Mostly but not Completely Joanna

One day when the little kids were at school, Joanna was out exploring the backyard and found a friend.  She used her shoe to gather him up so she could take a closer look!

A little lizard guy!

This wasn’t too long ago.  It was pretty outside, and we were all in the cul-du-sac, enjoying the last few minutes of daylight.  There was also a cement mixing truck a block down, and James was very much enjoying watching it.

Those eyes… that gaze.  A deep soul, this one.

TAG!

Natalie picked out this dress to wear to school recently, and with the boots and jacket, I just had to take a picture of my cowgirl! 

I’m glad I did too because apparently it was painting day.  The dress will never be the same.  :(

I took the next couple when I was out taking pictures of James on his birthday.

I love a willing model!

I figure when the babies come I will completely forget about blogging any of these “old” pictures in the folders, so I may as well do it while I’m waiting!

Ladybug

A Box Turtle in a Box

My mom told me last week she had a box turtle in a box.  David had found it on the greenbelt and brought it home so the kids could look at it.

We stopped by after school on Thursday.

I forgot my camera, but I used my mom’s to catch all of these.

I was squatting to take the pictures, and the turtle kept crawling under my legs and trying to burrow under my shoe.

Joanna worked up her courage to pick him up!

Then we let him go in the yard and will likely never see him again.

Back inside, we vegged in front of the TV for a little while.  James grabbed a pen and said “ant me” to Gran.  He looooves it when she “tattoos” him.  :)

A fun little nature trip!

Ribbon Dancing and Cushaw Squash

This week has been fabulous.  It’s going by much too quickly, but I’m loving it!  For the first time since 2005, it feels like summer vacation.  :)

Yesterday James had a tie from a sweater of mine.  He used it to do some ribbon dancing.

Isn’t she beautiful?!!

And so smart and sweet and loving.  And whiney.  :)

This morning Matt and the kids were prepping the yard for mowing when they found squash on our plant gone wild.

If you’ll remember, back at the end of May I found what seemed like a yellow squash plant growing out of the compost.

As it grew and spread and became much more vine-like, I thought it seemed less like a yellow squash plant and more like watermelon or pumpkin.  I didn’t really think it was either of those though.  I pretty much thought it wouldn’t do anything but grow around and around our compost area.

Today, seeing the little guys, I know what they are!  They’re cushaw squash.  Or at least that’s what I decided they were last year when my grandma gave us some out of her garden!

And that makes sooooo much sense seeing the vine and how late in the summer they’re growing.  They’re sort of a cross between winter and summer squash.  They have more of a hard shell like butternut, but you can eat it like zucchini.  We ate it all kinds of ways last year.  We grilled it.  I probably also steamed and baked it.  I know I put it on a pizza.  I will be SO EXCITED if these little guys continue to grow and we can actually eat them!

Outside

We had a bloom on the Joanna rose last week.

And here is a picture of what I believe is a yellow squash plant.  The thing that is so amazing about this plant is that I didn’t plant it.  It grew out of the compost!!!!

If I actually manage to accidentally grow a vegetable, it is going to totally make my day week month year.  :)

While I was outside taking pictures of plants, I took a shot of my laundry too.  I love hanging laundry outside.  I’m just getting back into the groove of it after my winter routine.  This is from last Saturday when I pretty much washed everything in one day.

I ran out of clothespins.

Monday Matt had to work, but he came home early – yay!!  I had been hankering for a snow cone, so we took everybody up to Jitters and brought them home to eat on the driveway.

The girls are pretty happy just to get a snow cone and aren’t too particular what flavor, so I pick things I think will be light colored.  :)

Joanna got pineapple; it’s yellow.

Around here, everybody has what everybody else has… or else they’ve built an immunity to it.  I can’t imagine why… ahem.

Oh, and FYI, the lemonade flavor at Jitters is CLEAR.  Everybody’s getting that one next time!!

On Tuesday we tried to go to the library in the morning, but somehow my dress (my almost new dress) ripped between my house and the parking lot, and I felt it would be inappropriate to go into the library with my… behind showing, so we came home.

My mother says it was the universe telling me to throw out the dress.  I say it was the universe telling me not to take three small children into the library.

So instead we changed into our walking shoes and walked to Sonic for lunch!

We took the double stroller, and mostly James and Natalie rode while Joanna and I walked.  Natalie and Joanna switched a bit so big sis could rest, but everybody did so well!

It helped that there was a reward built in to the exercise. 

I have trouble doing things like going outside or exercising, much less both at the same time, without some kind of incentive.  :)

We all indulged in yummy processed junk food and artificially flavored beverages before heading back home.

Joanna is so funny to make believe with.  She ran ahead of us and sat on this bench.  When we got to it, I pretended she was a little girl I didn’t know.  Joanna played along and made up a story about how her mother and father had died, (so sad!) but they said she could come sleep over with me and my children.  She asked us our names and if we had extra beds and everything.

I can’t wait until she starts writing.

It’s Spring!

And that means that at any time you could look out the window and see lizards mating on the umbrella.

I’m not ready to have this conversation with the children.  :)

The Turtle Visitor

On Thursdays Joanna is the only on who goes to school, and my mom offered agreed to take her this morning!  It was sooooo nice to just get one little person ready for a little ol’ half day at school.  She let Natalie come with for the ride.  Of course she was sad when she had to come back home.  My mom asked her what would make her want to come back home.  Natalie said, “You got some French fries?”  So they stopped on the way home for that special treat.  :)  As my mom was leaving though, she ran across a turtle in my street and brought it back to show Natalie.

Natalie was very interested in him and talked to him.

But then he started walking, and she FREAKED OUT!  She scrambled into my lap and screamed for a while.  She’s like that with animals though – she likes the idea of them more than their actual right-in-her-face selves.  She calmed down a bit and even named him.  Mom asked her what we should call him, and without pause she said, “Natalie.”

Mom took him to her house to see if he wants to live in the backyard.  We tried our backyard but “Natalie” kept heading to the holes that the big neighbor dogs have dug under the fence.  That didn’t seem like it would end well.  Mom is hoping he’ll be around and she can show Joanna too.

Feathers and Feet

You know your eggs are farm fresh when you find a chicken feather in the carton.  :)

We’ve been buying a couple of dozen each week recently; I sure do love eggs!

I love how James will put his tiny foot up on the table or highchair tray. 

Once he’s actually walking on those feet, I won’t let him do it anymore, but it’s just so cute!

We got a new cover for the table.  The other one was like 8ish months old and full of holes from little forks.  (Not to mention blue with happy birthday things on it)  :)

Those little fork-wielders have been threatened (I’m shaking my fist here) that there will be NO little fork holes in our new pretty green cover!

I love my smiling James! (even though the photo is blurry)

Well that was a random post.  I guess that’s the beauty of having a blog.  You can pretty much write what you want to.  :)

I’m just sad it’s so hot.

I have exactly one nice thing to say about this weather.  The clothes dry very quickly on the line.  That’s it; that’s all I’ve got.  Otherwise, it’s horribly miserable.  And I don’t think I’ve ever been more thankful I do not have an outside job.  I am praying for all the people with outside jobs.  This can’t be good.

And I’m also wondering if it’s ever ever going to rain again.  ‘Cause if it’s not I don’t feel so bad about letting my grass die as we’re all going to need to rethink landscaping around here anyway.  So far I’ve only lost two Azalea plants.  Out of eleven, that’s pretty good for me.  I really am trying to keep the others alive.  It’s causing me a lot of stress.  I’m very glad I didn’t plant any food this year.  That would be more stress than I need, I think.  I’ve decided for us it just isn’t practical to water our grass.  Some of it is just going to die, and I have accepted that.  We can’t afford the water to keep it alive, not to mention we don’t have a good sprinkler.  I don’t like the sound of the crunching grass under my feet though.

A Trip to a Farm

We unexpectedly got to visit a little farm up the road today.  What a great way to beat the Friday afternoon slump!  Actually, I did know this morning that we were going, but I thought it would be a quick pick up, instead the girls got to see the animals and do a little learning/exploring – what fun!

The farm lady took the girls over to see the baby cows!  They are 4 and 5 months old – like James!

I didn’t want to be the crazy picture lady, but I had to get a couple of pictures!  They’re pixelated because I was standing pretty far away, and I cropped ‘em.  At first the calves ran away a distance because they were scared of my girls.  Little by little they came back over as Joanna waited patiently for them.

We got to ride the golf cart around to see everything!  This is the cow who made our milk!

Her “MOO” was very loud and really scared my poor Natalie!  There she is walking away from the cart:

Like I said I didn’t take many pictures, but there were chickens everywhere, pecking around.  We bought a dozen fresh eggs along with our milk.

So pretty!

It’s been a loooooong time since I’ve had eggs straight from the chicken – looking forward to it!