Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Ten on Wednesday

1. Lots have been going besides our Easter fun. Tball is in full swing now, in gale force winds and blowing dirt. We are two games in and I am kind of over it. Don't get me wrong Zane is having a blast and doing great. The first season of everyone running around, having no idea what is going on, was really cute. A year later it's slightly exhausting. I wish he could have stayed on one team the whole time, so that everyone could have progressed together. Zane is progressing and doing really well, but I'm pretty sure this is most of the other kids first season. The not getting my kids to bed until 9pm is also rough. Rowan remains adorable while watching his brother and Zane is having fun so I guess all is good. 
 



 

2. For some reason yesterday I was feeling quite domestic and was doing a stellar job as a house wife and stay at home mom. First up we made a construction site/sensory bin with beans where Rowan can use all his little CAT machines, trucks, and cars. He has a ton of little cars, but never quite knows what to do with them. Zane and Rowan both really enjoyed it. It was kind of messy, but the boys also got great practice sweeping at the end of the day. 
 
 This is the type of activity that Zane would never have set still long enough to do, but Rowan sat and played with it for a long time, multiple times yesterday. He even got Zane to sit and play with it!
 
3. Next up was my genius idea of trying to get Zane excited about reading. This is a constant, very real struggle. When Zane wants to he can read all sorts of things, sound out words, and knows all sorts of sight words. When he doesn't want to read he looks at the first letter of a word and says the first word he can think of that starts with that letter. It's very frustrating and I have tried all sorts of things to get him excited. Last week I got him a few more books for his Leap Reader pen, which he is using and enjoying. Yesterday, while Rowan was still sleeping, we went outside and did some sight word hopscotch, which morphed into the side walk being hot lava and the words in squares were rocks. If he couldn't read them the rock broke and he melted. He read all sorts of words, learned new words, he was on a roll and I was feeling quite good about myself. By the time Zach got home he was over it and couldn't read any of the words. So who knows how much stuck.
 
 
4. Lastly, I made some strawberry scones for my sister who had a minor procedure this morning, which went wonderfully, I'm happy to say! I might have kept some of the scones, because they were fabulous. I hope you enjoyed them Abbey and feel better soon! Here is the recipe if anyone is interested.

5. Zane had his last swim lesson this evening. I hear that all went well while I was at work. He has successfully swam almost all the way across the pool, without a floaty. I really wish we could do it again in April, but sadly there are multiple weeks with two tball games next month so we opted to wait until May. I am going to try to take him swimming with me more often so he remembers all his new skills. As I predicted he picked up on everything very quickly and loved it! 
 
 This face though!

6. Spring time is here and we are spending most of our afternoons outside. The boys spend hours riding their bikes, scooter, and a combination of both. Our tree in the front yard gets a lot of climbing as well. No more falls to report and the ladder is safely out of reach yet again. The Easter bunny brought bubbles, which I am always reluctant to buy because they get spilled immediately, but the boys are loving their bubble tubes. 
 

 
7. I finally gave up and went to see a doctor about my right hand/wrist situation. It has gotten worse and now my whole wrist hurts and I don't have any strength in that hand. I saw the doctor on Monday, she said it is probably a combination of arthritis in my pinky joint and tendinitis in that finger/wrist. ARTHRITIS??? I'm thirty two. Anyway I'm on high dose steroids now, so we shall see if that helps. If not we'll do imagining. For now I have mom's intense carpal tunnel wrist brace, it feels fine when it's on but a as soon as I take it off it's miserable again.

8. I finished Kari's wreath, just in time for Easter. I love how it turned out and kind of wish I had found the blue hydrangeas for my own. I have scratched my wreath making itch for now. So I'm thinking of going to back to some scrapbooking for my crafting outlet. 
 
 
9. My year of letting go is coming along nicely and my current thing that I think I have almost "let go" is my desperate desire to own a home. I think I've finally reached a point that I truly, in my soul, don't feel like this is something we HAVE to do. With the tornadoes, hail, gale force winds, and earthquakes I think I'm fine with renting indefinitely. I love our current house and the thought of home buying, moving, or trying to come up with stupid amount of money we seriously don't have isn't anything I want to do any time soon. Letting go!!!

10. Also on the letting go front, April 7th is just around the corner, and is registration day for Kindergarten. Zane really wants to see the school where he will be going. I'm thinking about trying to schedule a tour, if that's a real thing, so he can see it before the week classes start. He is decidedly excited about Kindergarten now and I am feeling great about our decision to wait to send him. This year has gong to fast I cannot believe the school year is almost over.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Easter at the Farm 2016

Easter is the best when it happens at the farm. The farm at Easter time is bursting with new life, things are green, flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing, the wheat is green, and everything is oozing spring time. This year Grandma pushed it over the top with the purchase of baby chickens. This scene, sitting around a box full of baby chicks, under a warming light, is what Easter looked like at our house growing up. And the car rides to Easter mass were always filled with the sound of chirping chicks, just like ours was this year. I loved it! Our chickens were extremely noisy, getting themselves removed from mass after the first reading for being too loud. They might have been complaining about the three square inches they had in their tiny cage, or they could have been signing. I choose to think they were celebrating.




The boys and I  came up early on Friday for an extra day of farm fun. The weather was gorgeous and we had a lovely day full of adventures. The most exciting discovering of the morning was Rowan digging up a little frog from the dirt pile. He found it all by himself and named him Cheesy. He took great care of Cheesy all weekend and we let him go Sunday afternoon, after he took part in the Creation Story at mass Saturday evening, of course.


 Goodbye Cheesy, hope you don't freeze to death. Sorry we woke you from your slumber.
Friday afternoon we took a nature walk down by the creek. We saw all sorts of animal tracks, found some shells, rocks, and bones for the tree house, learned how to identify deer poop, discovered snail shells under every log, and we all successfully earned our Botany Badges. Dad would be so proud.



 Both boys have bug suckers now so we went on a bug hunt, trying to find dinner for Cheesy the frog. Turns out bug suckers work great at sucking up fire ants, but they also make the ants pretty angry. This bug hunt ended with both boys getting bitten by fire ants and having a new found respect for the ant den on Grandma's patio. Lesson learned.


Saturday we had our first Easter egg hunt. Neither boy was too enthusiastic about it, which I found odd from the boys who hunted eggs for a month last year. On Sunday we had the second hunt, with the Richard's kids, and both my boys opted out. However, I did a lot of egg hunting, making sure we found all the hidden eggs. I still have my egg hunting skills, don't worry.

 I forgot that Rowan hunts eggs like he trick or treats. After he had found four eggs he sat down and had a drink. Completely content with the four eggs he had. Simple, lazy, little guy!
 Saturday afternoon we went on a nature hunt/walk  in the West pasture, we found a dead rabbit and a dead baby mouse, a couple of scorpions, a few fancy rocks, and one lizard for the creation story! Still no snakes though. Not yet.... soon!!!


The huge cedar tree in the front yard, which mom has thought about cutting down for years, finally had the top blown out of it with the gale force winds this past week. We took this as the tree giving us it's permission to cut it down, once and for all. Zach earned a man badge by climbing up into the tree, cutting off the top, and most of the branches, all while risking life and limb in front of his wife and children. That's some sort of man badge, right??


 No life or limb was lost during this adventure, now onto planning all the cool things we can make with all that cedar. First plan, using the limbs as posts for the bunk beds in the lake cabin. Oh and of course we need to make that canoe and some baseball bats that Able and Grant have been planning for upwards of thirty years now.


Looks at that beauty, it had a long beautiful life.

Then it was time to get all fancy for Easter vigil mass. But first, family photo shoots!

 Mr. and Mrs. Korenak
 Me and my loves!

 Look at that smile!
 Sadly the adorable suspenders broke with the first potty break at church.
 Look at these two darlings. Love it!
 The Richards clan
 Mr. and Mrs. Blakley
Cousin shot!

Easter mass at Bison is my favorite. This year all went off with flying colors. Everyone sat through the entire mass, courtesy of some cookies in Uncle Able's pocket. Both kids did great in the creation story, both brought up all sorts of creeping and crawling things, vegetation, stars, wind, the whole nine yards. It was amazing and I loved it!!

 It's dark and we sit to the far right, so pictures during the actual performance are hard to capture, so here are the pictures from Saturday morning practice!!

 
 Cheesy ready for his big moment!

Sunday we woke up to much chilly temps, but in good news the Easter bunny brought lots of surprises. It even remembered, at 1:30am, to plant some suckers where the kids had planted jelly beans. Nice remember Easter bunny!! The Easter bunny was very tired Easter morning.

 




 My favorite part of the Easter basket haul was the Papa Lego, that came in an egg. Rowan built him a little house and everything.
 Zane loved his Lego set as well.
 The little boys had their own private egg hunt later in the afternoon, using a bug net as an Easter basket. They were adorable and ate lots and lots of candy.
 This weekend also marked the final stage of tree house construction. The guys got the two doors hung, the one on the left is a dutch door, for added amazingness. Also they added a window covering and a mailbox. The kids love it and it was nice and warm on  a chilly, windy day.


It was a great Easter, yet again!!!!