Fancy gown, fancy flowers.

The fancy fancy graduation gown finally arrived, and I relented and let the kids try it on. "Let" is maybe less accurate than "induced," but it was fun. It's very elaborate and heavy and pretty and velvety, and I'm actually kind of excited to wear it at graduation.

In garden news, the big allium are blooming and only one was sacrificed by Peter to a project of making pretend bird food. Small allium are budding, and to my great excitement the iris are budding, too - I'm eager to see their colors. The salvia have just started blooming but the buds look promising, and we've mostly replaced all of the things that didn't make it through the winter, minus one rosebush and that's on the docket for tomorrow.

I made the tactical mistake today of wearing a dress (Target clearance, $12) instead of my usual grubby jeans, which Peter wrongly (but silently!) took to mean I was headed to work. So when I went to drop him off for the morning at his babysitter, I casually left the keys in the ignition since the dress doesn't have pockets. If you can see where this is going, you're about 30 seconds ahead of me: yes, Peter locked himself and the keys in the car. Finally I wrangled him out after the babysitter was wise enough to take another child to preschool as her schedule dictated; he and I sat and talked about keys and my keychain and cars and locks and doors and Omaha for quite a while. All was eventually well, and during my precious babysitting hours I did a dizzying number of errands and some of the more wretched cleaning jobs.

Ah, cute photos: