Sunday Afternoon

A few pictures from a very nice Sunday afternoon. 

They had spotted a small snake in the yard - though he was dead. 

Reagan had a jar and was catching bugs. 

Cousins - I love seeing them play together. 

Asher has a few tattoos on his arms. 

Sidewalk Paint

We went to A.C. Moore today to look for a picture frame and as we were leaving saw sidewalk paint. I have, somehow, never seen that and as much as my kids like to use sidewalk chalk I thought they might really like to paint so I picked up a few packs. Unfortunately, they only had two colors - pink and blue. But, I'm sure I can find some other colors somewhere else. 

Spring

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt - Margaret Atwood 

We have been digging our garden and planting our tomato plants and all kinds of flowers. Tomorrow we will plant our radishes and cucumbers. The kids take turns digging and helping to place the plants and also scattering the flower seeds. They now say they are gardeners. 

In My Defense

After answering a couple of questions I felt that I might come across as kind of a meanie -- don't take the kids to the library often, and almost never let them go to the store with me. But, I do actually try to spend a lot of time doing things with them. We spend hours and hours reading together and they absolutely love that. Sarah doesn't think she can eat breakfast unless I'm reading. We do lots of crafts and nature walks and we spend so much time talking about things we want to do and what we will build or plant next or what project the kids want to do. We don't travel a lot, but take short trips close to home, though we occasionally take longer trips. But, I will admit that we do a lot of the same things over and over. In my defense the kids seem to thrive on it and can have a perfectly lovely day just playing outdoors building fairy houses or in the outdoor kitchen. They entertain themselves a lot. They don't seem to ever run out of things they want to do. 

We had a nice Easter today and I would post pictures, but I haven't even gone through them yet. By the time everyone left, and we cleaned up, I was tired and pretty much didn't want to do anything. So, I will post Easter pictures tomorrow. Tonight I will post some pictures I took a few days ago. Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter Sunday. 

Evelyn and Liam love to play in the outdoor kitchen  when they come over. 

Bethany and Tess were starting a new fairy house which they worked on for about three days. 

Bethany made a small broom for her fairy house.

Another Question

Another question that I was asked that is simple for me to answer was - Do you all go grocery shopping? I can answer this in two words - Absolutely Not! That was an easy question and I didn't even have to think. 

I don't mind taking kids with me to the grocery store to pick up a few things or just run in quickly, but I do not like to take anyone with me when I do the weekly shopping. I like to have that time alone to look and plan and basically just be alone. I shop once a week and I do not go back to the store between shopping trips. I find I am much more careful about what I plan for the week and what I buy if I just tell myself that I can spend no more than "this much" and I can NOT go back to pick up little things I run out of or forgot. This is actually new for me as I used to run to the store probably 4 or more times a week and spent at least $100 more a week doing that. Now I plan and stick to my budget. This has made me really happy for some reason and the funny thing is that the kids are eating better and healthier than ever on less money. It is good for all of us. 

I know it isn't easy for some people to shop without kids, but I will miss my shopping day if I don't have a babysitter. Doing this alone is important to me. It is basically the only thing I ever do alone. 

Bethany has started making a lot of smoothies since it has started to get warm,  and she loves them. 

Grape Pixy Sticks

I kept Asher - my grandson - on Friday so his mom could take his sister, Reagan, out to get something to eat and go to the bookstore. Reagan had earned her white belt in karate and gotten all As on her report card so it was a special trip with her mom all to herself - except baby Finn. 

Anyway, this was Asher's face 10 seconds after I poured 1/3 of a grape Pixy Stick into his mouth. He obviously loved it and asked me to do it over and over. 

The Library

I had someone ask me a few questions, and I am going to try to answer some of them. This question seemed fairly easy - do we go to the library? At first I hesitated to answer this question as I figured my answer would not go over very well, but the truth is we almost never go to the library. We buy most of our books. I love to look at old books online and if someone mentions a book that sounds good I will immediately look for it and order it. I love to add new books to our library. I am a book lover and I almost never regret buying a book. All of us also love old books and the classics and some of the really old books are not in the library - so I also hunt them down and order them. I love having the books we love right here in our home to pick up and read anytime we want. 

It isn't that we have never used the library. We used to go every week or two to the large downtown library and spend hours there looking at books and checking them out. It was in that library that I found so many old and out of print books that we all came to love. It had a "stack room" as they called it with all of the older books in that room -- books that most people never checked out. But, for some reason this library held on to these old books. We would go in that room and look and look and always go home with new treasures. I will always be so thankful we found that room and so many lovely books to read. They eventually closed the "stack room" and we could no longer visit it, but we had already found many treasures. 

So, now when someone mentions a good book or I read a blog post and they mention a book I have never heard of - but it sounds really interesting - I usually look for it online and purchase. Then we have the book for years and years to enjoy. This just seems to work for us. We now have collected hundreds of books and even my adult children will talk about their favorite books as kids and the ones we read together. I am always looking for something new to read to the kids and love suggestions from people. 

I do love the feeling of walking into the library surrounded by so many books - it does give me such a lovely feeling. I still remember fondly all those days at our downtown library going through book after book after book. But, now it is a little harder to go and with so many people recommending wonderful books to me I find that for now it works better for us to just buy our books and add them to our library. But, I'm not saying that one day we won't start going again. 

Evelyn, my granddaughter, loves me to read to her. Every single time she comes over she finds a book and brings it to me to read. She also loves the outdoor kitchen which is where she is in this picture. 

Finally Here To Stay

I think warm weather is here to stay! We are all loving this weather so much. I think we are going to plant our garden this weekend -- flowers and vegetables. The kids are so excited - more excited than usual because we are reading The Secret Garden and so talking a lot about flowers and gardens. 

I had a reader ask me some questions - things she would like me to write about on the blog and I am actually going to try to answer at least one or two of her questions in the next few weeks - I am not good about answering questions and I know that. I always have good intentions, but somehow never get around to them. This time I think I will. 

Piper and Bella smile almost all of the day through. Piper does for sure. I don't think I have ever seen a child smile so much. 

Mark-My-Time

I meant to post our reading time for the month of March. Our Mark-My-Time says we read for 24 hours and 10 minutes for the month. I think that is down from February, but not too bad. We read quite a few books that I'm not going to list and we have started the book The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnette. I'm pretty sure just about everyone has read this book so there is no point in me giving a synopsis, but the kids are thoroughly enjoying it and I enjoy reading it to them around this time every year. It doesn't seem to matter how many times we have read this book they still ask for it every spring when we start talking about flowers and gardens and beautiful weather. This year I think Piper is actually understanding it much better and loving it. 

We are planning on planting our garden in the next week or two and the kids are drawing plans for the garden and planning what they want to plant. We have bought a lot of flower seeds and a few vegetables. I am hoping to have a little bit larger garden than last year. 

A few random pictures from our weekend. 

Keeping Up

There have been so many times in the past couple of weeks that I knew it was time for this blog to end. It has been kind of fun blogging about our adoptions and just our everyday lives, but the truth is that we are pretty boring people. We do the same things day in and day out and we don't even go to many places. So, I am feeling that the blog has become the same thing over and over and over. It seemed time to end. I kind of hated to end it, but things to write about seem to elude me.  Then last week my daughter that is in nursing school texted a question about Claire -- questions about years and years ago when she had leukemia. I answered the first question easily and the second one part way. I realized all of a sudden that I had actually forgotten some of the things I didn't think I would ever forget. But, there were some details and dates I could not remember. That made me think of my blog and how many times I have gone to it to look up dates or little things we could not remember -- like how many hours did Bethany use her vest in 2016 or when did she get her last vest. I usually mention some of this stuff on my blog and can find out the answer to quite a few questions we might have in less than 5 minutes. It was this that made me want to try to revive my blog and hold on a little longer. That and the fact the kids absolutely love to look at it and go back several years to see what they were doing and what they looked like. There is not a day that goes by that one of the kids isn't looking at the blog or one of our blog books.  It seems important to them. 

So, I guess I will try to continue though I have very little to say and we tend to do the same old same old constantly. But, I know I won't journal and I probably won't take the time to write the little things that happen or little details of our lives anywhere but here. It does make a nice yearbook at the end of the year. 

Our weekend was nice, but we were here just about all day every single day. The kids played out and I took a few pictures. I can't wait till it is really warm and we drink iced coffee on the porch every morning. I am hoping my daughter will come by occasionally and join me. 

Piper has worked so hard to lean to jump rope. It didn't seem like she would ever really get it. Then this weekend she called me out and she could not only jump, but for over 20 times straight. She was so thrilled and so was I. She is loving her new jump rope for sure.