We are thankful for all the family and friends we got to see over the holidays....missing the ones we didn't get to see... and building a new house with our Lincoln Logs. Yippee!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Okay, I realize how silly this looks, but I feel like it says so much. Of course, I can be really dramatic, but I wonder if from under the silliness out creeps some real emotions. With the beginning of this school year, homeschooling again, I feel the stress of having to 'whip' the kids into shape after summer's long play. Math is SOOO hard! Children want to sneak out the back door and ride away on a bike. We DO enjoy our learning, but we are not ready for it to keep us inside. So today we hunted crickets in the yard, but only caught a tiny caterpillar and a HUGE rolly-polly. We dug through long grasses, but the crickets eluded us. We gave up and came inside for lunch. It wasn't until much later in the day that I was trimming grass around my flower bed when I happened upon a tiny, hopping cricket and snatched him up. We put him in a jar for a short time, but he was not too exciting. No singing... I might of squooshed him a bit when I caught him...he didn't jump anymore when we let him go just a little while later. We have a better plan for tomorrow. Big J says that there are always loads of crickets under the trash can in the morning. We'll have to find a big, hardy one to catch and keep for a day. Crickets are good luck, aren't they? Maybe my stress will go away. I'm sure that a bit of a nap and a dose of prayer would do the same trick. We'll just have to try it all.

Here are my spring flowers. Yes, I find that my little ones have absorbed so much of my dance improvisational skills. I love seeing the movement and symmetry in these photos. Amazingly, in the first picture the girls were posing but the boys weren't. The sun was in J's eyes and S did not really want his picture taken. Ahh, this growing business is beautiful, but hard.