Home-y

On Saturday we made hobo stew and cooked it in our freshly cleaned-our firecircle. Delicious as always!

Also, Caleb spent a very long time patching up the Habs’ last-year’s inflatable pool. Don’t think it’s gonna hold air too well, but it sure kept him busy!

Another Happy Monday

My parents took us on a lovely adventure today - a long drive and a short hike were included. 

The kids even went for a bit of an impromptu swim. 

We stopped at a fun fruit place in town, and I got to see one of my students (his family runs it), which bring me to five of my students (V, S, A, A, J) that I’ve got to see since school ended and three that I actually got to talk to for a while!

The first student I got to talk to was a kindergartener who was at the track with her mom, and my student scootered beside Josiah and me, talking (in English and Spanish) as fast as she could the entire way.  (I think she might be an only child.). Josiah said afterwards, “Mom.  Why didn’t you just say, ‘No habla Espanol.’?”  I told him I was catching her general drift (She has a birthday coming up, she wants a unicorn party or Frozen, and also, are there alligators in the lake?)  

The second student was at a Mexican restaurant her family owns, and she even told me she wrote the writing prompt I sent her!  (None of the schoolwork we have mailed to our students at our school is mandatory, and my guess is that not a whole lot is happening in some families, so that made me happy to hear.)

Speaking of Spanish, the boys and I are trying to practice our Spanish every day using a great free app called Duolingo. (Try it today!). I made it to a 100 day streak last week!  My biggest competitors on there (who have achieved even longer streaks) are Matthew and my mother. Josiah is gaining on us. My bro-in-laws are on there too, but we won’t talk about their status. 

(Eleonora wasn’t wearing much under that coat after her swim, haha.). Fruit is Caleb’s favorite - that cup was huge. 

Josiah and a school friend are planning a sleepover in the future, and this is the schedule his friend emailed him today for when it happens. (His friend is the only kid at his house, and it looks like he’s ready for someone to play with!)


The other good news from today is that the kids did great on their charts - schoolwork, etc., you know. That’s good because this is our last official week of school!  I believe Eleonora’s kindergarten graduation would have been today!  And just to remember all the memes going around these days, here’s a funny graduation one for you. 

Happy Monday!

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.