After changing into my “play” clothes the kids and James presented me with a beautiful lilac to plant out front. I love lilac! It is my favorite scent and from childhood. At each of our homes we've had (this is our third) I've planted a lilac but I haven't planted one here yet and we've been here for 3 years now.
So now I have a lilac. I was also given the gift, from James, that he will be starting a batch of strawberry wine for me. We'd like to start making our own and he thought this was the perfect opportunity to do that. So it is now fermenting.
After that I spent the whole afternoon doing what I love to do, tend the garden. I weeded and planted and weeded some more. There is something about weeding that is very calming for me, very therapeutic. If I could weed a little everyday I'd probably be a saner a person. :) And now that I'm not attached to the "time leech" as often I have far more time for this therapeutic activity.
Before the end of the day I figured out where I want to put my new lilac. I want to be able to see it from the house, and smell it as well. So I decided to rip up all the snowberry bush from the front bed near the driveway and put it there. This is an incredible job because it turns out snowberry bushes ( which have no real usefulness since their berries are poisonous and they don't even have a show of flowers-why would you plant this on purpose?) are extremely invasive with their roots. When we moved in 3 years ago there was one little bush and it has grown into 3 separate bushes via root sprawl. Plus there are tiny little shoots all over the place. So I spent the evening slowly digging up this bush. I got the main bush out and another side bush before going in for the evening and watching a movie with my family while enjoying a cold, crisp glass of Silverlake Reisling.
It was a fabulous day. Thank you my beautiful children and husband for a wonderful day. Thank you God for blessing me so richly and for the added blessing of sunshine!
Here is a series of pictures I took Sunday morning of the kids. I wanted just one of the 4 of them, but they got really silly. Some of the silly shots are awesome.
From left to right: Charissa ( 11 in July), Nicholas (9 1/2), Joseph (8 in July) and Kelsey Anna (13).
Nicholas is definitely the clown of the family. He'd definitely have the title of class clown if he were in public school.
Here they are again being funny.
I LOVE THIS PICTURE!!!! These are the two middle ones and they are only 17 months apart. These are the two that, most of time, would rather the other didn't exist. I saw this picture and was in awe at how much they look EXACTLY alike!! Wow! And look they are smiling and have their arms around each other.
This picture wasn't taken on Mother's Day, but last night. Last night Joseph lost his top front tooth...FINALLY!!! The other one fell out nearly a year ago and the adult tooth is well in place already. We thought the dentist was going to need to pull it. But it just wasn't ready. The orthodontist said, "Wait, it's not ready, it'll come out when it's ready." Yes, Joseph sees the orthodontist already because he has had teeth fall out and has no room for the new ones to come in such as that big one on top on the right...it is filling the spot of 2 teeth. But we soon found out that Joseph has 4 adult teeth that are missing from the x-ray and don't seem to be anywhere in sight. I think it is God's way of making room in his mouth the natural way. :)