Graduation!

Look who graduated from preschool today! They had a very nice ceremony for the kids, first they sang songs then they got their diplomas, they we had a picture slide show of the year... which we got a copy of!, then the kids got to play games and eat snacks. It was very nice. The little man did a great job, we are so proud of him! Of course he is fairly upset that school is over and that he won't have Miss Valerie next year, but we have an upcoming open house at the kindergarten where he can meet his teachers and see his classroom... so I'm hoping he'll mellow out about the changes to come. He also knows that I'm working on a mini curriculum for the summer so we can brush up on known stuff and complete learning a few things we missed... like did you know when counting it's 15 then 21:)

We love you little man... way to go!

Where's the camera??????????

Well let us just say my brain has taken a vacation! We went on an outing today and I completely forgot the camera! Both rag rats did a 4 mile hike... the little dude whined the entire way back, but he did make it with only about a half a mile of shoulder riding time! We decided to take advantage of the wonderful weather, my park pass, and my unfortunate lack of work and we went to Calvert Cliffs State Park... wow how entirely lovely! First a 2 mile hike through forest and wetlands, then we get dumped out on the beach for 2 hours of sand castle/beach combing time, and then of course the 2 mile hike back. The beach combing was something to be desired by my sea glass hunting standards... I found 5 pieces in 2 hours... bummer, but I did find lots of other cool stuff... tons of fossils, shells, and lumps of clay... yeah like throw-able make a plate, bowl, cup, vase clay... kinda weird, but I'm assuming the cliffs are clay based, and it just falls off of them. In other bad news, it took nearly three weeks to fix the pinched nerve under my shoulder blade... and two seconds of proving to my little man that I could in fact skip a rock to snap it right back out of whack, there will again be no more sleep for me:( And I've finished the latest wonderful book I've read, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, I kinda thought it was going to be weird to read a book written by all letters... oh but it grabbed a hold and would not let go... definite thumbs up on that one!

Field trip

Today we finally got great weather for the end of the year field trip to the park! We played, and played... oh yeah and played some more! What a beautiful day!

okay, 4 things you maybe don't want your 3 yr old saying or thinking

1. When Mama wears a tank top...
"Mama you're so beautiful" ,
"Why",
"Big Boobs"

2. When a Victoria's Secret or Locked Door commercial comes on TV,
"They're so beautiful"
... while stopping all motion and pointing in a daze.

3. While potty training and you've taken all the gun like toys away and he is naked,
"pichew, pichew"
while turning around and spreading his butt cheeks apart at you.

4. While trying to showing you his Woody doll from the movie Toy Story, again naked,
"Look, I've got a Woody, I've got a Woody, I've got a Woody"

Rain Rain go away...

Come again some other, The roofers need to play... well maybe just work, I'm sure they don't view power tools as I do... it would be great fun and play for me. I love the rain for the garden, of course I'm having a hard time finding time to plant my plants... but my roof needs replacing and this rain isn't making it very easy for the roofers to schedule a time to replace it! Oh well just means I can put off parting with my tax refund money just that much longer!!!! Of course it also is not depressing me that I haven't had a day off in three weeks... what would the boys and I do but get soaked! Hmmmmmmm... boys + puddles =FUN maybe we won't mention this equation to them.

2 batches complete!

Well I have to do some research today on resetting jelly because the second batch did not set... kinda bummed about that since it smelled and tasted super duper great. The little man begged for it straight out of the pot... he wanted it warm! In the first picture you can see what the flowers looked like after being stripped of their colour... it was a fun experiment!

Crazy neighbor strikes again!

Only this time I brought my craziness to Middletown... yup grabbed up all the violets at Mom's, kinda weird but they did not dye the water as dark as the ones from my house. So far today I've made a batch of plain violet jelly... went fairly smoothly. I remembered how long it took to boil the water in the canner so this time after sterilizing the jars I left the burner on low and once the jelly boiled I cranked up the heat again and by the time I was ready to throw the full jars in I had a rolling boil going in the canner... also recycles the water. This actually is giving me enough time to do two batches. I'm not too happy with the heat in the kitchen... I'm slowly melting!