A Little Bit of Everyday Life

Boy am I sure off to a bad start with the blogging this year!  I just haven't been in the mood I guess.  And there's been a lot going on.  Namely I've been a lot more involved with homeschool, which is a really good thing.  We're changing things up a bit and it's taking more attention.  

We have a little visitor that lives outside our school room door.  We get a lot of birds down here too because there is a feeder directly above us on the deck and seeds get spilled down here.  I'm thinking of moving one of our feeders down here.  It's more sheltered and right outside the school room door where it's easy to watch and refill.

 I started a new puzzle the other night.  It reminded me of my daughter because we did a bunch of puzzles while she was here.  It also reminded me of something I heard at a dinner the other night.  Our church has a gourmet dinner for everyone who has read through their Bible the previous year, and it is at the beautiful log cabin of an older couple in our church.  They are avid puzzle people, and she offered her last puzzle to our pastor's wife, who also enjoys puzzles.  When the wife mentioned to her husband that she wanted to give that puzzle to the pastor's wife, he said, "Why? Are you mad at her?" :)  He insisted that the most difficult part of the puzzle was the part he was assembling.  It was too cute.

Anyway, I'm making pretty good progress on this 1000 piece puzzle. I got most of it done the first night.  But it sure was more fun with my daughter working on them with me!

One day when we were still at my Mom's house in Colorado, I found my boys playing with their cars on a blanket.

This is probably not noteworthy to most of you, but I loved it.

You see, my sister and I have been reminiscing about our old favorite books from our childhood.

I brought a couple of them along to share with her, and she read Pals to her daughter and my boys the night before the picture of them playing on the blanket.

When I was a kid, my favorite page in the whole book was this one - where Jeremy Joe and Tommy are playing with their cars on a quilt.

(As a side note, I'm realizing I was always a fabric person - even before I started to sew. This particular page appealed to me, and I realized at our VBS planning meeting the other day that one of my highlights of attending VBS as a kid was the chance we had at the end of each day to pick a little fabric draw-string bag to take home and bring our offering back in.  I don't remember much about those VBS days but I clearly remember looking forward to picking out my bag for the day!)

While we were in Colorado, I picked up some bamboo roller shades for the sunroom/playroom.

They go really nicely with the wood paneling down there.  I had to laugh because I hosted a ladies' meeting a few days after we got home and the ladies went crazy for that room, insisting I should turn it into the "tomato room" - my indoor garden.

They about have me convinced... now just to convince the kids.  It's been their playroom, but I do think it might be too warm in the summer to really enjoy playing down there.  We'll see who wins out later this year - the kids or the tomatoes ;)