T-Ball Round Two

Just 4 short years ago we were on these very fields for T-Ball when Eric was in the league. This year Charlotte chose to take a break from gymnastics and try out T-Ball.

Warm-up before the game

In the dugout looking a little warm (it was 90 deg or something the day I took these.)

This is being "baseball ready" (aka pay attention so you don't get bopped on the head with a ball)

If this isn't a "girl throw", I don't know what is!

Can you tell this child was loving having the camera on her all during the game?

Yes, You're At The Right Place

I just made some changes to my blog look. I wasn't planning on it since I hardly have time, but what I was using (from some free site) has apparently been deleted and is no longer available, so rather than have readers looking at a white background with "this image is no longer available" plastered all over the page, I chose to spend some time today to find another look. Blogger has come a long way in their offerings since I first started blogging, but so many of the backgrounds are nice to look at but make it difficult to read text. I think this one may border close to the edge of "not quite readable".

The Big Reveal

Three summers ago Mike and I whacked down all our bushes out front. The yucky evergreen type trees had met a similar fate in a previous year. We made some major changes out there and this summer it all finally came together. Now it's a matter of waiting for everything to mature.

To read the initial post I made about this journey, you can read that here. If you don't really care and just want to cut to the chase and see the photos of before and after, keep scrolling down.

BEFORE

We got crazy

We planted a new tree

If you look in the above photo you can see my white spray painted line of what my plans were. Lets see how I did.

Ta Daaaah.....

Notice the fence is gone, the whole garden area is outlined with interlocking brick (the kind that are buy two at .89 and get one free kind), and there's always something blooming. Right now it's daylilies, hydrangea, and asiatic lilies. If you click on the photo to enlarge, you'll also see that I relocated the bird bath. Now the birds can splash around right in front of the window and torture our cats.

There's an assortment of stuff in there - balloon flowers, lupine, iris, hosta, couple different kinds of daylilies, two bushes, cone flowers, poppies, bleeding hearts, spider wort, and some other stuff I don't even remember what it's called. It's taken 3 summers to put it all together - some came from friends' gardens, some were rescued off the October clearance rack, and other stuff came from honest to goodness nurseries.

Much improved, eh?

La Mariposa

We spent 2 weeks on a butterfly unit last month and part of that unit was raising our own from caterpillars. Memorial Day weekend 4 of the 5 chrysalis hatched into beautiful Painted Lady butterflies. The 5th chrysalis didn't make it.

We enjoyed them inside for a couple days, but once the cats figured out what was fluttering around inside the habitat, they started a stake-out to see if they could catch one. So on our 2nd to last day of school we started the day by going outside to release our little butterflies. One flew off so fast I don't even know where s/he went to. The other wasn't too far behind, and the 3rd seemed to be telling us "I got snacks; not going anywhere right now."




Our 4th, and final, butterfly is "flight impaired". Instead of symmetrical wings, the right side is a bit....off and not well-formed. Oh, he tried to fly away, but just fluttered to the ground. We rescued him and brought him back inside to live out his life. I couldn't stand the thought of him becoming a part of the food chain.

Butterfly #4 resting on Charlotte's hand

You can see his asymmetrical wings here

About a week later we went on a family bike ride and were down by the river. We stopped for a moment and there was a painted lady butterfly. We watched it a while, and it briefly came to rest on my hand. I think it was our butterfly.

Daddy's Princess

In April, Mike took Charlotte to a daddy/daughter dance hosted by our church. Charlotte talked of nothing else all week long and was beyond excited once the day arrived. She chose to wear her red velvet Christmas dress, and I put her hair up in a bun in the back. She was thrilled to have her hair done fancy, but totally blown away when I lent her one of my necklaces to wear with her dress.

At the dance they had their picture taken by the photographer, and all the daughters received a necklace and a carnation. Lots of punch, desserts and dancing followed! She had the time of her life!!! Since I can't decide which one I like best, I posted all three of the ones I thought turned out good. :-)










He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers..." (Malachi 4:6a)

Prairie Girl

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I took the kids on a field trip to a one-room school house about 40 minutes from home. We've been studying pioneer life, and I thought this might be a cool thing for them to see first hand. When we got there, we had the place to ourselves, along with the two volunteers. They were happy to share their information with folks who were interested. The kids got to sit at the old-time desks and were each given a slate and slate pencil to practice on, as well as a grade-appropriate McGuffy Reader! Charlotte was thrilled to try on each of the dresses! For this reason alone she wishes she had lived during this period in history. As we were getting ready to leave, each of the kids got to ring the bell in the belfry. It was definitely a successful field trip!