers and we exchange cards), but we buy something for the house. This year (it happens to be the wood anniversary) we're going to buy a tree to plant in our front yard. On one side of the front yard is a huge, old cedar tree. We have two more huge, old cedars in the backyard. Since I was a child, I've always wanted a weeping willow. We're going to research, though, and ask people we know who have weeping willows what they think. I've heard negatives about them, but I can't remember what they are now. If we don't buy a weeping willow, then we're going with a red maple.

We'll be buying it right before Cole's birthday (Sept. 3) because we're going to plant his placenta with the tree. You're probably wondering what we're still doing with his placenta after nearly a year (not too uncommon, though, I've discovered). As you all probably know, Cole was born at home (planned). We couldn't just throw the placenta in our garbage since that could lead to some police investigation if someone discovered that. And we didn't want to bury it in our yard in Mitchell since we were moving in less than a month and didn't want our tenants digging it up. So we've had it wrapped up nice and tight in our freezer all this time. And as part of his birthday celebrations next Wednesday, we'll be planting the tree and placenta.

So that was a long explanation of our trip to the nursery today. We also had Cole's picture taken at good old Wal-Mart. Took forever, but I think we got some great shots of his killer smile. This will actually be the first professional picture of just him.

We had a few other plans for the day that we gave up on because it was just too hot and humid - our van thermometer read 100 degrees at one point. We wanted to wander around the Lewis and Clark Festival, but after last weekend outside so much in the heat and humidity, that just didn't sound good. We also wanted to stop by a meeting at a nearby park that that the South Dakota Safe Childbirth Options group was having, but again, it was just too miserable to subject the kids to being outside that long. My midwife had invited us to attend, and I feel bad that we didn't get to see her.

We went out to supper, came home and Cole fell asleep shortly thereafter. It was past 7 p.m., though, so he should be down for the night. Now to work on Accalia...