Skip to main content

Finches and Fish

We officially have a fifth grader! Ava’s last day of school was on Tuesday, and I was so pleased to see that all of her grades improved to the top level for this past trimester. Besides the lesson in procrastination last week, she has really applied herself in recent months. She is focusing very well in school, and getting her work done there, so she has minimal homework. Hooray for good habits!

To keep her sharp and focused, she’s partaking in 8 weeks of math and reading lessons (done at home) over the summer. I don’t think she’s too excited about it, but, a few hours of lessons during the week will still leave her plenty of time for fun in the sun!

Last day of 4th grade!


G had another rough start to the week, but we had some long talks with him, and the last few days were very pleasant at daycare...to the point where he was complimenting his friends instead of getting mad at them. He’s such a sweet boy, when he wants to be...so we’re going to do what we can to keep him surrounded by positive role models.

Last Sunday, my mom, Ava, Annie (blond) and Michelle (brunette) headed out to the American Girl Bistro at the MOA for our traditional mother's day celebration brunch. We thoroughly enjoyed the food, and then spent a few hours doing some shopping. It was a wonderful day to spend time with family!





Update on the bird/nest situation...it took me all week, but I finally figured out what kind of birds have taken up residence in our hanging planter. The daddy bird was hanging out on our gutter, and when momma bird flew away (after I tapped the basked to let them know I was going to water the plant,) the daddy bird flew down and landed in the lilac tree, which is right next to the hanging planter.

Once I got a good look at him, I was able to do more research. They are house finches! The one egg that has hatched produced a cute little baby bird, but the other two eggs haven't done anything. I'm a bit stressed thinking this little guy is going to fall out of the nest and land on our jagged rocks below, but, I'm not going to do anything else, and will let nature take its course.


Ava was at home with us starting on Wednesday of this week...and she and Scott headed up north for the weekend, so it’s been just me and G at home over the last few days. Scott and Ava have had a blast...fishing, four-wheeling, and enjoying nature.

She was pretty excited to catch this one!


Meanwhile, G and I have had a great time hanging out at home. We’ve watched movies, cuddled, and had so much quiet time...it’s been fantastic! We were supposed to see a movie in a park last night, but, the weather changed those plans. So...we watched the same movie at home (and stayed dry!)

We also helped my mom celebrate her birthday a few days early. They had us over on Friday night for dinner and cake. G was so well-behaved and I think he enjoyed being the only kid there, without Ava to outshine him.




The other half of our household will be home in a few hours, so it’s going to get a lot more noisy shortly. We better enjoy this quiet time while we have it!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Goodbye Sweet Spanky

This is a post that I'm not very excited to write.  As you probably know, our oldest dog, Spanky, had struggled with health issues (ear infections, seizures) his whole life, and recently, his health had severely deteriorated.  He hadn't been eating, his ear infection was so severe his face was swollen, he had a hard time getting up the stairs, and he very rarely wanted to play.  Last week we got a few tail wags from him, and he ate a few bowls of food, but it was a 50-50 chance that he would actually keep the food down. On Thursday, we made the decision that if he wasn't any better by this weekend, we were going to put him down.  I know Scott didn't want to make that decision as Spanky was a very special dog to him - he truly was his little buddy, following him around everywhere, wanting to be wherever Scott was, and howling his sadness whenever Scott would leave him. Throughout Friday night, it became clear that Spanky wasn't going to have a miraculous recovery...

Happily Ever After?

Lately, I've been adding to the Disney Princess movies in our collection.  Last week I bought Beauty and the Beast for Ava.  That was never a favorite movie of mine, but now that I've seen it several times in the last week, it's growing on me.  I figure this is a good chance for me to catch up on some of the stories that I missed out on! Watching all of these princess movies has me thinking about fairy tales...why is it that it's always the evil stepMOTHER?  Or the mom is dead, and no one has taken her place?  Very rarely is it the father who is evil, or dead.  This has actually come up as a topic in more than one conversation lately, and has me a bit intrigued.  Fairy tales are often not very happy - and usually someone dies at some point.  I was a giving an overview of Snow White to a friend of mine, and as I was going through the story, both of us were horrified at the message - mom dies, evil stepmother wants to murder her pretty stepdaugh...

26 Hours in a Day

Just yesterday morning, I was thinking to myself that I could really use a few more hours each day.  We don't sleep a whole lot, both work long hours at our jobs, try to play with Ava as much as we can at night and on the weekends, and then we have to do all of the adult-stuff...paying bills, grocery shopping, cleaning, work on side jobs, house projects, etc.  If there were only 26 hours in a day, we could: *Sleep just an extra 30 minutes - we need it since the dogs have been waking us up each weekend day at 5:30am.  What could be SO urgent that they need to get us up then?!?  You'd think we only feed them once a week, or something. *Spend an extra hour with Ava...we could go to the park every night, take an extra long bath, read a few extra stories, and just enjoy the giggles and chattiness. *Take 30 minutes to talk to each other about how things are going.  With Scott leaving for work each day before 5am, and then all of the craziness that ensues wh...