My Budding Flower Photographer

The other day Sam and Dave were at T-ball and Rachel and I had the evening together. We went for a walk and then Rachel wanted to help me water my flowers before we went inside. I had the camera out, as usual, and then Rachel grabbed it and started taking some pictures. "I like all the beautiful flowers, Mommy," she said.

Those of you have been reading here for any time at all already know that I love flowers and I love taking pictures of them. Miss Rachel is definitely following in my footsteps. And here are some of her pictures.

The Sweet William and tulips growing around our trees.

Peony closeup

This is a planter of snapdragons and lobelia. The snapdragons have yet to bloom.

Bleeding heart and pulmonaria

Just the pulmonaria.

Rachel has a bit to learn, and it probably would have helped if the camera wasn't set on "landscape" mode, but I love seeing her perspective as captured by her.

What's Up Wednesday

I like writing (and reading) these What's Up Wednesday posts because it's a good way to give you a peek into our lives. Coincidentally, I also like reading "Currently..." posts. And Day In The Life posts, but I digress...

 

image from here

What we're eating this week... Random food. I'm highly unmotivated to cook, or menu plan, so I've basically been making it up as I go along and making lots of trips to the grocery store for one ingredient. It's a little annoying.

This weekend we belatedly celebrated my birthday with a low country boil, 

and, as you can tell, I ate more than my fair share of shrimp. Yum!

What I'm reminiscing about... Last summer when I didn't have to work. We had so much fun and I'm sorry that we won't be having any lazy days at home this year. Sniff.

What I'm loving... Our warm weather and all the lovely, long walks we've been taking outside lately.

We walked to a local mall this past Saturday.

It was a gorgeous day to go for a walk and we walked 12.5 km (8 miles) there and back. 

We did have the Chariot for the kids but they actually walked a significant portion of the way there.

What we've been up to... Yard work. I bought 102 annuals on Friday night and they need to be planted.

One down, 101 to go...

What I'm dreading... I don't know that I'm dreading anything right now.

What I'm working on... Well, really, we're working on our yard. I need to weed the front bed before I can plant flowers in it, but first I really need it to rain (which it is supposed to do this week) so that the ground is a little softer.

I weeded half this bed on my birthday (three weeks ago now) 

and now I need to do the other half...

What I'm excited about... Yard work. Are you sensing a theme here? Ha! I'm excited to get our yard in shape after winter and we did make good progress on it this past weekend. However, there is still more to do, and I'm looking forward to it.

What I'm watching/reading... The Walkable City: From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacob's Streets and Beyond by Mary Soderstrom. This book has been inspiring me to walk more.

 

What I'm listening to... The birds chirping outside my window. Now that the weather is warmer our windows are open all the time. I love it!

What I'm wearing... On Monday I wore my new shorts from Old Navy and I'm looking forward to wearing them more this summer. They're so bright and colourful! Yay! I'm also enjoying wearing t-shirts and bright necklaces. Oh, and sunscreen, I'm also wearing sunscreen.

Rachel and I were twinning in our sandals, 

red-orange shorts, and white shirts!  

What I'm doing this weekend... I don't actually know... Hmmm, I'll have to figure that out soon.

 

What I'm looking forward to next month... My parents are coming to visit next month for Rachel's birthday and all of my mom's side of the family who live in Ontario are going to a Jays' game. I'm sooooo excited for that! And the kids have a couple of days off school in June and, rather than find childcare for them, I am taking a couple of vacation days to spend with them. Yep, I'm using vacation days to stay home with my kids when just a year ago, that was my life.

What else is new... We got a water softener last week. That's kind of fun :)

Bonus question:
What are you looking forward to this summer?
Last time I did this, I was looking forward to a little birthday trip. Due to the hotel stays costing twice as much as we had anticipated, we decided not to do that trip. And another trip we had talked about for this weekend also fell through due to other reasons. All this is to say, I'm really looking forward to our long road trip this summer.

And that's What's Up this Wednesday. What's up with you?

Project 366: Days 135 Through 141

May 14, 2016 -- I recovered Rachel's rocking chair last weekend and then I spent some time sitting in it and reading A House In The Sky by Amanada Lindhout. Read this book. It's not an easy read but it is worth it.

May 15, 2016 -- Since it was a cold, rainy, snowy (!) weekend, I spent some more time sitting in a chair and reading. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins is a much lighter read, but definitely fun!

May 16, 2016 -- I finally had the chance to use some of the fancy salt Tessa and Janice brought us back from France.

May 17, 2016 -- I went for an evening walk and enjoyed the sunset.

May 18, 2016 -- I started reading The Walkable City: From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacob's Streets and Beyond by Mary Soderstrom. It encouraged me to walk Sam and Rachel to Sam's tennis lesson. It was a 8km (5 mile) walk which took about two hours there and back. By the way, Sam's tennis lesson was only half an hour.

May 19, 2016 -- I love watching Sam play T-Ball. He just LOVES it!

May 20, 2016 -- We kicked off the long weekend with ice cream before dinner. Sam appropriately chose Baseball Nut!

I Hope You Dance

I never thought I'd be a "dance mom." Tutus and plies and first position are (pretty much) outside my realm of knowledge, even though I've taken two adult beginner ballet courses. (The fact that I've taken two beginner courses ought to explain something!)

But Rachel has a lot of energy and dance seemed like something to check out, so we did.

And Rachel loves it. She loves leading other people through her dance warmups. She loves wearing her dance outfit.

She spent a couple of no school days at dance this year and all of March Break at dance camp. And she's going back for a week this summer. She just loves everything about dance.

Last week Rachel had her final session ever of preschool dance. In the fall she'll be signed up for the first level of ballet and next spring she will participate in her studio's dance recital. I'm so excited to see how she continues to grow as a dancer.

And I'm learning to embrace being a "dance mom!" After all, it appears that I have a "dance daughter."

The Past Few Weekends (All Rolled Into One!)

So I've missed telling you about our past few weekends, and although they held some birthday celebrating and Mother's Day, they actually weren't all that eventful, as you soon shall see. Ha!

The last weekend in April (so about two weeks ago now), we went out to celebrate my and Tim's birthdays. We went to The Lone Star Grill and had an excellent time.

That Saturday was a full day as I worked on my sermon for the next day (more on that in an upcoming post), and we went to a family concert in the afternoon. On Sunday I preached, we had lunch with Dave's parents, and then we had care group and T-ball in the evening.

The following Saturday we went to a Blue Jays game with Tim, Janice, Willem, and Tessa to finish off the celebrating of Sam's birthday. This was one thing Sam really wanted to do and it took awhile to get our schedules figured out.

Sam's donation this year was to the Jays Care Foundation and he was pleased to hand it over to the executive director and an assistant.

He was also thrilled that we got a birthday greeting for him on the Jumbotron.

Rachel was excited about her face painting. Ha!

We really didn't do much for Mother's Day. I wanted to finish a city tour we had started last fall and get drinks at Starbucks but it was kind of cold out so we cleaned the house instead. Once the weather is nicer we will celebrate Mother's Day with some fun! Ha! I didn't even get pictures with the kids that day.

This past weekend I spent the first part of it recovering Rachel's rocking chair. I was really pleased with how it turned out.

Then I got hit with a combination of exhaustion and feeling slightly under the weather. I had two naps and read two books. We didn't have much planned for this weekend but it was still annoying to feel not great.

This coming weekend we are having a belated birthday party for me and hoping to get some yard work done. And maybe enjoy some belated Mother's Day celebrations so hopefully I'll have something more exciting to report next week. Maybe...

Project 366: Days 121 Through 134

I want to apologize for the radio (blog) silence since my last post. It has been a full couple of weeks and there just hasn't been a lot of time to blog. My brother and his family (along with the other 90,000 people of Fort McMurray) still can't go home. In about a week a "return plan" will be announced for the whole city. Thankfully the fire is no longer threatening the community and Jay and Erin know for sure that their house was spared. I really appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers for everyone affected by the fire during this time.

I will end the blog silence with a two-week catch up on my Project 366. It actually holds a pretty good sample of what's been happening here the past two weeks. Tomorrow I will return with more stories for you.

April 30, 2016 -- Since it didn't make sense for Dave to rush home from work on my birthday to cook a special supper for me, he made it a few days early. Words cannot express how much I LOVE bbq veggies. Yum!

May 1, 2016 -- Rachel was pretty in pink at Sam's T-ball game!

May 2, 2016 -- It was my birthday this day. I did whatever I wanted to which included mowing the lawn and weeding. Garden nerd alert -- ha ha ha!!!

May 3, 2016 -- Sam and I took some silly selfies while we waited during Rachel's dance class.

May 4, 2016 -- Sam had his first tennis lesson of the year this day. He loved it!

May 5, 2016 -- We took some car selfies while listening to the end of an inning of a Blue Jays game in our driveway.

May 6, 2016 -- I loved the look of the tree in bloom against the blue sky this day.

May 7, 2016 -- We went to the Blue Jays game this day and the Fort McMurray fires were on everyone's minds.

May 8, 2016 -- Sam was warming up for his turn at bat during his T-ball game. For both this and tennis I can only take pictures through the chain link fence so sometimes you can see the fence in the picture, as with this one!

May 9, 2016 -- Rachel decided to get her hair washed for the first time at her haircut this day.

May 10, 2016 -- Sam, Rachel, and I went for a walk to return some library books.

May 11, 2016 -- Rachel needed some "peace and quiet" after school this day so she sat in the sun with Funny Bunny and ate a popsicle. I think it was just what the doctor ordered.

May 12, 2016 -- Unfortunately, we didn't have a lot of time to spend at the Science Fair at the kids' school but I did pick up this gem of information!!!

May 13, 2016 -- One of my favourite nights of the month is the women's craft night at church. I captured the view across the road from church this night.