A Pretty Present

10/366

My friend Mary is retiring this weekend, and there is a Surprise party planned.. .Shhh!  

I picked up the pretty present for her, she collects Crosses.  She was in my very first Reunion Group years ago. She was in the choir and she was Pastor Bill's wife, so we connected well.  But life and kids have pulled me away from that crew.  Still I'm excited about getting to see her tomorrow. 

I'm also working on this Scarf that I started on my VDC weekend this past fall. 

It's taking me forever. 

I started attending a BSF Bible Study today, and though it's tricky to keep up with this level of Bible Study, I'm excited about where BSF is going to lead. 

I enjoy getting together with like minded women.  Sam and I also got to meet with his Reading Group tonight. We started a Book Club for parents and kids of the 4/5 High Ability kids class.  

We read Mockingbird, the story of a girl with Special Needs.  I don't like reading about Special Needs Parent and Kids.  That's our life.  I don't need to read about it for leisure. 

I finished it up at the last minute, since Sam and I are sharing.  At least it was a quick read. 

I do enjoy getting to know Sam's classmates better.  5th grade girls are different than 5th grade boys. 

I also enjoy getting to have this one special thing to do with Sam. 

It was a busy day, and it doesn't allow for a ton of photographic opportunities.  That's ok. 

Birdfeeding

We had a visitor to the backyard. 

The word is out, I have full new birdfeeders in the backyard. 

Eric and I went to the Birds Unlimited store over break and I got a week after-Christmas present of new feeders.  And it's become clear, the birds know. 

Today, it wasn't just juncos visiting.  

All my little lbb's (little brown birds) disappeared when this big fella paid a visit. 

I don't think he managed to eat any of my regular visitors.  

But he searched out the woodpile to see where they were all hiding and wintering. 

I thought it might be a broad tailed hawk, but it could be  Cooper's hawk. 

That tail is spooky. 

A friend mentioned she used to keep her birdfeeders full, until she realized she was drawing in birds to the feeder that fed other birds.  Big raptors like these hover around little feeders like mine, to eat.

Talk about Birdfeeding! 

Cheesy

8/366

Sushi Date with my Honey! 

Now that the boys have been back in school after just over two weeks, it was time for Eric and I to get away on our own.  We have found the best time is to go out for a Nice Lunch. 

One of our favorite places to go on a date lunch is Sushi Club.  We did it for our 20 Dates for 20 years, and we decided to keep it on the list for last year and this year. We just decided to simply keep Sushi Club and all our other favorite date spots on the list. 

Sushi club is one of our favorites!  All we can eat for $20 a person, and it's worth it.  

I shouldn't post it here, because word will get out, and it won't be the quiet place anymore. 

Oh well too bad. 

Anyway, we ate well on a lunch date, and got to talk like grownups.  

It's hard to keep this time in our schedule, to purposefully get out once a month and have a nice meal and talk, but it's so easy to get stuck in the quagmire that is a houseful of young boys. 

Dating my Spouse helps keep me on the same page of parenthood, and he makes me laugh everyday.

We didn't feel like eating much for dinner when the time came. 

So I had fresh raspberries and yogurt for dinner, and Eric had a hunk of Cheese. 

Cheesy. 

I enjoy... pretty things.

7/366

The kids went back to School.  

It's weirdly quiet around here. But I had quite an extensive To-Do List to work on. 

The first thing I did was get the mail, apparently it had been a while. 

Freebies! 

This year for Christmas, I cashed in some of my Essential Rewards points for Free Goodies for me. 

First Thieves Cough Drops, which couldn't come at a better time, and also true for the Thieves spray. 

But the real treat, the expensive goodie was Jasmine oil. 

I didn't have that one, but I had saved up enough points to spoil myself. 

One drop of this is pure luxury. It reminds me of the beach in Maui when we passed by the flowers growing there, known as Pikake.  I'm guessing they were a Jasmine cousin, because they smell just as sweet and flowery.  I'm looking forward to making some perfumes! 

I get so surrounded by the boys that I enjoy taking some time for girly things. 

I took a soaky bath, and did some coloring. 

The theme for the day is "I enjoy..."  And I enjoy art projects; pretty things, like perfume in pretty bottles and a fresh box of colored pencils. 

Another treat just for me, a box of colored pencils.  I received this colored pencil box for Christmas. 

I don't have to share them either.  

All for me.  I've enjoyed coloring after the kids go to bed, in my Psalms book. We're doing a Bible Study of Psalms and Proverbs in my Christcare group.  I enjoy doing some coloring with the same passages that we're reading.  I haven't had enough time to make art. 

This is my newest favorite pretty art project. 

Starry Night. 

I got into Diamond Dotz as a gift for my friend Kathy, and then I got one for my niece for Christmas. I must've wished outloud just one too many times because Eric got me this one, and I Love it! 

I can't wait to see the finished project. 

Outside

6/366

The theme of the day was Outside.

What a Sunset! 

The kids last day of Winter Break was today, and they didn't want to do much.  

They wanted to play video games. 

I limited their screen time to 1 movie, and 1 1/2 hours of Video game time. 

That was reward for being amazing at the dentist's office in the morning. 

Then they had Kumon in the evening. 

When I returned from Kumon, Eric arrived home shortly thereafter, and he was chatting with me.  

In the middle of his sentence, I stopped.  I grabbed my phone and ran outside to snap these from the front porch.  

Not bad for no filter pic from my phone.  

Someday I want to learn how to paint.  Like Bob Ross or something, just park me with an easel and paints, and I'll make happy little trees. 

I'll paint sunsets like this one. 

Sunday Bits

5/366

I woke up feeling a little snotty today, and sent the boys off to Church with Eric. 

Apparently, that was exhausting. 

While I spent the morning drinking Thieves and Honey tea, he didn't. 

So he crashed hard later.  These boys are adorable, but yes, exhausting. 

This one wanted video game time. 

He thought the lip would work. 

It didn't. 

It did make me laugh, and want to take his picture though. 

I started a new project.  For Christmas Eric gave me a Diamond Dotz diamond painting.  

It's like Paint By Number and Cross Stitch but with tiny little gems. 

For Christmas I was given Van Gogh's Starry Night. 

You can see it, right?!  

The theme from my Fat Mum Slim Photo a Day was Confetti, and this was about as close as I came. 

The dog buried herself in sparkly pillows.  

Busted. 

Get Moving

4/366

It was time to put up the trains.  I don't mind leaving the trees up until Epiphany, but the trains have a lot of clutter.  And this weekend was time. 

But before we pack it all up, the boys wanted to watch their trains just "1 More Time!"

Jacob watches his train. 

Jacob's train looks good. 

We put them up before Christmas, on Christmas Eve, and they run them on Christmas morning, but they don't spend a lot of time wanting to watch them, until it's time to put them away. 

Sam wants to count his cars one last time. 

Sam's train is getting pretty long!  

Sam's favorite cars. 

This aquarium car doesn't get lit up very often, because it's noisy and bright, but it's very cool being Green and having fish swim.  These are a couple of my favorites. 

Christopher's car is so long, that this year he received extra stuff, he got a lamp and a tower. 

There's no more strength for his train engine to pull any more cars. 

As a Bonus for today, we got to Celebrate our nephew Cole's 6th Birthday. 

We went up to Fishers to a place called Bounce U.  It was actually really awesome.  

It's a chain of reasonably size rooms.  It doesn't get as noisy as a place like Jump and Play. 

The kids didn't have any chance to get bored. It was really fun. 

 All of our family is going up that ladder.  

Can I call it a ladder?  It's made of a jumpy steps. 

Anyway, Uncle Ryan brought up the rear as all the boys ran up. 

 All of them Kids at Heart. 

From that first room, we went into a dark room. 

Chris and I loved the black light. My shirt was doing very cool things. 

Unfortunately, the fans keeping the inflatables pumped up are very noisy.  

Chris needed to step out of there a couple times. 

Frankly, I was super proud of him for realizing he needed to Step Away. 

Black Light Basketball!

I love this flooring. 

It looked so cool in the black light, that I just captured a snap of it. 

I may have to use it for a scrapbook page at some point. 

The Birthday Boy gets a throne !

All the kids got a kid table. 

They brought out glow stick necklaces for everyone, doused the lights and we all got to sing to Cole. 

This looked really cool, and Cole was so happy. 

Cole opened up all his presents after the kids had cake. 

It got a little crazy with a gaggle of kindergartners crawling all over him, but I must say, my kids were all in the back row, and didn't go too crazy. 

I was pretty impressed with how well the boys did. Sam couldn't eat the cake, so we went for a walk, I had some junk in the car, but one of the employees pulled us aside, and dug in their stash of candy to find Sam something to eat that didn't have Red 40.  It was very classy of them. 

Sam appreciated the sour green candy very much! 

And for a last hurrah, the kids were in such a good mood, we decided to go test drive a Honda Civic, to see if 3 kids could fit across the back.  They could!  Then we popped next door and tried a Nissan Leaf.  Eric needs a new car, and it's time.  

They fit across the back of the Civic, and the Leaf is an electric car of roughly the same size, so we didn't put the kids in the back of that one.  

It looks like there may be a new car in our future!