Bud

This theme was much easier to find, although I admit that many things are past the bud stage around here. The lilacs are finished up. My tulips (all 2 of them) had their run. Even the dandelions are gone, but that is because I pulled them all up. Huzzah!

However, the roses are just poking their noses out.

My one neighbor (not the chicken one) has a wild lawn, and yet you can find beautiful flowers that dutifully make their stand each year. I believe this is an Iris.

Another neighbor (still not the chicken one) with an immaculate lawn, has some very interesting flowers starting to bloom. I don't even know what these are.

Immaculate lawn guy would love to see us take better care of our yard since our grass is touching. He also doesn't have five small children to herd around. I'm sure he was happy to see me uprooting dandelions, but it wasn't for him. It is my own personal battle. This year the tide has turned.

Next up: PORTRAIT OF A MOTHER

B&W - Steadfast

While I was not getting my bird shot, most of my time was thinking what in the world I was going to do for this theme.

stead·fast, adjective: resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering.

I kept thinking of trees, but trees get torn down all the time; especially in my town where they are always building a new apartment complex. Just last month, an entire orchard disappeared from our neighborhood. So....no trees.

Buildings?
People?
Laundry?

I finally settled on a statue. Statues seem to stand the test of time. They remain in their diligent position regardless of weather or spectators. The specific statue I had in mind seems more steadfast than most. What makes one statue more steadfast than another, you ask?

Well, this statue doesn't have a home. I feel bad for him. Two of them actually. A stag and a moose, sit near the freeway, strapped to a trailer. And there they wait. They are beautiful and there must be some design in mind for their eventual habitation. But until then, I feel like they wait patiently for their moment. Always steadfast.

Next up: BUDS

Domestic Bird Portrait

Yes, I need to do some catching up on my photo challenge. The bird wasn't supposed to be a hard one. I thought about a friend with a parakeet, but I couldn't get a hold of her. My neighbors have chickens, so I was going to pop over there for three weeks now. Sheesh. Sometimes my good intentions aren't even real intentions.

But I got over there today. My lovely neighbor told me to come over any time. So I walked over and there were no chickens to be seen. Apparently they were out prowling. There is a wooded area behind her house and I'm assuming the chickens were in there. I checked the normal places, like the other neighbors yard. (That neighbor does NOT want chickens in her yard at all, so they sense that and come anyway.) But they weren't there.

As I got closer to the coop, a lone chicken darted to the back and clucked away at me. They must have left that one as a guard. I'm not a huge chicken fan, so I gave the hen her space. I took a picture through the chicken wire and I liked the lightened effect it gave around the bird. Nevermind that the chicken is turned away from me.

I accept this photo as a good attempt to catch a domestic bird. And I realize that I won't be getting chickens any time soon. Even if they are cute and fluffy to start off. (Heavens, I was going to put a link to the fuzzy chick post, but apparently that never happened. I guess you can look forward to a fuzzy chick post.)

Next up: B&W - STEADFAST

My Offspring at Their Best

This is practically a current event, it being only a day after Mother's Day. I thought I would share all the great stuff my kids did for me. They are very sweet and actually go a bit overboard. If I could get Daisy to clean the house instead of making me cute notes, the domicile would be spotless from top to bottom. (That kid really writes a LOT of notes.)

But regardless of how they want to show love (or how I want them to show love) they are amazing kids and I appreciate all they do. They really make me feel like a great mom, when I know I am only above average half the year.

I don't let the kids bring me breakfast in bed, but I did get some really cute cinnamon toast. They used cookie cutters to make shapes.

All the girls together, with a little help from Dad, put together an assortment of magnets for me. They are so creative and darling. I love every one.

The kids brought me down to the table strewn with trinkets and I was able to look at each in turn.

I think the original idea came from Daisy, since her class made magnets for the moms. Most of the magnets are paper, except for one that has Daisy's face.

Then came the notes. Notes upon notes upon notes. Most of them were from Daisy. But many were from Pearl. I believe she made me this cool snowflakes.

I think I have watched too much Hobbit lately, because every time I see that picture, I think I look like Gollum from the animated film. What do you think? I can totally see it.

Anyway, moving on. Ivory wanted very much to make me a shirt. Together, she and Dad designed the heart and cut it out of vinyl. Super awesome!

Oh, here is my favorite card from Pearl. She is doing so well with her writing. I like how she ran out of room, but put an arrow, so I could find the 'Y' on Mother's Da...

Robyn made me an original artwork. It is on some very heavy wood. I think it is splendid, but I won't be able to hang that one up.

June made me several pairs of earrings and a necklace to match. I wore them to church and got many compliments.

It really was a wonderful day. My fridge is now much more colorful.

We were joking around. We took Daisy's magnet and put it over her teacher's face on her wedding announcement.

It was classic to see Daisy's expression when she saw it.

Miss Thomas only has a few more days to be Miss Thomas.

I also got a movie from my visiting teachers. I can't wait to watch it. It is called Mom's Night Out. It looks really funny and has the guy who plays Samwise. (Seriously...too much Tolkien.)

I'll leave you with an original song, sung by two of my littles. It is dedicated to you know who. (Hint: Not Voldemort.)

Happy Mother's Day to all the amazing women that I know! I feel when I am a good mom, all those women who influenced me for good can take some credit for that.

You Had Spring Break, We Had Summer

There were some plans to go to CA over Spring Break, but sadly they didn't pan out. Instead, we bumped them towards the summer and we are planning to go visit then. While the kids were making summer plans, they were actually bummed about a week being taken up in CA. (Not that they don't want to visit family and spend time in CA...they just want as many activities as they can cram into summer.) I told them that we could still plan that week of summer and then transplant it into Spring Break.

We did all the 'days' we plan to do over Summer. We started with Stations each morning. I'll go into more detail about those as we get into actual Summer. (We already have to rearrange them because of extra curricular activities.) But if you want to remember the basics of how we do Stations, you can go HERE.

Also, we have our allotted days ready to go for this year. This is how it is shaking down.

Monday - Craft Day
Tuesday - Library Day
Wednesday - Swimming Day
Thursday - Treat Day
Friday - Field Trip Day
Saturday (Maybe) - Movie Day

Let's see how our bonus week of Summer went:

Monday: Already we had to move some things around. My mom and sister were arriving on Monday evening, and we had already decided to color eggs for our craft, so we switched the days and went to the library on this day instead. We are trying something new this year. We are spending an hour AT the library and finding a corner in which to read. The only problem I see is Pearl, who is not quite at the reading-by-herself-for-an-hour stage. We mixed it up and took turns reading with her, but I'm not sure what we will actually do for the summer. We even played the witch game at the end, but that can get pretty intense and sure enough, we ended once Ivory caught the edge of a stone and went down hard. This is our one library day picture:

Tuesday: This became Craft Day and we had a lot of fun decorating eggs and having our family Crack Off. I already posted about this. You can see it again HERE. I think those are the only pictures I have with Miranda the whole time she was here. Which means that I was enjoying myself again instead of taking pictures.

Wednesday: Likewise, no pictures on Swimming day, but that is because cameras and water don't go well together. Daisy wasn't feeling well, so she stayed home with Miranda, and I think Grandma spent the day out at Color Me Mine. Pearl managed to injure herself at the pool, bringing our grand total of hurt knees to 3. (Daisy had a run in with the pavement earlier and was sporting a nice bandaged knee along with Ivory.)

Thursday: Treat day, and a personal favorite of mine. We made Cheesecake Cupcakes. I'm sure there are many recipes out there, but we opted for this one. There was plenty of debate about whether we should do strawberry or caramel topping. We were split right down the middle, so we just made both.

First though, you need to make the cupcakes. As usual, the girls were such good helpers. Here is Pearl filling the cups with graham cracker crust to be pressed down.

Ivory is cracking eggs while we put together the cheesecake filling.

Look at these lovely mini cheesecake wonders.

Now add just the right amount of your choice of delicious topping and you are good to go.

These were yummed right up by our crew. I especially like the homemade caramel sauce. I'll have to make that again in the future.

Friday: Our field trip was out to play miniature golf. Sadly, there aren't a lot of convenient places to play anymore. The closest one to use is at Boondocks Fun Center. It was a pain to get going. There are so many of us, and the cards they gave us didn't work right. It was pretty crowded and we decided to stay together as a group, but seven people is a bit much for one team. In fact, the online score card only accepts six. Miranda opted to stay home and it was a good decision, because although it was fun, it was very hot and slow going on the course. I think the kids had a good time and Grandma was a trooper.

And I got several holes in one. Even one at the end, but on the last hole, you could tell it was broken. The hole was filled with balls and it may be that in the past, something was supposed to happen if you made the shot, but clearly nothing was happening now. A little anticlimactic if you ask me. Oh well. Still a fun day with family.

Saturday: The kids liked the idea of keeping our movie day, but we don't have a set day for it, so we are going to try and sneak them in on Saturday. We got Pan to watch with the Dargans and I really liked it. Although, it is hard for me to dislike any movie with Hugh Jackman.

We played lots of games with Grandma and Miranda while they were here. Miranda read a LOT to the kids. I think she read all of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to them, along with The Horse and His Boy. Miranda is one of the few people I enjoy listening to read aloud. I also got to spend some sister time with her, although it was cut short by Tyler spraining his ankle. (Poor Tyler.)

Another fun event during the week was a visit from the Neilsen's. We thought we were going to miss them, but when we remained in town, we got to see them after all. They are some of our favorite people. Here Eric is teasing Pearl. He looks pretty serious, but I know he is holding back a grin right behind that stern facade.

Love my gal Camille. She announced she is expecting another little Neilsen around December. I am so excited for her family. Her boys are adorable, so I'm assuming the next baby will fit right in.

The only thing I'm not sure about is whether the Neilsen's love us more...or our water? It is probably us, although they made sure to fill up a gallon to take on the road.

Who am I kidding? I love our water too.

I think that wraps up Spring Break. Ahem, I mean, our week of early Summer. Utah was very kind and the weather was gorgeous. We were spoiled to have family visit, and we hope to see the Dargans again soon.

Give Me Five

I know I posted my lovelies yesterday, but I've been meaning to post a little project involving them, so you get some more of my cute five.

After we got family pictures, I wanted to put up some pictures of the girls. There is a large space in Midguard just calling for pictures. So, I finally got my ducks in a line. I think it turned out very well.

The real trick was the canvases. If you order actual printed canvases, they get really pricey. So instead, I ordered prints and mod-podged them onto a canvas. Thrifty and cute.

Also, check out our Spring flip-flops. We got these back in March, as per tradition, but I was noticing that we don't have many designs this time around. And June's flip-flops are technically bigger than mine and Robyn's are the same size.

The kids sure are growing up quickly.

Five Reasons I Love Being a Mother

 Nuf Sed.