Reading, Spring, And Some Of My Other Favourite Things

Even though I have a few more posts I want to share from our road trip, including a post from Dave about his day out, I wanted to take a break today to share some slices of life from the past two weeks.

Rachel has suddenly discovered dressing up and everyday you will find her wearing either her hand me down princess dress, her fairy wings, her Santa hat, and usually a bunch of things at once. This particular day she was wearing her one piece pjs, a pair of sweats, her princess dress, her fairy wings, Sam's cape, a party hat, and her Santa hat. What can I say? The girl knows how to layer!

As Spring has begun in earnest here, we have been spending more time outside, biking and delivering flyers. And swinging and hula hooping. And sorry these pictures are all of Rachel, Sam has mostly been in school, or lying on the futon with the world's longest stomach flu. Blah. Thankfully, I think I can definitively say that he is better as of today. I hope.

Rachel loves to just run out to the backyard and swing and sing (she's always singing on the swings!) for a few minutes at a time. Swinging by herself is a new development this spring.

And I've spent some time taking pictures of some of the signs of spring which make me happiest -- flowers!!!

 

Rachel has had big goings on school-wise. She had crazy hair day at preschool, and, now that she's registered for JK, she can go to "Sam's school," as she calls it, and take out books from that library.

Not only have there been flowers outside, but there have been blooms in abundance indoors as well. Dave knew the best way to keep me from going crazy while stuck inside with sick Sam was to bring me flowers! The irises are actually from Sam's birthday party because I thought they looked like spiky dinosaur trees and I don't remember how we ended up with the purple tulips.

I went through all the boxes of kids' clothes we had earlier this week, and since I think (and hope and pray) the warm weather is here to stay, I started to pull out the kids' summer clothes. So it's been time to do a lot of laundry and it's nice enough to HANG LAUNDRY OUTSIDE!!!!!!! Yay!!!! We're back to the season of scheduling laundry around the rain and I'm so excited!!!

The kids contributed to my laundry hanging efforts by sorting the clothespins for me. This was their own initiative and I have no idea where they got their organizational skills from :)

I know I have not yet referred to "reading," the first word in the blog post title, but I am getting there. I'm so excited that next weekend from 8am Saturday until 8am Sunday, I will be participating in Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon for the first time ever. I first heard of this from Shoshanah and I am so looking forward to it. I've been planning for this for months! Dave's parents are taking the kids for part of the day and my stack of books to read is growing. I will be doing some live action blogging the day of, so if you're bored (or have insomnia) next Saturday, check out the blog to see how I'm doing. If you want to sign up to participate, it's not too late. It'd be fun to have company.

And if you have any good, riveting, keep you awake all night, books to share, please do so! I'm guessing I'm going to be pretty exhausted at 4am Sunday with another four hours to go and looking for something to keep me engaged.

So there's what's been happening in my part of the world lately. What's going on with you?

Hanging Out With Sherry

I intended to publish this post this morning and it has been a crazy day of preschool (what else?!?) and Sam throwing up at school. Fun times. But better late than never for this post, right?

The last blog friend we visited on our Southern Road Trip was sweet Sherry and her family in North Carolina. Sherry's daughter, Mattie, was stillborn in June 2013 and I've been praying for her family every day since then. And I know some of you have been as well. At the beginning of March, Sherry and her husband, Eddie, welcomed their rainbow baby, Mattox into their lives. I was so excited to finally hug Sherry and hold Mattox. But on our way to Sherry's we had another stop to make...

After years of reading about Chick-Fil-A we decided to make that our lunch stop on the way from Amy's to Sherry's. I had the most amazing Cobb salad, some waffle fries, and a frosted lemonade. Rachel decided to let Chick-Fil-A know what she thought of their decorating and pulled the burlap "Lemonade" sign off this display. I was so embarrassed. After that little incident, we promptly got in the car and went to meet up with Sherry.

I'm going a little out of order here because these next pictures were taken on our second day there, but I was so happy to hold Mattox. And we even got a picture with Mattie too :)

Sam and Rachel really enjoyed hanging out with Evan and Brody.

These two really are a lot alike, much as Sherry and I suspected :)

These two aren't that dissimilar either :)

On Thursday we spent the day in Raleigh. First up was some southern BBQ. I had the best fried okra of the trip, and some BBQ tofu. It was delicious!

Then we headed off some museums. First up was the North Carolina Museum Of History. The four kids ran wild, and generally had a great time. Next time I want to actually visit the museum instead of just chasing our four children through the displays :)

Then we headed off to the Natural Sciences Museum where we got in the middle of a dinosaur attack!

And I took a picture of the seal of North Carolina.

On Friday, we celebrated Evan's 8th birthday (which was that day) and Sam's 6th birthday which was three days later. Thanks for being willing to share your birthday celebration, Evan.

We were hoping to end our day off with some mini golf before we headed out, but it was just too rainy. We had such a great time meeting Sherry, Eddie, Evan, Brody, and Mattox and can't wait until we get to hang out together again.

*You can read about Day 17, our final road trip day, here.

Doing Life With Amy

Amy lives in South Carolina and her kids are almost the exact same age as Sam and Rachel. Amy and I often joke that we are living the exact same lives. If I spend a day doing errands, then Amy has too. If she's spent the day ferrying her kids to appointments, well, so have I. So I was really excited to "do life together" if only for a day.

This is the only picture I got of all four kids together and it was the night we arrived. Rachel just adored Kate and Sam and Lincoln enjoyed being crazy together!

The next day we spent the whole day together. First of all the kids (minus Kate, who was in school), got a bike lesson. Thank you Vicki from Chicago for being so patient. And yes, the kids were all dressed in the same colours. And no, it wasn't intentional. See what I mean -- same lives!!!

Then we went for brunch and then for a walk along the river. The plan was to tire the kids out so that they would go to sleep nicely, since the previous night Sam and Rachel had been up until 10:30. Yikes.

It was a gorgeous day and we really enjoyed just hanging out and letting the kids run wild.

It was even warm enough that the kids could dip their feet in the river.

After the park I got to experience "car line" as we picked up Kate from school. "Car line" is a line up of cars at the school and they send your child out to you and you never have to leave your car. It's so different from walking to get Sam from school. It would be so awesome when it's raining or in winter here, although I love getting to walk Sam to school when the weather is awesome.

After school, the kids played, Kate did Rachel's hair, Sam and Lincoln were crazy together, and Kate and Sam whispered secrets to each other. And Amy and I sat in her backyard and talked and talked and talked. It was awesome!

We really enjoyed our day and hopefully we'll get to do it again sometime. Maybe next time in Canada. But not in the winter!

And I'm sorry for the bad/lack of photos. Dave took the DSLR to the Biltmore (which he will blog about next week) and I only had the iPad. And check out Amy's post about our day together here.

*You can read about Days 14 through 16 here. You can read about Dave's Day 13 here.