hello, spring

Are there songs that transport you to a specific time and place?  

Is there a song that makes you remember the feeling of grass poking up through a picnic blanket, while the sun warms your face and a light breeze tickles past you?  Mmmmmm, I love spring.

Listen to this haunting cover of Fleetwood Mac's Dreams by Dana Williams & Leighton Meester and be swept into the promise of spring and the beauty of tragic love. 

beginning a nature study

I'm starting to follow Anna Comstock's Nature Study program with the kids, so last week when TLM asked if we could go collect wildflowers, I was really happy. When I found out that he wanted to collect them so that we could "smash them in a book and make them flat," I was more happy. Even when I found out that he got the idea from a Scooby Doo book and that's why he was interested, I was just glad that he was interested. Thanks, Scooby Doo for the great influence!

Behind our neighborhood is a giant area that is undeveloped. Well, all three sides of our neighborhood have these areas, but two of them are farmed. The third area was bought by a developer to build houses on before the housing market went down the drains. So it's just a giant field that they occasionally mow down. Right now, it's covered with wildflowers, so we walked over there to gather some specimens to "smash in a book." I don't have any photos of this part of the story, because I took the camera with me, but left the memory card at home.


As it usually is with children, they were sidetracked by our original goal by something else more exciting...roly polies. So instead of filling their buckets with wildflowers, they collected over 12 roly polies.


They only consented to pick flowers when I agreed that the roly polies would probably like them to play on. We took them back home and watched them crawl, counted how many seconds it took them to unroll out of balls, and drew circles with sidewalk chalk and counted how long it took them to crawl out of it. Good times.


Our read aloud novel right now is Freckles, by Gene Stratton Porter. I love her books, because they seem so magical. Didn't you love Girl of Limberlost when you were little? I wanted to be Eleanor. Anyways, this adventure took place the day after we started Freckles. In the first chapter, Ms. Porter describes how Freckles took a long piece of grass to beat the dirt off his clothes before his interview with McClean. I explained to the kids that Freckles was using the type of grass we had seen last year in the Kansas at the Tallgrass Prairie Reserve, but they were still skeptical. So when we went on our walk, I picked some prairie grass to remind the kids. TLM wanted me to take this photo of him cleaning the dirt off his clothes just like Freckles for Sunshine to see, since she was at school while we were off adventuring.


We did smash one wildflower in a book, but it's still being smashed. I'll let you know how that went after it's done "getting flat." =)

And these photos document how bipolar Pocket is minute by minute. These photos were taken maybe 15 seconds apart.




Have you noticed that every photo of her in a dress, she's also wearing jeans? She INSISTS on it and I'm too tired from fighting with her about everything else to fight her on this one. Perhaps when the temperature gets over 90, she'll change her mind.

if this is wrong

I don't want to be right. LOL


What kind of idiot buys a rubberband gun for a kid like TLM?


Us.

far FAR from the apple tree

*2004 - only child Sunshine hunting eggs in my parents' backyard while five adults cheered her on*


My parents have a great backyard and have always had a super garden, complete with gobs of fruit trees. That garden took work, so on the weekends, my parents would shuffle us outside to work in the dirt.

I don't like to touch dirt.

I also don't like to touch sand. (Yep, I grew up in a beach city. What can I say?)

I don't like the way they make my hands and feet feel. Honestly, it freaks me out. I love to garden, I love nature, I love camping, I love the beach, but I really can NOT handle the way dirt/sand dries out my skin. As an adult, I garden with my hands slathered in cream, covered with blue surgical gloves and then regular gardening gloves, while wearing knee high wellies. Oh ya, and I also HATE the way chlorine feels on my skin. AHHH!!!! Don married such a freak. Do you know that most people with dyslexia also have sensory issues? I'll shout 'Amen' on that one.

So, what's a girl to do on a beautiful Saturday morning in southern California if she really, really doesn't want to garden?

I usually started out there and had to leave after about 20 minutes. So, I cleaned the house. I cleaned the house until it was spotless every weekend. I also made lunch for the hard working gardeners. I thought it was a fair trade off and my sweet parents never forced me to stay out there. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Apparently, my children fell far FAR from the tree and do NOT have the same issues I have, because this is how they entertained themselves after school today.


Or they just fell on their heads from a tree and have lost their minds.


Either option is possible.

*2007 - playing in my parents' backyard*

a good backup plan

When you can't get your inflatable waterslide to work, but you promised your kids they could play in water after school,


it's nice to have a sprinkler system and a hose sprinkler in your backyard.



It's all good to kids!!!