Mother's Day & the Week in Review

 What could be better than a day spent with my favorite little people in the world?  I had a great Mother's Day. 

 We went to the lake for a picnic with my in-laws.  It's a tradition :)  Every Mother's Day we try to picnic at the lake (if it's not snowing).  This was the warmest I remember having.  It was a sunny and gorgeous day.  I even got quite a sunburn.  It's not unusual for there to still be ice on the lake on Mother's Day, but it's been off for about a month now, which is very unusual.

 Don't you just love this little chair?  The baby fits in it perfectly.  Makes me think of the three bears, with a chair in just the right size for everyone.  He was getting ready for his lunch.  He had squash, but the rest of us had some deli chicken, suddenly salad, chips, potato wedges and carrot cake.  No cooking today!

 The boys enjoyed themselves.  They waded in the water, played in the sand, and did a little fishing.

 The Moms enjoyed the shade, visiting, and watching the boys play.

 They can be pretty entertaining.

 Can you see the eight year old behind the trees?  I would have had much better pictures but my camera battery died just as I was getting started taking pictures.  I forgot to grab my big camera and only had the one that stays in the diaper bag, and I haven't charged it in forever.

 Anyway, for Mother's Day, my family treated me to some great flowers.  I already had the hanging basket, and the ones on the top right are what we bought my Mother-in-law. I was able to pick out my own flowers, and I chose the purple and white daisy like flowers (not sure what they really are), and two peony plants.

 Peonies are my favorite flower in the world - they smell amazing.  My grandmothers both had peony plants and I always loved them.  I picked out a light pink plant with three blooms getting ready to open, and a dark pink one with no blooms showing yet.  I think I'll plant them in a large container that I can take with me if we move (since we're in a rental).

 When I was going through my pictures for the Mother's Day post I realized I haven't posted for awhile.  So here's what else has gone on this week.  I received the last of the sewing books I was expecting.  This one is more of a basics book - explaining not only how to do different techniques, but why.  Since I'm self-taught, I figured a good review of the basics would help me with the pattern-making I've been trying to do.

 Speaking of pattern-making, I want to make a shirt like this one - which is what a one year old was wearing when she came to my daycare last week.  It has ruffles on the sleeves - I think these are called raglan sleeves.  Anyway, the front looks just like the back.  There are three ruffles on each sleeve.

 Wednesday and Thursday night I attended a training class for my daycare licensing.  I always enjoy the trainings.  We have to have a certain number of hours every two years, but I'm always way over that.  This class was about using literacy to help kids be able to express their feelings and behavior, for instance, when they hit another kid, teaching them instead to say, "I don't like it when you take my ball."  In other words, giving them the words to express themselves properly.

 I came across the three year old on stilts... um, I mean, wearing his sister's flip flops.

 These are not your typical flip flops.

 He thought he was pretty big stuff.

 I also finally got the big stroller out and took the kids to the park. I hadn't gone yet because I have a lot of littler kids this year and the nap schedule is off.  I used to have everyone nap just once after lunch, so we could go in the mornings.  But now, I have three little people who nap in the morning, then again later, and so I usually have at least two kids napping at some point all day.  I finally decided just to skip one of the naps so we could go anyway.  They had a blast.  Look like a full load?

 How about from this angle?  It was a bit of a trick to figure out where to seat everyone so that they would best get along, but this arrangement worked out pretty well.

 I took a big fleece blanket (which I found at the thrift store for this exact purpose) for the babies to sit on.  The grass at the park tends to be damp a lot of the time.  This blanket is thick enough it gives good padding and will at least slow down the water if there is any.  And the kids love that it has superman on it.

 We spent about an hour playing at the park.  It was a lot of fun, and we're going to have to repeat it.  The homeschoolers meet for lunch twice a week at the park and I think we'll try to join them.  I don't plan to do lunch there, but if we eat a little early, we can go play with them.  It's too much trouble to try to take everyone's food and washcloths to clean them all up afterwards.

 This was just funny to me, so I had to take a picture of the kids.  The eight year old and my daughter were earning Swagbucks for me, playing the games, and the baby was squeezed in with them.

 Friday night my husband came home with this little fishy.  It's a lake trout - aka Mackinaw - and much bigger than the others we've been catching, but from the same location.

 Pardon the dirty dishes.  The fish was 22 inches long.

 It was really fat, and stuffed full of mosquito or mayfly larvae (we weren't sure which).

So after the daycare kids left my husband and I headed out for our usual Friday night date, but instead of heading to an expensive restaurant, we grabbed a couple of burgers and headed to the lake.  I know, it's not real romantic to take a book with you on a date, but I know how my husband fishes ... until you can't see outside anymore.  After spending the whole day with the daycare kids, I'm ready to sit back and relax.  I love to fish, and do that for an hour or so, but then I'm ready to sit back and read a book, and listen to nothing but the wind in the trees and the waves on the beach. Aah.....

 Saturday we hit all the yard sales and came away with a bunch of great deals - mostly kids clothes and daycare supplies - and then we had a nice lunch together.  In the evening it occurred to me that I still needed to change the church bulletin board for graduation, so after giving everyone baths, I finally managed to get over to the church at 9:45 pm.  It took me about an hour to put this one up.  It was one of those "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" moments.  I didn't have enough of any one color paper to completely cover the board, and I didn't have many supplies.  So I used brown paper at the top and green in the middle, leaving the silver strip from the previous board (which I just covered up) at the bottom.  The school colors are green and orange, so I used orange napkins under the word "congratulations" and the ones you can't see well are napkins with smiley faces wearing graduation hats.  The pastor's wife had supplied me with her invitation and picture, so I cut out a construction paper frame and put her picture up too.  I like how it turned out, especially that the background is very simple.  I think I may just leave that background up and decorate on that.  Now I'm wishing I had taken the other one down first.  I left it because this one will only be up a couple of weeks.  Oh well.