Bubble Gum

Wow, this week was a stressful one that was full of great things.  My work schedule was very busy and I ended up putting in close to 10 hours of extra time.  The nice thing is I'll be using those extra hours to make our vacation a day longer.

Felicity had her kindergarten promotion on Tuesday morning.  I took some time off and Jeff and I went to the Primary school to watch her in a little performance before receiving her kindergarten certificate.  They had a nice slide show and refreshments after.  I cannot believe how fast the year has flown, and Felicity has simply amazed me with all that she's learned this year.  I remember kindergarten, for me it was 1/2 a day and we were lucky to get out knowing our colors, and how to spell our names.  Felicity is writing sentences, solving addition and subtraction problems along with all the reading she is able to do!  Her report card was perfect in the last quarter; we are so proud of her.  She did not want the school year to end!  She cried on Friday when she didn't get to go to school.  She said she was going to miss her teacher so much, and asked if we could go visit her at her house.

Tuesday night, Felicity also had her very first piano recital.  She started piano lessons in August and has really enjoyed learning.  She memorized her piece and played wonderfully and even managed a cute little bow at the end.  We were so proud of her!  I can't fathom how grown up she is getting.  I posted a video of her recital performance below.

 

I had two cakes this weekend.  One for a friend's graduation party on Friday and one for a baby shower on Saturday.  The first was a sheet cake with a three dimensional earth blowing up with a mushroom cloud in the center.  Yeah, I think of graduation being the "first day of the rest of our lives" as a oppose to "its the end of the world as we know it", to each their own!  The baby shower cake was for somebody I've never met.  They won a gift card for $35 off a custom cake at a Christmas gift exchange for the estate sale company Jeff and I went to a couple of years ago.  Even though it was expired, I still honored it and ended up making money off it anyway with a delivery charge.  I sent them several pictures, they picked the same one I made a couple of weeks ago.  Now I'm all caked out seeing as we were so busy this week and I didn't have an off Friday and I had two cakes to produce in as many days...my kitchen is a mess!

So the girls have, aside from missing school, enjoyed summer so far.  They were a little disappointed with our no TV all day rule.  Once we get back from vacation, I'm going to come up with a schedule including the summer reading program and daily activities.  Saturday they spent a couple hours in the sand box and another couple playing with play dough.

I think we'll end up getting ready for vacation on Monday, we have a lot to prepare.  The rest of my team will be away at a conference this week, so I'll probably work from home Tuesday and Wednesday, and then our adventure starts Thursday.  We are so looking forward to it!

I found this the other day when I got home and thought to myself, "dads are a special kind of parent, the kind who gets you McDonald's for lunch and plays the Wii with you, and pretty much lets you do whatever when Mom is not at home" (*rolls eyes).


Felicity plays Shepard Count Your Sheep at her first piano recital...

Ruby

Another busy week. It seems like they're always busy.  Arlo had a checkup this week.  He is five months old and is 26" long which is average.  He only weighs 12 pounds 12 ounces which is low for his age.  We are feeding him more frequently and we're giving him more formula.  The doctor said to hold off on the rice cereal as it is low in calories and fills him up.  He's still nursing in the morning, after I get home from work, and in the evenings.  He's developmentally on target and otherwise very healthy and happy.  He's such a good baby and really talks up a storm.  He is really loving his toys now too.

We've been getting out and walking after dinner and have really enjoyed the added exercise and time together.  While on our walk on Wednesday we came upon an abandoned baby quail chick.  He was just hatched and the parents and nest were no where in site.  We picked him up and brought him home.  I prepared the girls that he probably wouldn't survive the night, but low and behold he was chirping and excited to be held in the morning.  We started to feed him rice cereal with a syringe and he has just thrived.  He has started walking now and the girls just love him.


I went out with my mom and grandma on Friday.  We had breakfast and went shopping and I got a few things for our upcoming vacation.  Jeff helped the neighbor's lay sod and we had dinner and games after.  We had a very nice time.  Jeff worked on Saturday and I cleaned the house.  We enjoyed time in the garden Sunday evening as it cooled down.  Helen spotted a lizard in the marigolds and asked if she could pet it.  We told her she could, and she went straight over to him and picked him up after gaining some trust.  She is such a sweet girl and I'm glad that she has a love of nature and animals already.  I'm not at all squeamish and I'm glad the girls don't shriek around insects and lizards and such (although we did talk about not picking up things without permission).

  I have a full week of work in the coming week and then a long weekend, we'll be heading on vacation after that.

Cherry Blossom Pink

So I have some catching up to do!  I’m going to start with the week of May 7, 2012.

Work has been very busy, but in a lot of ways that’s a good thing.  Time has really been flying.  I have LOVED having Jeff at home during the day since he’s out of school for the summer.  He does a great job with the kids, he such a great father.  While Jeff was still in class, I was going to work from 5 AM – 2PM, and then when I didn’t make it in quite that early, I would still have to leave at 2 PM and then work from home in the evening.  It was actually pretty stressful, so I’m enjoying working a more normal schedule.  We haven’t decided what we are going to do next semester for child care, but would like to send Helen back to the Early Childhood center for their pre-school program at the very least to get her prepared for kindergarten.  It’s so hard to believe that Helen will be starting kindergarten in a little more than a year; hard to believe Felicity is almost finished with her first year of school in a little more than a week.

Our garden is blossoming and it makes me so happy.  The grass is nice and green and many of the flowers are in full bloom.  The hollyhocks outside my kitchen window are simply stunning.  We’ve been eating pea pods straight from the garden and the kids love that.  We have been using the sprinkler to water the grass more now.  Typically, we move the kid’s pool around every couple of days and draining it constitutes about 70% of the grass watering.  The cat jumped on the inflatable pool to see what was inside it and put several holes in it, so we retired it and haven’t replaced it yet.

The highlight of the week was the wonderful Mother’s day weekend.  I spent much of Saturday working on the gifts I was making for my mother and grandmother.  I finally pulled out my cutting machine and spent a lot more time fiddling with it than I would have liked to, but the finished project was beautiful if I do say so myself.  Jeff worked at the estate sale this week as we’re saving up some extra money for vacation.  Sunday we went to church as usual, but had a nice Mother’s day brunch in the last hour which was very nice.  I was relieved from my interpreting duties while enjoying a very nice early afternoon eating with some of my favorite women.  We went to lunch with my parent’s at the Del Lago club house after church.  The girl’s got a kick out of eating while overlooking the golf course and it was a very nice meal.  We spent the rest of the day with them and really enjoyed ourselves.  Jeff bought me a potted rose bush for the garden.  The last phase of our garden will be to extend the raised bed down the last side of the yard and it’s my plan to plant rosebushes in that bed, so I’ve been collecting rose bushes (in containers for now) for when that is completed.  It was a great week!

Persimmon

It was a crazy and busy week around here! Last Saturday I did the market on the move thing and went a little overboard and brought home about 20 pounds of green beans and 20 pounds of tomatoes among other things. Monday afternoon I got together with a couple of my very awesome friends and we canned the green beans. We also started processing the tomatoes. The plan was to make and can pasta sauce. I'll tell you a little later about how that turned out!

Jeff finished his last class on Wednesday and had exams on Friday. He thinks he did well and is happy to have some time off for the summer. He'll be taking a summer class in July after our vacation, which is fast approaching. I was happy to be back to a normal work schedule, 7:oo AM - 4:00 PM.

I made two cakes this week. One for a baby shower that turned out really cute, the other was for a friend's birthday. I baked the cakes on Thursday evening with Jeff's help and spent my entire off Friday in the kitchen decorating. We had a full house too. I watched a friend's two kids for a couple of hours in the morning and Jan came over to hang out and help me finish the pasta sauce. My mom stopped by to drop some things off and stayed to chat for quite awhile. By the time 6 PM rolled around things had quieted down but the kitchen was pretty much a mess so we ordered a pizza and the Bryson's stayed and had dinner with us and then we played games after. Vance also stayed over Friday night, so he was here for rousing game of Risk.

The pasta sauce, let me tell you about the pasta sauce adventure. We cut up about 20 pounds of tomatoes and added two large onions, two large bell peppers, fresh oregano, garlic, and other spices. We cooked that for several hours and then spent another hour putting it through the food mill to remove the skin and seeds. Then we put that back on to cook down some more. It cooked for another few hours, but it wasn't reduced enough to can yet, so we turned it off before going to bed. I dutifully put it back on in the morning while I was cleaning, but didn't stir it enough, because it scorched! I was so upset. All that prep time and cooking time, literally down the drain. Oh, well! To be honest it only looked like it was going to make three or four quarts of sauce after all the reduction anyway, so I don't feel so bad forking over a dollar or two for store bought sauce.

We cleaned the house on Saturday morning which it was is desperate need of. In the evening we went on a double date with Jan and Victor and had dinner and then went to see the Avengers. I love living in a small town, you can't go anywhere without running into someone you know. The movie was alright, I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had seen Thor and Captain America as I didn't know anything about those characters. My opinion, make sure you see the individual character's movies first, then The Avengers will probably make more sense. I was entertained and it didn't seem like it was two and half hours, so in the end it was a win. We had a lot of fun and will have to go on those kinds of dates more often. I think it was the first time we've ever left the kids with a babysitter and the girls seemed to really enjoy it. I was pretty comfortable leaving them as we didn't even leave Sahuarita for our date.

The girls and I went to my sister in law's baby shower after church on Sunday and enjoyed that. Arlo tried rice cereal for the first time at dinner on Sunday and after a few bites decided he liked eating with the spoon and also decided that he would be more skilled with it than me, and took it away from me. He made quite a mess and I doubt very seriously he actually consumed any of it, but its all about the learning experiences. It was a great week and I can't believe Monday is already here!