April Books

I read some great books in April, but this wasn’t among them. We can’t go to the library right now, of course, and it seems like the wait for good books on the library app is longer than ever.  Sometimes I just take what’s available on the app, and that leads to reading books like this. 

Now this was a good one!  It’s the memoir of a girl growing up in poverty with crazy parents, and it’s sad, but a page-turner. 

Oh, this is just fabulous!  My dad has the real, live, paper book, and I highly recommend that you borrow it!  This was my second time reading it, but I just couldn’t put it down!

The next two are books I borrowed from a friend at school, and according to my notes, the one above was ‘mediocre’ and the one below was ‘good.’  It’s just so nice to have a real book to read. 

The kids and I listened to Doctor Doolittle over the course of many bedtimes. 

The Aviator’s Wife was another sad page-turner!

This was an audiobook because that was what was available, and it was fun to listen to because it was set in Scotland so the narrator had a nice accent. This story pulls you in!

My mom brought this next one home from Scotland, and I believe I like his Ladies’ Detective books better (and they still aren’t exactly my jam) but this was pretty good. 

I finished all these by April 18 and then the rest of the time I got bogged down in this historical account of Scotland and I’m still only halfway through it. But I did read a great book yesterday!  I’ll tell you what it was at the end of May!  

Happy birthday to Jennifer!

Back in Kindergaten

Here are a few pictures of Eleonora’s last weeks of kindergarten, we just didn’t know it at the time. 

She did a project about an arctic animal - the elephant seal. I helped the boys do their artic animal posters back in the day, so I was happy when Caleb helped Eleonora finish putting her poster together. 

The Cat in the Hat came to read to the kindergarteners. 

The last day of school before Spring Break (also the last day of school, period) was the day they celebrated St. Patrick’s Day early. 

(E’s teacher sent me the last three pictures.)

Weekend

We had a nice, relaxing, drizzly weekend. Chris took most of these pictures. Our irises are beautiful. We have 4 or 5 varieties. 

We got some more stone edging from a friend’s house and put that around the blueberries and moved the blueberries’ bricks to the garden in front of the cabin. We just need a few more to finish the job. 

We took out this black plastic edging we had there before because Buddy wouldn’t leave it alone. We had different levels of satisfaction with working in the mist, as you can see.  If anyone is in the market for some free black edging, come on down!

Chris replaces the light fixtures in the bathroom while the kids looked on. 

While we were on our porch Saturday evening, a gigantic tree fell across our street, just a few houses down. 

On Sunday evening, we went for a family walk. It was sprinkling and so windy when we started, but it got prettier as we went along. 










Now it is Monday morning, and we hit the ground running!  Right now I hear one kid doing Mr. Hoffman piano lessons, one kid sorting legos, one kid humming while she does her worksheets, and it is all music to my ears. 

Fun Friday at Fall Creek Falls

Yesterday started out as a normal “home-schooling” day, only even messier because the kids had just unloaded their trash bags of school belongings and I was sending out work to my ESL students as well. Then my dad called and offered to take us on an adventure, and “oh, buddy, he didn’t have to holler twice.”

We originally set out looking for a greenhouse, but Eleo noticed we were heading in the general direction of Fall Creek Falls, and my dad had just read that they were opening up yesterday, so we went!  There were some strange road closings within the park, but you could get pretty much anywhere, just circuitously. We ate lunch on the back porch of this old schoolhouse. (While we were driving-through to pick up our lunch, Eleonora joined in with her Google-Meet kindergarten classroom meeting - the wonders of technology.)

It was gorge-eous!!

The waterfalls were all flowing like crazy!

Caleb got himself a new hat at the FCF General Store. 

Then as we were leaving the park (out the wrong side because of the road blocks), we saw and followed a sign to a greenhouse and ended up in some sort of Amish/Mennonite (?) community. They sold their canning lids in 24 dozen packs for $50. Now that would last you a while!

While we were in there, Eleonora lost her very first tooth!  Here’s Caleb with his missing bottom teeth. I’ll have to find Josiah, too. 

Anyways, their greenhouses were great, and we came home with some fun plants, so now it’s time to hop out of bed and go plant them. We are hosting a little socially-distanced birthday party for Jennifer next weekend, so we’ve got to turn this place into a show place!

Happy Saturday!

Strawberry Girls

A local strawberry farm announced that it was time to come pick this week. 

We had taken our girls to this same place three years ago and we thought we could recreate this cute picture. 

Unfortunately, the ripe strawberries had already all been picked for the day, so the girls found one each to eat, and then we headed to Amanda’s house to bounce, play, and plant a little veggie garden. 

Packed Up

Today was my day to pack up my classroom at school. We had to take our temperatures as we went in the building, and then put all our students’ things in a labeled garbage bag. Here was the gym when I went to add my kids’ ESL stuff to their classroom teachers’ bags for them. 

That was sad. Next week, parents can drive by the school and teachers will bring out their kids’ stuff to them. 

Some of the work I was sending home: