I caught the kids colds this past month and it was a bad one. A fever of 102 and a sinus infection so bad that my face hurt in ways it had never hurt before. It took me almost a week to beat it, but I finally did with a variety of home remedies including soaking my feet, breathing in oregano essential oil over a boiling pot of water, saline nose spray that I swiped from Violet, keeping a hat on my head even while indoors and *trying* to sleep. I'm certain I got the cold to begin with because I was so sleep deprived from taking care of the kids - namely Violet - while they were sick. I love being a mom, but how nice would it be if there was a pause button on the demands of motherhood while mom was sick? Will came home from work early one day, and I was able to rest then as well as through the weekend which made a big difference.
Will is really great about taking the kids on errands with him so I can get some work done at home. While I was sick, he got the kids out of the house so that I could sleep. One afternoon he took the kids to the local farm and garden store to let me catch a nap. When they came home, Emma announced excitedly that they didn't get the bunny they wanted but they did get 10 baby chicks! Now, Will and I had discussed earlier that we would get a couple (think 2) egg laying hens and 6-8 meat birds. If you add those numbers generously, you will come up with 10 chickens. Will came home with TEN baby egg laying hens and casually mentioned the store was out of the meat birds, but he would check back next week. For a former high school math teacher, these numbers just don't add up. After questioning him for a couple of minutes to figure out if was crazy, he finally flashed me a sheepish grin and put all of his stuttered excuses aside by simply stating, "But they're so CUTE!" Here are the kids below enjoying what then became my easy, hands-on science unit for the week.
Charlie was fascinated by the chicks when they first arrived, especially since Will set up their home in the garage. For the first couple of weeks Charlie slinked about the place with the most guilty expression on his face. Now the chicks are almost as big as him, so he has moved on to his old standbys - woodpeckers, squirrels and anything else smaller than him that flies or runs on four legs. Charlie loves being around us, and is no longer in hiding with his guilty conscious. He will watch TV with the girls through the window, or just hang out near us when we are playing outside. I still cannot believe that he picked our garage when he was just a tiny little orphan kitty. Most nights he comes when he is called and we can lock him up safe in the garage allowing me to have one less loved one to worry about. Such a good kitty.
From St. Patrick's Day we moved on to the first day of spring. We celebrated by enjoying the spring flowers in our yard as well as making a Spring Bucket List. Lucy arranged the bucket list in the center of our dining room table in such an artistic manner, I just had to take a picture. The bunny painting in the below picture was painted by me in fourth grade, and I found it in our basement while doing some spring cleaning (aka get everything off of the ground as our basement leaks in spring!). In the top right hand picture below is a custom beaded sun-catcher that a new friend of mine made for me, depicting all four of the spring flowers that represent my children: yellow tulip for Luke, daffodil for Emma, pink tulip for Lucy and a purple violet for Violet. What a bouquet!
Easter morning dawned bright and early of course, and the girls had fun discovering their hidden Easter baskets in the theme of Fairies. The Easter Bunny even left tiny, fairy-sized Easter baskets for each of the girls too. Violet wasted no time after she found her basket and ripped open her chocolate bunny and was drooling chocolate before Lucy had even found her Easter basket.
After giving up on Operation Get Violet to Take a Nap, we left for Will's parents house where we enjoyed another Easter egg hunt, time spent with family and even a great game of hide and go seek.
Usually, Easter is timed with Will's spring break. Because Easter was so early this year, it was back to work and school the day after Easter. Wow, was that rough. We made it through, but I'm thinking we need to make Easter Monday a day off just to recover from the day before. Here we are below, doing school work. In the middle, top picture below, our friend came over dressed as Anne Frank and gave us a presentation on her life. She did an amazing job and the girls were in awe of her performance.
Lately, Will and I have been looking at each other in mild horror and saying things like, "There are THREE of them." No longer do we have Lucy, Emma and a baby. Nope, now we have three, independently minded girls who are constantly vying each other for the head hen status. About every five minutes someone is yelling "MINE!!!" and about every ten minutes, someone is getting hurt - usually after I warned them to stop doing whatever risky thing they were doing because they were going to get hurt. When the "MINE" and the "OW" are happening at the same time - so every ten minutes - I can barely handle it. Most of the time I feel guilty for having little to no sympathy when they are crying - either because of "MINE" or "OW". Of course the pictures below do not back up my case that I am surrounded by three little crazy people. As Will would say, "But they are so cute!"
Homeschooling has had it's fair share of ups and downs. Some moments I feel like a prisoner in my own house with three little wardens keeping me locked in and I am the least patient person on the planet. Sometimes this is a passing moment, and sometimes the feeling lasts all day. Other moments I have such a feeling of love and amazement at the fact that this is MY life that I can hardly contain my joy. The bottom line is that I feel a strong calling to homeschool, and that is what gets me through the ups and downs. Most days, book work is just routine stuff that we all try to accomplish so that we can move on with the rest of our day. And it really is the rest of the day that makes us all prefer the homeschool life. Here we are below, at Will's work for Astronomy Night. I learned so many things about the sun and the planets and all of us absolutely loved it.
Here they are below, enjoying life after their book work is done for the day. In clockwise order from the top left: Violet, hugging a dress she liked at the store while saying "awwww!", Lucy trying on a robe and then me almost peeing my pants when I discovered she had left the hanger in it while trying it on, out to lunch with an old family friend and my cousins, and finally, modeling dresses that they are going to wear for their birthday photo shoot next month. Going shopping with three girls in tow is dangerous for our budget. I just want to buy all of the cute clothes...times THREE.
Most days we just play after our school work is done, and as the weather starts to warm up, we go outside to play. The top left hand picture below is what spring time looks like in our garage - and behind that mess of bee hives and newly resurrected outside toys are the baby chicks. It is a tangled mess which I hope translates to the fact that we are enjoying life and have a hard time passing up good deals on outside toys...times THREE.
The girls have been busy fixing up their fairy gardens...
...and we have enjoyed many a spring time walk to the river by our house as well as the school playground down the street from us. Over Easter weekend we were playing at the school playground when we started discovering little bouncy balls scattered in the wood chips. The girls started collecting them until it occurred to us that perhaps they were going to have an Easter egg hunt with them, as there were far too many balls to just be coincidentally lost. So, we had fun discovering them all, and then sent them all down the twisty slide to be randomly dispersed back amongst the wood chips. It was such a fun evening though, and the sight of all of those bouncy balls flying off of that slide was amazing entertainment for us.
On one of our spring hikes we were exploring some parts of a trail by us that we have never been on before. Lucy had been hounding us to check out a small foot bridge and when we finally obliged her we discovered a bunch of turkey feathers on the ground. After studying the feathers we came to the conclusion that they were not wild turkey feathers but a heritage breed of turkey feathers. Once we made that connection, our eyes drifted to - gasp - a turkey, clearly injured and in pain a couple of feet away from the feathers. We were pretty sure it was our neighbor's turkey, Tom so we called him up and he was by our side in about 15 minutes. Yes, Tom had gone missing and yes, he would be right there! Tom had already survived six Thanksgivings, and so we were hopeful that he would pull through. Something had attacked him though and he was definitely in rough shape. If we hadn't found him, he would have surely died there. Our neighbor took him straight home and told us that Tom was so happy when he got back to his pen. Sadly, Tom died the next day but we are holding on to the fact that he died at home and with the people who loved him.
Some of our favorite friends go to public school during the day, and it is always nice to have a playdate after school is out. Here they are below, playing traditional school at home which if you think about it is a nice blend of both kids' worlds.
We also attended an adorable, strawberry-themed one year old's birthday party this past month that was at a roller rink our friend had redesigned into a beautiful gathering space and sports arena. Every sporting equipment you could think of was available to play with and the girls had so much fun running around in the open space.
Our kitchen continues to support us as we pump out all sorts of food. A favorite this past month was Irish soda bread as well as a very delicious veggie spring roll that we have been making in bulk as they freeze nicely and make a nutritious and quick lunch when pulled out of the freezer and put in the toaster oven two at a time.
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