Grace's Tea

On Saturday I hosted a graduation tea for one of our Bible Bowl players who moved to Tennessee this year.  Her family was back in town for a visit, and it was the perfect opportunity to reunite with them and honor a beautiful young lady who is very special to us.

Her favorite color is blue, so blue and white was the theme for the tea.

These cute girls showed up and immediately my house felt like home.  I have great memories of the Bible Bowlers congregating here for a variety of events through the years.

Our guest of honor, with her mother, sister, and Nana.

Grace got a picture that made me laugh.  It was from a road trip we took to St. Louis several years ago. I made the kids wade into the Mississippi River and retrieve a piece of driftwood for me to bring home to my garden.  They had to haul that driftwood all through the museum under the St. Louis arch.

Good (and patient) kids!!  :-)

Coach Beverly hosted the tea with me.

It was a sweet time to reconnect and visit.  I miss these friendly faces very much.

I'm proud of you, Grace.  Congratulations.

May God direct your path and bless your future!

Preschool Graduation

On Thursday, the Little LuLu graduated from preschool.

And I spent the entire day in a puddle of tears.

I don't know why this particular milestone stuck in my heart ... and mind ... and overactive heightened emotional state....but it did.  She's the last baby.  I'll never get to do preschool again.

A letter of the week with coordinated snacks, silly sock days, letter buckets, special stickers for learning Bible verses, WOW stickers for saying something spectacularly mature, and tons of construction paper crafts...I could live in this season of life indefinitely, and leaving it behind brings me sorrow.

BUT, it's time to head to kindergarten.............and that requires good hair.  :-)

Ems asked me to use hot rollers in her hair for the very first time, and she even came downstairs at an alarmingly early hour of the morning excited to get started.

Cute.

Lucky for me, we live in a "dry climate" where the humidity levels climb to 97% hardly ever.

Hardly ever, and also on preschool graduation curly hair day.  Naturally.

So, the beautiful hair lasted all of seven minutes, which was precisely enough time for me to get this amazing photo which I will treasure in my heart forever and ever and ever.

Because, as I mentioned, we are leaving preschool behind.  Forever.

I love this photo.  She is sitting in a little chair that a PRECIOUS family hand painted and gave to me at Emma's baby shower.

Caps and gowns on five years olds.  Adorable times a million.  Tears from every Mommy in the room.

Emma and her teacher, receiving her diploma.  The first of hopefully many that will be delivered into those little hands over the years!  :-)

The graduating class of 2013.  I want to pack up all ten of these kids and make them be in the same class together for the next thirteen years.  That would be my idea of the perfect school.

Emma may have been slightly uninterested in the Pastor's little "charge to the graduates".  He was a fine keynote speaker, but she looked a bit disconnected from the message.  Ha!!!

She was selected to do TWO solos during graduation.  First, she got to sing a verse of Thank You Lord.

"The bears in the woods say thank you Lord."

"Thank you, Lord!"

"Grrr!  Grrr! Grrr!!!"

She went to the microphone and MOUTHED the words.  Not a peep.  But then she returned to the microphone later on to recite a Bible verse, and she did it perfectly!!

"Oh give thanks to the Lord for He is good!"

Psalm 118:1

After the ceremony all the moms were invited back to the classrooms for a Mother's Day Lunch.

There were fresh flowers on the table, and they served a salad trio and muffins.

Each child had drawn a portrait of their Mommy, and we had to guess which drawing was us.

Here's me.

I don't know where the green eyes came from, but I'm very relieved that I have gray earrings instead of gray hair.

It was a very sweet day, and even though emotions ran a little high, I had a wonderful time.

There was a huge storm during graduation....thunder clapping and rain beating down on the roof.

One of the most fun parts was running to the van afterwards with our yellow balloon, jumping in a puddle on purpose, just for fun.

We still have three more days of school, but they are all fun days and field trips.

She was completely exhausted when we got home, so she took a little rest.

(With a pillow.)

Earlier in the week, we delivered a flower fairy garden to Mrs. Alice Ann to thank her for a wonderful year.  Emma had a sweet relationship with her teacher this year.  It was most definitely a year of growing, maturing, learning, and preparing for all the exciting things God has in store for us next.

Oh, we give THANKS to the LORD,

for He is indeed so very, very GOOD!

Mother's Day

Friday's Top Ten

1.

The chicks are staying through the weekend!  Landlord Buzzard graciously extended their lease.  :-) Emma and I read to them, so we've spent loooooots of time cuddled up next to the bucket with a stack of library books.

2.

Speaking of reading, I've started a new reading program with Emma.  She was all of the sudden READY to learn....full of questions about letters, sounds, and words.  So, off we went!  This week, she read her very first "chapter" out of her little reader.  It's about a yak eating jam.  :-)  More on our reading program (and why it's one of my favorite curriculum choices EVER) in a later post.  Here she is feeding bones to a monster.  As soon as you read the word on the bone, you get to feed it to the monster.

Also, matching rhyming ice cream scoops to make ice cream cones.

3.

I have 2,500 pounds of rocks on my driveway.  (Thank you, Calvin!!!)  I unexpectedly found some gorgeous boulders at an outrageous price, and we are giddy to finally address a landscape issue on the front of the house that has plagued us for years.  We weren't really looking for a project, but sometimes projects just have a way of finding you!  I'll be excited to share more about what we have planned.

4.

My girl and I on a date to spend a little gift card we were given.  (Thank you, Aunt Marci!).  Love this photo.  Emma has been in preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays this year, and both of those mornings the boys have co-op classes that are quite a distance away, especially in morning traffic.  So, that sweet girl has eaten her breakfast out of a zip lock baggie while sitting in her seat for 90 minutes very early before preschool twice a week all year.  Sometimes we stop at Starbucks if traffic is moving well and we have extra time to kill before preschool carpool drop off.  I treat her to a vanilla scone, her favorite.  This photo is a cute reminder to me of the visits we have spent there this year, and how sometimes being flexible can have its own rewards!  :-)

5.

Last night was "Bark at the Park" at Texas Rangers Ballpark.  Oh, I wish I would have known!!!  It would have been a blast to take Penny.  689 dogs showed up, despite some really off weather.  Owners and their dogs were allowed on the field a few hours before game time.  Hayden got Penny all dressed up this morning, just to "practice" her ensemble for next year's bark at the park.  We definitely want to go!

6.  "New cowgirl hat" has been on our wish list for a long, long time.  DONE!!  :-)

7.  I found this cute panel of nursing fabric at the quilt show this year.  Wendy and I each bought one.  I turned it into a bag to send to Hannah.  Duh.......she called me when it arrived in the mail.  I completely forgot to sew a HUGE hole in the lining closed, so the bag is unusable.  Phooey.  I'm so forgetful lately!

8.  I have a box of dissected animals in my garage.  Hayden's life science class ended this week and he brought all the animals from the year home with him.  He was extraordinarily interested in this class, and he really, really wanted the opportunity to show me these animals (and all their various parts) before disposing of them.  They have been in the garage for three days now.  I am working so, so hard to try to find the motivation to go out there and look at dissected brains, eyeballs, and hearts.  Nope, haven't found it yet!!!!!!  Ha!

9.  In other wildlife news, our new caterpillars came in the mail yesterday!!!  We're doing a butterfly garden this year.  This was my HUGE, exciting surprise that I've been building toward for weeks.  Then Kenny showed up and completely upstaged me in a massive way!!!  Ha!  Maybe not quite as awesome as chickens, but we're still happy to have caterpillars living on our piano.  (Are there any other empty corners of this house that I need to fill with nature???)  Marci and Nichole were giving me a REALLY hard time last week when I mentioned that when something happens to Mindy I'm not going to replace her.  I was casually talking about how we didn't really need any more pets.  They totally called my bluff.......and accused me of all manner of obsessive pet collecting.  I may need a special program.  Whatever am I going to do when I don't have little ones in this house to use as an excuse for housing all these critters???

10.  Don't you think I need this garden statue?  You know, just to remember my week??

Just Us Chickens

Here's how it's all been going down.....

I have wanted chickens since, about, for-ev-ah.  Urban cooping, they call it.  Keeping chickens is all the rage, in case you haven't heard.  It's hip, it's healthy, and it's fabulous.

And my Buzzard is not interested in being fabulous.  :-(

I go in spurts.  I rally for my cause and stay up late reading www.mypetchicken.com.  Then I let it go for a bit......we have a very small yard, there are hawks and coyotes in our neighborhood, city ordinances, yada...yada...yada.  That old Buzzard is just plain full of depressing facts.

But this week, Kenny arrived on my doorstep, bearing a half dozen fresh brown eggs.  Kenny is our same friend who showed up with a squirrel one day.  He's taken to urban cooping, and is, in fact, taking it BY STORM. What started as a few chicks has grown into a full blown organic egg business for him, complete with roosters crowing in his garage at the crack of dawn.  The great irony here is that Kenny is married to one of my dearest high school girlfriends, who is, by all accounts, completely and totally, a hundred thousand percent NOT INTERESTED in urban cooping.  She and Buzzard have lots to chat about,  apparently.

Anyway.  The eggs.  Oh how delighted I was over my eggs.  Big plans have I for those little dears.  Of course, Kenny came in to visit.  And of course, I had a million questions.  And of course, Kenny got me all fired up (again!!) about coops and runs and the egg laying stats of a Buff Orpington.  And of course, Buzzard broke a sweat across his brow.

So yesterday morning at the crack of early, my phone rings and it is Kenny.  He ordered a new shipment of baby chicks.....they arrived at the post office earlier than he expected.....they need to be picked up.....he is due to be out of town on business.....and would Emma and I be at all interested in chick sitting for some two day old babies?????

WOULD WE BE INTERESTED?!!  Bring me thy chickens.

They arrive, and I immediately text a photo to Buzzard and some friends.

This is the part where Buzzard begins to wonder if he has been set up.  It was all too fun not to let it play out....at least for a little while.  I realize at this point that if I have any chance of being promoted from chicken sitter to chicken owner, I've got to play my "A" game.  So, I ask Emma if she would like to keep the cheeping fluffy puffballs in her bedroom.  Next to her bed.  Because I intimately know the powers of a five year old, and I (accurately) estimated it would take three eighths of a nano-second for Emma to fall in loooooove with the chickens and begin trailing her Daddy like a shadow on his heel begging, begging, begging for chicken puffballs of her own.

Well sure, this is considered playing dirty.  But this is what a girl has to do if she really wants to break into the poultry business around here.

Buzz ends up coming home for lunch to investigate the issue and questions every tiny little thing.  I'm telling you, the man is made of steel.  How is it humanly possible not to be WON OVER by a tiny puffy ball of peeping, chirping wonderfulness??  There is seriously nothing cuter than a newborn chick.  (Except maybe the sight of a man on the side yard building his wife a coop.  That's a pretty cute thing too.)  Anyway, put a little livestock in the upstairs bedroom and he gets all testy.  SHEESH.  I had to confess that they belonged to Kenny because he was acting like the SWAT team was due to show up here any minute to raid my gardenia bushes for bantam hens.  I reassured him I would never dishonor him by doing something I KNEW he didn't want me to do, and that supposedly violated some wildly restrictive and unfair city ordinance.  Even chickens.

But gosh.  They are so fun.  We've had the neighbors in.  We march them all upstairs to show off our finely feathered brood.  Emma beams with pride.  The kids and I dart up there many, many times a day to check on them.  We just stand over the Rubbermaid tote gawking at their playful sweetness, and croon about how fabulous they are.  (I warned Kenny we are creating very vain birds.)  You can hear the constant peeping all the way downstairs, even through closed doors.  PRECIOUS sounds.

Today we loaded them up in the van (along with our bearded dragon) and hauled everyone to homeschool co-op for Max's biology class.  They have been studying birds and reptiles, so the teacher was thrilled to have visitors, and Kenny graciously agreed to let us take his sweet babies.  I was driving the Chicken Express!!!  It's the first week of May and we're having these crazy temperature swings in Texas, and today was cold and windy and rainy.  A bad day in general for transporting barnyard animals in a Toyota.  So I wrapped the chicken box in a handmade quilt.

I'm telling you.  I'm this in love with baby chicks.  My handmade quilts.  Around a box of chickens.  Urban cooping.  It's all the rage.  Pleeeeeeease, won't somebody tell the Buzzard??????  :-)

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

Hayden and I attended our last book club of the school year.  The book we studied was Carry On, Mr. Bowditch; the true story of the sailor in the 1700's who wrote the navigational tables still in use today.

It was a sea-faring theme, and our lovely hostess helped coordinate a seafood buffet.

(I got stuck on a busy day in a busy week, so my big fancy contribution was Swedish Fish.  Ha!)

We played a game of power-jeopardy, where the kids competed to answer questions about all the books we have studied so far this year.

I have to say again that this has hands down been one of my favorite homeschool activities this year.

I love the creativity and passion that the women who lead these studies pour into reading....and into teens!  I always come away feeling inspired in both my teaching and my parenting.

We had to leave club early because of a baseball game far, far away.  I was having such a great time it was almost impossible to walk out the door.  We drove for 90 minutes to get to our game and arrived to an empty parking lot.

Panic!

Turns out, I misread my calendar, and we got to the fields an hour early.  We didn't need to leave club after all.  No worries....I made good use of that hour kicking myself in the pants and stewing!!  GRRRR.

Our summer book is Ten Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.  We're reading, then getting together for a swimming party.  Can't wait, but it's a big book, so we've got to get started!  :-)